Bickerstaff, Esq., and in a poem of forty-three lines, by Nahum Tate, poet laureate to her Majesty.  It is a duodecimo volume of three hundred pages; a work of no inconsiderable merit and originality; and written in a style which, though not faultless, has scarcely been surpassed by any English grammarian since.  I quote it as Brightland’s:[78] who were the real authors, does not appear.  It seems to be the work of more than one, and perhaps the writers of the Tattler were the men.  My copy is of the seventh edition, London, printed for Henry Lintot, 1746.  It is evidently the work of very skillful hands; yet is it not in all respects well planned or well executed.  It unwisely reduces the parts of speech to four; gives them new names; and rejects more of the old system than the schools could be made willing to give up.  Hence it does not appear to have been very extensively adopted.

30.  It is now about a hundred and thirty years, since Dr. Swift, in a public remonstrance addressed to the Earl of Oxford, complained of the imperfect state of our language, and alleged in particular, that “in many instances it offended against every part of grammar.” [79] Fifty years afterward, Dr. Lowth seconded this complaint, and pressed it home upon the polite and the learned.  “Does he mean,” says the latter, “that the English language, as it is spoken by the politest part of the nation, and as it stands in the writings of the most approved authors, often offends against every part of grammar? Thus far, I am afraid the charge is true.”—­Lowth’s Grammar, Preface, p. iv.  Yet the learned Doctor, to whom much praise has been justly ascribed for the encouragement which he gave to this neglected study, attempted nothing more than “A Short Introduction to English Grammar;” which, he says, “was calculated for the learner even of the lowest class:”  and those who would enter more deeply into the subject, he referred to Harris; whose work is not an English grammar, but “A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar.”  Lowth’s Grammar was first published in 1758.  At the commencement of his preface, the reverend author, after acknowledging the enlargement, polish, and refinement, which the language had received during the preceding two hundred years, ventures to add, “but, whatever other improvements it may have received, it hath made no advances in grammatical accuracy.”  I do not quote this assertion to affirm it literally true, in all its apparent breadth; but there is less reason to boast of the correctness even now attained, than to believe that the writers on grammar are not the authors who have in general come nearest to it in practice.  Nor have the ablest authors always produced the best compends for the literary instruction of youth.