A response to Jonathan Swift's "Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue", first published in 1715. "Elizabeth Elstob's "Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities" prefixed to her "Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue" ... exhibits no political bias; it agrees with Swift's denunciation of certain current linguistic habits; and it does not reject the very idea of regulating the language as repugnant to the sturdy independence of the Briton. Elizabeth Elstob speaks not for a party but for the group of antiquarian scholars, led by Dr. Hickes, who were developing and popularizing the study of the Anglo-Saxon origins of the English language--a study which had really started in the seventeenth century".
