...clearly motivates Swift's Proposal. How can any author work "with Spirit and Chearfulness," he asks, "when he considers, that he will be read with Pleasure...shall hardly be understood without an Interpreter?" A deep distrust of fashions and "false Refinements" of style impels him to recommend a radical simplicity,...

...his Proposal for correcting English, for instance, Jonathan Swift warns, "genius for History . . . will be read with Pleasure but a very few Years, and...an Age or two shall hardly be understood without an interpreter."22 Johnson also laments that in the absence of a "grammatical and settled" English, "Homer...