With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, writers again looked to France. John Dryden admired the Académie Française and greatly deplored that the English had “not so much as a tolerable dictionary, or a grammar; so that our language is in a manner barbarous” as compared with elegant French. After the passionate controversies of the Civil Wars, this was an age of cool scientific nationalism. In 1662 the Royal Society of London for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge received its charter. Its first members, much concerned with language, appointed a committee of 22 “to improve the English tongue particularly for philosophic purposes.” It included Dryden, the diarist John Evelyn, Bishop Thomas Sprat, and the poet Edmund Waller. Sprat pleaded for “a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions; clear senses, a native easiness; bringing all things as near the mathematical plainness” as possible. The committee, however, achieved no tangible result, and failed in its attempt to found an authoritative arbiter over the English tongue. A second attempt was made in 1712, when Jonathan Swift addressed an open letter to Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, then Lord Treasurer, making “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining [fixing] the English Tongue.” This letter received some popular support, but its aims were frustrated by a turn in political fortunes. Queen Anne died in 1714. Oxford and his fellow Tories, including Swift, lost power. No organized attempt to found a language academy on French lines has ever been made since.

With Dryden and Swift the English language reached its full maturity. Their failure to found an academy was partly counterbalanced by Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary (published in 1755) and by Robert Lowth in his Grammar (published in 1761).

Age of Johnson

In the making of his Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson took the best conversation of contemporary London and the normal usage of reputable writers after Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86) as his criteria. He exemplified the meanings of words by illustrative quotations. Johnson admitted that “he had flattered himself for a while” with “the prospect of fixing our language” but that thereby “he had indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience could justify.” The two-folio work of 1755 was followed in 1756 by a shortened, one-volume version that was widely used for centuries afterward. Revised and enlarged editions of the unabbreviated version were made by Archdeacon Henry John Todd in 1818 and by Robert Gordon Latham in 1866.

It was unfortunate that Joseph Priestley, Robert Lowth, James Buchanan, and other 18th-century grammarians (Priestley was perhaps better known as a scientist and theologian) took a narrower view than Johnson on linguistic growth and development. They spent too much time condemning such current “improprieties” as “I had rather not,” “you better go,” “between you and I,” “it is me,” “who is this for?”, “between four walls,” “a third alternative,” “the largest of the two,” “more perfect,” and “quite unique.” Without explanatory comment they banned “you was” outright, although it was in widespread use among educated people (on that ground it was later defended by Noah Webster). “You was” had, in fact, taken the place of both “thou wast” and “thou wert” as a useful singular equivalent of the accepted plural “you were.”

As the century wore on, grammarians became more numerous and aggressive. They set themselves up as arbiters of correct usage. They compiled manuals that were not only descriptive (stating what people do say) and prescriptive (stating what they should say) but also proscriptive (stating what they should not say). They regarded Latin as a language superior to English and claimed that Latin embodied universally valid canons of logic. This view was well maintained by Lindley Murray, a native of Pennsylvania who settled in England in the very year (1784) of Johnson’s death. Murray’s English Grammar appeared in 1795, became immensely popular, and went into numerous editions. It was followed by an English Reader (1799) and an English Spelling Book (1804), long favourite textbooks in both Old and New England.

19th and 20th centuries

In 1857 Richard Chenevix Trench, dean of St. Paul’s, lectured to the Philological Society on the theme, “On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries.” His proposals for a new dictionary were implemented in 1859, when Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s grandnephew, Herbert Coleridge, set to work as first editor. He was succeeded by a lawyer named Frederick James Furnivall, who in 1864 founded the Early English Text Society with a view to making all the earlier literature available to historical lexicographers in competent editions. Furnivall was subsequently succeeded as editor by James A.H. Murray, who published the first fascicle of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles in 1884. Later Murray was joined successively by three editors: Henry Bradley, William Alexander Craigie, and Charles Talbut Onions. Aside from its Supplements, the completed dictionary itself filled 12 volumes, had over 15,000 pages, contained 414,825 words, and was illustrated by 1,827,306 citations. It sought to represent English in the British Commonwealth and the United States—a fact symbolized by the presentation of first copies in the spring of 1928 to King George V and President Calvin Coolidge—and to record the histories and meanings of all words known to have been in use since 1150. From 1150 to 1500 all five Middle English dialects, as has been seen, were of equal status. They were therefore all included. After 1500, however, dialectal expressions were not admitted, nor were scientific and technical terms considered not to be in general use. Otherwise, the written vocabulary is well represented. A revised edition of this dictionary, known as The Oxford English Dictionary, was published in 1933, and a second edition was published in 1989. Online publication of the dictionary’s corpus enabled ongoing revision and expansion.