" In the passage I
have italicized, it will be seen that Dryden lays some stress upon the
influence of women in refining language. Swift, also, in his plan for an
Academy, says: "Now, though I would by no means give the ladies the
trouble of advising us in the reformation of our language, yet I cannot
help thinking that, since they have been left out of all meetings except
parties at play, or where worse designs are carried on, our conversation
has very much degenerated."[28] Swift affirms that the language had grown
corrupt since the Restoration, and that "the Court, which used to be the
standard of propriety and correctness of speech, was then, and, I think,
has ever since continued, the worst school in England."[29] He lays the
blame partly on the general licentiousness, partly upon the French
education of many of Charles's courtiers, and partly on the poets. Dryden
undoubtedly formed his diction by the usage of the Court. The age was a
very free-and-easy, not to say a very coarse one. Its coarseness was not
external, like that of Elizabeth's day, but the outward mark of an inward
depravity. What Swift's notion of the refinement of women was may be
judged by his anecdotes of Stella. I will not say that Dryden's prose did
not gain by the conversational elasticity which his frequenting men and
women of the world enabled him to give it.
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