In The Grammatical Art Improved: In Which the Errors of Grammarians and Lexicographers Are Exposed (1795), Richard Postlethwaite (c.1759–1819) wrote: “Dr. Lowth, than who no better English Grammarian has existed, was an excellent Poet, a great Latinist, a famous Grecian, and a good Hebrician” (1795: 218). This sentence occurs in a section called “Exercises of Bad English,” a feature of eighteenth-century grammars of English which was introduced by Ann Fisher in her New Grammar ([1745] 2nd edition, 1750), and which proved very popular after her grammar was first published (Rodríguez Gil 2002). With this example, Postlethwaite mocks the phenomenon, and with it eighteenth-century normative grammar as such. This is clear from the fact that he couples the name of Robert Lowth (1710–87), the author of one of the most popular grammars of the period, with a sentence containing a so-called grammatical solecism, i.e., who instead of whom, which the reader of the grammar had to correct. Another example from Postlethwaite's “Exercises of Bad English” is the following sentence, which plays on the well-known eighteenth-century stricture against the use of double negation:

But, as I must not never imitate those, who, by their Ignorance and Vulgarity, are distinguishable from others, it cannot not be supposed, that I shall fall into their Errors; and therefore need not say no more on this Subject. (1795: 216)

Not only is this sentence unusual in the number of double negatives it contains, but also because the types of double negation illustrated, not never, . . . not not and not . . . no, did not to my knowledge occur at the time (Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1982: 281–2). Hence, it cannot have been intended to illustrate actual usage.

    Lowth's grammar, which is called A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), is a normative grammar which, to judge by the number of editions and reprints that have come down to us, became very popular immediately upon its publication, and remained so until well after the author's death (see Alston 1965: 42–8; see also Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2000a, 2001).

The strictures alluded to by Postlethwaite do not occur in the first edition of Lowth's grammar: this edition had been intended as a kind of trial version, that was to be augmented by additions from the reading public, thus getting a more definitive shape (see also below). Lowth evidently received a large number of suggestions for improvement (see the manuscript additions in Alston's facsimile edition of the grammar), and these were all incorporated into the second edition, along with the strictures referred to above.

For details, see the attached file.