unanimous in acknowledging the adequacy of the Scottish vernacular, in the hands of Burns, as the image of the vivid perception of the objective world. And sometimes they are apt to put extravagantly high the claims of the dialect in this respect. The late Principal Shairp, in his monograph on Burns, has an interesting passage which may serve as an illustration. “What pure English words," he asks, "could so completely and graphically, describe a sturdy old mare in the plough, setting her face to the furzy braes, as the following: the vernacular exercises over those who are familiar with it. One can quite appreciate the force of the contention that to Burns the toiling life of the ploughman and his horse was a most vivid experience, and that he has made it live forever in his vernacular verse as he could not have done had he written in the standard English. Only let us remember that the secret of the power of Burns lies in clear vision and genial sympathy, not in the use of a particular vocabulary. The fact that his genius has made the Scottish dialect immortal is no proof that in other writers the excessive use of up Thou never braing't, an' fetch't, an' land words is not a blemish. fliskit, But thy auld tail thou wad hae whiskit, and dialogue is a vice akin to the free introduction of technical phrases in a Till spritty knowes wad rair't an' riskit, work which is intended to be purely An' slypet owre? Paraphrasing the verse, the principal makes it read: "Thou didst never fret, or plunge and kick, but thou wouldest have whisked thy old tail, and spread abroad thy large chest, with pith and power, till hillocks, where the earth was filled with tough-rooted plants, would have given forth a cracking sound, and the clods fallen gently over." The paraphrase is purposely bald and cumbrous, and the principal, who was an accomplished Latin scholar, would have given a much terser version, had he been translating Burns into Latin verse. Bald as it is, it gives a better idea of the sense of the original than many modern Scottish readers themselves can gather even with the assistance of a glossary. What strikes one in Principal Shairp's commentary, however, is the implied theory that the standard English is inadequate to the description of an old mare facing a particularly tough bit of ploughland, and that the dialect best describes the sympathy of the farmer with his faithful, inarticulate friend and fellow-laborer. Without going the length of saying that the idea could not be expressed in good English, the fact that a critic like Shairp thinks so may be accepted as a proof of the power literary. We have a remarkable example of this blemish in Falconer's "Shipwreck;" and as Falconer was a Scot, one is tempted to ask whether an excessive love of detail may not be a Scottish failing of which the too liberal employment of the vernacular is only a symptom. Charles Lamb says of the Caledonian: "He brings his total wealth into company and gravely un packs it. His riches are always about him. His conversation is as a book." In the opening of "The Tempest," Shakespeare, by a few vivid strokes, paints a ship driving before the wind on a lee-shore. perfectly. Now contrast Shakespeare's tween literary Scotch and vernacular brief and graphic sketch with Falconer's elaborate scene. Unlike Shakespeare Falconer makes a most copious use of marine phraseology. In the space of some hundred lines he introduces to our notice, among other items of the fitting of the ship, top-gallant yards, travellers, back-stays. top-ropes, parrels, lifts, booms, reef-lines, halyards, bow-lines, clue-garnets, reeftackles, brails, head-ropes, and robands. There have been critics who have gone into ecstasies over the most highly nautical passages of this poem, but theirs is an enthusiasm which it is difficult to share. One can understand a seaman, or a seasoned yachtsman, becoming enraptured over Falconer's clue-garnets; and among a people whose love of salt water and tarry ropes is proverbial, there are possibly many to whose ears the jargon of the forecastle and the marine dictionary is music. That these sea-phrases can be used effectively Shakespeare has shown; but Falconer demonstrated that enough is far better than a feast. Falconer's mistake is excessive circumstantiality, and this is just the error into which vernacular writers, who prize the vernacular for its own sake, are apt to fall. With them the use of dialect tends to become an affectation, a sort of inverted pedantry, an occasion for displaying a knowledge of uninteresting minutiæ. Scotch. The distinction is important. Sir Walter Scott, who may be taken as a model in the use of dialect, is careful to insist upon it, and we imagine the words he puts in the mouth of the Duke of Argyle in "The Heart of Midlothian" express his own view. It may be remembered that the duke eulogizing Effie Deans (now become Lady Staunton) says, "She speaks with a Scotch accent, and now and then a provincial word drops out so prettily that it is quite Doric;" and when Butler interposes with the remark that he should have thought that would have sounded vulgar, the duke replies, "Not at all, you must suppose that it is not the broad, coarse Scotch that is spoken in the Canongate of Edinburgh or in the Gorbals." In practice Scott himself observes this difference. He never sinks into Gorbals Scotch. As Mr. Ruskin has pointed out with fine discrimination, he does not, like some modern writers, consider it amusing to indulge in "ugly spellings." He "makes no attempt whatever to indicate accents or modes of pronunciation by changed spelling, unless the word becomes a quite definitely new and scarcely writeable one." He only uses the Scots form of a word when there is a difference between it and English. "There is no lisping, drawling, slobbering, or snuffling; the speech is as clear as a bell and as keen as an arrow; and its elisions and contractions are either melodious (na for not and pu'd for pulled) or as normal as in Latin verse.” But every Scottish writer is not skilful as Scott, and the excessive use some of them make of the vernacular in describing rustic manners is apt to we repel. The explanation is obvious if we call to mind the dictum, we think in words. An excessive use of dialect in this connection involves a minute count of the meaner and more trivial details of common life which are not necessarily worth photographing. A conspicuous example of the jarring effect of a too free use of the vernacular in this way is to be found in a very interesting narrative poem entitled "Hel When applied to the description of rustic character and manners, King James's advice is of wider interest than when restricted to the description of external nature, for the use of dialect to portray manners is not confined to those who speak the vernacular. Extending the rule to this usage, may accept the general principle that when a thought has been born in dialect, so to speak, dialect is appropriate for its expression. But as no true artist paints everything he sees, no discriminating writer repeats literally everything he hears. Modern writers of Scottish dialect have sinned against this principle, and have neglected to observe that there is a distinction be ас enore," written in the latter half of last century by Alexander Ross of Lochlee. As a pastoral tale "Helenore" is admirable; the plot is original and well worked out; and it gives us a valuable insight into the life and customs of a crofter cominune, situated on the debatable ground between Highland and Lowland where the conflict between two opposing systems of social ethics was still in the balance; the Highlanders maintaining, in anticipation of Wordsworth's Rob Roy, that right goes with might, and that the booty belongs to the victor, while the Lowlanders take their stand on the principle that the law is protector of the weak. With all his merits Ross is now almost unknown, and the main reason is that his vernacular is unpleasant. Scott, when he quotes him, amends him, and speaks of him as being forgotten even in his day. Had he written in a language less uncouth, his poem might have lived. He wished, as he tells us, to give expression to the sentiments of plain people living in a remote part of the country. The object is laudable enough; but Wordsworth did something of the same kind without finding it necessary to speak the language of Cumbrian folk, and Ross might have fulfilled his purpose without adopting the coarsest Scottish patois. He appears to have erred against his better instinct, for he altered his style upon the advice of a mentor to whom he showed his manuscript. The judgment which this gentleman pronounced might serve as the creed of the Kailyard School. "Your poem, Mr. Ross," the critic is reported to have said, "is beautiful, and you are nearly as good at the English as you are at the Latin. You are trying, I see, to imitate some of those great English poets, but it will not go down just yet to speak of Scotch fashions to Scotch people in the English tongue. Gae awa hame, mon, and turn it into braid Scotch verse; and, gin ye print it, not a jot will my lassies do at their wheel, and some thousands mair like them, till they have read it five or six times over." Judged by the result, the advice was wrong. The flame of Ross's genius was smothered under the speech he used, whereas had it been fed with the oil of a less outlandish dialect, it might have continued to shed a mild but benignant light over a little known phase of Scottish rural life. It was Ross's misfortune that he had no one to give him an advice similar to that which Charles Lamb gave John Clare. "In some of your story-telling ballads, the provincial phrases sometimes startle me. I think you are too profuse with them. In poetry slang of every kind is to be avoided. There is a rustic Cockneyism, as little pleasing as ours of London. . . Now and then a home rusticism is fresh and startling; but, when nothing is gained in expression, it is out of tenor. It may make folks smile and stare; but the ungenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases will prevent you in the end from being so generally tasted as you desire to be." Lamb was "a scorner of the fields," but, as Wordsworth adds, he was more so in show than truth. He was certainly a more discreet critic than ... Ross's friend. Upon the principle that we can look out on infinitude through any loophole, it may be said that one can find an epitome of all humanity in the life of his village. That is the idea, so far as they act by rule, of the extreme school of local and dialect literature. There is undoubtedly some force in it. On the other hand, it is almost certain, that if a man's ears are continually filled with the cackle of his bourg, he will in time become deaf to everything else. A dialect-literature cultivated for its own sake inevitably tends downward to the utterly provincial and parochial. Shakespeare, in a well-known passage in "King Lear," makes Edgar speak in dialect. Good gentleman, go your gait, and let poor volk pass. And chud ha' been zwaggered out of my life, 'twould not ha' been zo long as 'tis by a vortnight. Nay, come not near th' old man; keep out, che vor ye, or ise try whether your costard or my ballow be the harder; chill be plain with you. ... Chill pick your teeth, zir; "Come, no matter vor your foins." The dialect is in this case of course adopted in order to support the peasant's disguise. On the same principle, that amusing rogue, Captain John Creichton, in relating how he ran to earth the hillside men of the West Country, adopts the West Country tongue on occasion. "While the soldiers stayed to refresh their horses in the churchyard," he tells us, "I spied a country fellow going by, and asked him in his own dialect, 'Whither gang ye, this time of night? He answered, 'Wha are ye that speers?' I replied, 'We are your ane foke.'" This had the desired effect. While Captain John's dialect is not perfect, the idea of it, like Edgar's, is correct. Friends from stranger lurking about a churchyard at night would have sounded Enemies, even to a Westland Whig so guileless as to accept as genuine so poor an imitation of his own tongue. The employment of dialect by Edgar and of West Country Scots by Captain John Creichton is clearly consistent with dramatic fitness. Edgar deceived Os wald by his dress and speech, and there is no other way of indicating the deception than by using the dialect. a It is sometimes charged against modern vernacular writers that they do not distinguish between dialect and corruptions. But the sin is not new. Fluellen wears the leek "upon St. Tavy's day," and tells Henry that all the water in the Wye cannot wash "the Welsh plood out of his pody." "It sall be very gud, gud feith, gud captains bath," observes Captain Jamy; while Captain Macmorris, in the same play, speaks of the town being "beseeched," and asks, "what ish my nation?" It is but a step from corruptions such as these to the misspelling of Tabitha Bramble, the extraordinary idioms of Mrs. Gamp and Betsy Prig, and the philological vagaries of the American humorists. Mrs. Gamp offends some fastidious tastes; but where are we to draw the line? "Comparisons are odorous," says Dogberry. "No capari sons, miss, if you please," is Mrs. Malaprop's version of the axiom. "Caparisons don't become a young woman." If we think in words, there is no better way of reproducing the muddle-headedness of a Dogberry or the vacuous conceit of a Malaprop than in words that are no words; but the usage marks the borderland between what is legitimate and what is illegitimate. In the main, the practice of the best writers confirms the rule that dialect should only be used to convey ideas for the expression of which the standard language is inadequate, and should be used only to an extent sufficient to mark the individuality of the speaker. Where the use of dialect is really vitalizing, where it emphasizes a character really worth knowing, it is permissible, but not otherwise. And after all, the experience for which the literary language does not provide sufficient expression is comparatively unimportant. It is a sign of degeneracy in our literature when writers deliberately resort to the grotesque, the archaic, or the vernacular. It is the duty of his countrymen to maintain the credit of the tongue that Shakespeare wrote. We owe far more to it than to any dialect. It is astonishing that Scotsmen of all people in the world should fail to realize the significance of the fact that the Scottish people, like the English, have done their thinking, not in dialect, but in English, on the most solemn оссаsions in their lives. For more than two centuries the thoughts which have made Englishmen and Englishwomen what they are, which have made Scotsmen and Scotswomen what they are, have been presented to them in English pure and undefiled. The literary value of the Church-service to the English people has been incalculable; and this is true also of Scotland. In town and country, for generations, Scotch people have heard the Bible read in the church every Sabbath, and many of them used to hear it read twice a day at family exercise. As children they learned by heart the metrical versions of the Psalms and the clean-cut, logical, dogmatic statements of the Shorter Catechism. Their religion, in in them a great divinity that grows not short, came to them in an English old." garb. It would be difficult to overestimate the literary importance of this fact. It has had a much profounder influence upon their literature, if they would only think of it, than their songs and ballads, or the story of Wallace, of which Burns said that it poured a tide of Scottish prejudice into his veins which would continue to boil along there until the floodgates shut in eternal rest. No one can take a just view of the comparative value of the vernacular literature of Scotland who leaves out of sight the important fact, which Scotsmen presumably overlook only because it is so familiar, that the standard English has been to them of far greater value than their own form of speech. It only needs a moment's reflection to prove that there are some things which their dialect cannot accomplish. To an ordinary soberminded Scotsman it would partly grotesque, and partly profane, to state the great verities of his religion in anything but the purest speech. With true insight Sir Walter Scott does not make Mause Headrigg, nouncedly vernacular though she naturally is, give paraphrases of Scripture in her own dialect. She quotes correctly the Orientalisms of the Old Testament; she gives the very words of the authorized translation, as knowing them familiarly and believing in plenary inspiration. appear pro The ideas capable of being expressed even in the purest dialect which has fallen behind in the race for supremacy, are and must be at best only of second-rate or third-rate value. The Scotsman, equally with the Englishman, is interested in maintaining the dignity of English speech. "The language of world-wide literature," said Dean Stanley, "is the only fitting garb for those eternal and primary principles of which the Grecian poet has said that they have their foundation high, all-embracing like their parent Heaven, neither did mortal infirmity preside over their birth, nor shall forgetfulness lay them to sleep. There is on From The Academy. SOME CHILD-CRITICS OF BROWNING. A BOARD SCHOOL OF EXPERIMENT. I have before me some essays written by children in the Walworth Board Schools on the life and poetry of Robert Browning. They were prepared for a culminated, less competition which than a fortnight ago, in a distribution of honors, and my knowledge of the matter dates from the brief newspaper report of that ceremony. not end with it. So much of Browning's mind had been hidden from the wise and prudent that it seemed to be worth while to discover how much had been revealed to babes; and I went to Walworth. There I found Mr. F. Her But it does bert Stead in his large office in the Robert Browning Hall in York Street. in Mr. Stead spoke of working men who read "Abt Vogler" or "Paracelsus" with him, finding meanings that had escaped himself; of lectures and entertainments, of May Day festivals and summer outings, of Bible study, clubs, flower missions, and of many other agencies by which it is sought to light on the let dark places of Walworth. And he said that the pivot, the magnet, the ever-useful pretext of it all was Browning's early connection with the neighborhood. Born in Camberwell young Browning came for years to worship with his parents in the Congregational Chapel which now, under the name of a hall, bears his name. Thanks to the Settlement the humblest folk in Walworth have learned the name at least of Robert Browning. It is true that many of them begin by taking the "Settlement" for a charitable fund, and coming forward to claim their "share;" but their disillusionment is the beginning of good. And the children? |