WHAT IS SLANG? 131 



the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign to the breaking out of the 

 civil war of 1642. His perturbed mind was filled with mingled feel- 

 ings of grief and indignation as he pointed out in this letter the grow- 

 ing corruptions then so apparent even in the writings of the best au- 

 thors, and more especially as he was compelled to admit that not only 

 the fanatics of the commonwealth, but also the court itself, had con- 

 tributed to bring about the sad condition of the language. 



It is not worth while to speak in detail of Swift's fanciful and 

 quixotic scheme for purging the language and keeping it pure. But 

 it is interesting to observe, in passing, that his urgent appeal to the 

 prime minister to become the guardian and curator of the English 

 tongue was utterly fruitless and, what is more, that his direful predic- 

 tions as to the speedy decay of English have never been verified. 

 Furthermore, some of those very neologisms which Swift criticized so 

 unrelentingly are now recognized in polite speech and bear the stamp 

 of approval as the jus et norma loquendi. Of his second class of bar- 

 barisms well-nigh all are to-day accepted as standard English and are 

 without a trace of slang. With his first and third classes, however, 

 fate has not dealt so kindly, for these words are still under condemna- 

 tion, save mob, which has forced its way to recognition in good usage as 

 a necessary term. 



Toward the end of the eighteenth century appeared another cham- 

 pion of the preservation of the purity and propriety of the English 

 speech. This was James Beattie, a learned Scotchman. For some 

 reason or other, the Scotch seemed extremely solicitous about the 

 English language during the eighteenth century — a solicitude that was 

 not appreciated by the British lexicographers and least of all by Dr. 

 Johnson. In a letter written in 1790, Beattie took occasion to speak 

 of the ' new-fangled phrases and barbarous idioms that are now so 

 much affected by those who form their style from political pamphlets 

 and those pretended speeches in Parliament that appear in the news- 

 papers.' " Should this jargon continue to gain ground among us," 

 he assures his correspondent, in a doleful mood, " English literature 

 will go to ruin. During the last twenty years, especially since the 

 breaking out of the American war, it has made alarming progress. . . . 

 If I live to execute what I purpose on the writings and genius of 

 Addison, I shall at least enter my protest against the practise; and by 

 exhibiting a copious specimen of the new phraseology, endeavor to 

 make my reader set his heart against it." 



In order to emphasize the damage resulting to the language from 

 the neologisms which were creeping in, Beattie conceived the clever 

 plan of privately printing a series of ' Dialogues of the Dead,' which 

 purported to be the production of his son deceased a few years before. 

 The most interesting of these ' Dialogues ' is the report of an imaginary 



