SLANG. 125 



wards showed their gratitude by leaving 

 his service, and becoming the principal 

 instigators of a competition, opposition 

 it may more properly be termed, which 

 gained them a celebrity many of the 

 more youthful professors were anxious to 

 acquire. These men, and such as these, 

 were sought by the London proprietors 

 when they started any new coach, 

 whether in opposition, or to some newly- 

 discovered fashionable watering-place. 



About this time, too, a sort of flash 

 language, called slang, was very much in 

 use, and it was considered almost a neces- 

 sary accomplishment, and a recommenda- 

 tion for employment on the box, although 

 the candidates had picked it up in the 

 purlieus of St. Giles's, and among asso- 

 ciates who were now and then unwilling 

 pleaders at the bar of the Old Bailey. It 

 was not then thought necessary to know 

 anything of the moral condition of the 



