intention, and not as part of the essayist's own
verbal stock. Waller lamented the dangers
which English poets had to encounter in
consequence of writing in "a daily-changing tongue;"
but he attributed the evil, not to slang, but to
the natural growth of the language:

Poets that lasting marble seek
Must carve in Latin or in Greek:
We write in sand; our language grows,
And, like the tide, our work o'erflows.

In the present day, slang is assimilated with
lamentable facility. It enters largely into the
corn-position of parliamentary wit; it moves to
laughter in the law courts; it helps to point the
style and enforce the arguments of writers in
the press. People now are not courageous—
they are "plucky." Nothing is ever long—it
is "lengthy." We form resolutions not
immediately, but "right away;" we enter into
engagements "on our own hook." The desire to
write in a popular style is the cause of this, and
the public encourage it. Slanginess is considered
smart, and indicative of a knowledge of affairs
and society. It is amusing to observe the
complacency and quiet self-esteem with which most
men will utter a cant phrase of the day, as if
they had themselves invented it on the spot, and
it were something superlatively brilliant and
felicitous. "Neither you, nor I, nor any other
man," has induced many a foolish fellow to think
himself a born wit. "How's your poor feet?"
a year ago cheated half the natives of Cockaigne
into the belief that they were gifted with a
special genius for repartee. The heaviest face
kindled with unwonted light, the dullest voice
chuckled with conscious fun, as the words came
forth. And every one laughed, and was fully
persuaded that he had heard the sarcasm for the
first time, and was delightfully surprised at its
readiness, point, and applicability. This,
however, is a habit of the uneducated, and has not
yet infected the higher classes of our periodical
literature, though it is unpleasantly conspicuous
in the cheap comic journals. In the better
order of papers, what is chiefly to be complained
of is the use of words and phrases which have
no warrant and no real use, for the paltry
purpose of appearing familiar with the town and its
habits.

Most of the questionable expressions at the
present day are borrowed from the Americans;
and, fond as we are of rating our republican
kinsmen for their vulgarity and uncouthness,
it is wonderful to see the eager quickness
with which we adopt any of their perversions
of the language. Even well-educated
people now use the word "expect" in the
sense of "suspect." They will say that they
"expect" a thing was so and so—which is a
preposterous confusion of ideas. They caught
a glimpse of some one in the City this morning,
and they "expect it was Smith." This, we
believe, was originally an importation from the
United States, and came in, if we mistake not,
about twenty years ago. People had been very
well content until then to say suspect when they
meant suspect; but as soon as it was known
that the Americans said "expect" instead, it
became at once a smart and clever thing to say
so too. It showed that you understood the age
in which you lived—knew the kind of speech
which society demanded, and were not an old
"fogey." That the use of the word was
ridiculously wrong, was a matter of supreme
indifference; if it was the last new fashion from
the West, that was sufficient. It might be
supposed that such absurdities would live their
brief season, and die out; but this is
unfortunately not the case. Nothing is so
permanent as established corruption. We have a
greedy appetite for vulgarisms, especially when
they are of transatlantic origin. "Go-ahead,"
used as an adjective, is now as common in
England as in America; but it must be admitted
that this is a much more expressive phrase, and
therefore more capable of justification, than the
great majority of our importations. "A fix,"
for a dilemma, or difficulty, is a stupid
barbarism, which ought to be scouted out of the
language; yet we find it frequently used in
conversation, and even sometimes in respectable
writing. The word "loafer," for idler, is making
way with us, though perhaps somewhat slowly.
"Posted up," in the sense of well-informed,
on any current topic the aspects of which
change from day to day, is now of frequent
use. We have fallen so desperately in love with
the American expression "over a thousand,"
that "above a thousand," which had the sanction
of centuries, has almost disappeared. The new
phrase may be as good as the old, and we do not
mean to say that it is grammatically wrong or
essentially vulgar; but the abandonment of any
mode of expression which has formed part of
the language for generations is always
objectionable, unless there should be some positive
advantage in the change. For some reason
best known to themselves, the people of the
United States choose to say "sun-down" for
sunset. It is, we think, very questionable
whether the compound is grammatically allowable;
but at any rate it will be sad to find
a beautiful expression, which has come down to
us through countless generations of ancestors—
which has its roots in five centuries of literature
—which is linked with some of the most lovely
passages in our poetry, and which, in fact, is part
of the very poetry of common speech—giving
way before a compound with no associations at
all. Yet we have serious misgivings of such a
result. "Sun-down" has of late made its appearance
in some of our English newspapers;
and, knowing from former experience with what
senseless avidity our countrymen seize on the like
corruptions, we are not without a fear that some
years hence we shall see the setting of sunset.

English writers have also recently adopted
the American trick of forming verbs out of
nouns. We say that a certain act was
"motived" by this or that consideration; and a
morning paper stated the other day in its leading
columns that, in consequence of the Metropolitan
Railway having come to an arrangement