him his chance of showing off that he learnt Latin in youth. One of this breed, in the last years of the French Empire, was never tired of telling us in a queer Anglo-Gallic jargon what he ate and drank at Paris, and what Dukes and Marquesses he slapped on the back. Such stuff could not have been served up, day after day, if it had not hit the taste of the English middle class, a taste thoroughly corrupt. A writer of this kind must have readers like-minded with himself. Let me borrow his beloved jargon for one moment, and wound his amour propre by asking what is his raison d'être? The penny-a-liner's help is often sought by an Editor, who knows what good English is, yet employs these worthless tools. Surely the Editors of our first-class journals should look upon themselves as the high-priests of a right worshipful Goddess, and should let nothing foul or unclean draw nigh her altars. Cannot these lower journeymen of the Press be put through a purification, such as an examination in Defoe, Swift, or some sound English writer, that a good style may be formed before the novice is allowed to write for the journal? If the great authors named were set up as models for young writers, we should never hear of fire as ‘the devouring element,’ of the spot where something happens as ‘the locale,’ or of a man in his cups as ‘involved in circumstances of inebriation.’[1] It would be barbarous indeed to ask the writers to learn a new tongue; but we only beg them to go back to what they learned from their mothers and their nurses.
- ↑ This last gem I saw myself in a Penny Paper of October, 1872. Hæc ego non agitem?
