Slang is not reputable. Neither is slang reputable. He would be a prude who would not recognize that slang is sometimes right to the point; and that many of our strongest idioms were originally slang. Still, although many phrases which to-day are called slang were at one time reputable, the fact of their respectable birth cannot save them from the slight imputation that now they are slang. Notwithstanding the fact that we owe some of our strongest idioms to slang, the free use of slang always vulgarizes. It generally is called upon to supply a deficiency either in thought or in the power of expression. People too lazy to think, too indolent to read, with little to say, and but a few slang phrases to say it with, may be allowed to practice this vulgarity; but cultured persons in cultured conversation will eschew all acquaintance [241] with it. To find it in the serious composition of educated persons always raises a question of their refinement. It is the stock in trade of the lazy and the uncultured. It is used to divert attention from poverty of thought and a threadbare vocabulary. It is unnecessary for the complete expression of thought by the scholar and man of refinement.
It is a real misfortune that many good words have been tarnished by the handling of the illiterate. “Awful,” “horrid,” and “lovely” are good words; but they have been sullied by common use. So common have they become that they approach slang. They may be rescued from that charge in each person’s writing, if he shows by accurate use of them that he is master of their secret strength.
Milton wrote in “Paradise Lost:”—
“No! let us rather choose,
Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once
O’er Heav’n’s high towers to force resistless way,
Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Against the Torturer.”
Lord Lytton makes Richelieu exclaim:—
“Look where she stands! Around her form I draw
The awful circle of our solemn church.”
And in the New Testament we read:—
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
There is no question here of the words; they have all the freshness and vigor of their youth. Do not hesitate to use such words exactly. When the thought calls for them, they say with certainty what can be expressed only doubtfully by other words.
Words must be national. Provincialisms. [242] Second, words must be of national use. They cannot be words confined to a locality. When Morris talks of a house that has been “gammoned,” he deprives a large number of readers of his meaning. “Gums” and “brasses” may be good in certain districts of England, but in literature they should not be used, for they would not generally be understood. For the same reason much of the common conversation of the South is foreign to a native of New York. Whoever employs the language of a locality limits his circle of readers to that locality. To write for all he must use the language of all; he must avoid provincialisms.