Dekker’s greatest contemporary, in reference to certain qualities he attributes to “man’s deadliest enemy,” tells us, though we are not bound to take his word for it, unless we like it,
“The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman;”
in which he follows the opinion long before expressed by the Italian poet Pulci, in his Morgante Maggiore, (canto xxv. st. 161.)
Che gentilezza è bene anche in inferno.
Pulci seems so pleased with this discovery, (if it be one,) that he repeats it in nearly the same words (in the following canto, st. 83.)
Non creder ne lo inferno anche fra noi
Gentilezza non sia.
The old bone-shoveller in Hamlet maintains that your only real and thorough gentlemen are your “gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers;” so that, after all, the authorities on this point are various and contradictory. If it be objected that slang (otherwise sometimes called flash) is employed very much by boxers and prize-fighters, teachers and practisers of “the noble science of self-defence,” one answer may be supplied by a quotation from Aristotle, which shows that he himself was well skilled in the art, and he gives instructions how important it is to hit straight instead of round, following up the blow by the weight of the body. His words upon this subject are quoted (with a very different purpose certainly) in the last number of the Edinburgh Review, (p. 279.) So that we need only refer to them. Another “old Grecian” might be instanced in favour of the use of slang, and even of incorrect grammar; for every scholar knows (and we know it who are no scholars) that Aristophanes in the first scene of his comedy, named in English The Clouds, makes his hero talk bad Greek, and employ language peculiar to the stable: the scholiasts assert that Phidippides ought to have said, even in his sleep, ω Φιλε αδιχεις instead of Φιλων αδιχεις, which he uses. However, we are perhaps growing too learned, although it will be found in the end, (if not already in the beginning,) that this is a learned article, and ought perhaps to have been sent for publication in the Classical Journal.
What we seek to establish is this:—that the language of the ignorant is the language of the learned; or in less apparently paradoxical terms, that what is considered slang and unfit for “ears polite,” is in fact a language derived from the purest and most recondite sources. What is the chief recommendation of lady Morgan’s new novel?—for what do ladies of fashion and education chiefly admire it? Because the authoress takes such pains to show that she is acquainted with French, Italian, and even Latin, and introduces so many apt and inapt quotations. What is the principal advantage of modern conversation? That our “home-keeping youths” have no longer “homely wits,” and that they interlard their talk with scraps and words from continental tongues. Now if we can show that slang is compounded, in a great degree, of words derived from German, French, Italian, and Latin, shall we not establish that what is at present the language of the ignorant is in fact the language of the learned, and ought to be the language employed by all gentlemen pretending to education, and of all ladies pretending to blue-stocking attainments? We proceed to do so by a selection of a few of the principal words which are considered slang or flash, of which we shall show the etymology.
Blowin—“an unfortunate girl,” in the language of the police-offices. This is a very old word in English, and it is derived from blühen, German, to bloom or blossom. Some may think that it comes from the German adjective blau. The Germans speak of a blue-eye, as we talk of a black-eye, and every body is aware that blowins are frequently thus ornamented.
To fib—a term in boxing. It means, to clasp an antagonist round the neck with one arm, and to punish him with the other hand. It is from the Italian fibbia, a clasp or buckle. The Italian verb affibiare is used by Casti precisely in this sense:—Gli affibia un gran ceffon. (Nov. xliii. st. 65.)