New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1853-11-12
EnJToRLaL BooK.NpTEs. !

Households WORDS y Souf 50 yorll
dickens For November. American EDITION w"
McElrath Il Barker
u.s,;,.s-vb;ch are little better than
~.h,r n.wsnaperss-newspapers without any
- .hon,--and Reviews which at best are
Int a sort Of back -door to Learning are 'n."ss
,-h;ob man should not affect, unless ne thihAs
=. needs TO cultivate his shallowness, In order to
bring il to perfection, or by dint of reading to
vrov more ignorant. If you want to read, don't
take Reviewer to do it for you: don't read oy
proxy. If you are lazy, sleep; if you are iuAu-
rious, devour novels But let Reviews ana Nag
azines alone, if you mean ever to know any 'i'ns
Life is. at best 1--WE have Gicero's WORD ior IL III
Latin prose and Byron's in English verse; 'oO
sw;ft fer Art. TOO short for Learning SO that'
IN ,ha n,r,,nlio;ty of books, the brevity OF our
evan and the insufficiency Of single pair OF
ewes for perusing more than portion u an
that has been scribbled, your only ear'niy
chance for reading to any purpose is TO reau
~i,h much selection. There are wise ana sweet
and precious books enough in the world 10 III
struet, to mend, to delight you why .heh, "as'e
xourself upon those that will do neither lou
can converse with sages; you can eonsort with
the most famous wits-with all
swhose tongues and pen
Have been tn interpreters 'twixt gods ana men
INV. then idle with printed blockheads or fab
s,,o ev;, communication with the depraved
Life and the gift of letters were not vouchsaiea
us, to be SO abused. True, there are folks whose
brain is such that it signifies little what they DO
with it. If you look upon yourself as one OF
these. indulge in whatever reading likes you ;
RpyiPws- and
what seem to be called literary journals
only because they are not POLITICAL Don't be
afraid nothing will hurt your head, if it has
no more sense in it than to employ itself this
wise.
Yet we mean not to assert that these things
are utterly useless For we believe In the adage
that "nothing has been created in vain AS
Hies and MOSQUITOES have their mysterious util-
ity, so must these, could il beexplained Cues
sing at it only we should say that these intellec-
fual phantasms may be to the mind what dreams
are to the body. As dreams perhaps serve to
animate the else suspended functions and, by
keeping up sort of tickling of the sensations,
to prevent them from going out altogether; SC
these prickings of the sleepy perceptions in soul:
that do nothing but doze, are probably meant tt
SUSTAIN the continuity of their half-heing anc
to make for them small stir of semi-conscious
ness, not that they may think or know, but tina
they may not fall into total extinction. Besides
this, all the kind of learning of which We now
treat is probably for yet other purposes 1t is
admirable for making US feel the emptiness Of
what most people are engaged about; ana tnen
again. rs some require illusions, these produc-
tons do excellently to maintain for multitudes
of folks the pleasant illusion of literature and
of knowing.
Reviews and Magazines, then, being things
better not read are necessarily also things bet
ter not noticed. Why should one talk of copies
when the originals are as easily to be seem or
\ why should we review what is itself but re-
view: We shall not do it. We have, then
taken up Mr.. Charles Dickens--as alone h'
merits to be taken up-for special purposes
first, that we might say, en- ,passant, whole
some word about Magazine literature and th'
literature generally which such as he can make
and, secondly, to note an article which it is the
very height of impudence for him to put among
his pages.
The article to which we refer is lamentation
for the subsisting prevalence Of Slang, of cant
phrases, in our speech, in our orations, in our
very literature. And certainly the complaint
is one but too just. Yet what living parsonage
has done more to bring about this very mischie
than Mr. Charles Dickens himself! If only
good English were written, how should he ever
have produced book, a page, a line If men
would read none but good, sound, sober, solid,
downright, sturdy Saxon, such as our fathers
spoke and wrote in the manly times of Milton,
the noble times of Raleigh and Bacon, who would
ever read the vile dialect of Dickens, that is
slip-slop whenever it is not slang From whom
has flowed more of all this food of wish
than from him Who is more the well of this
defiled Englishl Nobody. Had his fountain
been dry, we never should have been in this
pond had his source been stopped, we should
not be thus sluiced were he damned up, We
might yet, though late, get out of this muck.
Not content, however, with thus saddline
upon all others generally, his own sin, Mr..
Dickens attempts to shoulder ID off upon this
country in particullr He will haveit that this
influx of yulgarisAas, this overflow of jargon,
great part Of which is even yet unheard in
America, despite the taste for it which Mr..
Dickens has taught us) came from America.
What did America, then, produce Grose S
Slang Dictionary Was it among us that its
rich materials were collected Had we a fash
dialect, before Moore's Tom Crib saw the
Light Surely not. Where, then, ethe anti
quities, the sorignes of this boosted speech,
this gibberish, lis lingo, to be sought Its
father, no body Laows; but in what cradle il
was rocked, every body. 1t is tongue origi-
nally invented by the thieves of London
enriched with terms borrowed from their exotic
associates, the Gypsies, and constructed upon
the idea Of that brother knave, Talleyrand
that 1t should be the instrument, not of explain
ing, but Of eoncealing the thoughts from all but
adopts. From the thieves, it naturally made
its way to thieftakers and at first the catch
poles, then the lawyers, nextthe Judges smoke
it; until from Newgate, Old Bailey and the Inns
of Court, it rose into good society; which wa,
also, meantime, studying it in the briske,
schools of the horse course, the boxing rim,
and the cock pit. All this is plain history
which needs no Niebuhr for its discovery, an
when once recalled to life from the monuments
easily sets at nought such idle Liyian legends q
Mn Dickenss of the feigned migration of Sian
to England from this country. He might q
well assert that she drew her Saxon as her Sian