hat, the bonfire (which of
course he called the 'bonner') being due at nine-thirty o'clock, there
was little more than bare time left for 'langers and godders.' It cost
me, who think slowly, some seconds to interpret that by 'langers' he
meant 'Auld Lang Syne' and by 'godders' 'God Save the King.' I thought at
the time, and still think, and will maintain against any schoolmaster,
that the neologisms of my young neighbour, though not to be recommended
for essays or sermons, did admirably suit the time, place, and occasion.

Seeing that in human discourse, infinitely varied as it is, so much must
ever depend on _who_ speaks, and to _whom_, in what mood and upon what
occasion; and seeing that Literature must needs take account of all
manner of writers, audiences, moods, occasions; I hold it a sin against
the light to put up a warning against any word that comes to us in the
fair way of use and wont (as 'wire,' for instance, for a telegram), even
as surely as we should warn off hybrids or deliberately pedantic
impostors, such as 'antibody' and 'picture-drome'; and that, generally,
it is better to err on the side of liberty than on the side of the
censor: since by the manumitting of new words we infuse new blood into a
tongue of which (or we have learnt nothing from Shakespeare's audacity)
our first pride should be that it is flexible, alive, capable of
responding to new demands of man's untiring quest after knowledge and
experience. Not because it was an ugly thing did I denounce Jargon to
you, the other day: but because it was a dead thing, leading no-whither,
meaning naught. There is _wickedness_ in human speech, sometimes. You
will detect it all the better for having ruled out what is _naughty_.

Let us err, then, if we err, on the side of liberty. I came, the other
day, upon this passage in Mr Frank Harris's study of 'The Man
Shakespeare':--

In the last hundred years the language of Moliere has grown fourfold;
the slang of the studios and the gutter and the laboratory, of the
engineering school and the dissecting table, has been ransacked for
special terms to enrich and strengthen the language in order that it
may deal easily with the new thoughts. French is now a superb
instrument, while English is positively poorer than it was in the time
of Shakespeare, thanks to the prudery of our illiterate middle
class.[1]

Well, let us not lose our heads over this, any more than over other
prophecies