girls are as free as the rivulets, and 'auld,' a form of the southern
'old,' adopted by a race of finer musical ear than the English.

On the contrary, mere deteriorations, or coarse, stridulent, and, in the
ordinary sense of the phrase, 'broad' forms of utterance, are not
dialects at all, having nothing dialectic in them, and all phrases
developed in states of rude employment, and restricted intercourse, are
injurious to the tone and narrowing to the power of the language they
affect. Mere breadth of accent does not spoil a dialect as long as the
speakers are men of varied idea and good intelligence; but the moment
the life is contracted by mining, millwork, or any oppressive and
monotonous labour, the accents and phrases become debased. It is part of
the popular folly of the day to find pleasure in trying to write and
spell these abortive, crippled, and more or less brutal forms of human
speech.

Abortive, crippled, or brutal, are however not necessarily 'corrupted'
dialects. Corrupt language is that gathered by ignorance, invented by
vice, misused by insensibility, or minced and mouthed by affectation,
especially in the attempt to deal with words of which only half the
meaning is understood, or half the sound heard. Mrs. Gamp's 'aperiently
so'--and the 'undermined' with primal sense of undermine, of--I forget
which gossip, in the _Mill on the Floss_, are master- and
mistress-pieces in this latter kind. Mrs. Malaprop's 'allegories on the
banks of the Nile' are in a somewhat higher order of mistake: Miss
Tabitha Bramble's ignorance is vulgarised by her selfishness, and
Winifred Jenkins' by her conceit. The 'wot' of Noah Claypole, and the
other degradations of cockneyism (Sam Weller and his father are in
nothing more admirable than in the power of heart and sense that can
purify even these); the 'trewth' of Mr. Chadband, and 'natur' of Mr.
Squeers, are examples of the corruption of words by insensibility: the
use of the word 'bloody' in modern low English is a deeper corruption,
not altering the form of the word, but defiling the thought in it.

Thus much being understood, I shall proceed to examine thoroughly a
fragment of Scott's Lowland Scottish dialect; not choosing it of the
most beautiful kind; on the contrary, it shall be a piece reaching as
low down as he ever allows Scotch to go--it is perhaps the only unfair
patriotism in him, that if ever he wants a word or two of really
villainous slang, he gives it in Eng