“LET US BE TOLERANT.”

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 313, 7 November 1929, Page 3

“LET US BE TOLERANT.”

THE MODE OF SPEECH. Affectation in Language. Now that the controversy over the introduction of Americanisms, Cockneyisms and solecisms has been divested of much of its tumult and shouting the time seems more opportune for an examination of the question by the light of history which flickers but feebly in the heat of invective.

History elucidates the situation by showing that language is elastic. The weapons of speech are subject to as many changes as the weapons of war. As the modern age has produced the tank and the aeroplane so it has produced a new speech. History shows that in spite of academies, committees and tribunals colloquial speech is at the mercy of the multitude. Like the Eton crop, it refuses to be cribbed and cabined by the edicts of the elect. There may be mutterings and mumblings from the powers, but our speech ebbs and flows as freely as the tides. But an historical examination consoles us by showing that public opinion sifts well and wisely and that although the tide may be loaded with flotsam and jetsam yet only the sound driftwood is collected, while the v ubbish is left to rot on the beach. And so let us be tolerant and hopeful when we remember that this is not the first time that the English language has been compelled to submit to periodic stages when it is temporarily transmuted into “ the pedant’s mot- 1 ley tongue, soldier’s bombast and mountebank’s drug tongue.” At present we are simply evolving a mode of speech as characteristic as the Oxford accent in its whimsicalities and as ephemeral as milady’s fashions in its eccentricities. It is one of those stages through which colloquial English has been continually passing.

Euphuism. The first- interesting stage was euphuism, so profusely and tiresomely illustrated in John Lyly’s “ Euphues,” an Elizabethan book full of preciosity, alliteration, antithesis, simile, conceits and subtly-chosen words. This passage includes all its strange ponderosities:— “ Ah, well 1 perceive that love is not unlike the fig tree whose fruit is sweet, whose root is more bitter than the cla\y of the bittern ; or like the apple tree in Persia, whose blossom savoureth like honey whose blood is more sour than gall.” Apparently it became an obsession in contemporary speech for Shakespeare parodies it most caustically in: “ Whereat with blade, with bloody blameful blade, he bravely broached his boiling bloody breast.” This parody illustrates a principle which holds good in literature as it does in every other thing. Every deviation from convention is invariably counterbalanced by summary correction. And so it will be found that every period of affected speech has been subjected to such a torrent of sarcasm, invective, or to more gentle reason that it is invariably righted. The stream of English again flows on undisturbed carrying with it a trace of the debris from its unruly and defunct tributary. The Good Mouth-Filling Oath.

An ex* ract from Scott’s “ Nigel ” well illustrates the next stage—the swaggering bombast of the "swashbucklers of the Stuart period, when “ a good mouth-filling oath ” was backed up by “ bloody noses and cracked crowns.”

“ But Caracco, ’tis a vile old canting knave for all that, whom I will one day beat out of his devil livery into all the colours of the rainbow. Basta—said I well old Trapbois ?

Zounds, eir, we would slit any nose that was turned up at us honest fellows. Rabbit me, I am a soldier and care no more for a lord than for a lamplighter.” “ You have got the vocabulary perfect, sir, at least,” said Nigel. “ Yes, by mine honour have I,” replied the Hector, “ they are the phrases that a gentleman learns about town.” Poetic Diction. Not to say what you mean savours more of puerility than of affectation, but the main point of the literary fashion during Queen Anne’s reign was to call a thing by as many different names as possible except the obvious one, which was avoided like • the plague. Pope, the master of this poetic diction, contrives to refer to a pair of scissors six times without actually naming them.

“ Just then Clarissa drew with tempting grace A two-edged weapon from her shining case. He takes the gift with reverence and extends The little engine on his finger’s ends. The peer now spreads the glittering Forfex wide, T’inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide. Even then before the fatal engine closed A wretched nymph too fondly inter-* posed; Fate urged the shears and cut the Sylph in twain.”

The whole • poem is certainly a humorous skit, but it illustrates the vogue which sponsored such an elephantine circumlocution as “ the feathered tribe domestic,” for the humble fowl. This avoidance of the obvious was equally popular in contemporary Fiance. Moliere satirised it in “ Les Precieuses Ridicules ” when Cathos, one of the affected young ladies, takes forty-one words to ask Madelon to sit down.

“ But, my dear sir, I hope you will not be inexorable to the advances of the easy chair which has been stretching out its arms to you for a quarter of an hour; pray yield to its desire to embrace you.” A recent musical comedy reduced the number to five words “ park your hips, old thing.” Yes, above all things, let us be tolerant. Then came the inevitable counterblast led by Wordsworth, who maintained that there should be no difference between the language of prose and of poetry. Masefield, - the most popular living, poet, has gone a step further. lie refuses to cloak even repulsive scenes in legitimate poetic diction. This is the result: — “ From three long hours of gin and smokes, And two girls’ breath and fifteen blokes’, , A warmish night and windows shut The room stank like a fox’s gut.’

The “ Old Bean ” Stage. If we can believe Wodehouse .and Dornford Yates, the present generation is responsible for an affectation of speech which in its quips and pranks can rank side by side with any of its predecessors. A quotation from “ The Indiscretions of Archie ” will suffice. “I say. That’s frightfully interesting. Fearfully interesting, really.” “ Yes,” the old thing chortled. “ He’s going in off the deep end.” “Yes. But I say. What I mean to say. Are they pretty pally ? The good old Dove of Peace flapping Lis little wings fairly briskly and all that?” And then that current cL.S~ic—- “ What—frightfully—ho.” Yes, above all things, let us he tolerant.—L.R., in the Wellington Evening Post.