NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 19 January 1922, Page 26

NOTES

Was Dickens Vulgar ? Most of us have heard superior persons speak condescendingly of Dickens as if he were a wholesome sort of writer, good enough, for persons of small culture. What the superior persons have to say concerning anything under the sun is seldom worth listening to; but it may be interesting to those who are gifted with common sense rather than superiority to hear what such a gentle and refined critic as Alice Meynell thinks of Dickens : “Those critics who find what they call vulgarisms think they may safely go on to accuse Dickens of bad grammar. The truth is that his grammar is not only good but strong; it is far better in construction than Thackeray’s, the ease of whose phrase sometimes exceeds and is clack. Lately, during the recent centenary time, a writer averred that Dickens ‘ might not always be parsed,’ but that we loved him for his,’ etc., etc. Dickens’s page is to be parsed as strictly as any man’s. It is, apart from the matter of grammar, a wonderful thing that he, with his little education, should have so excellent a diction.” And again, “A generation between his own and the present thought Dickens to be vulgar; if the cause of that judgment is that he wrote about people in shops, the cause is discredited now that shops are the scenes of the novelist’s research. ‘High' life ’ and most wretched life have now given place to the little shop and its parlor.” Although, as Mrs. Meynell says, the novelists have gone to the shops in bur, time, there are still superior people among us who deem it more respectable to run away with another man’s wife than to take down shutters. The snobs die hard. Snobs Snob, we are told, comes from the words sine no■bilitate, by way of abbreviations, as, s:nob . A snob is a superficial person who cannot think for himself or herself, and who would find it easier to walk on air than to act on principle. v snob follows the lead of a super-snob. He rules his speech and his conduct by saws and" instances rather than by common sense and the principles of Christianity. The snob is peculiarly English: he is a product of the hypocritical and Puritanical traditions according to which it matters not how . filthy is the inside of the cup provided the outside be clean: John Bull, whom our American cousins now properly call John Cow, is the prototype of all snobs. In nothing is snobbery so hateful as in the press. Everybody knows that the British press is a gigantic system for the suppression of truth and the dissemination of falsehood, and yet there are even Christians who take their traditions from that press and who accept its ruling as the ultimate canon of good taste. It is no wonder that such foolish persons get rude shocks now and then when a man like Chesterton comes along and speaks what is true, caring more for truth than for shams, and for principle than for precedent. The snobs have attacked the editor of the New,Witness for being what they call vulgar and personal. Other snobs attack other editors in a similar way. It is the coward’s refuge when argument is lacking. Surely, it is about time that self-respecting people got rid of their nonsense and ruled their writings as well as their lives according to what is right and wrong rather than according to what is done and said by those benighted asses whom they would refer to as “the best people.” The amusing part of it is that snob critics are often themselves past masters in the gentle arts of vituperation , and misrepresentation. Judged by their standard Our Lord was an offender when he. lacerated the Pharisees /from whom all snobs are descended in a direct line.

The Beggars’ Opera ” The following note from the Weekly Freeman throws an interesting light on the origin of the famous and evergreen opera which is John Gay’s chief title to immortality : * " - _ / ~ ' - “Not all of us in Ireland are aware, though, as to his ‘Beggar’s Opera,’ of late so successfully revived in London, that' it reached there for its first night of all— in 1727 via Dublin, whence Swift exported it in embryo. Because Ambrose Phillips of those Pastorals which earned him the nickname of Namby-Pamby Phillips, -stood in relation to Swift as d'd the poet Clancy towards a fellow scribe about whom Thackeray elicited Clancy’s report : ‘ That man has a manner of treading on me corrans which is intolerable to me ! ’ “Phillips in those days lived at Dublin as an imported hack, especially in collar for Archbishop Boulter, another pet aversion of the caustic Dean’s, and this nation’s then most mischievous enemy. Phillips’s Pastorals being a species simply asking for it in the matter of parodies, Swift Suggested to Gay that a Newgate Pastoral should', with its socio-satirical winged words, in London certainly wing over the footlights. “Gay caught at an idea which gave such scope to that cynic wit of his and his quite alarming astuteness of the most brilliant kind, all as light and carrying as thistledown. Further enhanced by Swift, who gifted his friend’s opera with two of its most effective songs — ‘ If laws were made for every degree,’ and 1 Through all the employments of life.’ Modem Culture Recently we were told by a Sydney gentleman that he was asked by a Protestant friend who were all the strangers who were with him on the Manly ferry-boat the day before. “They are all members of the Vincent de Paul Society.” 1 ■ “Vincent de Paul? ' Yes, I believe I met that chap at the Cup last year,” said the up-to-date noscens omnia. ere is another yarn from Ireland to cap the howler from Australia : This is a true story. Two ladies were travelling last week to Ballyclare, Co. Antrim. They were evidently sisters, one living in Belfast and the other in Ballyclare. The lady living in the country town asked the city resident, .in the broad Scotch so familiar in Co. Antrim: “Well, Maggie, hoe are the Papishes gettin’ on in Belfast?” “Oh,” replied Maggie, “they’re no sae bad. The ould Pope is gaein’ them guid help.” “But,” said the other, “the Pope canna help them a’.” “Well,” replied the other, “there is another fella they ca’ Vincent Paul, and the man hae a lot of money, as he is daein’ a lot tae help them.”— ( Freeman Journal.) 7-7.7 . '