Page:Paul Clifford Vol 1.djvu/23

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DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
xv

tale, are solely and wholly to be laid to my charge.[1] It were to be wished that my friend had found leisure himself, among labours more important, to embody his own idea; or that, in giving me the canvass, he could have given me also his skill to colour and his talent to create.

I can scarcely conceive, what you, who are rather fastidious about the niceties of language, will think of the vulgar graces wherewith the greater part of my first volume is adorned. I must own, that I have on this point steeled myself against censure; for, independent of any latent application or irony in the dialect[2] I refer to, I am willing to risk an experiment, tried successfully in Scotland and Ireland—though not in the present day attempted in England:

  1. I should add, also, that I alone am accountable for the personality of any caricatures in the scenes referred to: all that my friend suggested, was the satirical adaptation of living personages to fictitious characters in the station or profession of life which Old Bags and Long Ned adorn,—for the choice of those personages he is by no means answerable. I mention this, because it is but fair that I should take the chances of offence on myself;—though the broadness, and evident want of malice in the caricatures referred to, will, I venture to foretell, make those caricatured, the first—perhaps the only persons—to laugh at the exaggerated resemblance.
  2. It must be remembered, too, that this dialect is not the corruption of uncouth provincialisms. The language of the thieves, or the low Londoners, (a distinction, I fear, without a difference,) is perhaps one of the most expressive—nay, one of the most metaphysical in the world! What deep philosophy, for instance, is there in this phrase "the oil of Palms!"—(meaning money!)