As to the term "barbarous," Mr. Horace Smith, the author of
"_Walter Colyton_," assures me that many of his friends call
what he has introduced of the Somerset Dialect in Walter Colyton,
"barbarous."--Now, I should like to learn in what its barbarity
consists. The plain truth after all is, that those who are
unwilling to take the trouble to understand any language, or any
dialect of any language, with which they are previously
unacquainted, generally consider such new language or such dialect
barbarous; and to them it doubtless appears so. What induces our
metropolitan _literati_, those at least who are, or affect to
be the _arbitri elegantiarum_ among them, to consider the
_Scotch_ dialect in another light? Simply because such able
writers, as _Allan Ramsay, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott,_
and others, have chosen to employ it for the expression of their
thoughts. Let similar able writers employ our _Western
Dialect_ in a similar way, and I doubt not the result. And why
should not our Western dialects be so employed? If _novelty_
and _amusement_, to say the least for such writings, be
advantageous to our literature, surely novelty and amusement might
be conveyed in the dialect of the _West_ as well as of the
_North_.
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