f a ball near the battery. 'Confound it!'
cries Nevil. 'It's because I consented to a compromise!'"

Most people know that this passage refers to Rear-Admiral Maxse, yet,
well as we may know our man, we have him presented like an awkward,
silly, comic puppet from a show. The professor of slang could degrade
the conduct of the soldiers on board the _Birkenhead_; he could make the
choruses from _Samson Agonistes_ seem like the Cockney puerilities of a
comic news-sheet. It is this high-sniffing, supercilious slang that I
attack, for I can see that it is the impudent language of a people to
whom nothing is great, nothing beautiful, nothing pure, and nothing
worthy of faith.

The slang of the "London season" is terrible and painful. A gloriously
beautiful lady is a "rather good-looking woman--looks fairly well
to-night;" a great entertainment is a "function;" a splendid ball is a
"nice little dance;" high-bred, refined, and exclusive ladies and
gentlemen are "smart people;" a tasteful dress is a "swagger frock;" a
new craze is "the swagger thing to do." Imbecile, useless, contemptible
beings, male and female, use all these verbal monstrosities under the
impression that they make themselves look distinguished. A
microcephalous youth whose chief intellectual relaxation consists in
sucking the head of a stick thinks that his conversational style is
brilliant when he calls a man a "Johnnie," a battle "a blooming slog,"
his lodgings his "show," a hero "a game sort of a chappie," and so on.
Girls catch the infection of slang; and thus, while sweet young ladies
are leading beautiful lives at Girton and Newnham, their sisters of
society are learning to use a language which is a frail copy of the
robust language of the drinking-bar and the racecourse. Under this
blight lofty thought perishes, noble language also dies away, real wit
is cankered and withered into a mere ghastly crackle of wordplay, humour
is regarded as the sign of the savage, and generous emotion, manly love,
womanly tenderness are reckoned as the folly of people whom the smart
young lady of the period would describe as "Jugginses."

As to the slang of the juniors of the middle class, it is well-nigh past
description and past bearing. The dog-collared, tight-coated, horsey
youth learns all the cant phrases from cheap sporting prints, and he has
an idea that to call a man a "bally bounder" is quite a ducal thing to
do. His hideous cackle sounds in railway-carriages,