er the heart and impulses of man has been
recognised by all writers from Aristotle down to Serjeant Talfourd.
In dexterous hands it has been known to subvert a severe chastity by
the insinuations of a holy flame, to clothe impurity in vestments
'bright with something of an angel light,' to exalt spleen into
elevation of soul, and selfishness into a noble scorn of the world,
and, with the ringing cadences of an enthusiastic style, to ennoble
the vulgar and to sanctify the low. How much may be done, with an
engine of such power, in increasing the numbers of 'The Family' may
be conceived. The Muse of Faking, fair daughter of the herald
Mercury, claims her place among 'The Mystic Nine.' Her language,
erewhile slumbering in the pages of the Flash Dictionary, now lives
upon the lips of all, even in the most fashionable circles. Ladies
accost crossing-sweepers as 'dubsmen'; whist-players are generally
spoken of in gambling families as '_dummy_-hunters'; children in
their nursery sports are accustomed to 'nix their dolls'; and the all
but universal summons to exertion of every description is 'Fake
away!'

"'Words are things,' says Apollonius of Tyana. We cannot be long
familiar with a symbol without becoming intimate with that which it
expresses. Let the public mind, then, be in the habit of associating
these and similar expressions with passages of poetical power, let
the ideas they import be imbedded in their hearts and glorified in
their imaginations, and the fairest results may with confidence be
anticipated."

In song and sonnet and ballad these views were illustrated and enforced.
They served the purpose of the ridicule which it was hoped might operate
to cure people of the prevailing toleration for the romance of the slums
and the thieves' kitchen. Naturally parody was freely used. Wordsworth
did not escape. His

"Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour,"

found its echo in

"Turpin, thou shouldst be living at this hour,
England hath need of thee," &c.

And his "Great men have been among us," &c., was perverted into

"Great men have been among us,--Names that lend
A lustre to our calling; better none;
Maclaine, Duval, Dick Turpin, Barrington,
Blueskin and others, who called Sheppard friend.
. . . .
. . . Now, 'tis strange,
We never see su