be counted as a weak, inconsequent patois, or
dialect.

To be direct, it is the object of this article to show
that dialect is not a thing to be despised in any event
--that its origin is oftentimes of as royal caste as
that of any speech. Listening back, from the stand-
point of to-day, even to the divine singing of that old
classic master to whom England's late laureate
refers as

". . . the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still";

or to whom Longfellow alludes, in his matchless
sonnet, as

". . . the poet of the dawn, who wrote
The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
Made beautiful with song"--

Chaucer's verse to us is NOW as veritably dialect as
to that old time it was the chastest English; and even
then his materials were essentially dialect when his
song was at best pitch. Again, our present dialect,
of most plebeian ancestry, may none the less prove
worthy. Mark the recognition of its own personal
merit in the great new dictionary, where what was,