There seems, however, to be an exception to this. Carlyle, it is said, when expressing the profoundest feeling in conversation always lapsed into broad Scottish dialect. Colonel T. W. Higginson says that he, with another gentleman and Carlyle, once passed through a park belonging to a private estate. Some children were rolling on the grass, and one boy coming forward timidly, approached Carlyle, whose face seemed to the boy the most kindly disposed to children, and said, "Please, sir, may we roll on the grass?" Carlyle broke into the broadest Scotch, "Ye may roll at discretion."
As already intimated, dialect must not be so extreme that the audience cannot easily understand what the reader is saying. All true art is clear; it is not a puzzle. On account of its theme, and its appeal to the higher faculties, its comprehension may at times require long continued contemplation and earnest endeavor; but an accidental element, such as dialect, must never prevent immediate understanding of the words spoken or thoughts expressed. Dialect must be perfectly transparent. Its whole charm will be lost if it does not give a simple, quaint suggestion of character.
The chief element of dialect is not in the words or the pronunciation of the elementary sounds but in the melody. Every language has a kind of "accent," as it is called, and it is this "accent" which is most characteristic. Every word may be pronounced correctly, but the artistic reader or actor can suggest immediately by the peculiar melodic form of his phrases whether it is a Frenchman, a German, an Italian, an Irishman, or a Scotsman who speaks.
In fact, the more subtle, more natural, more suggestive the dialect, the better. It must never be labored; never be of interest in itself. It is secondary to character, to thinking, and even to feeling.
Dialect should always be the result of assimilation rather than imitation. If there is imitation at all, it must be of that higher kind resulting from sympathetic identification and a right use of the dramatic instinct.
One of the greatest mistakes in rendering dialect consists in taking the printed word as the sole guide. Because a word here and there is spelled oddly, the reader confines the dialect to these words.