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_. Besides these advantages, it cannot be improper to observe that occasional visits to the _well-heads_ of our language, (and many of these will be found in the West of England) will add to the perfection of our polished idiom itself. _The West may be considered the last strong hold of the Anglo-Saxon in this country._
I observed, in very early life, that some of my father's servants, who were natives of the _Southern_ parts of the county of Somerset, almost invariably employed the word _utchy_ for I. Subsequent reflection convinced me that this word, _utchy_, was the Anglo-Saxon _iche_, used as a dissyllable _ichè_, as the Westphalians, (descendants of the Anglo- Saxons,) down to this day in their Low German (Westphalian) dialect say, "_Ikke_" for "_ich_." How or when this change in the pronunciation of the word, from one to two syllables, took place in in this country it is difficult to determine; but on reference to the works of _Chaucer_, there is, I think, reason to conclude that _iche_ is used sometimes in that poet's works as a dissyllable.