PREFACE

TO THE

FIRST EDITION.

THE great approbation with which so polite a nation as France has received the Satirical and Burlesque Dictionary of Monsieur Le Roux, testified by the several editions it has gone through, will, it is hoped, apologize for an attempt to compile an English Dictionary on a similar plan; our language being at least as copious as the French, and as capable of the witty equivoque; besides which, the freedom of thought and speech arising from, and privileged by, our constitution, gives a force and poignancy to the expressions of our common people, not to be

found under arbitrary governments, where the ebullitions of vulgar wit are checked by the fear of the bastinado, or of a lodging during pleasure in some gaol or castle.

The many vulgar allusions and cant expressions that so frequently occur in our common conversation and periodical publications, make a work of this kind extremely useful, if not absolutely necessary, not only to foreigners, but even to natives resident at a distance from the Metropolis, or who do not mix in the busy world without some such help, they might hunt through all the ordinary Dictionaries, from Alpha to Omega, in search of the words, " black legs, "lame duck, a plumb, malingeror, nip cheese, "darbies, and the new drop," although these are all terms of well-known import at Newmarket, Exchange-alley, the City, the Parade, Wapping, and Newgate. va day more The fashionable words, or favourite expressions of the day, also, find their way into our political and theatrical compositions: these, as they generally originate from some trifling event, or temporary circumstance, on falling into disuse, or being superseded by new ones, vanish without

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leaving a trace behind. Such were the late fashionable words, a bore and a twaddle, among the great vulgar; maccaroni and the barber, among the small: these, too, are here carefully registered.

The Vulgar Tongue consists of two parts; the first is the Cant Language, called sometimes Pedlars French, or St. Giles's Greek; the second, those burlesque phrases, quaint allusions, and nick-names for persons, things, and places, which, from long uninterrupted usage, are made classical by prescription.

Respecting the first, that is, the canting language, take the account given of its origin, and the catastrophe of its institutor, from Mr. Harrison's Description of England, prefixed to Hollingshead's Chronicle; where, treating of beggars, gypsies, &c. he says, "It is not yet fifty "years sith this trade began: but how it hath "prospered sithens that time, it is easy to judge; "for they are now supposed, of one sexe and "another, to amount unto above ten thousand

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persons, as I have harde reported. Moreover, in counterfeiting the Egyptian roges, they "have devised a language among themselves,

"which they name Canting, but others Pedlars "French, a speache compact thirty years since "of English, and a great number of odde "words of their own devising, without all order 66 or reason; and yet such it is, as none but "themselves are able to understand. The first "deviser thereof was hanged by the neck, as a

just reward, no doubt, for his desartes, and a "common end to all of that profession.

"A gentleman (Mr. Thomas Harman) also "of late hath taken great paines to search out the secret practizes of this ungracious rabble; and,

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among other things, he setteth down and de"scribeth twenty-two sorts of them, whose names "it shall not be amisse to remember, whereby "each one may gather what wicked people, they

are, and what villany remaineth in them."

For this list see the word Crew.-This was the origin of the cant language; its terms have been collected from the following Treatises :

The Bellman of London, bringing to light the most notorious villanies that are now practised in the kingdom. Profitable for gentlemen, lawyers, merchants, citizens, farmers, masters of households, and all sorts of servants, to marke,