150 Slang Dictionaries. [Aveusr, 
Common Cursitors, commonly called Vagabones, set forth by Thomas 
Harman, Esq., for the Utilitye and Proffyt of his Natural Country.” 
It was published in 1567, and has been often described in books of 
English bibliography. 
In 1608, “'The Bellman of London,” and, in 1615, “ Thieves falling 
out, True Men come by their own,” were published. These books 
contain the slang language then in vogue. In 1638, their contents 
were incorporated with many additions in “ English Villanies,” seven 
several times prest to death by the Printers, &c. At the end of which 
is a “ Canting Dictionary,” to teach that language, with songs in the 
dialect. Its author assures us, in his title-page, which is rather too | 
voluminous to copy, that it is “a booke to make gentlemen merrie, 
citizens warie, countrymen carefull; fit for justices to reade over, be- 
cause it is a pilot by whom they may make strange discoveries.” We 
are sorry to say that the wit of the book is rather of the thinnest, and 
that the gentlemen, whom it was calculated to make merry, were easily 
satisfied. 
As, however, it is not our intention to write a bibliographical account 
of these works, we refer the curious in such matters to the preface of 
Jon Bee’s whimsical Slang Dictionary, of which two editions have been 
published. Jon is the only author we know of, who ventures on an 
etymology of the word “slang.” He derives it, with what truth we 
cannot tell, from a Newgate onomatopeeia. The clashing of the irons, 
with which the inhabitants of Whittington’s College (as a book entitled 
*«« Hell upon Earth,” published in 1703, calls Newgate) are ornamented, 
it seems, utter, as the prisoners walk, the sound of sling-slang, 
as church bells have, from time immemorial, said “ding-dong.” Hence, 
by a natural transition, the voice of the irons was applied to the lan- 
guage of their wearers ; the nature of which it is rather unnecessary to 
describe. Neither Johnson nor Todd contain the word at all, though, 
as the writer of the very clever preface to Robinson’s late reprint of John- 
son justly remarks, the reverend gentleman has supplied the words 
which it signifies in sufficient abundance. We vouch not, however, for 
the accuracy of Mr. Bee’s etymology. 
It was merely our intention to have given a few specimens of the 
only real wit among our English lexicographers of this class, Francis 
Grose, but we found it necessary to say what we have just written as a 
preface. Grose was indeed a droll fellow: a fat, round, oily man, and 
full of glee. In size and good humour he rivalled Falstaff ; he might 
have rivalled him in wit, too, if that of Falstaff had not been supplied 
by Shakspeare. His very picture, in the poorest engraving, is redolent 
of fun. The honest face, the loose-girt paunch, the stick firmly planted 
in the ground, all speak his character. He lived in jollity, and he died 
of laughing. It was a fine illustration of his mode of life, that when 
he was paymaster of the J ersey Militia, he kept but two account-books 
—and those were his right and left-hand breeches pockets—the one 
being the debtor and the other the creditor pocket. It is said that the 
pecuniary consequences of this mode of doing business, were what first _ 
set him on deriving money from the productions of his pencil—all ,o ae ie 
which are too well known to require further notice here. He died in 
Ireland, to which country he had gone for the purpose of sketching its 
antiquities. A joke (tradition says not a very cleanly one) so tickled 
his fancy, that he was seized with a fit of laughing, so immoderate, as 
