The first vocabulary of the 'Cant Language,' or English Germania,
appeared in the year 1680, appended to the life of THE ENGLISH
ROGUE, a work which, in many respects, resembles the HISTORY OF
GUZMAN D'ALFARACHE, though it is written with considerably more
genius than the Spanish novel, every chapter abounding with
remarkable adventures of the robber whose life it pretends to
narrate, and which are described with a kind of ferocious energy,
which, if it do not charm the attention of the reader, at least
enslaves it, holding it captive with a chain of iron. Amongst his
other adventures, the hero falls in with a Gypsy encampment, is
enrolled amongst the fraternity, and is allotted a 'mort,' or
concubine; a barbarous festival ensues, at the conclusion of which
an epithalamium is sung in the Gypsy language, as it is called in
the work in question. Neither the epithalamium, however, nor the
vocabulary, are written in the language of the English Gypsies, but
in the 'Cant,' or allegorical robber dialect, which is sufficient
proof that the writer, however well acquainted with thieves in
general, their customs and manners of life, was in respect to the
Gypsies profoundly ignorant.
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