{7} These two letters, dated the 5th and 19th of May, 1882, were in answer to a short one from a clergyman of the Church of England, acknowledging the receipt of a copy of my _Reminiscences of Childhood_, _etc._, which contained an Appendix on John Bunyan and the Gipsies. {11a} The text represents the article as originally written. {11b} I endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to get another reading of this book before saying that “no reference was made in it to mine.” I alluded, from memory, to _my_ part of it. On examination I find that the only indirect reference to it is the following:—“Mr. Simson, in his _History of the Gipsies_ [that is, in the _Disquisition on the Gipsies_] asserts that there is not a tinker or scissors-grinder in Great Britain that cannot talk this language; and my own experience agrees with his declaration, to this extent—that they all have some knowledge of it, or claim to have it, however slight it may be,” (p. 4). I did not express myself so absolutely as represented by Mr. Leland, who did not see fit to mention the double authorship of the book; the subject of which I took up from where it was left by Walter Simson. This double authorship may prove a little confusing to the reader when the book is alluded to. {11c} See second note at page 19. {12} In _The English Gipsies_, _etc._, Mr. Leland writes:—“I asked a Copt scribe if he were Muslim, and he replied, ‘_La_, _ana Gipti_’ (‘No, I am a Copt’) pronouncing the word _Gipti_, or Copt, so that it might readily be taken for ‘Gipsy.’ And learning that _romi_ is the Coptic for a man, I was again startled; and when I found _tema_ (tem, land) and other Romany words in ancient Egyptian (_vide_ Brugsch. _Grammaire_, _etc._) it seemed as if there were still many mysteries to solve in this strange language.” Of some Egyptian Gipsies Mr. Leland says that “they all resembled the one whom I have described . . . They all differed slightly, as I thought, from the ordinary Egyptians in their appearance” (p. 193). {14} Tacitus makes Caius Cassius, in the time of Nero, say:—“At present we have in our service whole nations of slaves, the scum of mankind, collected from all quarters of the globe; a race of men who bring with them foreign rites, and the religion of their country, _or probably no religion at all_.”—_Murphy’s Translation_. {15} Perhaps the most interesting scene connected with the Gipsy language in Scotland, given in the _History_, is that at St. Boswell’s (pp. 309–318). The word “Tinkler,” assumed by and applied to the Scotch Gipsies, seems to have been used from a desire to escape the legal responsibility attaching to the word “Gipsy.”