Adventure stories; England -- Fiction; Romanies -- Fiction
miserable circumstances by writing a book, an original book, within a
week, even as Johnson is said to have written his "Rasselas," and
Beckford his "Vathek," and tells how, leaving London, he betakes himself
to the roads and fields.
In the country it shows him leading a life of roving adventure, becoming
tinker, gypsy, postillion, ostler; associating with various kinds of
people, chiefly of the lower classes, whose ways and habits are
described; but, though leading this erratic life, we gather from the book
that his habits are neither vulgar nor vicious, that he still follows to
a certain extent his favourite pursuits, hunting after strange
characters, or analysing strange words and names. At the conclusion of
the last chapter, which terminates the first part of the history, it
hints that he is about to quit his native land on a grand philological
expedition.
Those who read this book with attention--and the author begs to observe
that it would be of little utility to read it hurriedly--may derive much
information with respect to matters of philology and literature; it will
be found treating of most of the principal languages from Ireland to
China, and of the literature which they contain; and it is particularly
minute with regard to the ways, manners, and speech of the English
section of the most extraordinary and mysterious clan or tribe of people
to be found in the whole world--the children of Roma. But it contains
matters of much more importance than anything in connection with
philology, and the literature and manners of nations. Perhaps no work
was ever offered to the public in which the kindness and providence of
God have been set forth by more striking examples, or the machinations of
priestcraft been more truly and lucidly exposed, or the dangers which
result to a nation when it abandons itself to effeminacy, and a rage for
what is novel and fashionable, than the present.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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