It might be supposed from the commonness of allusions to Bohemia and Bohemianism that the terms were contemporary, at least, with the intrusion of artists and men of letters into society, and that before the existence of the Bohemia whose capital is Prague the name of some other nation was, in the same way, taken in vain. However, this is not the case. The _grœculus esuriens_ to whom the Roman poet so scornfully refers had no doubt many Bohemian qualities, but the emphasis of the taunt is laid on his foreign nationality, not upon his mode of existence. Even after the Bohemia of the atlas came into being it knew for many centuries no usurper of its name. Will Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the merry company of the "Mermaid" tavern neither called themselves nor were called Bohemians. Samuel Johnson, Goldsmith, and the other less distinguished inhabitants of Grub Street suffered many verbal indignities, but not that. Coleridge and Charles Lamb might be alluded to as Bohemians now, but in their day the term had even yet not been invented. Murger's preface to "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" proves that so late as 1846 a universal understanding of his title could not be taken for granted, since he begins by carefully distinguishing the geographical Bohemia from the artistic. The modern sense of the term originated, in fact, in Paris at the time of the Romantic movement, being only an extension of the meaning of "gipsy" or "vagabond" long attached to the word _bohémien_ in France. Our "Bohemian" was introduced into the English language by Thackeray, who learnt it during his student-period in Paris.