He is proud of his knowledge, he makes of it a deep mystery; and if you, a gentleman, ask him about it, he will probably deny that he ever heard of its existence.  Should he be very thirsty, and your manners frank and assuring, it is, however, not impossible that after draining a pot of beer at your expense, he may recall, with a grin, the fact that he has heard that the Gipsies have a queer kind of language of their own; and then, if you have any Rommany yourself at command, he will perhaps rakker Rommanis with greater or less fluency.  Mr Simeon, in his “History of the Gipsies,” asserts that there is not a tinker or scissors-grinder in Great Britain who 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.

So rare is a knowledge of Rommany among those who are not connected in some way with Gipsies, that the slightest indication of it is invariably taken as an irrefutable proof of relationship with them.  It is but a few weeks since, as I was walking along the Marine Parade in Brighton, I overtook a tinker.  Wishing him to sharpen some tools for me, I directed him to proceed to my home, and en route spoke to him in Gipsy.  As he was quite fair in complexion, I casually remarked, “I should have never supposed you could speak Rommany—­you don’t look like it.”  To which he replied, very gravely, in a tone as of gentle reproach, “You don’t look a Gipsy yourself, sir; but you know you are one—­you talk like one.”

Truly, the secret of the Rommany has been well kept in England.  It seems so to me when I reflect that, with the exception of Lavengro and the Rommany Rye, {5} I cannot recall a single novel, in our language, in which the writer has shown familiarity with the real life, habits, or language of the vast majority of that very large class, the itinerants of the roads.  Mr Dickens has set before us Cheap Jacks, and a number of men who were, in their very face, of the class of which I speak; but I cannot recall in his writings any indication that he knew that these men had a singular secret life with their confreres, or that they could speak a strange language; for we may well call that language strange which is, in the main, Sanscrit, with many Persian words intermingled.  Mr Dickens, however, did not pretend, as some have done, to specially treat of Gipsies, and he made no affectation of a knowledge of any mysteries.  He simply reflected popular life as he saw it.  But there are many novels and tales, old and new, devoted to setting forth Rommany life and conversation, which are as much like the originals as a Pastor Fido is like a common shepherd.  One novel which I once read, is so full of “the dark blood,” that it might almost be called a gipsy novel.  The hero is a gipsy; he lives among his kind—­the book is full of them; and yet,