stall-wimper (base-born little unfortunate),
should dare to approach their majesties,
claiming fraternity, however far off, in the
varying grades of rascaldom, they could
not have turned away as not understanding
what he said. His language would
have been quite familiar. And when they
were all brought to the great leveller, the
prison — to wit, the Whit — each would dread
cly the jerc (to be whipped), each would
talk of a naper of naps (a sheep-stealer), of
a mow-beater (a drover, probably from
moo, the sound the ill-used animal would
utter), and they would all know that hanging
was in store for them, and that they
must fall into the hands of the nubbing-cove at last. " In a box of the stone-jug
I was born;" aye, and by a tightened
jugular I shall die, for, however often there
may be evasion, gripping comes at last, and
gripping means a settling of little hopes
and aims for ever !

Another word, too, with these interesting
folk was lappy (drunk). It was heard
often. Intoxicating liquors were sold at
the corners of all the streets; and — what
the ministry cared far more for—it was
sold without the payment of the duty;
such duty, people said, being so extortionate,
it was worth running any risk to evade.
Thus, any clapper-dudgeon (beggar-born),
who had held out his pen-bank (his can)
successfully, over against the Royal
Exchange, or in Russell-court, next the Cannon
Ball, at the Surgeon's Arms, in Drury-
lane, might get lappy at the end of his
hard day's labour, and a dozen times over
if he pleased, for the small sum of a
shilling. The ministry were afraid from
this that the populace would sink into a
continued state of intoxication; even into
the state they had been in when the
retailers of the poisonous compound, gin, set
up painted boards in public, inviting people
to be drunk for the small expense of one
penny; assuring them they might be dead
drunk for twopence, and have straw to lie
on for nothing! So it was proposed to
bring in a bill for reducing the liquor-duties,
in order that they might strictly,
and with a modest face, be enforced. And
the ministry carried the measure, though
Lord Hervey ("men, women, and
Herveys") was dead against it, and so was
my Lord of Chesterfield (and of the
Letters), and such quantity of bishops,
that, at division, the last witty and polished
nobleman was quite surprised. " How!"
he cried, looking round at their reverences
in a cluster near him. " Have I got on
the other side of the question ? I have
not had the honour to divide with so many
lawn-sleeves for years !"

"I was passing the evening at Will's, in
Covent Garden," Steele tells us—such evening
being really a few years before our
date, but practically identical—" when the
cry of the bellman, 'Past two o'clock!'
roused me. I went to my lodgings led by
a Light, whom I put into the discourse of
his private economy, and made him give
me an account of the charge, hazard, profit,
and loss of a family that depended upon a
link, with a design to end my trivial day
with the generosity of sixpence."

Well. Any one of our rogues and
gipsies relating this incident would have
called the link-man a Glym-Jack, and the
sixpence added to his earnings a half-bord.
Possibly Steele knew both the expressions;
and heard them when he was " entangled
at the end of Newport-street and Long-acre,"
or when he came to " the Pass,
which is a military term the brothers of
the whip have given to the strait at St.
Clement's Church." He heard another piece
of cant, at any rate; about which he
gossips very prettily. He saw a lady
visiting the fruit-shops at Covent Garden,
and, after tripping into her coach, she sat
in it, with her mask off, and a laced shoe
just appearing on the opposite cushion, to
hold her firm and in a proper attitude
to receive inevitable jolts. She was
a silkworm. " I was surprised," says
Steele, " with this phrase; but found it
was a cant with the hackney fraternity for
their best customers; women who ramble
twice or thrice a week from shop to shop,
to turn over all the goods in town without
buying anything. The silkworms are, it
seems, indulged by the tradesmen."

"It is scarcely to be credited," cries
Walker of the Dictionary (actor, school-
master, and lecturer on elocution), and he is
speaking of the second meaning to the word
cant—" it is scarcely to be credited that the
writer in the Spectator, signed T., should
adopt a derivation of this word from one
Andrew Cant, a Scotch Presbyterian
minister! The Latin cantus, so expressive of
the singing or whining tone of certain
preachers, is as obvious an etymology!
The cant of particular professions is an
easy derivation from the same origin. It
means the set phrases, the routine of
professional language, resembling the chime of
a song.

Does it? Well, we care not. Like
Cowper, we are not