A History of the Gypsies: With Specimens of the Gypsy Language
By . Edited, with Preface, Introduction, and Notes, and a Disquisition on the Past, Present, and Future of Gypsydom, by . New York : M. Doolady.
THE history of the Gypsies, according to the editor of the present work, is best presented in a series of desultory anecdotes which relate chiefly to the Egyptian usages of murder, pocket-picking, and horse-stealing, and the behavior of the rogues when they come to be hanged for their crimes. Incidentally, a good deal of interesting character is developed, and both author and editor show a very intimate acquaintance with the life and customs and speech of an inexplicable people. But here the value of their book ends; and we imagine that the earlier Simpson, who contributed the greater part of it in articles to Blackwood’s Magazine, scarcely supposed himself to be writing anything more than sketches of the Scotch Gypsies whom he found in the different shires, and of the Continental and English Gypsies of whom he had read. The later Simpson thought it, as we have seen, a history of the Gypsies, and he has furnished it with an Introduction and a Disquisition of amusingly pompous and inconsequent nature. His subject has been too much for him, and his mental vision, disordered by too ardent contemplation of Gypsies, reproduces them wherever he turns his thought. If he values any one of his illusions above the rest, — for they all seem equally pleasant to him, —it is his persuasion that John Bunyan was a Gypsy. “ He was a tinker,” says our editor. “ And who were the tinkers ? ” “ Why, Gypsies, without a doubt,” answers the reader, and makes no struggle to escape the conclusion thus skilfully sprung upon him. Will it be credited that the inventor of this theory was denied admittance to the columns of the religious newspapers in this country, on the flimsy pretext that the editors could not afford the space for a disquisition on John Bunyan’s Gypsy origin ?
The comparison of the Gypsy language in this book with a dialect of the Hindostanee is interesting and useful, and the accounts of Gypsy habits and usages are novel and curious ; and otherwise the work is a mass of rather entertaining rubbish.