ims which Lavengro has to respect, that it is the first,
if not the only work, in which that nonsense is, to a certain extent,
exposed. Two or three of their remarks on passages of Lavengro, he will
reproduce and laugh at. Of course your Charlie o'er the water people are
genteel exceedingly, and cannot abide anything low. Gypsyism they think
is particularly low, and the use of gypsy words in literature beneath its
gentility; so they object to gypsy words being used in Lavengro where
gypsies are introduced speaking--"What is Romany forsooth?" say they.
Very good! And what is Scotch? has not the public been nauseated with
Scotch for the last thirty years? "Ay, but Scotch is not"--the writer
believes he knows much better than the Scotch what Scotch is and what it
is not; he has told them before what it is, a very sorry jargon. He will
now tell them what it is not--a sister or an immediate daughter of the
Sanscrit, which Romany is. "Ay, but the Scotch are"--foxes, foxes,
nothing else than foxes, even like the gypsies--the difference between
the gypsy and Scotch fox being that the first is wild, with a mighty
brush, the other a sneak with a gilt collar and without a tail.

A Charlie o'er the water person attempts to be witty, because the writer
has said that perhaps a certain old Edinburgh High School porter, of the
name of Boee, was perhaps of the same blood as a certain Bui, a Northern
Kemp who distinguished himself at the battle of Horinger Bay. A pretty
matter, forsooth, to excite the ridicule of a Scotchman! Why, is there a
beggar or trumpery fellow in Scotland who does not pretend to be
somebody, or related to somebody? Is not every Scotchman descended from
some king, kemp, or cow-stealer of old, by his own account at least? Why,
the writer would even go so far as to bet a trifle that the poor creature
who ridicules Boee's supposed ancestry, has one of his own, at least as
grand and as apocryphal as old Boee's of the High School.

The same Charlie o'er the water person is mightily indignant that
Lavengro should have spoken disrespectfully of William Wallace; Lavengro,
when he speaks of that personage, being a child of about ten years old,
and repeating merely what he had heard. All the Scotch, by-the-bye, for
a great many years past, have been great admirers of William Wallace,
particularly the Charlie o'er the water people, who in their nonsense-
verses about Charlie generally contrive to bring in the name