![]() Joining the army early in life, he left it, in 1769, just long enough to run through his inheritance. Francis Grose passed up university training to follow his bent for art and the military. Appropriately, it is the work of one of England’s most remarkable scholars, Captain Francis Grose.īorn in 1730, son of a wealthy jeweler. In particular, the dictionary dealt with the speech of eighteenth-century London, where everyone seemed able to turn sharp, pungent phrases-from the literary giants who assassinated each other with epigrams in the coffee houses to the mob of pickpockets and cutthroats who flocked to Tower Hill to cackle at the sight of a hanging.ĭespite the subject matter of the dictionary, the word “classical” in its title was no mere affectation, for the book is a remarkable feat of classical scholarship. The book was entitled A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, and it defined the slang, cant and colloquial patter of eighteenth-century England. In the year 1785 there appeared in the bookstalls of London the first edition of a scholarly work that has come to be regarded as one of the most valuable studies ever made upon the English language. ![]() A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue ![]() Browse our vintage tag to read more articles from times long past. This article originally appeared in the Spring edition of the vintage EROS magazine, which was published in four 1962 issues and ceased to be when its editor Ralph Ginzburg was charged with three counts of obscenity (convicted in 1963). ![]()
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