A CLASSICAL DICTIONARY OF THE VULGAR TONGUE Edited by Erie
Partridge By editing and commenting on the words and phrases contained in the third (1796) edition of Captain Francis Grose's A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (Scholartis Press, for private- subscribers, 32s.), Mr. Eric Partridge has made of the book a new work twice as big as the original. To it he has added an entertaining sketch of Grose himself. He it was of whom Burns wrote, " A chiel's among you Lakin notes," and for whom he composed his masterpiece of Tam o' Shanter. His Dictionary is strong meat and not for squeamish stomachs. Though consisting chiefly, of course, of eighteenth century vocables, it contains (especially with Mr. Partridge's additions) words which are used to-day by thousands of people and which therefore demand preservation in print. These words pass freely in the lower strata of society ; upper circles use them, too, but, pudoris causa, not always openly. Beside these marches the variedly interesting army of slang and colloquialisms—all of the very stuff of our speech. Those whose reading lies in the direction of cant-books or low life, or in such writers as Rabelais, Rochester or even Swift ; those who interest themselves in what second-hand booksellers call with vague euphemy facetiae and plain men call smut ; those who want a smack of the talk of our Army during the War— will find in Grose, supplemented by Mr. Partridge's sincere, far-reaching and scholarly research, a valuable auxiliary. Undeniably coarse the Dictionary is; yet as Mr. Partridge can call it one of the most valuable books in our language."
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