"The Bellman of London," or
Rogue's Horn-book, begins with a very graceful and fanciful description
of the quiet beauty and seclusion of a country retreat in which the
author had sought refuge from the turmoil and forgetfulness of the vices
of the city; and whence he was driven back upon London by disgust at the
discovery of villany as elaborate and roguery as abject in the beggars
and thieves of the country as the most squalid recesses of metropolitan
vice or crime could supply. The narrative of this accidental discovery
is very lively and spirited in its straightforward simplicity, and the
subsequent revelations of rascality are sometimes humorous as well as
curious: but the demand for such literature must have been singularly
persistent to evoke a sequel to this book next year, "Lantern and
Candle-light; or, the Bellman's Second Night-walk," in which Dekker
continues his account of vagrant and villanous society, its lawless laws
and its unmannerly manners; and gives the reader some vivid studies,
interspersed with facile rhetoric and interlarded with indignant
declamation, of the tricks of horse-dealers and the shifts of
gypsies--or "moon-men" as he calls them; a race which he regarded with
a mixture of angry perplexity and passionate disgust.
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