"_Lackwit._ Now do I want some two or three good oaths to express
my meaning withall. An they would but learn me to swear and take
tobacco! 'tis all I desire."--'_A fine Companion_,' _by Shackerley
Marmion_, 1633.
This one voice of kindly censure was that of a man incapable of a
literary mistake. Whatever his own personal blunders, it was impossible
for Joseph Addison to err in a point of literary judgment. Although
wedded to the society of men of taste and perception, it was no part of
his purpose to remove himself from contact with the coarsest of human
ware. The tolerance he exhibited in ordinary intercourse reflects itself
in the labours of his pen. In his philanthropies, as in his severities
or his rebukes, he assumes no tinge of sanctity, no moralist's
sad-coloured robe. He is familiar, and in a manner identified, with the
very follies he is so generously decrying. The society into which he
went was disposed to be exceedingly lenient to fashionable excesses. And
thus it was that in the fulness of his wisdom, it pleased him to be of
good accord with priest and prelate as with the very movers and
seconders of iniquity.
And so, in the consideration of any social folly of his time and ours,
we are in a moment impelled to ask--What does Mr. Spectator say to this;
or gentle Master Tatler? Even in the present inquiry there can be no
reasonable doubt of their competency to give us testimony. Addison may
have heard as many and as furious oaths as any man of his time. His ways
were beset by inveterate and uncontrollable swearers. His friend Steele
had a tongue that was foolish enough, heaven knows; and when he was wont
to meet with Swift in St. James' Coffee House, may he not too often have
been assailed with language needlessly expressive? What cronies he must
have had! what lads he must have known! He had seen all the tearing
fellows of the day--the three-bottle men at the October Club, the young
blood of the shires who rode into the gap at Blenheim. He could have
remembered the roughest livers of King Charles' time, Sedley and
Rochester, Bully Dawson and Fighting Fitzgerald. He was surrounded with
bravado and devilry, with all the disbanded sins of the Flanders
regiments. For these were the days of Ramilies and Malplaquet, when the
nation was intoxicated with her meed of victory; when his Grace of
Marlborough won the country's battles, and his Lord of Peterborough
scattered sovereigns from his chariot to show the people he was _not_
the Duke of Marlborough. It was a time of great profusion and great
excess, in curses as in everything else.
And so, Joseph Addison, though living in the flighty times you did,
there can be no doubt of the quiet evenness of your ways, or how jovial
were the companions who shook you by the fist. But how you drilled and
moulded them, how you held and swayed them by the force of your bright
intelligence, how shall we who never heard your voice be able to
determine? Happily in the pages of the 'Tatler' and 'Spectator' there is
stored up for us the best and rarest of that quiet wisdom. No matter
whether the night were studious or riotous, there arrives the punctual
morning sheet with its offering of sober satire and sprightly sense. He
goes about his task of persuading and humanising as gaily as a man might
set out to laugh at a comedy. He mounts his best ruffles and his finest
tunic as he sits down to write his homily.
It is with no halting, staid, discriminative pen that he descants upon
the pleasantries and follies, the very reference to which give life and
colour to a weary argument. By the aid of these threads of human
sentiment we fancy we come the closer to him in his musings and his
wanderings, now hieing, as he does, to the pantiles or the playhouse,
now to the Temple Stairs or Vauxhall Gardens. Posterity takes delight in
reversing the footsteps of its favourites. It attempts to return with
them to the scenes which they themselves have left for good so long ago.
And so with Addison, we accustom ourselves to see him mixing in a crowd
of masquers and dominos, or supping in upper chambers with ministers of
state and tavern wits. The fancy is a harmless one, and not far removed
from reality. Imagine, therefore, Mr. Joseph Addison at
Hockley-in-the-Hole or at Cupar's Gardens, but be sure that to-morrow's
sermon will want nothing of its grace and sparkle because inspired
over-night in a mug-house parlour.
Addison has in fact conceived and transmitted to us some of the loftiest
notions ever formed of a Deity, and of the unending trespass against
divine law. Among surroundings possibly resonant with ribaldry, he could
reflect, as few before him have so impartially and equably reflected,
how much of vileness is to be set down to the score of thoughtlessness
and inanity, how much to a high-handed defiance of the Master he owns.
One number of the 'Spectator,' that of November 8th, 1711, sends forth
the sternest challenge to the government of error. Few other secular
works have made so moderate and at once so eloquent a protest. Adapting
the notion of Locke that the unaided realisation of the Deity is formed
by observation of the qualities we should desire to find in ourselves,
but sublimated by the notion of infinity attaching to each of them,
Addison proceeds to argue a state of veneration being the normal
condition of the mental frame. The horror that is conceived by a child,
or, as it may be, by a grown man, at the jarring dissonance of an oath
is nothing else than a sense of injury dealt out to this deeply-rooted
conviction. A condition of reverence being thus inherent, it follows
that the images which reason has unconsciously reared must meet with
some disturbing shock before they can be impaired or dismembered. But
the blow once fairly delivered, the victim of the assault in too many
cases passes out into the ranks of the assailants. The boundary line
between the state of abhorrence and the succeeding one of aggression is
so faint that it may almost imperceptibly be overpassed, and is apt to
become the more obscure with growth of years.
The danger is so easily incurred by even right-thinking men, that
Addison enjoins perfect abstinence from the passing mention of the name
of the Deity, instancing the Jewish prohibition which forbad its use
even in professedly religious discourses. And in this point of
veneration, we shall find the practice of Judaea to have been more
precise than anything that is recorded of a nation. Apart from the high
deliberative swearing that was so severely visited by the Mosaic law,
the use of most unmeaning and flippant particles was met with signal
retribution. The man who standing in the Syrian market-place made
mention of the holy name in reference to the common incidents of the
day--to the lusciousness of the melons, the knavery of the merchants--a
mere impatient whisper, perhaps, in all the hubbub of the fair, was
instantly deprived of civil rights. He had lost all power of intercourse
or conversation. He could not appear at a feast of three or a
congregation of ten; he could not mourn for a brother or bury a child.
The sentence was only removed after thirty days of expiation.
In the 'Spectator' of May 6th, in the same year, he recounts an
experiment supposed to have been successfully practised in a company of
hardened swearers. A host is presented as having invited to his table as
many of his friends as were conspicuous for their proficiency in
swearing. He takes the precaution to station a shorthand writer in a
concealed part of the room. The repast, as may be supposed, was rendered
terrific by the unceasing clatter of oaths, but as soon as it had ended,
the Amphytrion ushered in the scribe, who proceeded to read aloud the
faithful report he had taken down. The writer, it would seem, had filled
many sheets with this animated conversation, but this was found to be so
interspersed with swearing redundancies that the whole might have been
summarised in a single page. The perusal of the document, we are
informed, so far brought conviction to the minds of the swearers, that
they forthwith began to work with a will to amend their lives and their
vocabulary.
The indignation of our essayist is without doubt most powerfully aroused
at the inadvertent use that was made of the sacred name. "What can we
think," he exclaims, "of those who make use of so tremendous a name in
the ordinary expressions of their anger, mirth, and most impertinent
passions? of those that admit it into the most familiar questions and
assertions, ludicrous phrases and works of humour?" And then, as if
recollecting that gentlemanly example was the one rule to which the
squires and politicians at Button's or the Kitcat would most readily
submit, he instances a person of position, who, during a long life, was
never known to omit a gesture of reverence at the mention of the Deity.
It is a noticeable point in the gossiping moralist that he always
carefully guards himself from passing upon his readers the affront, for
such it would have been esteemed, of directing their attention to the
qualities of persons in a presumably lesser position than themselves.
On the whole Mr. Spectator has perhaps done wisely in humouring as well
as reprobating. The temper of the times required something less
ponderous than the invective of the older school of moralists, and this
was the very want that a man of Addison's temperament was best able to
supply. The confidence reposed in his readers was not misplaced. The
banter and the satire of these graceful essays are acknowledged to be
reflected in the mended morality of the whole body of subsequent
literature.
If we mistake not, there is the same improvement soon to be witnessed in
every department, in the national life of the nation as well as the
private life of the citizen. In part attributable to the politic sway of
the Walpole government, in part to the tincture of politeness and good
breeding that these polished penmen had striven to disseminate, there
is, for a time at least, a marked absence of rancour and strife of
tongues.
The fires of the Puritan faction had smouldered out; those of the
Jacobite frenzy had hardly had time to rekindle. That spirit of minute
controversy which had never ceased to divide both court and city since
the days of Martin Mar-prelate was at length at rest. In this somewhat
remarkable lull we find very little giving or taking of abuse. So far as
social records are a guide, there seems even to be a calm in the usual
tempest of swearing.
But towards the middle of the eighteenth century comes the relapse.
Jacobitism had blazed again. The factions were relit. Controversy wagged
its tongue as before. Everywhere are evidences of want and misery, of
low sedition and of strong drink. The tipsy Duke of Cumberland is the
hero whose graces we are to admire. The 'Guards' march to Finchley' is
the picture which may be trusted to convey a portraiture of the manners
of the times. It is precisely at this conjuncture that Parliament
enacted the last and most stringent of the measures by which it sought
to place an embargo upon swearing. In the use of coarse and violent
language women competed with the men. In 1756 on the occasion of the
memorable trial concerning the fair fame of the Countess of Grosvenor,
the letters of this lady were produced and read in court. We have Horace
Walpole's authority for saying that the oaths with which they were
plentifully besprinkled were far more masculine than they can be said to
have been tender. The prince of the blood to whom they were addressed
could swear volubly too, and his oaths we may feel assured were neither
masculine nor tender.
We of this generation can scarcely have any adequate notion of what the
swearing has been which has prevailed in this country at different
periods, and more particularly in the latter part of the reign of George
II. So popular and so ungovernable was the habit, that there is hardly
any rational means to be found for accounting for it. At this time there
lived in an obscure village in Sussex a decent, well-to-do tradesman,
whose shop, well stocked with broadcloth and homespun, was a centre of
commerce for miles around. He was known to be a thriving man, and seems
to have taken a leading part in the administration of parish affairs.
Business was not so burdensome but that he found time to attend at every
festive gathering, and to keep a well-written chronicle of his own and
his neighbours' doings. This diary has of late years been unearthed, and
a very pretty story it has to tell of the _bourgeois_ manner of life
towards the meridian of the century.[48] One entry will speak for many
of the same character.
"February 5th, 1759.--In the evening I went down to the vestry; there
was no business of moment to transact, but oaths and imprecations seemed
to resound from all sides of the room. I believe if the penalty were
paid assigned by the legislature by every person that swears that
constitute our vestry, there would be no need to levy any tax to
maintain our poor."
The outbreak must have reached an unprecedented point when we find the
president of quarter sessions, Sir John Fielding, alluding to it in the
charge to the grand jury delivered at the Guildhall in April, 1763. No
language can be stronger than that of Sir John--"I cannot sufficiently
lament," he says "that shameful, inexcusable and almost universal
practice of profane swearing in our streets; a crime so easy to be
punished, and so seldom done, that mankind almost forget it to be an
offence, and to our dishonour be it spoken, it is almost peculiar to the
English nation."
A state of things like this would seem to have given rise to a singular
communication addressed to the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' The writer lays
the whole blame upon the clergy; they have offered a direct
encouragement to swearing by declaring it a sin. He recommends that
divines in future should describe it as a virtue, which, he says, may be
as easily done as saying the contrary, and he will answer for the
success of the experiment. A clergyman of his acquaintance, continues
the writer, had already carried this bit of precept into use. To
convince the congregation that swearing was far from being a sin, this
gentleman constantly practised it in his own discourses. There might
indeed be some doubt here which was the worse, the remedy or the
disease.
The imprecations that are so severely censured by Fielding are a totally
different thing from the imprecations patronised by Lady Grosvenor, if
we are to understand the oaths of the populace to have been the hideous
and unsightly objects presented for condemnation to the Middlesex jury.
And here we hardly need point out the distinction between swearing when
at its earnest, and swearing when at its play. In numberless courts and
alleys, in the sinks and hiding-places of a great city, we may be sure
there are innumerable spots where oaths and imprecations never for a
moment are laid aside. They are as punctual and as regular as the
ticking of a clock. No word is uttered that has not its accompaniment of
an oath; no bread broken that is not devoured with cursing. For why?
Human nature is at all times bent upon possessing, and upon increasing
what it has acquired. The very act of producing is sufficient to uphold
the equilibrium of the mental frame. But this same nature, when pinched
and starved, becomes a perfect storehouse of enmity and ill-feeling.
Among the denizens of these holes and crannies humanity has been driven
very hard. It has been crushed and bruised to a point beyond endurance.
The possibility of possessing is very faint, that of enjoying still more
remote. No graceful thing--no pleasant thing, can readily come to its
hand. Yet there is one chattel they _can_ possess when every stick and
stone is denied them. They can be tenacious of their swearing. See how
manifestly useful a thing it is! It can give a man an eloquence where
none would otherwise belong to him. It can set him up with a semblance
of bodily strength, when otherwise he would be puny and fragile. He can
assail authorities, and they dare not answer. He can drown down the
voice of missionaries, and they are halting in reproval. There are
beings so dejected--so penurious--that this swearing constitutes their
whole store of worldly opulence. They know it too, in a fashion,
although it has never been told them and they themselves are incapable
of the telling.
So much for swearing when in grim earnest; how are we to account for it
in its transition to sport and play? Unless we are greatly mistaken,
there has entered into its composition a spirit of broad humour which
has, in a manner, rendered it attractive, if not positively amusing.
Were we to put the whole body of bad language to a judicial trial, we
should in fairness be compelled to admit the extenuating circumstance of
a time-expired claim to the mock-heroic and the ludicrous. It certainly
does not sparkle now, but it must have come of a witty stock, and have
boasted a mirth-provoking pedigree. To have rendered itself so
particularly palatable as it has done, like many other kinds of verbal
folly, it can only have taken its rise in a perverted spirit of
merriment.
To apply words, and more especially adjectives, in an unwonted and
unusual sense is one of the arts which go a long way to make
conversation agreeable. To do this with taste, and without corrupting or
annihilating the meaning of the word, demands a certain amount of
literary skill. To do so at any price frequently demands skill, and is
always fraught with consequences of some kind to the listener. Most of
these perversions of highly respectable words have now become so trite
that they pass unchallenged. The verb "to bag," for instance, is in
jocular use for implying a petty appropriation of property. It must of
course at some time have been forcibly wrested from the language of
sportsmen, and no doubt with this circumstance secretly underlying it,
has been productive, and will be again, of general good-humour. Such
another _tour de phrase_ is met with in the verb "to charter." This
originally had reference to the hiring of a ship; but when we hear of
chartering a fly, or chartering a stretcher, there certainly arises an
odd sense of the incongruous. We are far from saying that the merriment
in these cases is acute, but we contend that this kind of pleasantry is
at the bottom of every phrase or catchword obtaining universal
acceptance.
Examples might be multiplied of this wanton abduction of words. The not
very polite expression "the damage," as signifying the cost of any
article of purchase, is one which upon frequent repetition may fail to
strike the mind as containing any element of humour. But recollecting
the wide region the imagination has to traverse in order to connect the
idea of detriment with the idea of price, we are disposed to allow that
this mental circuit is enlivened with some shreds of grotesque imagery.
Indeed, a large and by no means contemptible portion of the world have
derived a high degree of enjoyment from the simple confusion and
dislocation of terms. Nothing is more frequent than to find a catch-word
ostensibly of no kind of intelligence being exchanged by delighted
youths across half the desks and counters of the metropolis. The
flippant use of oaths is so far practically explained; the colloquial
habit of imputing to unoffending objects a condition of damnation
passing in the light of a fairly respectable joke. Joke indeed there is
none, but it is the popular repute or suspicion of a jest that exercises
this fascination. It is noticeable that a provincial audience witnessing
one of Colman's or Sheridan's comedies is more genuinely amused by the
"zounds" and "dammes" uttered in provoking situations by testy speakers,
than by all the polish of epigram and dialogue.
As further illustrating this latent element of humour, which has helped
to perpetuate the practice of purposeless swearing, we may be permitted
to refer to an occurrence that befell us when, some number of years ago,
we happened to be taking a humble part in a legal inquiry at a county
assizes. The case was one in which, let us say, Moribundus was
plaintiff, and the Juggernaut Railway Company were defendants. It is not
necessary to refer to the business of the dispute further than to say
that the plaintiff had been shattered almost beyond recovery, and that
our province it was to help to prove to demonstration the utter
untrustworthiness of the story relied upon by Moribundus. The repast
that succeeded the inquiry more nearly concerns us; the lawyers, the
London doctor, and the local practitioner having agreed thus to
celebrate the evening. We do not recollect that the company were at all
disposed to fraternity, as a degree of professional acrimony seemed to
preside at that feast. In the course of dinner, one of the party,
looking round the board, happens to inquire, "Where's the damned
mustard?" No particular notice is taken of this remark, until presently
one of the legal gentlemen solemnly observes, "Where's the damned salt?"
We do not attempt to explain it, but a sudden sense of the ludicrous
instantly overcame the men of law and medicine assembled at the
_Fleece_. This incongruous and perfectly irrelevant joinder of words,
while it revealed the source from which amusement was supposed to flow,
was at the same time a potent satire upon the practice of a
disreputable art. It was taking the name of swearing itself in vain. It
substituted for any closer argument the incisive logic of ridicule.
It occurs to us to notice that Shakespeare, who was certainly alive to
the hidden springs of swearing, has conceived the notion of winging much
the same folly with a precisely similar shaft. It had been the fashion
among the gay Ephesians of Eastcheap, during Elizabeth's reign, to swear
by their honour. "Where learnt you that oath, fool?" asks Rosalind. "Of
a certain knight," returns Touchstone, "who swore by his honour they
were good pancakes."
With these examples of compromise before us, it becomes almost a matter
for regret that there should remain so large a body of protectionists
whose resentment at anything savouring of an oath is perhaps one of the
surest means of perpetuating swearing. Among the severest codes devised
to check the progress of the vice was that designed by the Puritan
settlers in Connecticut and Rhode Island. These Blue Laws, as they were
called, aimed at establishing an almost theocratic form of government.
Adopting the polity of Great Britain as a standpoint, these enactments
went considerably further and sought to remodel that system upon the
basis of the severest of Jewish ordinances. Among offences to which the
Puritan mind would seem to have been especially averse are to be
numbered those of swearing and tobacco-smoking. In the case of the
latter, however, retribution was only visited upon the after-generation
of smokers. People who had already acquired the habit were free to
continue in it for the days of their life. In the case of swearing,
needless to say, no such licence was extended, convicted swearers being
liable to be dealt with according to the gravity of the offence. The
penalty seems to have been rated in some instances as low as a fine of
five shillings, and to have amounted in others to the punishment of
death.
In all countries enactments have been levelled against the excesses of
ejaculation, but the true instruments for keeping them in bounds,
assuming there to be an actual necessity for such treatment, has been
shown to be the voice of ridicule and the keen banter of satire.
Moralists of the pattern of the law-givers of Connecticut would probably
be found to take exception to the oaths of Bobadil, and would condemn
'Every Man in his Humour' as a licentious work. It does not however need
argument to show that the mere fact of the redoubted Bobadil taking
credit to himself for his freaks with the fourth commandment, forms one
of the strongest inducements to respect that prohibition. But in view of
any latent admiration being lurking in any portion of his auditory,
Jonson has contrived a foil in the person of Master Stephen. This is a
vain-glorious, empty parasite, whose clumsy imitation of the Captain is
certainly calculated to put his hearers out of all sympathy with his
model. So captivated is this apt disciple with Bobadil's string of
expletives, that he is found anxiously inquiring whether he also may
swear _en militaire_. "Certainly," says the sagacious Well-bred, "if, as
I remember, your name is entered in the Artillery Garden."
Bobadil "swore the legiblest of any man christened." The field, however,
has not been suffered to be left without competitors. To see how
persistent has been the struggle for reputation in the matter as well as
manner of swearing, we have only to turn to the well-known dialogue in
Sheridan's comedy:
"_Absolute._ But pray, Bob, I observe you have got an odd kind of a new
method of swearing.
"_Acres._ Ha! ha! you've taken notice of it--'tis genteel, isn't it? I
didn't invent it myself though, but a commander in our militia, a great
scholar I assure you, says that there is no meaning in the common
oaths, and that nothing but their antiquity makes them respectable;
because, he says, the ancients would never stick to an oath or two, but
would say, By Jove! or by Bacchus!--by Mars! or by Pallas! according to
the sentiment, so that to swear with propriety, says my little major,
the oath should be an echo of the sense; and this we call the oath
referential, or sentimental swearing--ha! ha! 'tis genteel, isn't it?
"_Absolute._ Very genteel, and very new, indeed!--and I daresay will
supplant all other figures of imprecation.
"_Acres._ Ay, ay, the best terms will grow obsolete. Damns have had
their day."[49]
We are not aware whether it has been noticed how closely this passage is
foreshadowed by dialogue occurring in a much earlier play. Both turn
upon the notion of a species of property being acquired in set forms of
swearing. The play in question is from the pen of Richard Brome, and is
further useful to our purpose as showing that this eccentricity had not
abated in the interval that elapsed between Jonson and Sheridan. Under
the title of 'Covent Garden Weeded,' it exposes the riotous doings that
prevailed in that joyous locality. It was to cleanse this new
plantation of the human nettles and creepers that found shelter in its
precincts that the drama purports to have been designed. The builders
had just completed the spacious piazza which occupies a portion of the
site of the convent garden formerly existing there. Among the rollicking
societies that were springing up in this new settlement, was one known,
at least in the comedy, as the "Brothers of the Blade and the Batoon."
One scene in this play discloses the brethren in a state of carnival.
They are engaged in passing a novice into the ranks of the order, their
captain thus exhorting the new-comer as to their social code:--
"_Captain._ I have given you all the rudiments and my most fatherly
advice withall.
"_Clot._ And the last is that I should not swear; how make you that
good?
"_Captain._ That's most unnecessary, for look you, the best, and even
the lewdest of my sons do forbear it, not out of conscience, but for
very good ends, and instead of an oath, furnish the mouth with some
affected protestation. _As I am honest!_ it is so. _I am no honest man!_
if it be not. _'Ud take me!_ if I lie to you. _Nev'rigo! nev'rstir! I
vow!_ and such like.
"_Clot._ I'll have _I vow_, then.
"_Nick._ Nay, but you shall not, that's mine.
"_Clot._ Can't you lend it me now and then, brother?"
It would almost seem, from the evidence of the several passages we have
had occasion to refer to, as if the various diversities of character and
occupation had engendered a spirit of competition in the assumption of
oaths. Whether scholar or soldier, knight or citizen, each man,
according to his degree, is burning to distinguish himself by some
distinctive and eccentric form of swearing. The asseverations employed
by the Shallows and Slanders are as limpid and as timorous as those of
Falstaff and Bardolph are downright and headstrong. Hotspur, as we have
seen, reproaches Lady Percy for swearing like a comfit-maker's wife.
With the rest of the Percies he had lived in Aldersgate Street, and had
probably contracted an aversion to everything savouring of the vulgar
life of a great city. How defiant and versatile were the expletives of
the old French nobility, we may learn from the pages of Brantome. When
seeking to convey a flattering portrait of his father, Francois de
Bourdeilles, he does not omit to impress us with the importance of his
oaths. Playing backgammon with Pope Jules II., his form of adjuration
was _Chardieu benit!_ when he lost, and _Chardon benit!_ when he won.
In Elizabethan England a ridiculous notion prevailed among town society,
associating the idea of good breeding with the use, by way of oath, of
the word "protest." Such an affirmation was understood to raise the
presumption of quality in the person who used it. Says Carlo Buffone,
"Ever, when you can, have two or three peculiar oaths to swear by, that
no man else swears, and above all protest." Neither is Shakespeare
silent upon this fashionable eccentricity. The Nurse in 'Romeo and
Juliet' is instantly won over to the side of the Veronese lover the
moment he utters "I protest," and no longer harbours a doubt of his
principles. We see her desirous of communicating to her mistress this
single expression of gentlemanhood without concerning herself about the
more weighty portion of Romeo's message. This is, perhaps, almost
beneath the dignity of the love-story, but we have to regard it as a
relic. We must understand the allusion as a piece of chaff administered
to the gallants and templars who sported their fine clothes and broached
their oaths and their jests seated upon the very stage where the
performers were playing. A passage in a contemporary, entitled 'Sir
Giles Goosecap,' affords a key to the especial estimation in which the
term then happened to be held:--"There is not the best duke's son in
France dares say _I protest_ till he be one-and-thirty years old at
least, for the inheritance of that word is not to be possessed before."
Not only do we view these allusions as relics, but we may as justly
consider them in the light of literary fossils. The aim and intention of
the author have become petrified. It is, in fact, only by the help of
study and appreciation that the true shape and proportion of the idea
can be adequately revealed. But search beneath the crust of this
intellectual spoil-bank, and there will be seen those slight, if
somewhat corroded indications which disclose the humour and the temper
of a forgotten age. These inconsequent oaths and no less
incomprehensible bywords, fit only now-a-days to undetermine critics and
to baffle commentary, are really the reflection of a tinsel finery that
was no doubt borne aloft and bravely carried in its day. The explanation
for this is simple. The player, to be well in with his patrons, had to
turn the laugh from side to side, to give a thrust here and a buffet
there, just as the mood or the opportunity dictated. It is this easy
familiarity with audiences which has filled our play-books with such
store of meaningless or half-meaningless expressions. Not that their
supposed want of meaning is more than co-extensive with their apparent
want of purpose. Once re-animated with a design, and that of ever so
trivial a character, and their significance stands out in relief. When,
as frequently happens in our reading, we encounter oaths of the pattern
which Shakespeare ascribes to the youth of Verona, we may feel sure we
have fallen upon some passing home-thrust, some spectral blow,
delivered, as it were, among now ghostly antagonists.
Thus we find that in the town life of the more favoured days of Charles
I. it was a common affectation to use the words "refuse me," much as the
Elizabethan dandies made mention of the word "protest." We see this
indicated by several examples of contemporary raillery, and particularly
in the play of 'Match at Midnight,' in which the lordlings of the time
are described as "those wicked elder brothers, that swear, _refuse
them!_ and drink nothing but wicked sack."
So at other periods we find other combinations doing yeoman service in
this particular; as, for instance, in Killigrew's play 'The Parson's
Wedding,' where Careless is explaining his plan for attacking the
affections of the fair sex--"I am resolved to put on their own silence,
answer forsooth, swear nothing but _God's nigs_." Except upon the score
of banter at prevailing idiotcies, it would be difficult to account for
the luxuriant way in which oaths of this description have been
provided.
We may not inaptly before closing this chapter travel into another
hemisphere and advert to that side of the subject in which the powers of
darkness are accustomed to be apostrophised in place of the powers of
light. Most of the swearing which we have had to pass in review may be
said to have been accumulated at a vast expense to our notions and
perceptions regarding the Source of all light. How is it, then, that the
full detriment of this system was never taken into account before, and
that the obverse of the present practice was not more generally adopted.
One might have supposed that the malignant beings who find so facile an
entrance into popular imagination would have been the first objects with
which to associate so much that is acrimonious. If this could have been
seen to, and thoroughly brought about, it is possible that we should
never have heard of "swearing" at all, or that it might very well have
occupied the same relative position upon the pedestal of virtues as it
now does upon the more degraded tallies of vice. However this may be,
and of course speculation upon the subject can be nothing more than
fanciful, it is the beneficent creations of the universe, and not the
malignant ones, that have absorbed the greater part of the energy
directed to the practice of swearing.
In English archaic writings the instances in which the mention of the
Satanic power is thus utilised are not numerous. We cannot compete with
the _diables_ and _diavolos_ of another race. Wherever references of
this kind do occur, they as often assume the shape of some amusing
transposition. The sharp edge is at once taken off the anathema. Thus
the soubriquet "old Harry" or "the Lord Harry" generally understood to
refer to Satan, is frequently used as an adjunct of strong feeling.[50]
But as an imprecation it is of quite inferior magnitude, and seems
almost to imply the existence of a strain of good-fellowship with the
Evil One which it might be exceedingly impolitic to disturb.
But beyond the intuitive feeling that the cognomen does apply to this
individual, there is little to advance which can clear up the question
as to the precise origin of the term. It is supposed that our popular
notion of the devil is derived from the Roman fauni. The shaggy coat,
the horns and cloven feet, are certainly peculiar to the classical
treatment of this supernatural being. It is inferred therefore that the
idea has been transmitted to us through the medium of our early
moralities and interludes. This course of descent derives colour from
the fact that the like paraphernalia are not the subject of opprobrious
mention in the Scriptures,[51] and that hence our notion of the devil
must be drawn from pagan rather than biblical influences. It is
accordingly suggested that "old Harry," the subject of so much
irreverent and irresponsible reference, is no other than "old hairy" of
the earliest phases of theatrical representation.
A jocose turn seems also to have been given to that common contraction
of the Satanic name of which Mistress Page makes use in the 'Merry
Wives' when she exclaims, "I cannot tell what the dickens his name is!"
It does not however seem that the expression can be traced earlier than
Heywood's 'Edward the Fourth,' of the date 1600, where we meet with the
passage: "What the dickens! Is it love that makes you prate to me so
fondly?" The word is, however, less of an oath than an exclamation.
Probably few persons who allow themselves the enjoyment of that rather
jocular expletive, _the deuce!_ are in the least aware of the remote
antiquity of this delectable figure of speech. It is perhaps the most
ancient of all the oaths and apologies for oaths that have come down to
us, and which after a long and vicissitudinous transit have arrived at
last, neither mutilated or dismembered. So old is it that it dates from
the very formation of the language, but of so tainted a pedigree that in
spite of some six hundred years of regular descent we can scarcely
permit it to hold dictionary rank.
But, if the account we have to give of its origin can be credited, its
history is singular as being intimately connected with one of the
greatest social changes that have taken place in the national life. When
we are told that the Norman conquerors imposed their language upon the
subject race, we can understand with what difficulty and hesitation the
Saxon thanes would attempt to assimilate the foreign tongue. So severe a
lesson could only be learned by grasping at such words and phrases as
were the more frequently recurring. To say that oaths and imprecations,
and in fact all terms of anger and violence, would leave the more
durable impression, is only to insist upon what we see daily exemplified
in countries where the like process is going on. So it happened with a
very favourite Norman exclamation. From the evidence of the earliest
metrical romances we gather that _Deus!_ was such a term of impatience
as was constantly upon the lips of the descendants of the invaders. But
no sooner did these more courtly and cultivated entertainments make
their way into English vernacular, than we find that even in this latter
shape the Norman _deus_ is significantly preserved. There it appears
among the rugged doggrel, a piece of continental finery stitched into
the homely Saxon garb. It had dropped out of the vocabularies of the
French romancists and had become the common property of the ordinary
provincial poetaster. It had passed in fact from the French to the
English tongue, and is claimed to be that very _deuce_ with which we are
most of us familiar.
Proof of this is afforded by comparison of the old romance of 'Havelok
the Dane'[52] as it exists in its home and in its foreign versions, and
both of which are assigned to a period anterior to the fourteenth
century. The translator was evidently a man of spirit, who to warm his
Lincolnshire readers has added much original incident and local
colouring. Nevertheless he carefully retained the Norman _deus_. It was
evidently quite at home on the wolds and in the fens of the
translator's country, and only wanted the accent which Grimsby patrons
would not fail to supply, to transform it to the expression with which
we are so well acquainted.
There seems to be one oath of this description which bids fair to elude
all guess-work as to its origin or meaning. It was formerly a practice
in France to swear _par le diable de Biterne_. When so much exactitude
had been employed to emphasise the whereabouts of this personage, it is
only natural to inquire where the locality referred to might happen to
be. We believe, however, that no satisfactory answer has as yet been
returned. Some light is thrown upon the question by Francisque Michel
who (in his 'Recherches sur les Etoffes de Soie') has shown that a
present of some rare _pailes de Biterne_ was sent to Alexander by
Candace, one of the queens of Ethiopia. With this single ray of
illumination we must be content.