526. _spyced conscience_; so also in D. 435. _Spiced_ here seems to
signify, says Tyrwhitt, nice, scrupulous; for a reason which is given [47]
below. It occurs in the Mad Lover, act iii. sc. 1, by Beaumont and
Fletcher. When Cleanthe offers a purse, the priestess says--
'Fy! no corruption....
_Cle._ Take it, it is yours;
Be not so _spiced_; 'tis good gold;
And goodness is no gall to th' conscience.'
'Under pretence of _spiced_ holinesse.'--Tract dated 1594, ap. Todd's
Illustrations of Gower, p. 380.
'Fool that I was, to offer such a bargain
To a _spiced-conscience_ chapman! but I care not,
What he disdains to taste, others will swallow.'
Massinger, Emperor of the East, i. 1.
'Will you please to put off
Your holy habit, and _spiced conscience_? one,
I think, infects the other.'
Massinger, Bashful Lover, iv. 2.
The origin of the phrase is French. The name of _espices_ (spices) was
given to the fees or dues which were payable (in advance) to judges. A
'spiced' judge, who would have a 'spiced' conscience, was scrupulous and
exact, because he had been prepaid, and was inaccessible to any but large
bribes. See Cotgrave, s. v. _espices_; Littré, s. v. _épice_; and, in
particular, Les Oeuvres de Guillaume Coquillart, ed. P. Tarbé, t. i. p. 31,
and t. ii. p. 114. (First explained by me in a letter to The Athenaeum,
Nov. 26, 1892, p. 741.)