“Ha! this fellow is worse than me; what, does he swear with pen and ink?”— The Tatler , No. 13. LONDON: J. C. NIMMO AND BAIN, 14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. 1884....

“‘Our armies swore terribly in Flanders,’ said my uncle Toby, ‘but nothing to this.’”— Tristram Shandy. It lay in the heart of Bohemia. It was approached through a labyrinth of streets that grew denser and darker as one neared the precincts of the club. Could any of the brother Scufflers have seen the neighbourhood by day, it would have presented an appearance dismal and sordid enough. Dealers in faded wardrobes,—merchants in tinsel and rouge de théâtre ,—retailers of wigs and fleshings and all

“Now don’t let us give ourselves a parcel of airs and pretend that the oaths we make free with in this land of liberty of ours are our own; and because we have the spirit to swear them,—imagine that we have had the wit to invent them too.”— Tristram Shandy. When Hesiod fabled the god of oaths to be the son of Discord, the poet could hardly have foreseen the grim reality that would attach to his satiric allegory. It is now a very small thing—a matter of no consequence at all—that serious and well

“Pantagruel then asked what sorts of people dwelled in that damn’d island.”— Rabelais iv., chap. lxiv. “If ever I should betake myself to swearing,” says Sir John Hazlewood in the play, “I shall give very little concern to the fashion of the oath. Odd’s bodikins will do well enough for me, and lack-a-daisy for my wife.” Many other persons have been much of the same mind as this Sir John, and, possessing a certain esteem for the pomp and circumstance of swearing, have been impelled to cherish som

We have already adverted to that foreign and slanderous tradition which lays all the grosser sins of vituperation at the Englishman’s door. It has been seen how the “damns” and “goddams” of a marauding soldiery, though scattered upon the winds of many centuries ago, have continued to be held up in judgment against the English-speaking race. There remains to be noticed one other item of continental asperity that has enjoyed in its day a full measure of approbation owing to the delightful assumpti

“He swore by the wound in Jesu’s side.”— Coleridge, ‘Christabel.’ We may now turn our backs upon the luxuriant and fanciful swearing of the ancient world and pursue our researches into one other division of the subject that gives rise to more serious reflections. The diversions of the Roman and the Greek in the way of imprecation seem to have been mostly intended in good part, and to have been productive of little theological odium. But there is a body of swearing that has diffused itself throug

“When a gentleman is disposed to swear, it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths.”—‘ Cymbeline ,’ ii. 1. In the study of antiquity there are steep and irregular by-paths that defy the traveller every step that he pursues them. It is in threading these tortuous windings that many a fearless venturer has lost foot-hold and been utterly cast away. Many a man with the passion for antiquity deep at his heart, and with limbs well girded to attain to the summit of his aim, has been fain to se

Written during the fever of South Sea speculation, the skit of Jonathan Swift, known as the “Bank of Swearing,” was one exceedingly felicitous and well-timed. We are amused even now, as we read the prospectus of this preposterous undertaking, at the extreme audacity with which the would-be projector solemnly enumerates its advantages. Impossible and altogether ludicrous as was the enterprise, it is not improbable that many of the eager financiers of that speculative age fancied they saw solid re

“ 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

“As I was finishing this worke, an oyster-wife tooke exception against me and called me knave.”—‘ Lamentable Effect of Two Dangerous Comets ,’ 1591. We trust that we have travelled thus far on our journey without wounding the susceptibilities of any of our readers, and that thus it may continue to the not distant end. In all probability our remarks and illustrations will have been scanned by two totally diverse classes of patrons, those to whom the topics suggested present much that is worthy of

Page 73. Feminine Oaths. —Among the number of feminine expletives may be reckoned Ophelia’s adjuration “by Gis.” The derivation has been a source of trouble to the commentators, who profess to see in it a corruption of Saint Cecily, an abbreviation of Saint Gislen, or else, as is more probable, a phonetic form of the letters I.H.S. But whatever its derivation, the oath was commonly attributed to the female sex. Thus, in Preston’s ‘Cambyses,’ 1561, it is so employed; and again in the pre-Shakespe