CHAPTER XII

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.

I’ll undertake this moment to prove it to any man in the world, except to a connoisseur: ----though I declare I object only to a connoisseur in swearing, ----as I would do to a connoisseur in painting, &c., &c., the whole set of ’em are so hung round and _befetish’d_ with the bobs and trinkets of criticism, ----or to drop my metaphor, which by the bye is a pity, ----for I have fetch’d it as far as from the coast of _Guiney_; --their heads, Sir, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to the devil at once, than stand to be prick’d and tortured to death by ’em.

--And how did _Garrick_ speak the soliloquy last night? --Oh, against all rule, my lord, --most ungrammatically! betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in _number_, _case_, and _gender_, he made a breach thus, --stopping, as if the point wanted settling; --and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times three seconds and three-fifths by a stop-watch, my lord, each time, --Admirable grammarian! ----But in suspending his voice----was the sense suspended likewise? Did no expression of attitude or countenance fill up the chasm? ----Was the eye silent? Did you narrowly look? ------I look’d only at the stop-watch, my lord. --Excellent observer!

And what of this new book the whole world makes such a rout about? ----Oh! ’tis out of all plumb, my lord, ----quite an irregular thing! --not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle. --I had my rule and compasses, &c., my lord, in my pocket. --Excellent critick!

----And for the epick poem your lordship bid me look at----upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of _Bossu’s_----’tis out, my lord, in every one of its dimensions. --Admirable connoisseur!

----And did you step in, to take a look at the grand picture in your way back? --’Tis a melancholy daub! my lord; not one principle of the _pyramid_ in any one group! ----and what a price! ----for there is nothing of the colouring of _Titian_--the expression of _Rubens_--the grace of _Raphael_--the purity of _Dominichino_--the _corregiescity_ of _Corregio_--the learning of _Poussin_--the airs of _Guido_--the taste of the _Carrachis_--or the grand contour of _Angela_. --Grant me patience, just Heaven! --Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world--though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst----the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author’s hands----be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore.

Great _Apollo!_ if thou art in a giving humour--give me --I ask no more, but one stroke of native humour, with a single spark of thy own fire along with it----and send _Mercury_, with the _rules and compasses_, if he can be spared, with my compliments to--no matter.

Now to any one else I will undertake to prove, that all the oaths and imprecations which we have been puffing off upon the world for these two hundred and fifty years last past as originals----except St. _Paul’s thumb_----_God’s flesh and God’s fish_, which were oaths monarchical, and, considering who made them, not much amiss; and as kings’ oaths, ’tis not much matter whether they were fish or flesh; --else I say, there is not an oath, or at least a curse amongst them, which has not been copied over and over again out of _Ernulphus_ a thousand times: but, like all other copies, how infinitely short of the force and spirit of the original! --It is thought to be no bad oath----and by itself passes very well-- “_G--d damn you._” --Set it beside _Ernulphus’s_---- “God Almighty the Father damn you --God the Son damn you --God the Holy Ghost damn you”--you see ’tis nothing. --There is an orientality in his, we cannot rise up to: besides, he is more copious in his invention--possess’d more of the excellencies of a swearer----had such a thorough knowledge of the human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knittings of the joints, and articulations, ----that when _Ernulphus_ cursed--no part escaped him. --’Tis true there is something of a _hardness_ in his manner----and, as in _Michael Angelo_, a want of _grace_----but then there is such a greatness of _gusto!_

My father, who generally look’d upon everything in a light very different from all mankind, would, after all, never allow this to be an original. ----He considered rather, _Ernulphus’s_ anathema, as an institute of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of _swearing_ in some milder pontificate, _Ernulphus_, by order of the succeeding pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all the laws of it; --for the same reason that _Justinian_, in the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor _Tribonian_ to collect the _Roman_ or civil laws all together into one code or digest----lest, through the rust of time----and the fatality of all things committed to oral tradition--they should be lost to the world for ever.

For this reason my father would oft-times affirm, there was not an oath, from the great and tremendous oath of _William_ the Conqueror (_By the splendour of God_) down to the lowest oath of a scavenger (_Damn your eyes_) which was not to be found in _Ernulphus_. --In short, he would add --I defy a man to swear _out_ of it.

The hypothesis is, like most of my father’s, singular and ingenious too; ----nor have I any objection to it, but that it overturns my own.

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