the petitioner, "the people in Virginia have souls to be saved as well as their brethren in England." "Souls!" cried the attorney-general. "Damn your souls! Make tobacco!" At present swearing as a fine art has gone out of fashion in Anglo-Saxon countries. Men practise profanity among themselves, but not in general society. And even in exclusively male society it is tabooed by the better classes. To be sure, many of our common adjurations which are not usually classed as profanity are corruptions of the mouth-filling oaths of the past. "Egad" and "zounds" are still heard among English gentlemen, who probably have no thought of their etymological meaning. The mother who, when scolding her child, says "plague you" or "drat you" does not know or care to know that those expressions are elliptical for "God plague you" and "God rot you." "Lord," "O Lordy," and "Good Lord" are undoubted adjurations of the Almighty. "Darn" is a mere vulgarization of "damn," as "Gosh" and "Golly" are of "God." "Confound you" is but a truncated form of "May God confound you," as the servantgalism "My!" or "Oh, my!" is a truncated form of invocation of the Deity. 'Jingo" is the Basque name for the Deity. "Dickens" is a contraction for "devilkins." "Deuce" is a corruption of the Latin "Deus" (God). The Irish "be jabers" is a mere softening of "be Jasus" or "Jesus," and the harmless words "Jove" and “Gemini” (or "Jimminy") have only grown into favor through their faint yet sufficient resemblance in sound to the same sacred name. Nay, the commonest of all expressions, the familiar household phrase “ Dear me !" is in all probability a corruption of the Italian "Dio mio!" (" My God!") an exclamation which is still used by Italian men, women, and children of all ranks in society with quite as little intention of profanity as English and Americans put into their "Dear me !" To an Anglo-Saxon, indeed, the frequent appeal to God's name in the countries of Continental Europe is astonishing at least, if not shocking. The young American girl who, shortly after her arrival in Germany, went down into the kitchen and asked the cook if she had put on the potatoes, retreated with horror when the cook laughingly replied, "O thou great God, of course I have, miss." In Germany they probably ring more changes upon the name of the Divinity than in any other country. It is either "O Gott!" ("O God!") "Mein Gott!" ("My God!")" Herr Gott !" (" Lord God !") "Grosser Gott!" ("Great God !") "Du lieber Gott!" ("Thou dear God!") "Allmächt' ger Gott!" ("Almighty God !"), or "Gott" without any qualifying adjective. In France "Dieu," "Mon Dieu," "Bon Dieu," "Grand Dieu," are used with the same frequency as, and have about the force of, our "goodness gracious." A trifle more intensity is thrown into the French phrase "Sacré nom de Dieu" ("Sacred name of God"), especially when the stress of the voice is placed upon the syllable cré with a gradual decrescendo to the end. An ingenious and kindly French curate, deploring the excessive use of theological terminology in social life, yet recognizing the needs of suffering or excited humanity, recently proposed a scheme of reformation. It is not original, but is evidently based upon the illustrious precedent set by Coton in his "jarnicoton." Why not choose a number of sonorous and mouth-filling words from general literature or history? As the Latin races want a good deal of rolling r's in their sonority, he suggests Sardanapalus, Caractacus, or Crépuscule. 'Repeat these or other words till they come to you naturally," says the good Abbé Icart, “and you will never think of reverting to oldfashioned blasphemies." The new method needs a good deal of practice. Like Demosthenes, its votaries should first seek some secluded shore of the sea, and hurl the words "Crrrépuscule !" "Sarrrdanapale !" or "Mille noms d'un rrrat!" at the incoming waves. When they deem themselves perfect, they may venture back into general society. 66 Unhappily, many people feel that an oath quite devoid of supernatural sanction is like a temperance substitute for alcoholic drinks. Total abstinence seems to be the only true alternative, and really it is not a bit more difficult than the good abbé's scheme. Oats, To feel one's, in American slang, to be lively, frisky, bumptious, or quarrelsome; a metaphor evidently derived from the stable. When a horse is well fed and in good condition he feels his oats. Observation with extensive view. Johnson's "Vanity of Human Wishes" opens with the well-known lines, Let observation with extensive view Survey mankind from China to Peru. De Quincey, in his essay on "Rhetoric," recalls "a little biographic sketch of Dr. Johnson, published immediately after his death," wherein the author quotes these lines as an instance of desperate tautology, "and contends with some reason that this is saying in effect, 'Let observation with extensive observation observe mankind extensively.' "Nor have the lines even the saving grace of originality. The phrase "from China to Peru" appears to be a suggestion from a contemporary: The wonders of each region view, SOAME JENYNS: Epistle to Lord Lovelace (1735). Steele, in his prologue to Ambrose Philips's "Distressed Mother," has, 'Tis nothing, when a fancied scene's in view, To skip from Covent Garden to Peru, and Thomas Warton, in his "Universal Love of Pleasure," All human race, from China to Peru, Pleasure, howe'er disguised by art, pursue. Occam's razor, the maxim of William of Occam, who was noted for the hair-splitting logic with which he dissected every question. In the controversy between Nominalism and Realism, which, loosely speaking, was a dispute whether the names of things were merely symbols or whether they implied a separate existence in themselves, the rule was laid down by the Nominalists that "Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem,"―i.e., Entities are not to be multiplied beyond what is necessary. The axiom became known as Occam's razor; but it is stated that Occam never made use of the formula which thus bears his name. Ocean. Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean, roll! Perhaps the most popular and best-remembered passage in all Byron is that invocation to the ocean with which he concludes the fourth and last canto of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." Christopher North, in a long and labored critique, sought vainly to turn it into ridicule. Matthew Arnold and other later critics have vainly expressed a mild and gentlemanly contempt for it. The public still retains it in its heart. The opening stanza (clxxix.) runs as follows: Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean, roll! The general thought of the stanza has some affiliation with George Chap man: His deeds inimitable, like the sea That shuts still as it opes, and leaves no tracts Bussy D'Ambois, Act i., Sc. 1. The last line may be a reminiscence of Scott, Shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored, and unsung, Lay of the Last Minstrel; which in its turn is borrowed from the line in Pope's "Iliad :" Unwept, unhonored, uninterred he lies. Book xxii., 1. 484. Stanza clxxx. concludes with an ugly lapse in grammar: And dashest him again to earth :-there let him lay. It has been conjectured that Byron wrote stay in lieu of lay, which would be a gain in correctness at the expense of force. In stanza clxxxii. there is a famous disputed passage: Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee: The expression about the waters and the tyrants wasting the shores is awkward, at least, if not absurd. Byron, who had not read the proofs, confessed in the presence of print that he hardly knew what it meant. A change of punctuation has been suggested,— And many a tyrant since their shores obeyThe stranger, slave, or savage-their decay, etc. But a neater conjecture is that Byron meant to write "washed them power while they were free," and omitted the word "power." Thereupon "washed" was read wasted," for the sake both of the sense and of the metre. It is not impossible that the stanza may be a reminiscence of Johnson's observation to General Paoli, as chronicled by Boswell: "The grand object of all travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On these shores were the four great empires of the world,-the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman. All our religion, almost all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come to us from the shores of the Mediterranean." The general thereupon remarked that "The Mediterranean would be a noble subject for a poem." But if Byron imitated, he has in turn been imitated. Lord Macaulay was the first to point out a very stupid bit of plagiarism by Robert Montgomery. "We never fell in," says Macaulay, "with any blunderer who so little understood how to turn his booty to good account as Mr. Montgomery. Lord Byron, in a passage which everybody knows by heart, has said, addressing the sea, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow. Mr. Robert Montgomery very coolly appropriates the image and reproduces the stolen goods in the following form: And thou, vast Ocean, on whose awful face So may such ill-got goods ever prosper !" Stanza clxxxiv., the last stanza of the invocation, runs as follows: Pollok, in his And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy "Course of Time," has evidently—indeed, avowedly—borrowed the last figure: He laid his hand upon "the ocean's mane," Odds and Ends, small miscellaneous articles, scraps, leavings. An effort has been made to prove that odds is a corruption of orts,―i.e., fragments,—a word frequent in Elizabethan literature, and still locally surviving both in England and in America. W. W. Skeat, in his "Chaucer," p. 185, thinks the phrase was originally "ord and ende,”i.e., beginning and end. Either suggestion is plausible. Yet there seems no reason to be dissatisfied with the face value of the words, whose meaning is sufficiently intelligible. Ohio Idea. During the Greenback agitation for an unredeemable paper currency, public opinion in the State of Ohio was permeated by the heresy. Many of her statesmen held what were believed to be unsound views on the money question, wherefore the fiscal policy advocated by them was sometimes called the Ohio Idea, although it should not be understood that its spread was confined to this State. Long before, in the transatlantic mind, at least, Ohio had been associated with financial irresponsibility, as in the once-famous stanza,— Of all the States 'tis hard to say Which makes the proudest show, sirs; The State of "Oh! I owe," sirs! The squib of which this is a portion was inspired by Sydney Smith's impassioned denunciations of Pennsylvania repudiation and entitled "A New Song to an Old Tune." It first appeared in the Literary Gazette in England, January 18, 1845, over the signature of "Cecil Harbottle." The lines begin,Yankee Doodle borrows cash, Yankee Doodle spends it, And then he snaps his fingers at The jolly flat that lends it. Oil upon the troubled waters, a common metaphor used of all efforts to allay commotion of any kind by smooth words of peace. Its origin is lost in obscurity. But the physical phenomenon on which it is based was known to the ancients, and is mentioned in Pliny's "Natural History," i. 2, c. 103. The Venerable Bede, in his "Ecclesiastical History" (731 A.D.), tells of a priest called Vtta who was sent into Kent to fetch Eanflede, King Edwine's daughter, who was to be married to King Oswirra. He was to go by land, but to return by water. Before his departure Vtta visited Bishop Aidan, who had the reputation of performing miracles, and besought his prayers for a prosperous journey. The bishop blessed him, and, predicting for his return a great tempest and a contrary wind that should rise suddenly, gave him a pot of oil, saying, "Remember that you cast into the sea this oyle that I give you, and anon, the winds being laied, comfortable fayer weather shall ensue on the sea, which shall send you againe with as pleasaunt a passage as you have wished." The tempest came as predicted. The sailors essayed to cast anchor, but in vain; the water began to fill the ship, and "nothing but present death was looked for." At the near approach of death came the thought of the bishop and the pot of oil. Taking it in his hand, the priest cast of the oil into the sea, when, as if by magic, it became quiet and calm, and the ship was delivered. Bede declares that he had it from "a very creditable man, a priest of our church, Cymmund by name, who saied that he had heard it of Vita, the priest in whom the miracle was wrought." Modern experiments have demonstrated that this was no miracle, and the scene no doubt occurred. Oil, With (F., "Avec l'huile"). Fontenelle, the celebrated French author, is said to have been very partial to asparagus dressed in oil. A certain abbé dining with him one day preferred this favorite esculent dressed with butter, so it was decided that the dish of asparagus which was preparing should be dressed half with butter and half with oil. A short time before dinner was ready the abbé was attacked by an apoplectic fit, on which Fontenelle rushed to the cook, and cried out, "All with oil! all with oil!" The phrase has passed into a popular saying. But the story has no historical basis. Old, Praise of the. Lord Bacon reminds us that "Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things,-old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read." (Apothegms, No. 97.) The sentiment is thus reported by another authority: "Old wood to burn! Old wine to drink! Old friends to trust! Old authors to read !—Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appeared to be best in these four things." (MELCHIOR: Floresta Española de Apothegmas ó Sentencias, etc., ii. 1, 20.) The phrase has often been imitated. Here are a few instances: Is not old wine wholesomest, old pippins toothsomest, old wood burns brightest, old linen wash whitest? Old soldiers, sweetheart, are surest, and old lovers are soundest.-WEBSTER: Westward Ho, Act ii., Sc. 2. Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest for his feet.-SELDEN: Table-Talk: Friends. What find you better or more honorable than age? Take the preheminence of it in everything,-in an old friend, in old wine, in an old pedigree.-SHAKERLEY MARMION (16021639): The Antiquary. I love everything that's old,-old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.— GOLDSMITH: She Stoops to Conquer, Act i. Chaucer has not only a similar thought but also an explanation thereof: For out of the old fieldes, as men saithe, The Assembly of Fowles, 1. 22. The assumed superiority of age over youth is rather neatly put by Chap man: Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.-All Fools, Act v., Sc. 1. |