A saviour of society--Joseph Addison--A tradesman of the last century--A clerical apologist--Swearing in earnest and at play--An explanation offered--Blue laws of Connecticut-- Bobadil--'The Rivals'--'Covent Garden weeded'--Brantome's oaths--Eccentricities of swearing--"Old Harry"--"The dickens"--"The deuce"--"Le diable de Biterne" 139 CHAPTER IX. Utilitarian view of swearing--One touch of nature--The Shandean method--Code of Ernulphus--"Sacre froc d'Habacuc"-- Mr. William Barley--Philosophy of imprecation--"Bloody"--In the Low Countries--'The Man of Mode'--Swift without his waistcoat--Sanglant--Retrospect and ending 171 APPENDIX 193 A CURSORY HISTORY OF SWEARING. CHAPTER I. AT THE SCUFFLERS' CLUB. "'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 theatre_,--retailers of wigs and fleshings and all manner of stage wares, seemed one with another to have made the locality their home. One missed certainly the bone-sellers and refuse-sifters of the adjacent Clare Market, and one was spared the cheap cosmetic shops and smug undertakers of the neighbouring Soho. But you were recompensed, here in the heart of mid-Bohemia, by the all-pervading odour of potations and provisions,--of banquets long past, and of banquets that were yet to come. What wonderful odours are those that emanate from this quarter of the town! The dank vapours of Covent Garden are sweet in the nostrils of many a cockney reveller. There is no orange-peel so perfumed as the Drury orange-peel that has been concentrating its fragrance round the boards of Thespis since the days when Mohun and Hart, and Shatterel and Betterton strutted on the bare planks of the Cockpit. No scent of printer's ink is more refreshing than that which adheres to the yards of flimsy playbill still hawked about by itinerant vendors. But the whole place has through the day-time a blear-eyed, a drunk-over-night appearance. It is like a man who is never at his best until he has supped or dined. From morn till twilight it wears this sullen and uncared-for look. Wait until nightfall, and it will positively glisten with lamps and gleam with merriment. No wonder, therefore, that it has been the birthplace of so many of those midnight carousing dens, into one of which we are tremulously seeking to enter.