A jocose turn seems also to have been given to that common contraction of the Satanic name of which Mistress Page makes use in the 'Merry Wives' when she exclaims, "I cannot tell what the dickens his name is!" It does not however seem that the expression can be traced earlier than Heywood's 'Edward the Fourth,' of the date 1600, where we meet with the passage: "What the dickens! Is it love that makes you prate to me so fondly?" The word is, however, less of an oath than an exclamation. Probably few persons who allow themselves the enjoyment of that rather jocular expletive, _the deuce!_ are in the least aware of the remote antiquity of this delectable figure of speech. It is perhaps the most ancient of all the oaths and apologies for oaths that have come down to us, and which after a long and vicissitudinous transit have arrived at last, neither mutilated or dismembered. So old is it that it dates from the very formation of the language, but of so tainted a pedigree that in spite of some six hundred years of regular descent we can scarcely permit it to hold dictionary rank. But, if the account we have to give of its origin can be credited, its history is singular as being intimately connected with one of the greatest social changes that have taken place in the national life. When we are told that the Norman conquerors imposed their language upon the subject race, we can understand with what difficulty and hesitation the Saxon thanes would attempt to assimilate the foreign tongue. So severe a lesson could only be learned by grasping at such words and phrases as were the more frequently recurring. To say that oaths and imprecations, and in fact all terms of anger and violence, would leave the more durable impression, is only to insist upon what we see daily exemplified in countries where the like process is going on. So it happened with a very favourite Norman exclamation. From the evidence of the earliest metrical romances we gather that _Deus!_ was such a term of impatience as was constantly upon the lips of the descendants of the invaders. But no sooner did these more courtly and cultivated entertainments make their way into English vernacular, than we find that even in this latter shape the Norman _deus_ is significantly preserved. There it appears among the rugged doggrel, a piece of continental finery stitched into the homely Saxon garb. It had dropped out of the vocabularies of the French romancists and had become the common property of the ordinary provincial poetaster. It had passed in fact from the French to the English tongue, and is claimed to be that very _deuce_ with which we are most of us familiar.