As a few of our readers may by this time have harboured a conviction that swearing is in some degree a social necessity, they will be able to give full scope to the views upon this point of the excellent Mr. Shandy.[53] The only compunction that seems to have been entertained by this gentleman resided in the danger of expending small curses upon totally inadequate occasions. He maintained, indeed, with the utmost Cervantic gravity, that he had the greatest veneration for that student of swearing who, in obvious mistrust of his own extempore powers, composed forms suitable to all degrees of provocation, and kept them framed over his chimney-piece for daily reference. "I never apprehended," puts in Dr. Slop, "that such a thing was ever thought of--much less executed." "I beg your pardon," replies Mr. Shandy, "I was reading--though not using--one of them to my brother Toby this morning, whilst he poured out the tea." The work of ingenuity in question turned out to be a decree of excommunication, certainly a very ponderous and damnatory one, compiled by Ernulphus, a learned bishop of Rochester. Mr. Shandy is understood to account for the comprehensiveness of this anathema by assuming it to have been designed as an institute or perfect digest of swearing. He conjectures that upon a decline of vituperation Ernulphus had with great learning collected all the known methods, for fear of their being dispersed and so lost to the world for ever. The worthy Shandy would even go so far as to maintain that there was no kind of oath that was not to be found in Ernulphus. "In short," he would add, "I defy a man to swear out of it." This piece of quaintness, as we need hardly point out, only goes to the fact that wide as is the range of imprecation, it must always come back to that one monotonous symbol of despisal. The anathema of the good bishop is pitched in many keys and sounds, like the collected utterances of many throats. But even Ernulphus can scarcely have foreseen the Rabelaisian refinements that would suggest themselves to the minds of men as soon as literary demands were made upon the well-worn supply. The genius of the French language seems more particularly to lend itself to the fabrication of burlesque forms and subterfuges. Thus to affirm by _le sacre froc d'Habacuc_, or by _la double-triple manche de serpe_, are fair specimens of the ingenuity that has been lavished. Far less offending have been the ludicrous forms of asseveration popular in the lower ranks of French society, and one of which it is sufficient to mention as occurring in a curious rhyme of the last century,[54] where among other things is found characterised the pseudo-nuptials of a certain abbess and a dignitary of the Church-- "Mais, _par la vertu d'un oignon_, Ils sont maries environ, Comme l'est l'eveque de Chartres Avec l'abbesse de Montmartres."