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. CHAPTER XIII