week, and that I wanted five bloody shillings more. He said he had not the bloody time to listen to my bloody complaints." He is rather inclined to favor the etymology which makes it a corruption of the by'r lady of Shakespeare's day. But Murray sees in it a reference to the habits of the "bloods" or swells of the eighteenth century. Bloody drunk-as drunk as a bloodwas probably its first appearance. Gradually its apparent association with bloodshed and murder recommended its use to the rougher class as an adjective that appealed to their imagination. During the time of the Commonwealth some effort was made to suppress profane swearing. But the Restoration brought back an unbridled license of tongue. Macaulay tells us that, in order to spite the Puritans, "the new breed of wits and fine gentlemen never opened their mouths without uttering ribaldry of which a porter would now be ashamed, and without calling on their Maker to curse them, sink them, confound them, blast them, and damn them." Nor was the habit checked or impeded by the "glorious Revolution of 1688." The plays and novels and the gossip of the period prove that profanity was quite an ordinary exercise of the English lungs. It did not much matter whether those lungs were placed in a male or a female breast. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, calling on an eminent judge and finding him absent, departed in a flurry of vituperative indignation without leaving her name. The servant could only report to the judge on his return that the visitor had not mentioned her name, but that "she swore like a lady of quality." The armies which swore so "terribly in Flanders," according to Uncle Toby's report, were English troops engaged in the siege of Namur in 1693. Congreve's "Old Bachelor," produced in that very year, fairly bristles with oaths. Not only has it all the common blasphemies, but a number of new refinements. Thus, "zounds" becomes oons,' "God's blood" becomes "adsblud," and the Shakespearian "'Slid," "adslidikins." Then we have "O Lord," "By the Lord Harry," "Gad," "Egad," "Gadsobs," "Gadszooks" or Odszooks" ("God's looks"), and the puerile "Gad's daggers, beets, blades, and scabbards." "By the Mass" becomes "By the Mess," or simply " Mess." In this, as in the various substitutions of Gad for God, we see the mincing pronunciation affected by the dandies and loungers of the period, who turned o into a and a into e. ... In Sheridan's "Trip to Scarborough" (first acted in 1777) we have Lord Foppington rapping out a number of new oaths. "Death and eternal tortures, sir," he cries to his tailor, "I say the coat is too wide here by a foot! As Gad shall jedge me, it hangs on my shoulders like a chairman's surtout !" Stap my vitals," however, is his favorite adjuration. Bob Acres' 'genteel style" of oaths is, of course, a mere burlesque. Its specialty is that it adapts itself to the subject in hand: “Ods whips and wheels, I've travelled like a comet!" "Odds blushes and blooms, she has been as healthy as the German Spa!" "Odds minims and crotchets, how she did chirrup at Mrs. Piano's concert!" 66 But we do not need the evidence of fiction and the drama to prove that until quite recent times hard swearing was a sign of good breeding. Lord Chancellor Thurlow swore from the wool-sack. When a certain bishop, claiming the right of presentation to an ancient benefice, sent his secretary to argue the point, Thurlow cut the latter short. "Give my compliments to his lordship," he said, "and tell him I will see him damned before he presents." "That," remonstrated the secretary, "is a very unpleasant message to deliver to a bishop." "You are right," said Thurlow; "it is. Tell him I'll see myself damned before he presents.' Almost as pointed was the rejoinder of King William's attorney-general to the American clergyman who had crossed the Atlantic to solicit alms for a pious foundation in Virginia. "Sir," urged 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!" 66 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. 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 abbe'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 ob. servation 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! Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown. 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., Se. 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. 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 awk. ward, 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 obey The 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 Mediter ranean 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. Byron, in a passage which everybody knows by heart, has said, addressing the sea, Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow. Lord 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: And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy Pollok, in his "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 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, 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 |