In every tale they tell, or false or true,
Well-known, or such as no man ever knew,
They fix attention, heedless of your pain,
With oaths like rivets forced into the brain;
And e’en when sober truth prevails throughout,
They swear it, till affirmance breeds a doubt.”
The imprecation of Corneille’s Dorante, Que le foudre à vos yeux m’écrase si je mens! only evokes from Clarice the contemptuous rebuff, Un menteur [which, and more than which, emphatically, Dorante is, for he is Le Menteur,] est toujours prodigue de serments. So again Racine’s Theseus: Toujours les scélérats ont recours au parjure,—when Hippolytus begins to call heaven, and earth, and universal nature to witness, etc. So, too, Chamont, in Otway’s tragedy: “When a man talks of love, with caution trust him; but if he swears, he’ll certainly deceive thee.” Indeed, as Owen Feltham has it, wherever there is too much profession, there is cause for suspicion. “Reality cares not to be tricked out with too taking an outside; and deceit, when she intends to cozen, studies disguise. Least of all should we be taken with swearing asseverations. Truth needs not the varnish of an oath to make her plainness credited.” Fielding’s Pettifogger, on a certain occasion, calling to mind that he had not been sworn, as he usually was, before he gave his evidence, “now bound what he had declared with so many oaths and imprecations, that the landlady’s ears were shocked, and she put a stop to his swearing, by assuring him of her belief,” inconsiderately enough, as the manner of the man might have proved. Scott’s Jorworth, when heaping asseveration on asseveration, is cut short by the honest Fleming he is striving to mislead: “Stop, good Jorworth; thou heapest thine oaths too thickly on each other, for me to value them to the right estimate; that which is so lightly pledged, is sometimes thought not worth redeeming.” So again Monkbarns tells the gaberlunzie, after hearing his story of the adept, “I am strongly disposed to believe that you have spoken the truth, the rather, that you have not made any of those obtestations of the superior powers, which I observe you and your comrades always make use of when you mean to deceive folks.” The author of “London Labour and the London Poor,” recounts the redundance of “Glory be to God! it’s the thruth I’m telling of you, sir,” etc., etc.; which he had to hear from Irish mendicity, or mendacity, or both. “The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting,” the Cicero of Jonson’s “Catiline” says.
Take up any ordinary history, and you are but too sure to come across examples enough and to spare, of people who did protest too much, and did not keep their word. Glance at Alison’s big book, and on one page you read, of Napper Tandy, for instance, “But the conduct of this leader was far from keeping pace with these vehement protestations; for no sooner did he hear of the reverse sustained by the French corps which had landed in Killala Bay, than he re-embarked on board the French brig Anacreon, and got safe across the channel.” On another we have Tippoo Saib striving to disarm the suspicions of the British Government by “professions of eternal gratitude and attachment,” and considerably overacting his part. On another we have Napoleon bidding Marmont “spare no protestations of assistance to Turkey;” and himself assuring the Turkish ambassador that, “his right hand was not more inseparable from his left, than the Sultan Selim should ever be to him;” in consequence of which protestations, Turkey threw herself into the breach against both Russia and England, only to find the imperial ultra-protester, within one little month from the protestations, arranging for the immediate partition, with the Czar, of the Turkish dominions. Look, again, at Benjamin Constant, launching his vehement philippic against Napoleon, in the Journal des Débats on the eve of the Emperor’s return from Elba, and declaring, “Never will I crawl, like a base deserter from power to power. Under Louis XVIII. we enjoy a representative government. Under Bonaparte we endured a government of Mamelukes. He is an Attila, a Gengis Khan!” And then we read how, a few days after this fulmination, Constant, the inconstant, became a councillor of state under this Attila, an active supporter of this Gengis Khan. Another ground of indictment against Napoleon is found by Alison in the eagerness of his protestations to Russia, that he had no way connived at the election of Bernadotte to the throne of Sweden, when next vacant. “The extreme anxiety which Napoleon evinced for some time afterwards to convince the court of St. Petersburg that he had taken no concern in this election, only renders it the more probable that he was in reality at the bottom of the transaction.” The asseverations commenced by the younger Pennyboy, in Jonson’s “Staple of News,” are declined and dismissed, by the elder, who knows their worth, with this summary and suggestive caution:
“No vows, no promises; too much protestation
Makes that suspected oft, we would persuade.”