Not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler."
In which passage, Shakspeare, who never uses words in vain, nor with a grain less than their full weight, opposes the divineness of men, or their walking with God, to the scurviness of men, or their wallowing with swine; and again, he opposes the holiness of men,—in the sense of "Holy—harmless, undefiled," and more than that, helpful or healthful in action—to the harmful and filthy action of temporary meddlers, such as the hanging of seventeen priests before breakfast, and our profitable military successes, in such a prolonged piece of 'temporary meddling' as the Crimean war.
134. But, secondly, if you look down Johnson's column, you will find his last quotation is not in the higher or figurative, but the lower and literal sense, from Swift, to the effect that "it would be convenient to prevent the excess of drink, with that scurvy custom of taking tobacco." And you will also find, if you ever have the sense or courage to look the facts of modern history in the face, that those two itches, for the pot and the pipe, have been the roots of every other demoralization of the filthiest and literally 'scurviest' sort among all classes;—the dirty pack of cards; the church pavement running with human saliva,—(I have seen the spittings in ponds half an inch deep, in the choir of Rouen cathedral); and the entirely infernal atmosphere of the common cafés and gambling-houses of European festivity, infecting every condition of what they call 'æsthesis,' left in the bodies of men, until they cannot be happy with the pines and pansies of the Alps, until they have mixed tobacco smoke with the scent of them; and the whole concluding in the endurance—or even enjoyment—of the most squalid conditions of filth in our capital cities, that have ever been yet recorded, among the disgraces of mankind.
135. But, thirdly, Johnson's central quotation is again from 'Measure for Measure':—
"He spoke scurvy and provoking terms against your honor."
The debates in the English House of Commons, for the last half-century, having consisted virtually of nothing else!
I next take the word 'lout,' of which Johnson gives two derivations for our choice: it is either the past participle of 'to lower, or make low;' a lowed person, (as our House of Lords under the direction of railway companies and public-house keepers); or else—and more strictly I believe in etymology—a form of the German 'leute,' 'common people.' In either case, its proper classical English sense is given by Johnson as "a mean, awkward fellow; a bumpkin, a clown."
Now I surely cannot refer to any general representation of British society more acceptable to, and acknowledged by, that society, than the finished and admirably composed drawings of Du Maurier in Punch which have become every week more and more consistent, keen, and comprehensive, during the issues of the last two years.
I take three of them, as quite trustworthy pictures, and the best our present arts of delineation could produce, of the three Etats, or representative orders, of the British nation of our day.
Of the Working class, take the type given in Lady Clara Robinson's garden tea party, p. 174, vol. 79.