In spite of the society, the question of swearing and its prevalent grossness seems to have attracted the attention of the civil courts of law at this time. In a number of Applebee’s Journal for 1723, some account is given of a certain Abel Boyer, an infamous scribbler and notorious swearer of the day. It seems he had threatened some of his fellow journalists with the pains of libel because they had done him simple justice in referring to the comminations he was accustomed to use in speech. Before commencing his suit, Abel prudently sought the advice of counsel, contending that his trifling derelictions did not partake of the colour of blasphemy. The lawyers accordingly gave it against Mr. Boyer, advising that his “goddams” and kindred expletives came entirely within the prohibited pale. In March 1718, there is another instance of swearing being food for Westminster Hall, as appears from the Flying Post, the prominent Whig journal of the day. Mr. Richard Burridge, a scurrilous newsman attached to the British Gazetteer, had been tried at Hicks’s Hall for addiction to blasphemous expressions, too shocking, says the Post, to be named. Burridge was very properly convicted, although a strong presentation was made in his favour, that when sober a better conducted man did not exist. To account for this person’s unfortunate relapse, it was urged that he was “excessively drunk,” a consideration that so weighed with the tribunal, that they passed upon him what was admitted on all hands to be a most moderate sentence. Burridge was ordered to take up a position at the New Church in the Strand and to be from there publicly whipped to Charing Cross. Further, he was to pay a fine of twenty shillings and be imprisoned for a month. Thenceforward a paper war was waged between the two political divisions of journalism. The Tories professed to see the Whig journalists stigmatised by the disgrace of one of their number, and the great Daniel Defoe cast censure upon them and upon Burridge from Mist’s Journal, the Tory paper he conducted.
And so, pursued by judgments of court and branded with letters of infamy, it would seem to have been a very desperate time for these unfortunate swearers. The profession of the pen was likely enough to rankle under this load of aspersion, were it not that a more genial influence had arisen that was bent upon remedying rather than provoking offences. For while the leaders of opinion were playing their intensest game of political intrigue, while poets were occupied with the trade of admiration, and divines with the trade of subserviency, there arose in England a gentler and more captivating literature of reproval, that laid its generous laws upon men the most intolerant and the most prurient. We allude to that more benevolent code of morality inaugurated by Joseph Addison.
CHAPTER VIII.
“Lackwit. Now do I want some two or three good oaths to express my meaning withall. An they would but learn me to swear and take tobacco! ’tis all I desire.”—‘A fine Companion,’ by Shackerley Marmion, 1633.
This one voice of kindly censure was that of a man incapable of a literary mistake. Whatever his own personal blunders, it was impossible for Joseph Addison to err in a point of literary judgment. Although wedded to the society of men of taste and perception, it was no part of his purpose to remove himself from contact with the coarsest of human ware. The tolerance he exhibited in ordinary intercourse reflects itself in the labours of his pen. In his philanthropies, as in his severities or his rebukes, he assumes no tinge of sanctity, no moralist’s sad-coloured robe. He is familiar, and in a manner identified, with the very follies he is so generously decrying. The society into which he went was disposed to be exceedingly lenient to fashionable excesses. And thus it was that in the fulness of his wisdom, it pleased him to be of good accord with priest and prelate as with the very movers and seconders of iniquity.
And so, in the consideration of any social folly of his time and ours, we are in a moment impelled to ask—What does Mr. Spectator say to this; or gentle Master Tatler? Even in the present inquiry there can be no reasonable doubt of their competency to give us testimony. Addison may have heard as many and as furious oaths as any man of his time. His ways were beset by inveterate and uncontrollable swearers. His friend Steele had a tongue that was foolish enough, heaven knows; and when he was wont to meet with Swift in St. James’ Coffee House, may he not too often have been assailed with language needlessly expressive? What cronies he must have had! what lads he must have known! He had seen all the tearing fellows of the day—the three-bottle men at the October Club, the young blood of the shires who rode into the gap at Blenheim. He could have remembered the roughest livers of King Charles’ time, Sedley and Rochester, Bully Dawson and Fighting Fitzgerald. He was surrounded with bravado and devilry, with all the disbanded sins of the Flanders regiments. For these were the days of Ramilies and Malplaquet, when the nation was intoxicated with her meed of victory; when his Grace of Marlborough won the country’s battles, and his Lord of Peterborough scattered sovereigns from his chariot to show the people he was not the Duke of Marlborough. It was a time of great profusion and great excess, in curses as in everything else.
And so, Joseph Addison, though living in the flighty times you did, there can be no doubt of the quiet evenness of your ways, or how jovial were the companions who shook you by the fist. But how you drilled and moulded them, how you held and swayed them by the force of your bright intelligence, how shall we who never heard your voice be able to determine? Happily in the pages of the ‘Tatler’ and ‘Spectator’ there is stored up for us the best and rarest of that quiet wisdom. No matter whether the night were studious or riotous, there arrives the punctual morning sheet with its offering of sober satire and sprightly sense. He goes about his task of persuading and humanising as gaily as a man might set out to laugh at a comedy. He mounts his best ruffles and his finest tunic as he sits down to write his homily.