“I own it”, replied Dr. Slop.
“They are like sparrow-shot”, quoth my Uncle Toby (suspending his whistling), “fired against a bastion.”
“They serve”, continued my father, “to stir the humours but carry off none of their acrimony; for my own part, I seldom swear or curse at all—I hold it bad; but if I fall into it by surprise I generally retain so much presence of mind (“Right”, quoth my Uncle Toby) as to make it answer my purpose, that is, I swear on till I find myself easy. A wise and just man, however, would always endeavor to proportion the vent given to these humours, not only to the degree of them stirring within himself, but to the size and ill-intent of the offence upon which they are to fall.”
“Injuries come only from the heart”, quoth my Uncle Toby.
But after this, Tristram Shandy, who was an Elizabethan born too late, treats of contemporary swearing and protests against the connoisseurs of swearing that they have pushed the formal critical control of swearing too far. He speaks of a gentleman, “who sat down and composed, that is, at his leisure, fit forms of swearing suitable to all cases from the lowest to the highest provocation which could happen to him; which forms being well considered by him and such moreover as he could stand to, he kept them ever by him on the chimney-piece within his reach, ready for use.” Tristram Shandy finds this practice far too academic. He asks no more than a single stroke of native genius and a single spark of Apollo’s fire with it, and Mercury may then be sent to take the rules and compasses of correctness to the Devil. He says furthermore that the oaths and imprecations which have been lately “puffed upon the world as originals”, are all included by the Roman Church in its form of excommunication: that Bishop Ernulphus who formulated the exhaustive commination which he quotes (and which later the Cardinal used with such success on the Jackdaw of Rheims) has indeed brought categorical and encyclopaediac swearing to a point beyond which there can be no competition. He asks what is our modern “God damn him!” beside Ernulphus’
May the Father who created man curse him!
May the Son who suffered for us curse him!
May the Holy Ghost who was given to us in baptism curse him!