“[M]any men
are as much galled with a calumny, a scurrile and bitter jest, a libel, a
pasquil, satire, apologue, epigram, stage-plays, or the like, as with any
misfortune whatsoever.”
Ours is a
tender age. Feelings are easily bruised if not bloodied by the merest breath. Sticks
and stones are nothing weighed against words, the most lethal projectiles. No
aggression is micro to a sensitive plant. Robert Burton, writing in The
Anatomy of Melancholy above, would have understood. Scurrile has
been usurped by scurrilous. Dr. Johnson defines the latter as “using
such language as only the license of a buffoon can warrant.” In Act I, Scene 3
of Troilus and Cressida, Ulysses says of Achilles: “with him Patroclus /
Upon a lazy bed the livelong day / Breaks scurril jests.” Pasquil has
been replaced by pasquin and pasquinade. The latter is defined by
the OED as “a lampoon posted in a public place; (later) any circulated
or published lampoon or libel.” Burton continues:
“Princes and
potentates, that are otherwise happy and have all at command, secure and free, quibus
potentia sceleris impunitatem fecit [who are able to commit crimes with
impunity], are grievously vexed with these pasquilling libels and satires; they
fear a railing Aretine more than an enemy in the field.”
Were
Jonathan Swift alive and writing in the twenty-first century, he would be forever
mired in litigation alleging libel and slander. Swift’s crime was 20-20 moral
vision, a congenital predisposition to truth telling, even about himself and
his tenderest feelings. Consider the
letter he wrote to his friend Charles Ford in 1708. Swift is tempted to
rhapsodize the joys of his Irish childhood, and then reconsiders:
I read no self-pity here, no regard for aggressions, micro or otherwise, perpetrated against him. It’s merely what happened.
When I was a college teacher, sitting through required meetings, what fun it was to share with a (rare) likeminded colleague this passage from the Anatomy:
ReplyDelete"What can we expect when we vie with one another every day in admitting to degrees any and every impecunious student drawn from the dregs of the people who applies for one? They need only to have learnt by heart one or two definitions and distinctions, and to have spent the usual number of years in chopping logic -- it matters not what progress they have made or of what character they are; they can be idiots, wasters, idlers, gamesters, boon companions, utterly worthless and abandoned, squanderers and profligates; let them only have spent so many years at the university in the capacity, real or supposed, of gownsmen, and they will find those who for the sake of profit or friendship will get them presented [at court], and, what is more, in many cases with splendid testimonials to their character and learning. ... Our annual university heads as a rule pray only for the greatest possible number of freshmen to squeeze money from, and do not care whether they are educated or not... Philosophasters innocent of the arts become Masters of Arts," etc.
DN