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Sers has just cunning enough to be taken for a man of sense when with fools; when with men of sense, he reassumes the place allotted him by Nature. Without education, as well as without parts, he for a long time confounded brutal scurrility with oratory, and thought himself eloquent when he was only insolent or impertinent.
It is the veriest bound slave that was ever hampered by the chains of party prejudice, and the only attempt at freedom it ever makes in its lower grades is an occasional outbreak into scurrility! And yet think what a majestic power for good the true, REAL Liberty of the Press might wield over the destinies of nations!
The book consists of five hundred pages, principally low scurrility and illy-told private anecdotes; with about thirty pages of high eulogium on A. B. There may, for aught I know, have been twenty other publications criminating the person by whom the work has been suppressed.
There are no great names in his vocabulary only nicknames: George III. is 'Old Nobs, the Regent 'Prinney, Wellington 'the Beau, Lord John Russell 'Pie and Thimble, Brougham, with whom he was on friendly terms, is sometimes 'Bruffam, sometimes 'Beelzebub, and sometimes 'Old Wickedshifts'; and Lord Durham, who once remarked that one could 'jog along on £40,000 a year, is 'King Jog. The latter was one of the great Whig potentates, and it was characteristic of Creevey that his scurrility should have been poured out with a special gusto over his own leaders.
Herein only are the inferior sort somewhat to be blamed, that, being thus assembled, their talk is now and then such as savoureth of scurrility and ribaldry, a thing naturally incident to carters and clowns, who think themselves not to be merry and welcome if their foolish veins in this behalf be never so little restrained.
So falleth it out, that having indeed no right comedy, in that comical part of our tragedy, we have nothing but scurrility, unworthy of any chaste ears: or some extreme show of doltishness, indeed fit to lift up a loud laughter, and nothing else: where the whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a well-raised admiration.
But Cicero oftentimes fell from pleasant taunts, unto plain scurrility: and turning all his pleadings of matters of importance, to sport and laughter, having a grace in it, many times he did forget the comeliness that became a man of his calling.
Curll, we are told, possessed himself of a command over all authors whatever; he caused them to write what he pleased; they could not call their very names their own. Curll was the deadly enemy of Pope and his friends, and his unlimited scurrility drew from the poet of Twickenham a retaliation every whit as coarse and as biting as anything the bookseller's warped mind ever conceived.
There is so much scurrility and vituperation in their productions." "That's for your benefit, Frere," said Vickers, with a smile. "You remember what was said about your presence at the race meetings?" "Of course," said Frere. "Artful scoundrel! Go on, Mr. Meekin, pray."
And this he said as if both Colonel Chelmsford and my mother were at his elbow, and for that manner of speaking I have ever had contempt, preferring downright scurrility, and Captain Cavendish replied with his quick agility of wrath, as precipitate toward judgment as a sailor to the masthead in a storm: "And what if she be? The more shame to them that they have not enough wit to see what they do!
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