46 



Degraded Words. 



impossible for rational man to speak of his less highly endowed 

 fellow creatures without some tinge of scorn gradually attaching 

 itself to the name by which he calls them. The beasts " of the 

 Apocalypse are plainly only living beings dilferent from men ; and 

 in Wiclif's version of First Corinthians, five hundred years ago, we 

 find : " It is sown a beastly body ; it shall rise a spiritual body." 



The term knave^ like the German knabe^ meant at first only a boy, 

 well or ill behaved. In Wiclif's Apocalj^pse, the woman clothed 

 with the sun is represented as giving birth to "a knave child; " and 

 when Shakespeare wrote " good knave " (in the Twelfth Night), 

 and " gentle knave" (in Julius Caisar), there was nothing incon- 

 gruous in the expressions. Next it indicated a servant; there is 

 said to be an early version of the New Testament in which the 

 Apostle Paul is styled " the knave of Jesus Christ; " and it is 

 doubtless in the sense of a serving man or attendant to the king and 

 queen that the name was given to the card at whist. Indeed the 

 knave is called " le valet " in French to this day — valet, by the way, 

 being only the modern form of the old Gallic variety our English 

 varlet. The words caitiff, knave and varlet came, however to de- 

 signate not only a servant but a cowardly or roguish servant, and in 

 process of time the original signification has been quite lost sight of, 

 nothing remaining of the poor despised dependents but the evil odor 

 of their supposed bad morals. 



A blackguard, moreover, was merely a scullion — that is, the 



black guard" was the company of such servitors, who accompanied 

 persons of quality on their journeys, to take care of the pots and 

 kettles; and the ancient accej^tation of the term involved no neces- 

 sary conception of rufiianly manners. 



A menial was one of the household or mesnee; minion was only a 

 favorite, the French mignon. A brat was simple a child, however 

 lovely; and an imp was a young person, a minor, particularly, it 

 it would seem, a young heir. To im}^ is to engraft, and the imps of 

 a family were what we now, adopting precisely the same figure, call 

 the scions. Tusser writes, in "Good Husbandry," 1557: 

 " Take heed liow tliou layest the bane for the rats, 

 For poisoning thy servant, thyself, and thy brats." 



It is stated that one of the earls of Warwick, who died in boyhood, 

 is commemorated in a moituary inscription in the chancel of the 

 parish church as "the noble imp;" and Bacon, in his "Pathway 

 unto Prayer," exhorts his readers to " pray for the preservation of 

 the king's most excellent majesty, and for the prosperous success 



