The rebellion against Charles the First and the success of the Puritans led to a remarkable development of religious feeling.  Men seemed for the moment to think more of the next world than of the present, seasoned their language with texts, and from Scripture adopted new names suitable to a new life.  Their usual tone of conversation is thus humorously described by Harrison Ainsworth.

Captain Stelfax pays Colonel Maunsel a domiciliary visit, and an old Royalist retainer tells the redoubtable Roundhead that he looks more like a roystering Cavalier than a Puritan, to which the latter replies—­

“Go to, knave, and liken me not to a profane follower of Jehoram.  Take heed that thou answerest me truthfully.  Thou art newly returned from the battle-field whereat the young man Charles Stuart was utterly routed, and where our general, like Pekah the son of Remaliah slew many thousands of men in one day, because they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers.  Didst thou bear arms in the service of Ahaz?”

One Increase Micklegift soon afterwards fell into the captain’s bad graces—­

“I begin to suspect it was by thy instrumentality that he hath escaped.”

“How could that be seeing I was with thee in the closet.”  Micklegift rejoined.

“It might easily be, since it was by thy devise that I was led into the snare.  Bitterly shalt thou rue it, if I find thee leagued with the Amalekites.”

All this affords a good idea of the phraseology of these men, some of whom indulged in such names as “Nehemiah, Lift-up-Hand” and “Better-Late-than-Never,” and it must be remembered, to their credit, that there never was a more orderly army than that of Cromwell.  In accordance with the sentiments then entertained all theatrical exhibitions were prohibited.  Such austerity and self-denial could not be of long continuance—­it was kept up by an effort, and led to an inevitable reaction, and so we find that the court of the “Merry Monarch” became notorious in history for its dissipation.  Humour proportionally changed from what it had been under Charles I., and we read that that the old Earl of Norwich, who had been esteemed the greatest wit, was now quite out of fashion.

Barbarous nations have little idea of delicacy of any kind; and civilisation finds it hard entirely to change nature, so that where-ever the ground is allowed to lie fallow, the old weeds appear in their noisesome rankness.  Hence from time to time we find indelicacy springing up, and made to serve the purposes of those who know that the evil plant is not radically extirpated.  One of the most offensive men in this respect was Peter Aretinus, an Italian adventurer, who became a great favourite with the Emperor Charles V. He is said to have died from falling back over his chair in a fit of laughter, on hearing some indelicate joke.  But modes of death have often been invented to accord with the lives of those who suffered them, just as dithyrambic Anacreon is said to have been choked by a grape stone.