Anyway, last night I was listening to my ipod and I was listening to Toby Keith sing "Love Me If You Can." (Apropos of nothing, but at this very moment I am listening to my beloved Bon Jovi sing "This Ain't a Love Song").  So TK is singing, and for some reason I tune in to the lyrics. I have heard the song many times before, but suddenly I start to hear what he is singing. The line that caught my interest was, "I'm a man of my convictions. Call me wrong, call me right. But I bring my better angels to every fight." I googled the lyrics just to make sure I was hearing them right--and I was.

What was so interesting to me was that a couple of days earlier I was watching the West Wing episode, "The Crackpots and These Women" and there is an interesting piece of dialog that goes like this.

Bartlet: "The other night, when we were playing basketball, did you mean what you said? That my demons were shouting down the better angels in my brain?"

Toby: "Yes, sir, I did."

Bartlet: "You think that's what's stopping me from greatness?"

Toby: "Yes."

Bartlet: "I suppose you're right."

Toby: "Tell you what though, sir. In a battle between a President's demons and his better angels, for the first time in a long while, I think we may just have ourselves a fair fight."

Bartlet: "Thank you, Toby. Now, go away."

If you haven't seen it, Bartlet is the President of the USA, while Toby is his communications director and chief speechwriter. I've always liked the exchange for a lot of reasons, but one is that it seems to sum up the fears we all share about politics. That the demons are winning the battle and the better angels are being shouted down.

Okay, so we have this quote and we have this song (both of which feature a man named Toby...) and I started to think it is a bit strange. I wouldn't exactly say that "better angels" is a common phrase. (See synchronicity). Obviously, I had to look it up.

When I first googled the phrase, the very first hit was, strangely, the first inaugural address by President Abraham Lincoln, dated March 4, 1861. The speech is primarily about the possible secession from the union, by the southern states. The address covers slavery, states rights, constitutional law, civil war, and ends on the note of unity. The last paragraph is this:

I am loathe to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

That was enough to make me think that perhaps the writer of the West Wing perhaps borrowed from speeches of president's past. But, it didn't seem to me that it was all that likely that Lincoln invented the phrase, so I kept digging.

Since this post is already somewhat more locquacious than intended, I will spare you the travails of my search and sum it up by saying this. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations gives credit for the oldest know use of the phrase to one, William Shakespeare from his Sonnets, published in 1609. However, the particular sonnet that we are working with is 144, which was originally published in 1599. It goes like this:

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend
Suspect I may, but not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell:
Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

So, there you have it. A virtual dissertation on the usage of the phrase better angels. Lincoln borrowed from Shakespeare, The West Wing borrowed from Lincoln, and Toby Keith, well who knows where his songwriters borrowed from? And my better angels are singing down my demons, keeping me from ending this on a sassy note. I'll let 'em win...this time.