ON THE
LESSONS  IN  PROVERBS.








ON THE
LESSONS IN PRO-VEI BS
BEING TIiE SUBSTANCE OF
LECTURES DELIVERED TO YOUNG MEN'S SOCIETIES
AT PORTSMOUTH AND ELSEWHERE
BY
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, B.D.
AUTHOR OF " TIIE STUDY OF WORDS,"  SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT," ETC.
VICAR OF ITCHENSTOKE. HANTS; EXAMINING CIIAPLAIN TO THE LORD BISHOP
OF OXFORD; AND PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON.
FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION-REVISED AND ENLARGED
REDFIELD
110 AND 112 NASSAU  STREET, NEW  YORK.
Fourth Edition.]              1855.








PREFACE.
IT may be as well to state that the lectures which
are here published were never delivered as a complete course, but only one here and two there, as
matter gradually grew under my hands; yet so that
very much the greater part of what is contained in
this volume has been at one time or another actually
delivered.  Although I have always taken a lively
interest in national proverbs, I had no intention at
the first of making a book about them; but only selected the subject as one which I thought-though
I was not confident of this- might afford me sufficient material for a single lecture, which I had undertaken some time ago to deliver. I confess that
I was at that time almost entirely ignorant of the
imunmse number and variety of books bearing on the
subject.  Many of these I still know only by name.
With some of the best, however, I have made myself




6                   PREFACE.
acquainted; and by their aid, with the addition of
such further material as I could myself furnish, these
lectures have assumed their present shape: and I
publish them because none of the works on proverbs
which I know are exactly that book for all readers
which I could have wished to see. Either they include matter which can not be fitly placed before all
or they address themselves to the scholar alone,
or if not so, are at any rate inaccessible to the mere
English reader-or they contain bare lists of proverbs, with no endeavor to compare, illustrate, and
explain them-or if they do seek to explain, yet
they do it without attempting to sound the depths or
measure the real significance of that which they undertake to unfold. From these or other causes it has
come to pass that with a multitude of books, many of
them admirable, on a subject so popular, there is no
single one which is frequent in the hands of men.
I will not deny that, with all the slightness and shortcomings of my own, I have still hoped to supply, at
least for the present, this deficiency.
ITCHENSTOKE, HANTS (ENGLAND).




CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
THE FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB...............PAGE  9
LECTURE II.
THE GENERATION OF PROVERBS............................. 34
LECTURE III.
THE PROVERBS OF DIFFERENT NATIONS COMPARED.............. 63
LECTURE IV.
THE POETRY, WIT, AND WISDOM OF PROVERBS................ 
LECTURE V.
THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS................103
LECTURE VI.
TIlE TIEOLOGY OF PROVERBS...............................128
A  iENDnIX.1........................................ 155








ON
THE LESSONS IN PROVERBS.
LECTURE I.
THE FORM1 AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB.
IT may very easily have happened that from
some of us proverbs have never attracted the notice wlich I am persuaded they deserve; and froni
this, it may follow that, when -invited to bestow
even a brief attention on them, we are in some
doubt whether they will repay our pains. We
think of them but as sayings on the lips of the
multitude; not a few of them  have been familiar
to us as far back as we can remember; often employed by ourselves, or in our hearing, on slight
and trivial occasions: and thus, from  these and
other causes, it may very well be, that, however
sometimes one may have taken olur fancy, we yet
have remained blind in tlhe main to the wit, wisdom,
and illagination, of which they are full; and very
1



10    FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB.
little conscious of the amusement, instruction, insight, which they are capable of yielding. Unless
too we have $roted a certain attention to the subject, we may not be at all aware how little those
more familiar ones, which are frequent on the lips
of men, exhaust the treasure of our native proverbs;
how many and what excellent ones remain behind,
having now for the most part fallen out of sight;
or what riches in like kind other nations possess.
We may little guess how many aspects of interest
there are in which our own by themselves, and
again our own compared with those of other people, may be regarded.
And yet there is much to induce us to reconsider
our judgment, should we be thus tempted to slight
them, and to count them not merely trite, but trivial and unworthy of a serious attention. The fact
that they please the people, and have pleased them
for ages-that they possess so vigorous a principle
of life, as to have maintained their ground, ever
new and ever young, through all the centuries of a
nation's existence-nay, that many of them have
pleased not one nation only, but many, so that they
have made themselves a home in the most different lands-and further, that they have, not a few
of them, come down to us from remotest antiquity,
borne safely upon the waters of that great stream
of time, which has swallowed so much beneath its
waves-all this, I think, may well make us pause,




POPULAR USE OF PROVERBS.               11
should we be tempted to turn away from them with.
anything of indifference or disdain.
And then further, there is this to be considered,
that some of the greatest poets, the profoundest
philosophers, the most learned scholars, the most
genial writers in every kind, have delighted in
them, have made large and frequent use of them,
have bestowed infinite labor on the gathering and
elucidating of them. In a fastidious age, indeed,
and one of false refinement, they may go nearly or
quite out of use among the so-called upper classes.
"No gentleman," says Lord Chesterfield, or "no
man of fashion," as I think is his exact phrase,
"ever uses a proverb."*  And with how  fine a
touch of nature Shakespeare makes Coriolanus, the
man who, with all his greatness, is entirely devoid
of all sympathy for the people, to utter his scorn
of them in scorn of their proverbs, and of their frequent employment of these:"Hang'em!
They said they were an hungry, sighed forth proverbs;That, hunger broke stone walls; that, dogs must eat;
That, meat was madefor mouths; that, the gods sent not
Corn for the rich men only;-with these shreds
They vented their complainings."
Coriolanus, Act I. Sc. 1.
But that they have been always dear to the true
intellectual aristocracy of a nation, there is abun* A similar contempt of them speaks out in the antithesis of the
French Jesuit, Bonhlours: "Les proverbes sont les sentences du peup)e, et les sentences sont les proverbs des honnetes gens."




12     FORM AN D DEI'NITION OF A PROVERB.
dant evidence to prove. Take but these three names
in evidence, which though few, are in themselves
a host. Aristotle made a collection of proverbs;
nor did he count that he was herein doing aught
unworthy of his great reputation, however some of
liis adversaries may afterward have made of the
fact that he did so a charge against him.  He is
said to have been the first collector of them, though
many afterward followed in the same path.  Shakespeare loves them so well, that besides often citing
them, and scattering innumerable covert allusions,
rapid side glances at them which we are in danger
of missing unless at home in the proverbs of England, several of his plays, as Measure foir Mieasure,
All's well that enlds well, have popular proverbs
for their titles. And Cervantes, a name only inferior to Shakespeare, has made very plain the
affection with which he regarded them. Every
reader of Don Quixote, will remember his squire,
who sometimes can not open his mouth but there
drop from it almost as many proverbs as words.  I
might name others who have held the proverb in
lhonor-men who though they may not attain to
these first three, are yet deservedly accounted great;.s Plautus, the most genial of Latin poets, Rabelais
and Montaigne the two most original of French
authors; and how often Fuller, whlom  Coleridge
has styled the wittiest of writers, justifies this praise
in his witty employment of some old proverb; and




PROVERBS IN SCRIPTURE.           13
no reader can thoroughly understand and enjoy
Haudibras, none but will miss a multitude of its
keenest allusions, who is not thoroughly familiar
with the proverbial literature of England.
Nor is this all; we may with reverence adduce
quite another name than any of these, the Lord
himself, as condescending to employ such proverbs
as lie found current among his people.  Thus, on
the occasion of his first open appearance in the
synagogue of Nazareth, he refers to the proverb,
Physician heal t/hyself (Luke iv. 23), as one which
his hearers will perhaps bring forward against himself; and again personally to another, A p2o/phet
is not without honor but in his own country, as attested ini his own history; and at the well of Sychar
he declares, " Herein is that saying," or that proverb, " true, One soweth, and another reapeth" (John
iv. 37). But he is much more than a quoter of
other men's proverbs; he is a maker of his own. As
all forms of human composition find their archetypes and their highest realization in Scripture, as
there is no tragedy like Job, no pastoral like Ruth,
no lyric melodies like the Psalms, so we should
affirm no proverbs like those of Solomon, were it
not that " a greater than Solomon" has drawn out
of the rich treasure house of the Eternal Wisdom a
series of proverbs more costly still. For indeed
how much of our Lord's teaching, especially as recorded in the first three Evangelists, is thrown into




14    FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB.
this form; and how many of his words have in this
shape passed over as " faithful sayings" upon the
lips of men; and so doing have fulfilled a necessary condition of the proverb, whereof we shall
have presently to speak.
But not urging this testimony any further-a
testimony too august to be lightly used, or employed merely to swell the testimonies of men-least
of all, men of such "uncircumcised lips" as, with
all their genius, were more than one of these whom
I have named-and appealing only to the latter, I
shall be justified, I feel, in affirming that whether
we listen to those single voices which make a
silence for themselves, and are heard through the
centuries and their ages, or to that great universal
voice of humanity, which is wiser even than these,
for it is these, with all else which is worthy to be
heard added to them, there is here a subject, which
those whose judgments should go very far with us
have not accounted unworthy of their serious regard.
And I am sure if we bestow on them ourselves
even a moderate share of attention, we shall be
ready to set our own seal to the judgment of wiser
men that have preceded us here. For, indeed, what
a body of popular good sense and good feeling,,s
we shall then perceive, is contained in the better,
which is also the more numerous portion of them;
what a sense of natural equity, what a spirit of kindness breathes out from many of them; what prudent




PRACTICAL CSE OF PROVERBS.       15
rules for the management of life, what shrewd wisdomn, which though not of this world, is most truly
for it, what frugality, what patience, what perseverance, what manly independence, are continually
inculcated by them. What a fine knowledge of the
human heart do many of them display; what useful, and not always obvious, hints do they offer on
most important points, as on the choice of companions, the bringing up of children, the bearing
of prosperity and adversity, the restraint of all
immoderate expectations.  And they take a yet
higher range than this; they have their ethics,
their theology, their views of man in his highest
relations of all, as a man with his fellow-man, and
man with his Malker. Be these always correct or
not, and I should be very far from affirming that
they always are so, the student of humanity, he
who because he is a man counts nothing human to
be alien to him, can never without wilfully foregoing an important document, and one which would
have helped him often in his studies, altogether
neglect or pass them by.
But what, it may be asked before we proceed
further, is a proverb? Nothing is harder than a
definition. While on the one hand there is for the
most part no easier task than to detect a fault or
flaw in the definition of those who have gone before
us, nothing on the other is more difficult than to




16      FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERIB.
propose one of our own, which shall not also present
a vulnerable side.  Some one has said that these
three things go to the constituting of a proverb,
shortness, sense, and salt.  In brief, pointed sayings
of this kind, the second of the qualities enumerated
here, namely, sense, is sometimes sacrificed to alliteration.  I would not affirln that it is so here: for
the words are not ill-spoken, though they are very
far from satisfying the rigorous requirements of a
definition, as will be seen when we consider what
the writer intended by his three esses, which it is
not hard  to understand.  The proverb, he would
say, must have shortness; it must be succinct, utterable in a breath. It must have sense, not being
that is, the mere small talk of conversation, slight
and trivial, else it would perish as soon as born, no
one taking the trouble to keep it alive. It must
have salt, that is, besides its good sense, it must in
its manner and  outward form being pointed and
pungent, having a sting in it, a barb which shall
not suffer it to drop lightly from  the memory.*
Yet, regarded as a definition, this of the triple s
* Compare with this Martial's so happy epigram upon epigrams,
in which everything runs exactly parallel to that which has been
said above:"Omne epigramma sit instar apis; sit aculeus illi,
Sint sua nella, sit et corporis exigui;"
which may be indifferently rendered thus:Three things must epigrams, like bees, have allA sting, and honey, and a body small.




BREVITY OF PROVERBS.                    17
fails, as I have said; it indeed errs in both defect
and excess.
Thus, in demanding shortness, it errs in excess.
It is, indeed, quite certain that a good proverb will
be short-as short, that is, as is compatible with the
full and forcible conveying of that which it intends.
Brevity, "the soul of wit," will be eminently the
soul of a proverb's wit.  Oftentimes it will consist
of two, three, or four, and these sometimes monosyllabic words.  Thus: Extremes meet;~-Right
wrongs no man;-Forewarned, forearmed; -with
a thousand more.* But still, shortness is only a relative term, and it would, perhaps, be more accurate
to say that a proverb must be concise-cut down,
that is, to the fewest possible words; condensed,
quintessential wisdom.t  But that, if only it fulfil
this condition of being as short as possible, it need
not be absolutely very short, there are sufficient
examples to prove.  Thus, Freytag  has admitted
the following, which indeed hovers on the confines
of the fable, into his great collection of Arabic
* The very shortest proverb which I know in the world is this
Oerman: "Voll, toll;" which sets out very well the connection between fullness and folly, pride and abundance of bread. In that
seeking of extreme brevity noted above, they sometimes become
exceedingly elliptical (although this is the case more with the ancient than with the modern), so much so as to omit even the
vital element of the sentence, the verb. Thus: Xpfftar' Avnp: "Sus
Miilervam;" "Fures clamorem;" "Meretrix pudicam;" "Amantes
amentes."
f This is what Aristotle means when he ascribes c(ivropia-which
in another place he opposes to the',oso yescoe —to it.




18      FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB.
proverbs: " They said to the camel-bird [i.e., the
ostrich],'Carry;' it answered,'eI an not, for I
am  a bird.'  They said'Fly;' it answered,'1
can not, for I am  a camel.'"  This could not be
shorter, yet, as compared with the greater number
of proverbs, is not short.*  Even so the sense and
salt, which are ascribed to the proverb as other of
its necessary conditions, can hardly be said to be
such; seeing that flat, saltless proverbs, though
comparatively rare, they certainly are; while yet,
be it remembered, we are not considering now what
are the ornaments of a good proverb, but the essential marks of all.
And then, moreover, it errs in defect; it has
plainly omitted one quality of the proverb, and that
the most essential of all —I mean popularity; acceptance and adoption on the part of the people.
Without this popularity, without these suffrages and
this consent of the many, no saying, however brief,
however wise, however seasoned with salt, however
worthy on all these accounts to have become a proverb, however fulfilling all other its conditions, can
yet be esteemed as such.  This popularity, omitted
* Let serve for further proof this eminently witty old German
proverb, which, despite its apparent length, has not forfeited its
character as such. I shall prefer to leave it in the original: "Man
spricht, an viererlei Leuten ist Mangel auf Erden: an Pfaffen, sonst
diirfte einer nit 6 bis 7 Pfruenden; an Adelichen, sonst wollte nit
jeder Bauer ein Junker sein; an Huren, sonst wiirden die Handwerk Eheweiber und Nunnen nit treiben; an Juden, sonst wiirden
Christen nit wuchern."




APHORISMS NOT PROVERBS.                   19
in that enumeration of the essential notes of the
proverb, is yet the only one whose presence is absolutely necessary, whose absence is fatal to the
claims of any saying to be regarded as such.
Those, however, who have occupied themselves
with the making of collections of proverbs have
sometimes failed to realize this to themselves with
sufficient clearness, or, at any rate, have not kept
it always before them; and thus it has come to
pass, that many collections include whatever brief
sayings their gatherers have anywhere met with,
which to them have appeared keenly, or wisely, or
wittily spoken;* while yet a multitude of these
have never received their adoption into the great
family of proverbs, or their rights of citizenship
therein: inasmuch  as they have never passed into
general recognition and currency, have no claim to
this title, however just a claim they may have on
other grounds to our admiration and honor. For
instance, this word of Goethe's, " A  man need not
be an architect to live in a house," seems to me
* When Erasmus, after discussing and rejecting the definitions of
those who had gone before him, himself defines the proverb thus,
"Celebre dictum, scita qua piam novitate, insigne," it appears to me
that he has not escaped the fault which he has blamed in othersthat, namely, of confounding the accidental adjuncts of a good proverb, with the necessary conditions of every proverb. In rigor, the
whole second clause of the definition should be dismissed, and Celebre dictum alone remain. Better Eifelein (Sprichworter des Deutschen Volkes, Fi'iburg, 1840, p. x.): "Das sprichwort ist ein mit iffentlichen Gepaage ausgemiinzter Saz, der seinen Curs und anerkannten
Werth under dem Volke hat."




20     FOREM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB.
to have every essential of a proverb, saving only
that it has not passed over upon the lips of men.
It is a saying of manifold application; a universal
law is knit up in a particular example: I mean
that gracious law in the distribution of blessing,
which does not limit our use and enjoyment of
things by our understanding of them, but continually makes the enjoyment much wider than the
knowledge; so that it is not required that one be
a botanist to have pleasure in a rose, nor a critic
to delight in Paradise Lost, nor a theologian to
taste all the blessings of Christian faith, nor, as he
expresses it, an architect to live in a house. And
here is an inimitable saying of Schiller's: "I eaven
and earth fight in vain against a dunce;" yet it is
not a proverb, because his alone; although abundantly worthy to have become such,* moving as it
does in the same line with, though far superior to,
the Chinese proverb, which itself also is good:
One has never so much need of his wit, as when
he has to do with afool.
Or, to take another example still more to the
point.  James Howell, a prolific English writer
of the seventeenth century, one certainly meriting
better than that almost entire oblivion into which
his writings have fallen, occupied himself much
with proverbs, and, besides collecting those of oth* It suggests, however, the admirable Spanish proverb, spoken,
no'doubt, out of the same conviction: "Dios me dR contienda, con
quen me entienda."




HOWELL S COLLECTION.             21
ers, has, himself set down " five hundred new sayings, which, in tract of time may serve for proverbs
to posterity." As was to be expected, they have
not so done; for it is not after this artificial method
that such are born; yet many of these proverbs in
expectation are expressed with sense and felicity;
for example: " Pride is a flower that grows in the
devil's garden;" as again, the selfishness which
characterizes too many of them is not ill reproduced
in the following: "Burn not thy fingers to snuff
another man's candle;" and there is, at any rate,
good theology in the following: "Faith is a great
lady, and good works are her attendants."  Yet,
for all this, it would be inaccurate to quote these as
proverbs (and their author himself, as we have
seen, did not do more than set them  out as proverbs upon trial), inasmuch as they have remained
the private property of him who first devised them,
never having passed into general circulation; which
until men's sayings have done, maxims, sentences,
apothegms, aphorisms, they may be, and these of
excellent temper and proof; but proverbs, as yet,
they are not.
It is because of this, the popularity inherent in
a genuine proverb, that from  such a one, in a
certain sense, there is no appeal.  You will not
suppose me to intend that there is no appeal from
its wisdom, truth, or justice; from  any word of
man's there may be such, but no appeal front it




22     FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PIROVERB.
as most truly representing a popular conviction.
Aristotle, who in his ethical and political writings
often finds very much more, always finds this in it.
It may not be, it very often will not be, a universal conviction which it expresses, but ever one popular and widespread.  So far indeed from  a universal, very often, over against the one proverb
there will be another, its direct antagonist; and
the one shall belong to the kingdom of light, the
other to the kingdom  of darkness.  " Commons
fame is seldom  to blame:" here is the baser proverb, for as many as drink in with greedy ears all
reports to the injury of their neighbors, being determined from the first that they shall be true.
But it is not left without its compensation: "' They
say so' is half a liar:" here is the better word with
which they may arm  themselves, who count it a
primal duty to close their ears against all such unauthenticated rumors to the discredit of their brethren..  " The noblest vengeance is to forgive:" here
is the godlike proverb on the manner in which
wrongs should be recompensed: " He who can not
revenge himself is weak, he who will not is vile:"'
here is the devilish. There are some lines of an
old English poet in praise of proverbs:"The people's voice the voice of God we call;
And what are proverbs but the people's voice 
Coined first, and current made by public choiceThen sure they nust have weight and truth withal."
* "Chi non puo fare sua vendetta e debile, chi non vuole e vile."




POPULARITY ESSENTIAL.                23
It will follow, from what has just been said, that
these, true in the main, will yet require to be taken
with certain qualifications and exceptions.*
Herein, in great part, the force of a proverb
lies, namely that it has already received the stamp
of popular allowance.  A man might produce (for
what another has done he might do again) something as witty, as forcible, as imuch to the point,
of his own; which should be hammered at the
instant on his own anvil.  Yet still it is not "the
wisdom of many;" it has not stood the test of experience; it wants that which the other already
has, but which it only after a long period can acquire-the consenting voice of many, and at different times, to its wisdom and truth. A man employing a long-recognised proverb is not speaking
of his own, but uttering a faith and conviction very
far wider than that of himself or of any single maln;
and it is because he is so doing that they, in Lord
Bacon's words, "serve not only for ornament and
delight, but also for active and civil use; as being
the edge-tools of speech, which cut and penetrate
the knots of business and affairs."  The proverb has,
in fact, the same advantage over the word now pro* Quintilian's words (Inst. 5, 11, 41), which are to the same effect,
must be taken with the same exceptions: "Neque enim durassent
hbec in eternumn, nisi vera omnibus viderentur;" and also Don
Quixote's: "Pareceme me, Sancho, que no ay refirn que no sea
verdadero, porque todas son sentencias sacadas de la misma experiencia, madre de las ciencias todas."




24:    FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB.
duced for the first time, which, for present currency,
and value, has the recognised coin of the realm
over the rude unstamped ore newly washed from
the stream, or dug up fiom  the mine. This last
may possess an equal amount of fineness; but the
other lhas been stamped long ago as already passed
often fiomn man to man, and found free acceptance
with all: it inspires, therefore, a confidence which
the ruder metal can not at present challenge.  And
the same satisfaction which the educated man finds
in referring the particular matter before him to the
universal law which rules it, a plainer man finds in
the appeal to a proverb.  He is doing the same
thing; taking refuge, that is, as each man so gladly
does, fiom his mere self and single fallible judgment, in a larger experience and in a wider conviction.
And in all this which has been urged lies, as it
seems to me, the explanation of a sentence of an
ancient grammarian, which at first sight appeals to
contain a bald absurdity, namely, that a proverb is
" a saying without an author."  For, however without a known author it nmay, anad in the majority of
cases it must be, still, as we no more believe in the
spontaneous generation of proverbs than of anything else, an author every one of them must have
* Thus, in a proverb about proverbs, the Italians say, with a true
insight into this its prerogative: "I1 proverbio s'invecchia, e chi
vuol far bene, vi si specchia."




POPULARITY ESSENTIAL.               25
had.  It might, however, and it often will have
been, that in its utterance the author did notprecipitate the floating convictions of the society round
him; he did but clothe in happier form what others
had already felt, or even already uttered; for often
a proverb has been in this aspect, " the wit of one
and the wisdom of many."  And further, its constitutive element, as we must all now perceive, is not
the utterance on the part of the one, but the acceptance on the part of the many.  It is their sanction
which first makes it to be such; so that every one
who took or gave it during the period when it was
struggling into recognition may claim to have had
a share in its production; and in this sense, without any single author it may have been. From the
very first the people will have vindicated it for
their own. And thus, though they do not always
analyze the compliment paid to them in the use of
their proverbs, they always feel it; they feel that a
writer or speaker using these is putting himself on
their ground, is entering on their religion, and they
welcome him the more cordially for this.*
Let us now consider if some other have not sometimes been proposed as essential notes of tle prov* The name which the proverb bears in Spanish points to this
fact, that popularity is a necessary condition of it. This name is
not proverbio, for that in Spanish signifies an apothegm, an aphorism, a maxim; but refran, which is a referendo, from the oftenness
of its repetition. The etymology of the Greek rapolpia is somewhat
doubtful, but it, too, means probably a trite, wayside saying.
2




26    FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB.
erb, which yet are in fact accidents, such as may be
present or absent without affecting it vitally. Into
an error of this kind they have fallen, who have
claimed for the proverb, and made it one of its
necessary conditions that it should be a figurative
expression. A moment's consideration will be sufficient to disprove this. How many proverbs, such
as Ilaste makes waste —Honesty is the best policy,
with ten thousand more, have nothing figurative
about them. Here again the error has arisen from
taking that which belongs certainly to very many
proverbs, and those oftentimes the best and choicest,
and transferring it as a necessary condition, to all.
This much of truth they who made the assertion
certainly had; namely, that the employment of the
concrete instead of the abstract is one of the most
frequent means by which it obtains and keeps its
popularity; for so the proverb makes its appeal to
the whole man   not to the intellectual faculties
alone, but to the feelings, to the fancy, or even to
the imagination, as well, stirring the whole man to
pleasurable activity.
By the help of an instance or two we can best
realize to ourselves how great an advantage it thus
obtains for itself. Suppose, for example, one were
to content himself with saying, " He may wait till
he is a beggar, who waits to be rich by other men's
deaths;" would this trite morality be likely to go
half so far, or to be remembered half so long, as




FIGURATIVE PROVERBS.              27
the vigorous comparison of this proverb: " He who
waits for dead men's shoes may go barefoot?*  Or
again, what were " All men are mortal," as compared with the proverb: Every door may be shut
but death's door?  Or let one observe: "More perish by intemperance than are drowned in the sea,"
is this anything better than a painful, yet at the
same time a flat, truism? But let it be put in this
shape: More are drowned in the wine-cup than in
the ocean;"t or again in this: More are drowned in
wine and inr beer than in water:4 (and these both
are German proverbs) and the assertion assumes
quite a different character. There is something that
lays hold on us now. We are struck with the smallness of the cup as set against the vastness of the
ocean, while yet so many more deaths are ascribed
to that than to this; and further with the fact that
literally none are, and none could be, drowned in
the former, while multitudes perish in the latter.
ia the justifying of the paradox, in the extricating,  the real truth from the apparent falsehood of the
statement, in the answer to the appeal made here
to the imagination, an appeal and challenge which,
unless it be responded to, the proverb must remain
unintelligible to us-in all this there is a process
of mental activity, oftentimes so rapidly exercised
* Tlie same, under a different image, in Spanish: Larga soga tira,
ouien por muerte agena suspira.
t Im Becher ersaufen mehr, als im Meere.
t In Wein und Bier ertrinken mehr denn im Wasser.




28     FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB.
as scarcely to be perceptible, yet not the less carried
on with a pleasurable excitement.*
Let me mention now a few other of the more frequent helps which the proverb employs for obtaining currency among men, for being listened to with
pleasure by them, for not slipping again from their
memories who have once heard it; yet helps which
are evidently so separable from it, that none can be
in danger of affirming them essential parts or conditions of it.  Of these rhyme is the most prominent.  It would lead me altogether from my immediate argument, were I to enter into a disquisition
on the causes of the charm, which rhyme has for us
all; but that it does possess a wondrous charm, that
we like what is like, is attested by a thousand facts,
and not least by the circumstance that into this
rhyming form a very great multitude of proverbs,
and those among the most widely current, have
been thrown.  Though such will probably at once
be present to the minds of all, yet let me mention
a few: Good mind, good Jind;- Wide will wear,
buet tight will tear; — Truth may be blamed, but
can not be shamred; —ittle strokes fell great oaks;
-  Vomen's jars breed men's wars;-A kiny'sface
should give grace;-East, west, home is best;* Here is the explanation of the perplexity of Erasmus: Deinde
fit, snescio quo pacto, ut sententia proverbio quasi vibrata feriat
acrius auditoris anlimum, et aculeos quosdam cogitationurn relinquat
infixos.




ALLITERATION  IN PROVERBS.                  29
Who goes a-borrowing, goes a-sorrowing; with many
more, uniting, as you will observe several of them
do, this of rhyme with that which I have spoken of
before, namely, extreme brevity and conciseness.*
Alliteration, which is nearly allied to rhyme, is
another of the helps whereof the proverb largely
avails itself   Alliteration was at one time an important element in our early English versification;
it almost promised to contend with rhyme itself,
which should be the most important; and perhaps,
if some great master in the art had arisen, might
have retained a far greater hold on English poetry
than it now possesses. At present it is merely secondary and subsidiary. Yet it can not be called
altogether unimportant; no master of melody despises it; on the  contrary, the greatest, as in  our
days Tennyson, make the  most frequent, though
not always the  most obvious use of it.  In  the
proverb you will find it of continual recurrence,
* So, too, in other languages: Qui prend, se rend;-Qui se loue,
s'emboue; -chi va piano, va sano;-Chi compra terra, compra
guerra; —Quien se muda, Dios le ayuda;-Wie gewonnen, so zerronnen; and the Latin medieval: Qualis vita, finis ita; Via crucis,
via lucis. We sometimes think of rhyme as a modern invention, and
to the modern world no doubt belongs the discovery of all its capabilities, and the consequent large application of it. But proverbs
alone would be sufficient to show that in itself it is not modern,
however restricted in old times the employment of it may have
been. For instance, there is a Greek proverb to express that men
learn by their sufferings more than by any other teaching: HiaOrIara,
praOi9ara (Herod., i. 207); one which in the Latin, Nocumenta, documenta, finds both in rhyme and sense its equivalent; to which evi
dently the inducement lay in the chiming and rhyming words.




30     FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB.
and where it falls, as, to be worth anything, it must,
on the key-words of the sentence, of very high value.
Thus: Frost and fraud both end in foul; -Like
lips, like lettuce; -No cross, no crown; - Out of
debt, out of danger; —Do in hill as you would do
in hall;* that is, Be in solitude the same that you
would be in a crowd. I will not detain you with
further examples of this in other languages; but
such occur, and in such numbers that it seems idle
to quote them, in all; I will only adduce, in concluding this branch of the subject, a single Italian
proverb, which in a remarkable manner unites all
three qualities of which we have been last treating,
brevity, rhyme, and alliteration: Traduttori, traditori; one which we might perhaps reconstitute in
English thus: Translators, traitors; so untrue, for
the most part, are they to the genius of their original, to its spirit, if not to its letter, and frequently
to both; so do they surrender, rather than render,
its meaning; not turning, but only overturning it
from one language to another.t
A certain pleasant exaggeration, the use of the
figure hyperbole, is a not unfrequent engine with
the proverb to procure attention, and to make a
way for itself into the minds of men.  Thus the
Persians have a proverb: A needle's eye is wide
* So in Latin: Nil sol et sale utilius.
t This is St. Jerome's pun, who complains that the Latin versions
of the Greek Testament current in the church in his day were too
many of them not versiones, but eversiones.




HYPERBOLE OF PROVERBS.            31
enough for two friends; the whole world is too
narrow for two foes; and of a man whose good
luck seems never to forsake him, so that from the
very things which would be another man's ruin he
extricates himself not merely without harm, but
with profit and with credit, the Arabs say: Fling
him into the Nile, and he will come up with a ish
in his mouth. We have here examples of hyperbole in the proverb, a figure of natural rhetoric
which Scripture itself does not disdain occasionally
to employ.
In all this which I have just traced out —in the
fact that the proverbs of a language are so frequently its highest bloom and flower, while yet
so much of their beauty consists often in curious
felicities of diction pertaining exclusively to some
single language, either in a rapid conciseness to
which nothing tantamount exists elsewhere, or in
rhymes which it is hard to reproduce, or in alliterations which do not easily find their equivalents, or
in other verbal happiness such as these-lies the
difficulty which is often felt, which I shall myself
often feel in the course of these lectures, of transferring them without serious loss, nay, sometimes
the impossibility of transferring them at all from
one language to another.*  Oftentimes, to use an
* Thus in respect of this German proverb -
"Stultus und Stolz
Wachset aus Einem Holz"its transfer into any other language is manifestly impossible.




32      FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB.
image of Erasmus,* they are like those wines (for
instance, the Valdepenas of Spain), of which the
true excellence can only be known by those who
drink them in the land that gave them birth. Transport them under other skies, or still worse, empty
them from vessel to vessel, and their strength and
flavor will in great part have disappeared in the
process.
Still, this is rather the case, where we seek deliberately, and only in a literary interest, to translate some proverb which we admire from its native
language into our own or another. Whlere, on the
contrary, it has transferred itself, made for itself
a second home, and taken root a second time in the
heart and affections of a people, in such a case one
is continually surprised at the instinctive skill with
which it has found compensations for that which it
has been compelled to let go; it is impossible not
to admire the unconscious skill with which it has
replaced one vigorous idiom by another, one happy
rhyme or play on words by its equivalent; and all
this' even in those cases where the extremely narrow limits in which it must confine itself allow it
the very smallest liberty of selection. And thus,
presenting itself equally finished and complete in
* Habent enim hoc peculiare pleraque proverbia, ut in ea lingua
sonare postulant in qua nata sunt; quod si in alienum sermonern
demigrarint, Tmultum gratise decedat. Quemadmodum sunt et vina
qu.edam qua recusant exportari, nec germlanam saporis gratiam
obtineant, nisi in his locis in quibus proveniunt.




TRANSPLANTING OF PROVERBS.          33
two or even more languages, the internal evidence
will be quite insufficient to determine which of its
forms we shall regard as the original, and which as
a copy. For example, the proverb at once German
and French, which I can present in no comelier
English dress than thisMother's truth
Keeps constant use;
but which in German runs thus:Mutter-treu
Wird tiglich neu;
and in FrenchTendresse maternelle
Toujours se renouvelle;
appears to me as exquisitely graceful and tender
in the one language as in the other; while yet so
much of its beauty depends on the form, that beforehand one could hardly have expected that the
charm of it would have survived its transfer to the
second language, whichever that may be, wherein
it found a home. Having thus opened the subject,
I reserve further remarks for the lectures which
follow.
2*




34       THE GENERATION OF PROVERBS.
LECTURE II.
THE GENERATION OF PROVERBS.
WITH the form and definition of a proverb, my
first lecture was occupied. Let us proceed to consider, in the present, how far it may be possible to
realize to ourselves the processes by which a nation
gets together the great body of its proverbs, the
sources from which it mainly derives them, and the
circumstances under which such as it makes for
itself of new had their birth and generation.
And first, I would call to your attention the fact
that a vast number of its proverbs a people does
not make for itself, but finds ready made to its
hands; it enters upon them as a part of its intellectual and moral inheritance. The world has now
lasted so long, and the generations of men have
thought, felt, enjoyed, suffered, and altogether
learned so much, that there is an immense stock
of wisdom which may be said to belong to humanity in common, being the fruits of all this its experience in the past. Even Aristotle, more than two
thousand years ago,.could speak of proverbs as the
fragments of an elder wisdom, which on account of




ANTIQUITY OF PROVERBS.          35
their brevity and aptness, had amid a general wreck
and ruin been preserved. These, the common property of the civilized world, are the original stock
with which each nation starts; these, either orally
handed down to it, or made its own by those of its
earlier writers who set it in living communication
with the past. Thus, and through these channels,
a vast number of Greek, Latin, and medieval proverbs live on with us, and with all the modern nations of the world.
It is, indeed, oftentimes a veritable surprise to
discover the venerable age and antiquity of a proverb, which we have hitherto assumed to be quite a
later birth of modern society. Thus we may perhaps suppose that well-known word which forbids
the too accurate scanning of a present, One must
not look a gift-horse in the mouth, to be of English extraction the genuine growth of our own soil.
I will not pretend to say how old it may be, but it
is certainly as old as Jerome, a Latin father of the
fourth century; who, when some found fault with
certain writings of his, replied with a tartness which
he could occasionally exhibit, that they were voluntarily on his part, free-will offerings, and with this
quoted the proverb, that it did not behoove to look
a gift-horse in the mouth; and before it comes to
us, we meet it once more in one of the rhymed
Latin verses, which were such great favorites in the
middle ages:



36           THE GENERATION OF PROVERBS.
"Si quis dat mannos, ne quaere in dentibus annos."
Again, Liars should  have good  mqemories is a
proverb which probably we assume to be modern;
yet it is very far from so being. The same Jerome,
who, I may observe by the way, is a very great
quoter of proverbs, and who has preserved some
that would  not otherwise  hlave descended  to us,e
speaks of one as unmindful of the old proverbs,
Liars should  have good  memories,t  and we find
it ourselves in a writer a good deal older than him.n
Having  lighted  on  one of those Latin rhymed
verses, let me, by the way, guard against an error
about them, into  which  it would be very easy to
fall. I have seen it suggested that these, if not the
source from which, are yet the channels by which,
a great many proverbs have reached us. I should
greatly  doubt it.   This much  we  may  conclude
* Thus is it, I believe, with "Bos lassus fortius figit pedem;" a
proverb with which he warns the younger Augustine not to provoke
a contest with him, the weary, but therefore the more formidable,
antagonist.
t Oblitus veteris proverbii: mendaces memores esse oportere.
Let me quote here Fuller's excellent unfolding of this proverb:
"Memeory in a liar is no more than needs. For first lies are hard
to be remembered, because many, whereas truth is but one; secondly, because a lie cursorily told takes little footing and settled
fastness in the teller's memory, but prints itself deeper in the hearers, who take the greater notice because of the improbability and
deformity thereof; and one will remember the sight of a monster
longer than the sight of a handsome body. Hence comes it to pass
that when the liar hath forgotten himself, his auditors put him in
mind of the lie and take him therein."
$ Quintilian, Inst. 1. 4.




RHYMED LATIN PROVERBS.             37
from the existence of proverbs in this shape, namely,
that since these rhymed or leonine verses went altogether out of fashion at the revival of a classical
taste in the fifteenth century, such proverbs as are
found in this form may be affirmed with a tolerable
certainty to date at least as far back as that period;
but not that in all, or even in a majority of cases, this
shape was their earliest.  Oftentime the proverb in
its more popular form is so greatly superior to the
same in this its Latin monkish dress, that the latter,
by its tameness and flatness, betrays itself at once
as the inadequate translation, and we can not fail
to regard the other as the genuine proverb. Many
of them are "so essentially Teutonic, that they frequently appear to great disadvantage in the Latin
garb which has been huddled upon them."*  Thus,
when we have on one side the English, iHungry
bellies have no ears, and on the other the Latin"Jejunus venter non audit verba libenter,"
who can doubt that the first is the proverb, and the
second only its versification? or who would hesitate to affirm  that the old Greek proverb, A rolling stone gathers no moss, may very well have
come to us without the intermediation of the medieval Latin"Non fit hirsutus lapis hine atque inde volutus?"
And the true state of the case comes out still more
* Kemble, Solomon and Saturn, p. 56.




38        THE GENERATION OF PROVERBS.
clearly, where there are two of these rhymed Latin
equivalents for the one popular proverb, and these
quite independent of each other.  So it is in respect of our English proverb, A bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush, which appears in this
form:"Una avis in dextra melior quam quatuor extra:"
and also in this:
" Capta avis est pluris quam mille in gramine ruri."
Who can fail to see here two independent attempts
to render the same saying  Sometimes the Latin
line confesses itself to be only the rendering of a
popular word; thus is it with the following:" Ut dicunt multi, cito transit lancea stulti:"
in other words: A fool's bolt is soon shot.
Then, besides this derivation from elder sources,
from the literature of nations which as such now
no longer exist, besides this process in which a people ale merely receivers and borrowers, there is
also, at somewhat later periods in its life, a mutual
interchange between it and other nations growing
up beside, and contemporaneously with it, of their
own several inventions in this kind; a free giving
and taking, in which it is often hard, and oftener
impossible, to say which is lender and which borrower.  Thus the quantity of proverbs not drawn
from  antiquity, but common to all, or nearly all,




NTTIVITY OF PROVERBS.           39
of the modern European languages, is very great.
The " solidarity" (to use a word which it is in vain
to strive against) of all the nations of Christendom
comes out very noticeably here.
There is indeed nothing in the study of proverbs,
in the attribution of them to their right owners, in
the arrangement and citation of them, which creates
a greater perplexity than the circumstances of finding the same proverb in so many different quarters,
current among so many different nations. In quoting it as of one, it often seems as if we were doing
wrong to many, while yet it is almost, or oftener
still altogether, impossible to determine to what
nation it first belonged, so that others drew it at
second hand from that one; even granting that any
form in which we now possess it is really its oldest
of all. More than once this fact has occasioned a
serious disappointment to the zealous collector of
the proverbs of his native country. Proud of the
rich treasures which in this kind it possessed, he
has very reluctantly discovered, on a fuller investigation of the whole subject, how many of these
which he counted native, the peculiar heirloom and
glory of his own land, must at once and without
hesitation be resigned to others, who can be shown
beyond all doubt to have been in earlier possession
of them: while in respect of many more, if his own
nation can put in a claim to them as well as others,
yet he is compelled to feel that it can put in no




40         THE GENERATION OF PROVERBS.
better than, oftentimes not so good as, many competitors.*
This single fact, which it is impossible to question, that nations are thus continually borrowing
proverbs from one another, is sufficient to show,
that, however the great body of those which are
the portion of a nation may be, some almost as old
as itself, and some far older, it would for all this be
a serious mistake to regard the sum  of them as a
closed account, neither capable of, nor actually receiving, addition-a mistake of the same character
as that sometimes made in regard to the words of a
language.  So long as language is living, it will
be appropriating foreign words, putting forth new
words of its own.  Exactly in the same way, so
long as a people have any vigorous energies at
work in the midst of them, are acquiring any new
experiences of life, are forming any new moral convictions; for the new experiences and convictions
new utterances will be found, some of the happiest
of which will receive that stamp of general allowance which shall constitute them proverbs. And
this fact makes it little likely that the collections
which exist in print, and certainly not the earlier
ones, will embrace all the proverbs in actual circulation. They preserve, indeed, many others-all
* Kelly, in the preface to his very useful collection of Scotch proverbs, describes his own disappointment at making exactly such a
discovery as this.




NEW  PROVERBS RTSIS  UP.                 41
those which, having now become obsolete, would,
but for them, have been forgotten.  But there are
not a few, as I imagine, which, living on the lips
of men, have yet never found their way into books,
however worthy  to have done so; either because
the sphere in which  they  circulate has continued
always a narrow  one, or that the occasions which
call them  out are very  rare, or that they, having
only lately risen up, have not hitherto attracted the
attention  of any  who  cared  to  record  them.   It
would be well, if such as take an interest in the
subject, and are sufficiently well versed in the proverbial literature of their own country, to recognise
such unregistered  proverbs when they meet them,
would secure them from that perishing, which, so
long as they remain merely oral, might easily overtake  them; and  would  make them, at the same
time, what all good proverbs ought certainly to be,
the common heritage of all.':
* The pages of the excellent Notes and Queries would no doubt
be open to receive such, and in them they might be safely garnered
up. That there are such proverbs to reward him who should carefully watch for them, is abundantly proved by the immense addition, which, as I shall have occasion hereafter to mention, a Spanish
scholar was able to make to the collected proverbs, so numerous before, of Spain. Nor do there want other indications of the like kind.
Thus, the editor of very far the best modern collection of German
proverbs; records this one, which is found, as he affirms, in no preceding collection, and which he himself never heard but once, and
then from the lips of an aged lay servitor of a monastery in the
Black Forest: Offend one monk, and the lappets of all cowls will
flutter as far as Rome (Beleidigestu einen Munch, so knappen alle




42          THE GENERATION OF PROVERBS.
And as new proverbs will be born from life and
from life's experience, so too there will be another
fruitful source of their further increase, namely, the
books which the people have made heartily their
own. Portions of these they will continually detach, most often word for word; at other times
wrought up  into  new  shapes with  that freedom
which they claim to exercise in regard of whatever
they thus appropriate to their own use. These,
having detached, they will give and take as part
of their current intellectual money.  Thus, " Evil
communications corrupt good manners" is, word
for word, from a Greek comedy. It is not probable
that St. Paul had ever read this comedy; but the
words, for their truth's sake, had been taken up into
the common speech of men; and not as a citation,
but as a proverb, he uses them. And if you will,
from this point of view, glance over a few pages of
one of Shakespeare's more popular dramas-Hamlet, for example —you will be surprised, in case
Kuttenzipfel bis nach Rom); and yet who can doubt that we have
a genuine proverb here, and one excellently expressive of the common cause which the whole of the monastic orders, despite their
inner dissensions, made ever, when assailed from without, with one
another? It is very easy to be deceived in such a matter, and one
must be content often to be so; but the following, which is current
in Ireland, I have never seen in print: "The man on the dyke
always hurls well;" the looker-on at a game of hurling, seated indolently on the wall, always imagines that he could improve on the
strokes of the actual players, and, if you will listen to him, would
have played the game much better than they; a proverb of sufficiently wide application.




PKOVERBS FRO3I BOOKS.            43
your attention has never been called to this before,
to note how much has in this manner been separated from it, that it might pass into the every-day
use and service of man; and you will be prepared
to estimate higher than ever what he has done for
his fellow-countrymen, the "possession for ever"
which his writings have become for them. And
much, no doubt, is passing even now from favorite
authors into the flesh and blood of a nation's moral
and intellectual life; and as "household words,"
as parts of its proverbial philosophy, for ever incorporating itself therewith. We have a fair measure
of an author's true popularity-I mean, of the real
and lasting hold which he has taken on his nation's
heart, in the extent to which it has been thus done
with his writings.
There is another way in which additions are from
time to time made to the proverbial wealth of a
people. Some event has laid strong hold of their
imagination, has stirred up the depths of their moral
consciousness; and this they have gathered up for
themselves, perhaps in some striking phrase which
was uttered at the moment, or in some allusive
words, understood by everybody, and which at
once summon up the whole incident before their
eyes.
Sacred history furnishes us with one example at
the least of the generation in this wise of a proverb.
That word, "Is Saul also among the prophets?" is




44       THE GENERATION OF PROVERBS.
one of which we know the exact manner in which
it grew to be " a proverb in Israel." When the son
of Kish revealed of a sudden that nobler life which
had hitherto been slumbering in him, alike undreamed of by himself and by others, took his part
and place among the sons of the prophets, and,
borne along in their enthusiasm, praised and prophesied as they did, showing that he was indeed turned
into another man, then all that knew him beforehand, said one to another, some probably in sincere
astonishment, some in irony and unbelief, "Is Saul
also among the prophets?" And the question they
asked found and finds its application so often as
any reveals of a sudden, at some crisis of his life,
qualities for which those who knew him the longest
had hitherto given him no credit, a nobleness which
had been latent in him until now, a power of taking
his place among the worthiest and the best, which
none until now had at all deemed him to possess.
It will, of course, find equally its application, when
one does not step truly, but only affects to step suddenly into a higher school, to take his place in a
nobler circle of life than that in which hitherto he
has moved.
Another proverb, and one well known to the
Greek scholar, The cranes of lbycus,* had its rise
in one of those remarkable incidents, which, witnessing for God's inscrutable j udgments, are eagerly
* At'IBvKOV yipavol.




THE CRANES OF IBYCUS.           45
grasped by men. The story of its birth is indeed
one to which so deep a moral interest is attached,
that I shall not hesitate to repeat it, evia at the
risk that Schiller's immortal poem on the subject,
or it may be the classical studies of some here, may
have made it already familiar to a portion of my
hearers. Ibycus, a famous lyrical poet of Greece,
journeying to Corinth, was assailed by robbers:
as he fell beneath their murderous strokes he looked
round if any witnesses or avengers were nigh. No
living thing was in sight, but a flight of cranes soaring high over head. He called on them, and to
them  committed the avenging of his blood. A
vain commission, as it might have appeared, and
as no doubt it did to the murderers appear. Yet it
was not so; for these, sitting a little time after in
the open theatre at Corinth, beheld this flight of
cranes hovering above them, and one said scoffingly
to another, "Lo, there, the avengers of Ibycus!"
The words were caught up by some near them; for
already the poet's disappearance had awakened
anxiety and alarm.  Being questioned, they betrayed themselves, and were led to their doom;
and The cranes of lbycus passed into a proverb,
very much as our Mierder will out, to express the
wondrous leadings of God whereby the secretest
thing of blood is continually brought to the liglt.
Memorable words of illustrious men will frequently not die in the utterance, but pass from




46       THE GENERATION OF PROVERBS.
mouth to mouth, being still repeated will complacency, till at length they have received their
adoption into the great family of national proverbs.
Such were the gnomes or sayings of the Seven Wise
Men of Greece, supposing them to have been indeed
theirs, and not ascribed to them only after they
had obtained universal currency and acceptance.
So too a saying, attributed to Alexander the Great,
may very well have arisen on the occasion, and
under the circumstances, to which its birth is commonly ascribed. When some of his officers reported
to him with something of dismay the innumerable
multitude of the Persian hosts which were advancing to assail him, the youthful Macedonian
hero silenced them and their apprehensions with
the reply: One butcher does not fear many sheep;
not in this applying an old proverb, but framing a
new, and one admirably expressive of the confidence which he felt in the immeasurable superiority of the Hellenic over the barbarian man; and
this word, having been once set on foot by him, has
since lived on, and that because the occasions were
so numerous on which a word like this would find
its application.
And, taking occasion from this royal proverb, let
me just observe, by the way, that it would be a
great mistake to assume, though the error is by no
means an uncommon one, that because proverbs are
popular, they have therefore originally sprung from




PROVERBS OFTEN HIGH-BORN.          47
the bosom  of the populace. What was urged in
my first lecture of their popularity was not at all
intended in this sense; and the sound, common
sense, the wit, the wisdom, the right feeling, which
are their predominant characteristics, alike contradict any such supposition. They spring rather from
the sound, healthy kernel of the nation, whether
in high place or in low; and it is surely worthy of
note, how large a proportion of those with the
generation of which we are acquainted, owe their
existence to the foremost men of their time, to its
philosophers, its princes, and its kings; as it would
not be difficult to show. And indeed the evil in
proverbs testifies to this quite as much as the good.
Thus, the many proverbs, in almost all modern
tongues, expressing scorn of the " villain," are alone
sufficient to show that, for the most part, they are
very far from having their birth quite in the lower
regions of society, but reflect much oftener the
prejudices and passions of those higher in the social
scale.
Let me adduce another example of the proverbs
which have thus grown out of an incident, which
contain an allusion to it, and are only perfectly
intelligible when the incident itself is known. It
is this Spanish: Let that which is lost be for God:
one the story of whose birth is thus given by the
leading Spanish commentator on the proverbs of
his nation: The father of a family, making his




48        THE GENERATION OF PROVERBS.
will and disposing of his goods upon his death-bed,
ordained concerning  a certain  cow which had
strayed, and bad been now for a long time missing,
that, if it were found, it should be for his children:
if otherwise, for God: and hence the proverb, Let
that which is lost be for God, arose. The saying
was not one to let die: it laid bare with too fine a
skill some of the subtlest treacheries of the human
heart; for, indeed, whenever men would give to
God only their lame and their blind, that which
costs them nothing, that from which they hope no
good, no profit, no pleasure for themselves, what are
they saying in their hearts but that which this man
said openly -- et that which is lost be for God.
The subject of the generation of proverbs, upon
which I have thus touched so slightly, is yet one
upon which whole volumes have been written.
Those who have occupied themselves herein have
sought to trace historically the circumstances out
of which various proverbs have sprung, and to
which they owe their existence; that so by the
analogy of these we might realize to ourselves the
rise of others whose origins lie out of our vision,
obscure and unknown. No one will deny the interest of the subject: it can not but be most interesting to preside thus at the birth of a saying which
has lived on and held its ground in the world, and
has not ceased, from the day it was first uttered, to
be more or less of a spiritual or intellectual force




THEY FORGET THEIR PARENTS.             49
among men.  Still the cases where this is possible
are exceedingly rare, as compared with the far
greater number where the first birth is veiled, as is
almost all birth, in mystery and obscurity.  And
indeed it could scarcely be otherwise. The great
majority of proverbs are foundlings, the happier
foundlings of a nation's wit, which the collective
nation has refused to let perish, has taken up and
adopted for its own.  But still, as must be expected
to be the case with foundlings, they can, for the
most part, give no account of themselves. They
rest on their own merits, not on those of their
parents and authors, whom  they have forgotten,
and who seem  equally to have forgotten them; or,
at least, fail to claim them. Not seldom, too, when
a story has been given to account for a proverb's
rise, it must remain a question, open to much
doubt whether the story has not been subsequently
imagined for the proverb, rather than that the proverb has indeed sprung out of history.*
The proverb having thus had its rise from  life,
however it may be often impossible to trace that
rise, will continually turn back to life again; it will
attest its own practical character by the frequency
with which it will presentitself for use, and will
* Livy's account of Cantherium in fossa, and of the manner in
which it became a rustic proverb in Italy (1. 23. c. 47), is a case in
point, where it is very hard to give credit to the parentage which
has been assigned to the saying. See D6derlein's Lat. Synonyme,
v. 4, p. 289.
3




50        THE GENEr ATION OF PrrOVERBS.
have been actually used upon earnest and important occasions, throwing its weight into one scale or
the other at some critical moment, and sometimes
with decisive effect. I have little doubt that, with
knowledge sufficient, one might bring together a
large collection of instances wherein, at significant
moments, the proverb has played its part, and, it
may be, very often helped to bring about issues, of
which all would acknowledge the importance.
In this aspect, as having been used at a great
critical moment, and as part of the moral influence
brought to bear on that occasion for effecting a
great result, no proverb of man's can be compared
with that one which the Lord used when he met
his future apostle, but at this time his persecutor,
in the way, and warned him of the fruitlessness and
folly of a longer resistance to a might which must
overcome him, and with still greater harm to himself, at the last: It is hard for thee to kick against
the pricks.* (Acts xxvi. 14.)  It is not always observed, but yet it adds much to the fitness of this
proverb's use on this great occasion, that it was
already, even in that heathen world to which ori'
ginally it belonged, predominantly used to note the
madness of a striving oJ man's part against the superior power of the gods; for so we find it in the chief
passages of heathen antiquity in which it occurs.t
c* 2KX gp6v aoL tpods Kivrpa yaKrTieCv.
t Eschylus, Prom. V. 322; Euripides, Bacch. 795; Pindar, Pyth.
2, 94-96. The image is, of course that of the stubborn ox, which,




EMPLOYMENT OF PROVERBS.            51
I must take the second illustration of my assertion from a very different quarter, passing at a
single stride from  the kingdom  of heaven to the
kingdom  of hell, and finding my example there.
We are told, then, that when Catherine de Medicis
desired to overcome the hesitation of her son Charles
the Ninth, and draw from him his consent to the
massacre, afterward known as that of St. Bartholomew, she urged on him with effect a proverb which
she had brought with her from her own land, and
assuredly one of the most convenient maxims for
tyrants that was ever framed: Clemency is sometimes cruelty, and cruelty clemency.
Later French history supplies another and more
agreeable illustration.  At the siege of Douay,
Louis the Fourteenth found himself with his suite
unexpectedly under a heavy cannonade from  the
besieged city. I do not believe that Louis was
deficient in personal courage, yet, in compliance
with the entreaties of most of those around him,
who urged that he should not expose so important
a life, he was about, in somewhat unsoldierly and
unkingly fashion, immediately to retire; when M. de
Charost, drawing close to him, whispered the wellknown French proverb in his ear: The wine is
drawn; it must be drunlk.  The king remained
when urged to go forward, recalcitrates against the sharp-pointed
iron goad, and, already wounded, thus only wounds itself the more.
* Le vin cst verse; il faut le boire.




52       TIIE GENERATION OF PROVERBS.
exposed to the fire of the enemy a suitable period,
and it is said ever after held in higher honor than
before the counsellor who had with this word saved
him  from an unseemly retreat.  Let this on the
generation of proverbs, with the actual employment
which has been made of them, for the present
suffice.




NATIONAL IISTORY  IN  PROVERBS.                  53
LECTURE III.
TIE PROVERBS OF DIFFERENT NATIONS COMPARED.
"THE genius, wit, and  spirit of a nation  are discovered in its proverbs," this is Lord Bacon's wellworn  remark;  although, indeed, only  well-worn
because of its truth. " In them," it has been further said, " is to be found an inexhaustible source
of precious documents in regard of the interior history, the manners, the opinions, the beliefs,* the
customs of the people among whom they have had
their course." Let us put these assertions to the
proof, and see how far in this people's or in that
* The writer might have added, the superstitions; for proverbs
not a few involve and rest on popular superstitions, and a collection
of these would be curious and in many ways instructive. Such, for
instance, is the Latin (it is, indeed, also Greek): A serpent, unless
it devour a serpent, grows not to a dragon (Serpens, nisi serpentem
comederit, non fit draco); which Lord Bacon moralizes so shrewdly;
"The folly of one man is the fortune of another; for no man prospers so suddenly as by other men's errors."  Such again is the old
German  proverb: The night is no man's friend (Die Nacht ist
keines Menschen Freund); which rests, as Grimm  has so truly observed (Deutsche Mythol., p. 713), on the wide-spread feeling in the
northern mythologies, of the night as an unfriendly and, indeed,
hostile power to man. And such, too, the French: A  Sunday's
child dies never of the plague (Qui nait le dimanche, jamais ne
meurt de peste).




54      PROVEUBS OF NATIONS COMPARED.
people's proverbs, its innermost heart speaks out to
us; how far the comparison of the proverbs of one
nation with those of others may be made instructive to us; what this comparison will tell us severally about each. This only I will ask, ere we enter
upon the subject, that if I should fail here in drawing out anything strongly characteristic, if the
proverbs regarded from this point of view should
not seem to reveal to you any of the true secrets of
national life, you will not therefore misdoubt those
assertions with which my lecture opened; or assume
that these documents would not yield up their secret, if questioned aright; but only believe that the
test has been unskilfully applied; or, if you will,
that my brief limits have not allowed me to make
clear that which with larger space I might not have
wholly failed in doing.
I am very well aware that in following upon this
track, one is ever liable to deceive oneself, to impose
upon others, picking out and adducing such proverbs as conform to a preconceived theory, passing
over those which would militate against it. Quite
allowing that there is such a danger which needs
to be guarded against, and also that there are a
multitude of these sayings which can not be made
to illustrate difference, for they rest on the broad
foundation of the universal humanity, underlying
and deeper than that which is peculiar and national,
I am yet persuaded that enough remain, and such




THE PROVERBS OF GREECE.             55
as may with perfect good faith be adduced, to confirm these assertions; that we may learn from the
proverbs current among a people what is nearest
and dearest to their hearts, the aspects under which
they contemplate life, how honor and dishonor are
distributed among them, what is of good, what of
evil report in their eyes, with very much more
which it can never be unprofitable to know.
To begin, then, with the proverbLs of Greece.
That which strikes one most in the study of these,
and which the more they are studied, the more fills
the thoughtful student with wonder, is the evidence
they yield of a leavening through and through of
the entire nation with the most intimate Lknowledge
of its own mythology, history, and poetry. The infinite multitude of slight and fine allusions to the
legends of their gods and heroes, to the earlier incidents of their own history, to the Homeric narrative,
the delicate side glances at all these which the
Greek proverbs constantly embody,* assume an acquaintance, indeed a familiarity, with all this on
their parts among whom they passed current, which
almost exceeds belief. In many and most important respects, the Greek proverbs considered as a
whole are inferior to those of many nations of modern  Christendom.   This is nothing wonderful;
Christianity would have done little for the world,
*  Thus'Al'tos KvV'n.-L'A7rXq'ro7,rioS. —-'IXta  KaKCWo




56       PROVERBS OF NATIONS COMPARED.
would have proved very ineffectual for the elevating, purifying, and deepening of man's life, if it
had been otherwise. But, with all this, as bearing
testimony to the high intellectual training of the
people who employed them, to a culture not restricted to certain classes, but which must have
been diffused through the whole nation, no other
collection can bear the remotest comparison with
this.
It is altogether different with the Roman proverbs. These, the genuine Roman, the growth of
their own soil, are very far fewer in number than
the Greek, as was indeed to be expected from the
far less subtle and less fertile genius of the people.
Hardly any of them are legendary or mythological;
which again agrees with the fact that the Italian
pantheon was very scantily peopled as compared
with the Greek.  Very few  have much poetry
about them, or any very rare delicacy or refinement of feeling. In respect of love indeed, not the
Roman only, but Greek and Roman alike, are immeasurably inferior to those which many modern
nations could supply. Thus a proverb of such religious depth and beauty as our own, 1Jcarriayes are
made in heaven, it would have been quite impossible for all antiquity to have produced, or even remotely to have approached. In the setting out not
of love, but of friendship, and of the claims which
it makes, the blessings which it brings, is exhibited




NIUMBER OF SPANISH  PROVERBS.                     57
whatever depth  and  tenderness they  may  have.*
This indeed, as has been  truly observed,t was only
to be expected, seeing how much higher an ideal
of that existed  than of this, the full realization of
which was reserved for the modern Christian world.
Yet the Roman proverbs are not without other substantial merits  of their own.  A   vigorous moral
sense speaks out in many;  and even when this is
not so prominent, they wear often a thoroughly old
Roman  aspect; being  business-like  and  practical,
frugal and severe, wise saws such as the elder Cato
must have  loved, such  as must have  been  often
upon his lips;~ while in the number that relate  to
farming they bear singular witness to that strong
and lively interest in agricultural pursuits, which
was so remarkable a feature in the old Italian life.ij
* In this respect the Latin proverb, Mores amici noveris, non
oderis, on which Horace has furnished so exquisite a comment (Sat,
i. 3, 24-93), and which finds its graceful equivalent in the Italian.
Ama l'amico tuo con il difetto suo, is worthy of all admiration.
t By Zell, in his slight but graceful little treatise, On the proverbs
of the ancient Romans, Ferienschriften, v. 2, p. 1-96.
t Thus, Noxa caput sequitur;- Conscientia, mille testes.
~ He has preserved for us that very sensible, and at the same
time truly characteristic one, Quod non opus est, asse carum est.
11 These are two or three of the most notable-the first against
"high farming," which it is strange if it has not been appealed to in
the modern controversy on the subject: Nihil minus expedit quam
agrum optime colere.  (Pliny, H. N., 6. 18.) Over against this, however, we must set another, warning against the attempt to farm with
insufficient capital; Oportet agrum imbecilliorem  esse quam  agricolam; and yet another, on the liberal answer which the land will
make to the pains and cost bestowed on it; Qui arat olivetum, rogat
fructum; qui stercorat, exorat; qui cxedit, cogit.
3*




S8        PROVERBS OF NATIONS COMPARED.
It will not be possible to pass under even this
hastiest review more than twno or three of the modern families of proverbs.  Let us turn first to the
proverbs of Spain. I instance these, because the
Spanish literature, poor in many provinces wherein
many others are rich, is probably richer in this
province than any other literature in the world,
certainly than any other in the western world; and
this, I should be inclined to believe, both as respects
quantity and quality.* In respect of quantity, the
mere number of Spanish proverbs is astonishing.
A  collection I have been using while preparing
these lectures, contains between seven and eight
thousand, and yet does not contain all; for I have
searched it in vain for several with which from
other sources I had become acquainted.  Nay, it
must be very far indeed from exhausting the entire stock, seeing that there exists a manuscript collection brought tegether by a distinguished Spanish
scholar, in which the proverbs have attained to the
almost incredible amount of from five and twenty
to thirty thousand.t
* This was the judgment of Salmasius, who says: Inter Europoeos
Hispani, in his excellent, Itali vix cedunt, Galli proximo sequuntur
intervallo.
t What may have become of this collection I know not; but it
was formerly in Richard Heber's library (see the Catalogue, v. 9. No.
1697). Juan Yriarte was the collector, and in a note to the Catalogue it is stated that he devoted himself with such eagerness to the
bringing of it to the highest possible state of completeness, that he
would give his servants a fee for any new proverb they brought




CHARACTER OF SPANISH PROVERBS.            59
And in respect of their quality, it needs only to
call to mind some of those, so rich in humor, so
double-shotted with sense, wherewith the squire in
Don  Quixote adorns his discourse; being oftentimes indeed not the fringe and border, but the
main woof and texture of it: and then, if we assume
that the remainder are not altogether unlike these,
we shall, I think, feel that it would be difficult to
rate them  more highly than they deserve.  And
some are in a loftier vein; for taking, as we have a
right to do, Cervantes himself as the truest exponent
of the Spanish character, we should be prepared
to trace in the proverbs of Spain a grave thoughtfulness, a stately humor, to find them breathing the
very spirit of chivalry and honor, and indeed of
freedom too; for in Spain, as throughout so much
of Europe, it is despotism, and not freedom, which
is new.  Nor are we disappointed in these our
expectations.  How eminently chivalresque, for instance, the following: Thite hands can not hurt.*
What a grave humor lurks in this: The ass knows
in whose face he brays.t  What a stately apathyhow proud a manner of looking calamity in the
face-speaks out in  the admonition  which  this
him; while to each, as it was inserted in his list, he was careful to
attach a memorandum of the quarter from which it came; and if
this was not from books but from life, an indication of the name, the
rank, the condition in life of the person from whom it was derived.
* Las manos blancas no ofenden.
t Bien sabe el asno en cuya cara rebozna.




60       PROVERBS OF NATIONS COMPARED.
one contains: If thou seest thine house in flames,
approach and warmb thyself by i.*  What a spirit
of freedom, which refuses to be encroached on even
by the highest, is embodied in another: The king
goes casfarC as he may, not as fatr as he would.t
We may, too, I think, remark how a nation will
occasionally, in its proverbs, indulge in a fine irony
upon itself, and show that it is perfectly aware of
its own weaknesses, follies, and faults. This the
Spaniards must be allowed to do in their proverb,
Succors of Spain, or late or never.4   However
largely and confidently promised, these succors of
Spain either do not arrive at all, or only arrive
after the opportunity in which they could have
served have passed away. Certainly any one who
reads the despatches of England's Great Captain
during the peninsular war, will find in almost every
page of them that which abundantly justifies this
proverb —will own that those who made it read
themselves aright, and could not have designated
broken pledges, unfulfilled promises of aid, tardy
and thus ineffectual assistance, by a happier title
than Succors of Spain.  And then again, what a
fearful glimpse of those blood-feuds, which, having
once begun, seems as if they could never end, blood
touching blood, and violence evermore provoking
* Quando vieras tu casa quemar, Ilega te A esalentar.
f El rey va hasta do puede, y no hasta do quicre.: Socorros de Espania, 6 tarde, 6 nunca.




JUDGMENT OF ITALIAN PROVERBS.              61
its like, have we in the following: Kill, and thoum
shalt be killed, and they shall kill him  who kills
thee.*
The Italians also are eminently rich in proverbs;
and yet, if ever I have been tempted to retract or
seriously to modify what I shall have occasion byand-by to affirm in regard of a nobler life and spirit
as predominating in proverbs, it has been after the
study  of some Italian  collection.   "The Italian
proverbs," it has been said, not without too much
reason, though perhaps also with overmuch severity,
" have taken a tinge from their deep and politic
genius, and  their wisdom  seems wholly concentrated in their personal interests. I think every
tenth proverb in an Italian collection is some cynical or some selfish maxim, a book of the world for
worldlings."t  Certainly many of them are shrewd
enough, and only too shrewd; inculcating a universal suspicion, teaching to look everywhere for a
foe-to expect, as the Greeks said, a scorpion under every stone —glorifying artifice and cunning as
the true guides and only safe leaders through the
perplexed labyrinth of life,: and altogether seem* Mataras, y matarte han, y mataran a quien te matare.
f Curiosities of Literature, p. 391. London: 1838.: These may serve as examples: "Chi ha sospetto, di rado e in
difetto."-"Fidarsi e bene, ma non fidarsi e meglio."-"Da chi mi
fido, mi guardi Iddio; da chi non mi fido, mi guarder6 io."-" Con
arte e con inganno si vive mezzo'anno; con inganno e con arte si
vive 1'altra parte."




62       PROVERBS OF NATIONS COMPARED.
ing dictated as by the very spirit of Machiavel
himself.
And worse than this is the glorification of revenge which speaks out in too many of them. I
know nothing of its kind calculated to give one a
more shuddering sense of horror than the series
which might be drawn together of Italian proverbs
on this matter, especially when we take them with
the commentary which Italian history supplies, and
which shows them no empty words, but the deepest utterances of the nation's heart. There is no
misgivings in these about the right of entertaining
so deadly a guest in the bosom; on the contrary,
one of them, exalting the sweetness of revenge, declares, Revenge is a morsel for God.*  There is
nothing in them (it would be far better if there
were) of blind and headlong passion, but rather a
spirit of deliberate calculation, which makes the
blood run cold. Thus one gives this advice: Wait
time and place to act thy revenge, for it is never
well done in a hurry; t while another proclaims
an immortality of hatred, which no spaces of intervening time shall have availed to weaken: Revenge
of a hundred years old hath still its sucking-teeth.4
We may well be thankful that we have in England,
* Vendetta, boccon di Dio.
t Aspetta tempo e loco a far tua vendetta, che la non si fa mai ben
in fretta. Compare another: Vuoi far vendetta del tuo nemico,
governati bene ed 6 bell' e fatta.
t Vendetta di cent' anni ha ancor i lattaiuoli.




REnMAIZKABLE ITALIAN PROVERBS.         63
at least as far as I am aware, no sentiments parallel to these, embodied as the permanent convictions
of the national mind.
How curious again is the confession which speaks
out in another Italian proverb, that the maintenance of the Romish system and the study of Holy
Scripture can not go together. It is this: With
the gospel, one becomes a heretiec.   No  doubt,
with the study of the Word of God, one does become a heretic, in the Italian sense of the word;
and therefore it is only done to put all obstacles in
the way of that study, to assign three years' and
four years' imprisonment, with hard labor, to such
as shall dare to peruse it; yet certainly it is not a
little remarkable that such a confession should have
embodied itself in the popular utterances of the
nation.
But, while it must be freely owned that the
charges brought just now against the Italian proverbs are sufficiently borne out by too many, they
are not at all to be included in the common shame.
Very many there are not merely of a delicate refinement of beauty, as this, expressive of the freedom in regard of thine and mine which will exist
between true friends: Friends tie their purses with
a spider's thread,t of a subtle wisdom  which has
not degenerated into cunning and deceit, but also of
* Con l'evangelo si diventa eretico.
G Gli amici legono la borsa con un filo di ragnatelo.




64        PROVERBS OF NATIONS COMPARED.
a nobler stamp.  Honor and honesty, plain-dealing
and uprightness, have here their praises too, and
are not seldom pronounced to be in the end more
than a match for all cunning and deceit.  How
excellent in this sense is the following: For an
honest man, halJf his wits is enough, the whole is
too little for a knave: * the ways, that is, of truth
and uprightness are so simple and plain, that a little wit is abundantly sufficient for those that walk
in them; the ways of falsehood and fraud are so
perplexed and tangled, that, sooner or later, all the
wit of the cleverest rogue will not preserve him from
being entangled therein.  How often and how wonderfully has this found its confirmation in the lives
of evil men! so true it is, to employ another proverb, and a very deep one, from the same quarter,
that The devil is subtle, but weaves a coarse web.t
Again, what description of Egypt as it now is,
or indeed generally of the East, could set us at
the heart of its moral condition-could make us to
understand all which long centuries of oppression
and misrule have made of it and of its people?what could do this so effectually as the collection of
Arabic proverbs now current in Egypt, which the
* Ad un uomo dabbene avanza la meta del cer cervello; ad un
tristo non basta ne anche tutto.
t Jeremy Taylor appears to have found much delight in the proverbs of Italy. In the brief foot-notes which he has appended to the
Holy Living alone, I counted five and twenty such, to which he
makes more or less remote allusion in the text.




TIIE MODERN EGYPTIANS.           65
traveller Burckhardt gathered, and which, after his
death, were published with his name?*  In other
books, others describe the modern Egyptians, but
here they unconsciously describe themselves. The
selfisllness, the utter extinction of all public spirit,
the servility, which no longer, as with an inward
shame, creeps into men's acts, but utters itself
boldly as the avowed law of their lives, the sense
of the oppression of the strong, of the insecurity of
the weak, and generally the whole character of
life, alike the outward and inward, as poor, mean,
sordid, and ignoble, with only a few faintest glimpses
of that romance which one usually attaches to the
East; all this, as we study these documents, rises
up before us in truest though in painfullest outline.
Where, but in a land which evermore was
changing its rulers, and in which oftentimes the
unworthiest sat in highest places of all, whom yet
to propitiate was the only safety, where else could
the law of baseness have proclaimed itself aloud,
and this have been laid down as the maxim of conduct, If the mnonkey reigns, dance before him. The
monkey, it is true, may reign in other lands besides
those of the East; but the examples in a neighboring land, not merely of statesmen and warriors,
of men such as Guizot and Changarnier, but of
many more in every class, erect amid a too general prostration, abundantly testify, that, reign as
t Arabic Proverbs of tire Modern Egyptians. London: 1830.




66       PROVERBS OF NATIONS COMPARED.
the monkey may-Simia in pnrpura, — all will
not therefore count it their part and their wisdom
to dance before him.  What indeed this dancing
is worth, another of those Eastern adages reveals,
which says, Kiss the hand which thou canst not
bite.  Again, in no land save in one, where rulers, being evil in themselves, feel all goodness
to be their instinctive foe, and themselves, therefore, entertain an instinctive hostility to it-where
they punish, but never reward-where not to
be noticed by them is the highest ambition of those
under their yoke, in no other land could a proverb
like the following, Do no good, and thou shaltfind
no evil, have ever come to the birth.  How settled
a conviction that wrong, and not right, was the lord
paramount of the world, must have grown up in
men's spirits, before such a word as this (I know of
no sadder one) could have found utterance from
their lips.*
I have taken a wide circuit of nations; with the
proverb of a people nearer home I must bring this
branch of the subject to an end. It is one, and a
very characteristic one, which the poet Spenser,
who long dwelt in Ireland, records as current in his
time among the Irish; in which were contained
their offer of service to their native chiefs, with a
* Yet this very mournful collection of Burckhardt's possesses at
least one very beautiful proverb on the all-conquering power of
love: Man is the slave of beneficence.




MANY PROVERBS LOCAL.            67
statement of what they expected in return: Spend
me, and defend me. T eir leaders in all times
have taken them  only too well at their word in
respect of the first half of the proverb, and have not
failed prodigally to spend them; although their
undertakings to defend have issued exactly as must
ever issue all promises on the part of others to defend men from those evils, from which none can
really protect them but themselves.
Other families of proverbs would each of them
tell its own tale, give up its own secret; but I
must not seek from this point of view to question
them further. I would rather bring now to your
notice that even where they do not spring, as they
can not all, from the centre of a people's heart, nor
declare to us the secretest things which are there,
but dwell more on the surface of things, in this
case also they have often local or national features,
which to study and trace out may prove both curious and instructive.  Of how many, for example,
we may note the manner in which they clothe themselves in an outward form  and shape, borrowed
from, or suggested by, the peculiar scenery or circumstances or history of their own land; so that
they could scarcely have come into existence, not
certainly in the shape which they now wear, anywhere besides. Thus our own, ailke hay while
the sun sh.ines, is truly English, and could have
had its birth only under such variable skies as




68      PROVERBS OF NATIONS COMPARED.
ours-not, at any rate, in those southern lands
where, during the summer time at least, the sun
always shines. In the same way there is a fine
Cornish proverb in regard of obstinate wrongheads,
who will take no counsel except from calamities,
who dash themselves to pieces against obstacles,
which, with a little prudence and foresight, they
might easily have avoided.  It is this: He who
will not be ruled by the rudder must be ruled by
the rock. It sets us at once upon some rocky and
wreck-strewn coast; we feel that it could never
have been the proverb of an inland people. And
this, Do not talk Arabic in the house of a Moor: *
that is, because there thy imperfect knowledge will
be detected at once: this we should confidently
affirm to be Spanish, wherever we met it. So also
a traveller, with any experience in the composition
of Spanish sermons and Spanish ollas, could make
no mistake in respect of the following: A sermon
without Augustine is as a stew without bacon.t
Thus Big and empty, like the Heidelberg tun4,
could have its home only in Germany; that enormous vessel, known as the Heidelberg tun, constructed to contain nearly 300,000 flasks, having now
stood empty for hundreds of years.  As regards,
too, the following, Not every parish-priest can wear
* En casa del Moro no haLles algarabia.
f Sermon sin Agostino, olla sin tocino.
G Gross und leer, wie das IHeidelberger Fass.




COSMOPOLITAN PROVERBS.           69
Doctor Luther's shoes,' we could be in no doubt to
what people it appertains. And this, The world is
a carcase, and they who gather round it are dogs,
plainly proclaims itself as belonging to those Eastern lands, where the unowned dogs prowling about
the streets of a city are the natural scavengers, that
would assemble round a carcase thrown in the way.
So too the form  which our own proverb, Man's
extremity, God's opportunity, assumes among the
Jews, namely this, WV/hen the tale of bricks is doubled, Mloses comes,t plainly roots itself in the early
history of that nation, being an allusion to Exod. v.
9-19, and without a knowledge of that history,
would be unintelligible altogether
But while it is thus with some, which are bound
by the very conditions of their existence to a narrow and peculiar sphere, or at all events move more
naturally and freely in it than elsewhere, there are
others, on the contrary, which we meet all the
world ovrer. True cosmopolites, they seem to have
travelled from land to land, and to have made
themselves a home equally in all. The Greeks obtained them probably from the older East, and again
imparted them to the Romans; and from these they
have found their way into all the languages of the
western world.
Much, I think, might be learned from knowing
* Doctor Luther's Schuhe sind nicht alien Dorfpriestern gerecht
t Cum duplicantur lateres, Moses venit.




70       PROVERBS OF NATIONS COMPARED.
what those truths are, which are so felt to be true
by all nations, that all have loved to possess them
in these compendious forms, wherein they may pass
readily from mouth to mouth: which, thus cast into
some happy form, have commended themselves to
almost all people, and have become a portion of
the common stock of the world's wisdom, in every
land making for themselves a recognition and a
home. Such a proverb, for instance, is Man  proposes, God disposes;* one which I am inclined to
believe that every nation in Europe possesses, so
deeply upon all men is impressed the sense of
Hamlet's words, if not the words themselves:"There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will."
Sometimes the proverb does not actually in so
many words repeat itself in various tongues. We
have indeed exactly the same thought, but it takes
an outward shape and embodiment, varying according to the various countries and periods in which it
has been current; we have proverbs totally diverse
from one another in their form and appearance, but
which yet, when we look a little deeper into them,
prove to be at heart one and the same, all these
their differences being thus only, so to speak, variations of the same air. These are almost always
an amusing, often an instructive, study; and to
* La gente pone, y Dios dispone.-Der Mensch denkt's; Gott
lenkt's.




VARIOUS FORMS OF PROVEPRBS.            71
trace this likeness in difference has an interest
lively enough.  Thus the forms of the proverb,
which brings out the absurdity of those reproving
others for a defect or a sin, to whom  the same
cleaves in an equal or in a greater degree, have
sometimes no visible connection at all, or the very
slightest, with one another; yet, for all this, the
proverb is at heart and essentially but one. We
say in English: The kiln calls the oven, " Burnt
house;" the Italians, The pan says to the pot,
"Keep off, or you'll smutch me;", the Spaniards,
The raven cried to the crow, "Avaunt, blackamoor;"t the Germans, On.e ass nicknames another,
"' ong-ears;"f while it must be owned there is a
certain originality in the Catalan version of the
proverb: Death said to the man with his throat
cut, " How ugly you look."  Under how rich a variety of forms does one and the same thought array
itself here.
Let me quote another illustration of the same
fact.  We probably take for granted that Coals to
Newcastle is a thoroughly English expression of
the absurdity of sending to a place that which
already abounds there-water to the sea, fagots
to the wood-and English of course it is in the
outward garment which it wears; but in its inner* La padflla dice ai pajuolo, Fatti in la, che tu mi tigni.
f Dijo la corneja al cuervo, Quitate alla, negro.
t Ein Esel schimpft den andern, Langehr.




72       PROVERBS OF SNATIONS COMPARED.
most being it belongs to the whole world and to all
times.  Thus the Greeks said, Owls to Athens,*
Attica abounding with these birds; the rabbis,
Enchantments to Egypt, Egypt being of old esteemed the headquarters of all magic; the Orientals, Pepper to Hindostan; and in the Middle Ages
they had this proverb, Indulgences to RomeRome being the centre and source of this spiritual
traffic; and these by no means exhaust the list.
Let me adduce some other variations of the same
descriptions, though not running through quite so
many languages.  Thus compare the German, Who
lets one sit on his shoulders, shall have him presently sit on his head,t with the Italian, If thou
suffer a calf to be laid on thee, wtthin a little
they'll clap on the cow;4  and again, with the Spanish, Give me where I may sit down; I will make
where I may lie down.~  They all three plainly
contain one and the same hint that undue liberties
are best resisted at the outset, being otherwise liable to be followed up by other and greater ones;
but this under how rich and humorous a variety
of forms.  Not very different are these that follow.  We say: Daub yourself with honey, and
* ravKaas  isi'A0tvas.
t Wer sich auf der Achsel sitzen lasst, dem sitzt man nachher auf
dem Kopfe.: Se ti lasci metter in spalla il vitello, quindi a poco i metteran
la vacca.
~ Dame donde me asiente, que yo har6 donde me acueste.




VARIOUS FORMS OF PROVERBS.                13
you'll be covered  with flies-the  Danes:  Make
yourself an ass, and you'll have every man's sack
on your shoulders-while the French: Who makes
himself a sheep, the wolf devours him L — and the
Persians: Be not all sugar, or the world will swallow  thee 2Tp; to which they add, however, as its
necessary complement, nor yet all wormwood, or the
world will spit thee out.t  Or again, we are content to say without a figure, T/e receiver's as bad
as the thief; but tile French, He sins as much/ who
holds the sack, as he who puts into it;    and the
Germans, IHe who holds the ladder is as guilty as
he who mounts the wall.~   We say, A  stitch in
time savs nine; the Spaniards, Who will not repair
his gutter, repairss his whole house. 1T We  say,
Mzisfortunes never come single; the Italians have
no less than three proverbs to express the same popular conviction: Blessed is that minsfortune which
comes single; and again, One misfortune iS the
vigil of another; and again, A  misfortune and a
friar are seldom  alone.~   Or once more, the Russians say, Call a peasant "Brother," he'll demand
to be called "Father;" the Italians, Give a peasant
* Qui se fait brebis, le loup le mange.
f There is a Catalan proverb to the same effect: Qui de tot es
moll, de tot es foll.
I Autant peche celui qui tient le sac, que celui qui met dedans.
~ Wer die Leiter halt, ist so schuldig wie der Dieb.
I Quien no adoba gotera, adoba casa entera.
[ Benedetto e quel male, che vien solo.-Un mal  la vigilia dell'
altro.-Un male ed un Frate di rado soli.
4




74       PROVERBS OF NATIONS COMPARED.
your finger, he'll grasp yourfist.l   Many languages
have this proverb, God gives the cold according to
the cloth;   it is very beautiful, but attains not to
the tender beauty of our own, God tempers the
wind to the shorn lamb.
And, as in that last example, so not seldom will
there be an evident superiority of a proverb in one
language over one, which however resembles it
closely in another.  Moving in the same sphere, it
will yet be richer, fuller, deeper.  Thus our own,
A  burnt child fears the fire, is good; but that of
many tongues, A  scalded dog fears cold water, is
better still. Ours does but express that those who
have suffered once will henceforward be timid in
respect of that same thing whence they have suffered; but that other the tendency to exaggerate such
fears, so that now they shall fear even where no
fear is.  And the fact that so it will be, clothes itself in an almost infinite variety of forms.  Thus
one Italian proverb says: A  dog which has been
beaten with a stick, is afraid of its shadow; and
another, which could only have had its birth in the
sunny south, where the glancing but harmless lizard so often darts across our path: Whom a serpent
has bitten, a lizard alarms.'  With a little variation from this, the Jewish rabbis had said long
* Al villano, se gli porgi il dito, ei prende la mano.
f Dieu donne le froid selon le drap.-Cada cual siente el frio como
anda vestido.
$ Cui serpe mozzica, lucerta teme.




RABBINICAL PROVERBS.            7O
before: One bitten by a serpent, is afraid of a
rope's end; even that which bears so remote a resemblance to a serpent as this does, shall now inspire him  with terror; and the Cingalese, still
expressing the same thought, but with imagery
borrowed from their own tropic clime: The man
who has received a beating from a firebrand, runs
auway at sight of a irefly.
Some of our Lord's sayings contain the same lessons which the proverbs of the Jewish rabbis contained already; for he was willing to bring forth
even from his treasury things old as well as new;
but it is very instructive to observe how they acquire in his mouth a dignity and decorum which,
it may be, they wanted before. We are all familiar with that word in the Sermon on the mount,
"Whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go
with him twain."  The rabbis had a proverb to
match, lively and piquant enough, but certainly
lacking the gravity of this, and which never could
have fallen from the same lips: If thy neighbor
call thee an ass, put a packsaddle on thy back;
do not, that is, withdraw thyself from the wrong,
but rather go forward to meet it.  But thus, in
least, as in greatest, it was his to make all things
new.
Sometimes a proverb, without changing its shape
altogether, will yet on the lips of different nations
be slightly modified; and these modifications, slight




i76      PRIOVERBS OF NATIONS COMPARED.
as often they are, may not the less be eminently
characteristic. Thus in English we say, Thie river
ptast, and  God forgotten, to express with how
mournful a frequency, lie whose assistance was invoked, it may have been earnestly, in the moment
of peril, is remembered no more, so soon as by his
help the danger has been surmounted.  The Spaniards have the proverb too; but it is with them;'7le riverpast, the saint forgotten,* the saints being
in Spain more prominent objects of invocation than
God.  And the Italian form of it sounds a still sadder depth of ingratitude: The peril past, the saint
mocked;t the vows made to him in peril remaininlg unperformed in safety; and he treated something as, in Greek story, Juno was treated by Mandrabulus the Samian; who, having under her auspices and through her direction discovered a gold
mine, in his instant gratitude vowed to her a golden
rain; which he presently exchanged in intention for
a silver one; and again this for a very small brass
one; and this for nothing at all; the rapidly descending scale of whose gratitude, with the entire
disappearance of his thank-offering, might very
profitably live in our memories, as so perhaps it
would be less likely to repeat itself in our lives.
* El rio pasado, el santo olvidado.
t Passato il punto, gabbato il santo.




MERITS OF PROVERBS.             77
LECTURE IV.
THIE POETRY WIT) AND WISDOM OF PROVERBS.
IT will be my endeavor in the three lectures
whiclh I have still to deliver to justify the attention
which I have claimed on behalf of proverbs from
you, not merely by appealing to the authority of
others, who at different times have prized and made
much of them, but by bringing out and setting before you, so far as I have the skill to do it, some of
the merits and excellencies by which they are
mainly distinguished.  Their wit, their wisdom,
their poetry, the delicacy, the fairness, the manliness which characterize so many of them, their
morality, their theology, will all by turns come
under our consideration. Yet shall I beware of presenting them to you as though they embodied these
nobler qualities only. I shall not keep out of sight
tlat there are proverbs, course, selfish, unjust, cowardly, profane; " maxims" wholly undeserving of
the honor implied by that name.*  Still as my
pleasure, and I doubt not yours, is rather with the
* Reguise quce inter maximas numerari merentur.




78        THE POETRY ETC. OF PROVERBS.
wheat than with the tares, I shall while I do not
conceal this, prefer to dwell in the main on the nobler features which they present.
And first, in regard of the poetry of proverbswhatever isfrom the people, or trulyfor the people,
whatever either springs from their bosom, or has
been cordially accepted by them, still more whatever unites both these conditions, will have poetry,
inmagination, in it. For little as the people's craving
after wholesome nutriment of the imaginative faculty, and after an entrance into a fairer and more
harmonious world than that sordid and confused
one with which often they are surrounded, is duly
met and satisfied, still they yearn after all this with
an honest hearty yearning, which must put to shame
the pallid indifference, the only affected enthusiasm
of too many, whose opportunities of cultivating this
glorious faculty have been so immeasurably greater
than theirs. This being so, the proverbs being, as
we have seen, the sayings that have found favor
with the people, their peculiar inheritance, we may
be quite sure that there will be poetry, imagination,
passion, in them. So much we might affirm beforehand; our closer examination of them will confirm the confidence which we have been bold to
en tertainl.
Tllns we may expect to find that they will contain often bold imagery, striking comparisons; and
such they d<~. Let serve as an example our own:




IMAGERY IN PROVERBS.                79
Gray hairs are death's blossoms;* or the Italian:
Time is an inaudible file;t or the Greek:  lan a
bubble,4 which Jeremy Taylor has expanded into
such glorious poetry in the opening of the Holy
Dying; or that Turkish: Death, is a black camel
which kneels at every man's gate; to take up, that
is, the burden of a coffin there; or this Arabic one,
on the never satisfied eye of desire: Nothing b1lt
a handful of dust will fill the eye of nCan; or another fiom  the same quarter, worthy of Mecca's
prophet himself, and of the earnestness with which
he realized Gelenna, whatever else he may have
come short in: There are no fans in hell; or this
other, also from  the east: Siold all skirts of thy
mantle extended, when heaven is raciing gold; improve, that is, to the uttermost the happier crises
of thy spiritual life; or this one, current in tile
Middle Ages: Whose life lightens, his words thunder;  or once more, this Chinese: Towers are
measured by their shadows, and great metn by their
calumniators; however this last may have somewhat of an artificial air as tried by our standard of
the proverb.
There may be poetry in a play upon words; and
such we shall hardly fail to acknowledge in that
* In German: Grail' Hare sind Kirchkofsblumen.
~ I1 tempo b una lima sorda.
+ ilopo6'v' O a~Opw^Trog.
Cujus vita fulgor, ejus verba tonitrua. Cf. Mark iii. 17: vtol
tPol; rti].




80        TIIE POETRY, ETC. OF PROVERBS.
beautiful Spanish proverb: La verdad es sienmpre
verde, which I nust leave in its original form; for
w ere I to translate it, The truth, is always green, its
charm  and chief beauty would be looked for in
vain. It finds its pendant and complement in another, lwhich I must also despair of adequately rendering: Glorica vanac Jorece, y no ygracga; which
would express this truth, namely, that vain glory
can shoot up into stalk and ear, but can never attain
to the full grain in the ear.  Nor can we, I tlink,
refuse the title of poetry to this eastern proverb, in
which the wish that a woman may triuumph over
her enemies, clothes itself thus: 2fay her enemies
stunmble over her hair; —may she flourish so, may
her hair, the outward sign of this prosperity, grow
so rich and long, may it so sweep the ground, that
her detractors and persecutors may be entangled
by it and ihll.
And then, how exquisitely witty lmany proverbs
are.  Thus, not to speak of one familiar to us all,
which is perlaps thle queen of all proverbs: The
road to hell is paved with good intentions:   take
this Scotch one: A  man nmay love his  house well
without riding  on the ridge; it is enough for a
wise man to know what is precious to himself, without making himself ridiculous by everlore pro* Admirably glossed in the Guesses at Trluth: "Pluck up the
stones, ye sluggards, and break the devil's head with them."




WIT OF PROVERBS.                 81
claiming it to the world; or this of our own: When
the devil is dead, he never wants a chief mourner;
in other words, there is no abuse so enormous, no
evil so crying, but that the interests or passions of
some will be so bound up in its continuance that
they will lament its extinction; or this Italian:
TWhen rogues go in procession, the devil holds the
cross;* when evil men have it thus far their own
way, then worst is best, and in the inverted hierarchy which is then set up, the foremost in badness is foremost also in such honor as is going.  Or
consider this German one, in which the tender mercies of the feudal lords, of whom one is supposed to
be speaking, are excellently parodied: One qmust
be too hard on the peasants;-hew off his hands
and his feet.t  Or, take another from  the same
quarter, noting with slightest exaggeration a measure of charity which is only too common: He will
swallow an egg, and give away the shells in alms.
The wit of proverbs spares few or none. They
are, as may be supposed, especially intolerant of
fools.  Ie say: Fools grow without watering; no
need therefore of adulation or flattery, to quicken
them to a ranker growth; and the Russians: Fools
are not planted or sowed; they grow of themselves;
while the Spaniards: If folly were a pain, there
* Quando i furbi vanno in processione, il diavolo porta la croce.
t Der Bauer ist nit zu verderben: man hau' ihm denn Hand und
Fuss ab.
4*




82              POETRY, ETC., OF PROVERBS.
would be crying in every house;* having further an
exquisitely witty one on learned folly as the most
intolerable of all follies: A  fool, unless he knows
Latin, is never a greatfool.t   And here is excellently unfolded to us the secret of the fool's confidence: 1Who knows nothing, doubts nothing.4
The shafts of their pointed satire are directed
with  an  admirable  impartiality  against men  of
every degree, so that none of us will be found to
have wholly escaped. To pass over those, and they
are  exceedingly  numerous, which  are  aimed  at
members of the monastic orders,~ I must fain hope
that this Bohemian one, pointing at the clergy, is
not true; for it certainly argues no very forgiving
temper on our parts in cases where we have been,
or fancy ourselves to have been wronged.  It is as
follows: If you have ofended a clerk, kill hinm;
else you  never will have peace with him,.l     And
another proverb, worthy to take its place among
the best even of the Spanish, charges the clergy
with being the authors of the chiefest spiritual mischiefs which have arisen up in the church: By the
* Si la locura fuese dolores, en cada casa darian voces.
f Tonto, sin saber Latin, nunca es gran tonto.
t Qui rien ne spait, de rien ne doute.
~ An earnest preacher of righteousness just before the Reformation
quotes this one as current about them: Quod agere veretur obstinatus diabolus, intrepide agit reprobus et contumax monachus.
11 It is Huss who, denouncing the sins of the clergy of this day,
has preserved this proverb for us: Malum proverbium contra nos
confinxerunt, dicentes, Si offenderis clericum, interfice eum; alias
nunquam habebis pacem cum illo.




SATIRE OF PROVERBS.                83
vicar's skirts the devil climbs up into the belfry.*
Nor do physicians appear in the Middle Ages to
have been in very high reputation for piety; for a
Latin medieval proverb boldly proclaims: W'here
there are three physicians, there are two atheists.t
And as for lawyers, this of the same period, Legista,
nequista,4 expresses itself not with such brevity
only, but with such downright plainness of speech,
that I shall excuse myself from attempting to render it into English. Nor do other sorts and conditions of men escape.  " The miller tolling with his
golden thumb," has been often the object of malicious insinuations; and of him the Germans have a
proverb: What is bolder than a miller s neckeloth,
which takes a thief by the throat every morning?~
Evenhanded justice might perhaps require that I
should find caps for other heads; and it is not that
such are wanting, nor yet out of fear lest any should
be offended, but only because I must needs hasten
onward, that I leave this part of my subject without
further development.
What a fine knowledge of the human heart will
they often display. I know not whether this Persian saying on the subtleties of pride is a proverb
in the very strictest sense of the word, but it is
* Por las haldas del vicario sube el diablo al campanario.
t Ubi tres Medici, duo Athei.
t In German: Juristen, bosen Christen.
~ Bebel: Dicitur in proverbio nostro; nihil esse audacius indusio
molitoris, cum omni tempore matutino furem collo apprehendat.




84           POETRY, ETC.) OF PROVERBS.
forcibly uttered: Thou shalt sooner detect an ant
moving in tlie dark night on the black earth, thacn
all the motions of pride in thine heeat.  And on
the wide reach of this sin the Italians say: If pride
were as art, how many graduates we should have;*
and how  excellent and searching is this word of
theirs on the infiniteiy various sliapes which this
protean sin will assumlee: There are who despise
pride with, a greater pride,t one which might
almost seem to have been founded on the story of
Diogenes, who, treading under his feet a rich carpet of Plato's, exclaimed, "Thus I trample on the
ostentation of Plato;' " "With an ostentation  of
thine own," was the other's excellent retort; -even
as on another occasion he observed, with admirable wit, that lie saw the pride of the cynic peeping
through the rents of his mantle: for indeed pride
can array itself quite as easily in rags as in purple;
can affect squalors as earnestly as splendors; the
lowest place and tle last is of itself no security at
all for humility; and out of a sense of this we very
well have said: As proud go behind as before.
Somnetiines in their subtle observation of life,
they arrive at conclusions which we would very
willingly question or reject, but to which it is impossible to refuse a certain amount of assent.  Thus
it is with the very striking German proverb: One
* Se la s!per'bla f,).s,:3 rte, quanti Dottori avressimo.
+ Tal sprezza la sn,-erbia con una maggior superbia.




LOVE OF PARENTS AND CIItLDREN.         85
foe is too many; and a hundred friends too few.*
There speaks out in this a sense of how much more
active a principle in this world will hate be sometimes than love.  The hundred friends will wish
you well; but the one foe will do you ill.  Their
benevolence will be ordinarily passive; his malevolence will be constantly active; it will be ani9mosity, or spiritedness in evil. The proverb will
have its use, if we are stirred up by it to prove its
assertion false, to show that, in very many cases at
least, there is no such blot as it would set on the
scutcheon of true friendship. In the same rank of
unwelcome proverbs I must range this Persian one:
Of four things every man has more than he lknows 
of sins, of debts, of years, and of foes; and this
Spanish: One father can support ten children; ten
children can not support one father; which, in so
far as it rests upon a certain ground of truth, suggests a painful reflection in regard of the less
strength which there must be in the filial than in
the paternal affection, since to the one those acts of
self-sacrificing love are easy, which to the other
are hard, and often impossible.  But yet, seeing
that it is the order of God's providence in the world
that fathers should in all cases support children,
while it is the exception when children are called
to support parents, one can only admire that wisdom which has made the instincts of natural affec* Ein Feind ist zu vie]; und hundert Freunde sind zu wenig.




86         POETRY', E1T'C., OF PREOVERBS.
tion to run rather in the descending than in the ascending line; a wisdom  to which this proverb,
though with a certain exaggeration of the facts,
bears witness.
How exquisitely delicate is the touch of this
French proverb: It is easy to go afoot when one
leads one's horse by the bridle.*  How fine and
subtle an insight into the inner workings of the human heart is here; how many cheap humilities are
here set at their true worth. It is easy to stoop
from state, when that state may be resumed at will;
easy for one to part with luxuries and indulgences,
which he only parts with exactly so long as it may
please himself. No reason, indeed, is to be found
in this comparative easiness for the not'going
afoot;' on the contrary, it may be to him a most
profitable exercise; but every reason for not esteeming the doing so too highly, nor setting it in value
beside the trudging upon foot of him who has no
horse to fall back on whatever moment he may
please.
There is, and always must be, some rough work
to be done in the world; work which, though
rough, is not therefore, in the least, ignoble; and
the schemes, so daintily conceived, of a luxurious
society, which repose on a tacit assumption that nobody shall have to do this work, are touched with
a fine irony in this Arabic proverb: If I am
* 11 est ais6 d'aller a pied, quand on tient son cheval par la bride.




FULLER S USE OF PROVERBS.            87
master and thou art master, who shall drive the
asses? *
Again, how clever is the satire of the following
IHaytien proverb, which, however, I must introduce
with a little preliminary explanation.  It was one
current among the slave population of St. Domingo,
and with it they ridiculed the ambition and pretension of the mulatto race immediately above them,
who, in imitation of the French planters, must have
their duels too   duels, however, which had nothing
earnest or serious about them, invariably ending in
a reconciliation and a feast, the kids which furnished the latter being in fact the only sufferers,
their blood that which alone was shed. All this
the proverb uttered: Jldafttoes fight, kids die.t
And proverbs, witty in themselves, often become
wittier still in their application, like gems that acquire new brilliancy from their setting, or from
some novel light in which they are held. No writer that I know of has a happier skill in thus adding
wit to the witty than Fuller, the church historian.
Let me confirm this assertion by one or two examples drawn from his writings.  He is describing the
indignation, the outcries, the remonstrances, which
the thousandfold extortions, the intolerable exac* The Galligan proverb, You a lady, I a lady, who shall drive the
hogs a-field? (Vos dona, yo dona, quen botara a porca fora?) is only
a variation of this.
f Mulates qua battent, cabrite qua morts.




S8          POETRY, ETC., OF PROVERBS.
tions of the papal see gave birth to in England duaring the reigns of such subservient kings as our
Third Henry; yet he will not have his readers to
suppose that the popes fared a whit the worse for
all this outcry which was raised against them; not
so, for The fox thrives best when he is most cursed;*
the very loudness of the clamor was itself rather an
evidence how well they were faring.  Or again, he
is telling of that duke of Buckingham, well known
to us through Shakespeare's Richcard the Third,
who, having helped the tyrant to a throne, afterward took mortal displeasure against him; this displeasure he sought to hide, till a season arrived for
showing it with effect, in the deep of his heart, but
in vain; for, as Fuller observes, It is hard to halt
before a cripple; the arch-hypocrite Richard, he
to whom  dissembling was as a second nature, saw
through and detected at once the shallow Buckingham's clumsier deceit.  And the Church History
abounds with similar happy applications. Fuller,
indeed, possesses so much of the wit out of which
proverbs spring, that it is not seldom difficult to tell
whether he is adducing a proverb, or uttering some
proverb-like saying of his own.  Thus, I can not
remember ever to have met any of the following,
which yet sound like proverbs —the first on solitude as preferable to ill-companionship: Better ride
* A proverb of many tongues beside our own: thus in the Italian:
Quanto pih ]a volpe 5 maladetta, tanto maggior preda fa.




TIIE GLORY OF PROVERBS.           89
alone than have a thief's company;  the second
against certain who disparaged one whose excellencies they would have found it very difficult to imitate: They who complain, that Grantham steeple
stands awry, will not set a straighter by it,t and in
this he warns against despising in any the tokens
of honorable toil: Mlock not a cobbler for his black
th/i'mbs.'
But the glory of proverbs-that, perhaps, which
strikes us most often and most forcibly in regard of
them-is their shrewd common sense, the sound
wisdom for the management of our own lives, and
of our intercourse with our fellows, which so many
of them contain. In truth, there is no region of
practical life which they do not occupy, for which
they do not supply some wise hints and counsels
and warnings; there is hardly a mistake which in
the course of our lives we have committed, but
some proverb, had we known and attended to its
lesson, might have saved us from it. "Adages,"
indeed, according to the more probable etymology
of that word, they are-aptfor action and use.~
Thus, hlow many of these popular sayings and
what good ones there on the wisdom of governing
the tongue: I speak not now of those urging the
duty, though such are by no means wanting, but
* Holy State, B. 3, c. 5.  t B. 2, c. 23.  t B. 3, c. 2.
~ Adagia, ad agendum apta; this is the etymology of the word
given by Festus.




90          POETRY, ETC. OF PROVERBS.
the wisdom, prudence, and profit, of knowing how
to keep silence as well as how to speak. The Persian, perhaps, is familiar to many: Speech is silvern,
silence is golden; with which we may compare the
Italian, He who speaks, sows; he who keeps silence,
reaps:* and on the safety that is in silence, I know
none happier than another fiom the same quarter,
and one most truly characteristic: Silence was
never written down;t while, on the other hand,
we are excellently warned of the irrevocableness
of the word which has once gone from us in this
Eastern proverb: Of thine unspoken word thou art
master; thy spoken word is master of thee: even
as the same is set out elsewhere by many striking
comparisons: it is the arrow from the bow, the stone
from the sling; and, once launched, can as little
be recalled as these.:  Our own, He who says what
he likes, shall hear what he does not like, gives a
further motive for self-government in speech; and
this Spanish is in a higher strain: The evil which
issues fromt thy mouth falls into thy bosom.~  Nor
is it enough to abstain ourselves from all such
words; we must not make ourselves partakers in
those of others, which it is only too easy to do; for,
* Chi parla semina, chi tace raccoglie.
t I1 tacer non fui mai scritto.: Palabra de boca, piedra de honda.-Palabra y piedra suelta no
tiene vuelta.
~ El mal que de tu boca sale, en tu senso se c.ae.




WARNINGS IN PROVERBS.               91
as the Chinese have said very well: lie who laughs
at an im2pertinence makes himself its accomplice.
And then, in proverbs not a few, what profitable
warnings have we against the fruits of evil companionship, as in that homely one of our own, lie
that lies down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas;*
or again, in tle old Iebrew one, Two dry sticks will
set on fire one green; or, in another from the East,
which belongs to the same theme, and plainly shows
wrhither suell companionship will lead, fie that takes
the 7raven for  a guide, shall light upon carrion.
What warnings do many contain against unreasonable expectations, against a looking for perfection in a world of imperfection, and generally a
demanding of more firom  life than life can yield.
Te note very well the folly of one addicted to this,
saying, He expects better bread than caen be mzade
of wheat; and the Portuguese, lie that will have
a horse without fault, let hin  go a-foot.  Again,
what a good word of caution in respect of the wisdom of considering oftentimes a step which, being
once taken, is taken for ever, lies in the following
Russian proverb: Mleasure thy cloth ten times;
thou canst cut it but once.  And in this Spanish the
final isnes of procrastination are well set forth: By
the street of "By-and-by," one arrives at the house
of "Neve)r."t  In how pleasant a way the avoiding
* Quien con perros se echa, con pulgas se levanta.
t Por la calle de despues se va a la casa de nunca.




92          POETRY, ETC., OF PROVERBS.
of all appearance of evil is urged in the following
Chinese: In a field of melons tie not thy shoe;
under a plum-tree adjust not thy cap.  And this
Danish warns us well against relying too much on
other men's silence, since there is no rarer gift than
the capacity of keeping a secret: Tell nothing to
thy friend qwhich  thou  wouldst not have thine
enemy to know.  Here is a word which we owe to
Italy, and which, laid to heart, might keep men out
of lawsuits, or, being in them, fiom  refusing to accept tolerable terms of accommodation: The robes
of lawyers are lined with the obstinacy of suitors.*
Other words of wisdom and learning, for so I must
esteem them, are these; this on the danger of being
overset by prosperity: Everything may be borne,
except good fortune;t with which may be compared our own, Bear wealth, poverty will bear itself; and another Italian, which says, InZ prosperity
no altars smole.e  Tllis is on the disgrace which
will, sooner or later, follow upon dressing ourselves
out in intellectual finery that does not belong to us:
Who arrays himself in other men's garments, they
strip higm in the middle of the street;~ he is detected and laid bare, when and where detection is
most shameful.
* Le vesti degl' avvocati sono fodraet dell' ostinazion dei litiganti.
f Ogni cosa si sopporta, eccetto il buon tempo.
4 Nella prosperit.i non fumono g' altari.
~ Quien con ropa agella se visile,:e  la (ealle  e io eda en(Icueros.




SHREWD SENSE IN PROVERBS.                93
Of the same miscellaneous character, and derived
fiom quarters the most diverse, but all of them of
an excellent sense or shrewdness, are the following.
This from Italy: Who sees not the bottom, let him,
not pass the water.*  This is current among the free
blacks of Hayti: Before crossing the river, do not
curse the crocodile's mother:t provoke not wantonly those in whose power you presently may be.
This is Spanish: Call me not " olive," till you see
me gathered;t being nearly parallel to our own,
Praise afair day at night; and this French, Take
the first advice of a woman, and not the second;  a
proverb of much wisdom; for in processes of reasoning, out of which the second counsels would
spring, women may and will be inferior to us; but
in intuitions, in moral intuitions above all, they surpass us far; they have what Montaigne ascribes to
them  in a remarkable word, l'esprit primesautier,
the leopard's spring, which takes its prey, if it be to
take it at all, at the first bound.
And I can not but think, that, for as many as are
seeking diligently to improve their time and opportunities of knowledge, with, at the same time, little
* Chi non vede il tondo, no passi 1' acqua.
t Avant travers6 rivier, pas jur6 maman caiman. This and one
or two other Haytien proverbs quoted in this volume I have derived
from a curious article, Les mccurs et la litterature negres, by Gustave
D'Alaux, in the Revue des deux Afondes, Mai 15', 1852.
t No me digas oliva, hasta que me veas cogida.
~ Prends le premier conseil d'une femme, et non le second.




91         POETRY, ETC., OF PROVERBS.
of either which they can call their own, a very
useful hint and warning against an error which lies
very near, is contained in the little Latin proverb,
Comnpendia, dispendia.  Nor indeed for them only,
but for all, and in numberless respects it often
proves true that a short cut may be a very long
way home; yet the proverb can never be applied
better than to those little catechisms of science,
those skeleton outlines of history, those epitomes
of all useful information, those thousand delusive
short-cuts to the attainment of that knowledge
which can indeed only be acquired by them that
travel on the king's highway -on the old, and as I
must still call it, the royal road of patience, perseverance, and toil. Surely these compendia, so meager and so hnngry, with little food for the intellect,
with less for the affections, we may style with fullest right dispendia, wasteful as they generally
prove of whatever time and labor and money is
bestowed upon them.
And being on the subject of books and the choice
of books, let me put before you a proverb, and in
this reading age a very serious one; it comes to us
from Italy, and it says, There is no worse robber
than a bad book.*  Indeed, none worse, nor so bad;
other robbers may spoil us of our money; but this
one of our " goods"-of our time at any rate, even
assuming the book to be only negatively bad; but
* Non v' 6 il peggior ladro d'un cattivo libro.




PRUDENT WORDS ON EDUCATION.           95
of how much more, of our principles, our faith, our
purity of heart, supposing its badness to be positive,
and not negative only.
Here are one or two prudent words on education. A child may have too much of its mothers'
blessing; yes, for that blessing may be no blessing,
but rather a curse, if it take the shape of foolish
and fond indulgence; and in the same strain is this
German: Better the child weep than the father.*
And this, like many others, is found in so many
tongues, that it can not be ascribed to one rather
than another: Idore springs in the garden than the
gardener ever sowed.t  It is a proverb for many,
but most of all for parents and teachers, that they
lap not themselves in a false dream of security, as
though nothing was at work or growing in the
minds of the young in their guardianship, but what
they themselves had sown there, as though there
was not another who might very well have sown
his tares beside and among any good seed of their
sowing.  At the same time the proverb has also its
happier side. There may be, there often are, better
things also in this garden than ever the earthly
gardener set there, seeds of the more immediate
sowing of God. In either of its aspects this proverb is one deserving to be laid to heart.
Proverbs will sometimes outrun and implicitly
* Es ist besser, das Kind weine denn der Vater.
t Nace en la huerta lo que no siembra el hortelano.




96          POETRY, ETC., OF PROVERBS.
anticipate conclusions, wlich are only after long
struggles and efforts arrived at as the formal and
undoubted conviction of all thoughtful men. After
how long a conflict has that been established as a
maxim in political economy, which the brief Italian
proverb long ago announced: Gold's worth is gold.*
What millions upon millions of national wealth have
been as good as thrown into the sea, from the inability of those who have had the destinies of nations in their hands to grasp this simple proposition,
that everything which could purchase money, or
which money would fain purchase, was as really
wealth as the money itself.  What forcing of national industries into unnatural channels has resulted from this! what mischievous restrictions in
the buying and selling of one people with another!
Nay, can the truth which this proverb affirms be
said even now to be accepted without gainsayingso long as the talk about the balance of trade being
in favor of or against a nation, as the fear of draining a country of its gold, still survive?
Here is a proverb of many tongues: One sword
keeps another in its scabbard;* surely a far wiser
and far manlier word than the puling yet mischievous babble of our shallow peace societies, which,
* Oro a, che oro vale; and of the multitudes that are rushing to
the Australian gold-fields, some may find this also true: Pii vale
guadagnar in loto che perder in oro.
* Una spada tien 1' altra nel fodro.




TIHE SWORD-BEAREl.              97
while they fancy that they embody, and they only
embody, the true spirit of Ghristianity, proclaim
themselves in fact ignorant of all which it teaches;
for they dream of having peace the fiuit, while at
the same time the root of bitterness out of which
have grown all the wars and fightings that have
ever been in the world, namely the lusts which stir
in mnen's members, remain strong and vigorous as
ever.  But no; it is not they that are the peacemakers: in the face of an evil world, and of a world
determined to continue in its evil, He who bears the
sword-and though he fain would not, yet knows
how, if need be, to wield it-bearspeace.*
Let me add another proverb, bearing on a subject
which is occupying all patriot hearts in England at
this present time: Far-off water will not quench
near fire.t  They who watch, and are answerable
to their fellow-countrymen, for the safety of this our
beloved land, and not for its safety only, but the
inviolated honor of its shores, have laid to heart, if
not the proverb, yet at all events the truth which
it embodies, having resolved that an English fleet
shall guard our English coasts.  And this is well;
for let us only suppose that a blow were struck at
this mighty's empire's heart, at the home and sanctuary of its greatness-no improbable supposition,
when force and fraud are met together, and are
* Qui porte epee, porte paix.
t Acqua lontana non spegne fuoco vicino.
5




98          POETRY, ETC., OF PROVERBS.
watching their opportunity to strike it-what profit
would it then be that the mighty armaments of
England covered the distant seas, that her soldiers
were winning comparatively barren victories in
Africa and the East? The far-of water, as this
proverb warns us, would altogether be useless for
quenching the near fire.
One of the most remarkable features of a good
proverb is the singular variety of applications which
it will admit, which indeed it challenges and invites.
Not lying on the surface of things, but going deep
down to their heart, it will be found capable of being applied again and again, under circumstances
the most different; like the gift of which Solomon
spake, " whithersoever it turneth, it prospereth;"
or like a diamond cut and polished upon many
sides, which reflects and refracts the light upon
every one. There can be no greater mistake than
the attempt to tie it down and restrict it to a single
application, when indeed the very character of it is
that it is ever finding or making new ones for itself.
It is nothing strange that, with words of Eternal
Wisdom, this should be so, and, in respect of them,
my assertion can not need a proof. I will, notwithstanding, adduce as a first confirmation of it a
scriptural proverb, one which fell from the Lord's
lips in his last prophecies about Jerusalem, TWAeresoever the carease is, there will the eagles be gathered toyether (Matt. xxiv. 28), and which probably




THE CARCASE AND TIlE EAGLES.         99
he had talen up from Job xxxix. 30. Who would
venture to say that he had exhausted the meaning
of this wonderful saying? For is it not properly
inexhaustible? All history is a comment on these
words. Wherever there is a church or a people
abandoned by the spirit of life, and so a carcase,
tainting the atmosphere of God's moral world,
around it assemble the ministers and messengers
of Divine justice, "the eagles" (or vultures, more
strictly, for the true eagle does not feed on aught
but what itself has slain), the scavengers of God's
moral world, scenting out as by a mysterious instinct the prey from  afar, and charged to remove
presently the offence out of the way. This proverb, for the saying has passed upon the lips of men,
and tlhus has become such, is being fulfilled evermore. The wicked Canaanites were the carcase,
when the children of Israel entered into their land,
the commissioned eagles that should remove them
out of sight.  At a later day the Jews were themselves the carcase, and the Romans the eagles; and
when, in the progress of decay, the Roman empire
had quite lost the spirit of life, and those virtues of
the family and the nation which had deservedly
made it great, the northern tribes, the eagles now,
came down upon it, to tear it limb from limb, and
make room for a new creation that should grow up
in its stead. Again, the Persian empire was the
carcase; Alexander and his Macedonian hosts the




100         POETRY, ETC., OF PROVERBS.
eagles that by unerring instinct gathered round it
to complete its doom.  The Greek church in the
seventh century was too nearly a carease to escape
the destiny of such, and the armies of Islam scented
their prey, and divided it among them.  In modern
times, Poland was, I fear, such a carcase; and this
one may affirm, without in the least extenuating
their guilt who partitioned it; for it might have
been just for it to suffer, what yet it -was most unrighteous for others to inflict.  Nay, where do you
not find an illustration of this proverb, from  such
instances on the largest scale as these, down to that
of the silly and profligate heir, surrounded by sharpers and blacklegs, and preyed on by these? Everywhere it is true that Wheresoever the carcase is,
there will the eagles be gathered together.
Or, again, consider such a proverb as the short
but well-known one, Extremes meet.  Short as it
is, it is yet a motto on which whole volumes might
be written, which is finding its illustration every
day, in small and in great, in things trivial and in
things most important, in the histories of single
men, and in those of nations and of churches.  Consider some of its every-day fulfilments-old age
ending in second childhood; cold performing the
effects of heat, and scorching as bleat would have
done; the extremities of joy and of grief alike
finding utterance in tears; the second singular
"thou" instead of the plural "you," employed in




EXTIEMES MEET.               101
so many languages to inferiors and to God, never
to equals; just as servants and children are alike
called by the Christian name, but not those who
stand in the midway of intimacy between them.
Or to take some further illustrations from the moral
world, of extremes meeting; observe how  often
those who begin their lives as spendthrifts end
them  as misers; how often the flatterer and the
calumniator meet in the same person; out of a
sense of which the Italians say well, iWho pctints
me before, blackens me behind;  observe how those
who yesterday would have sacrificed to Paul as a
god will to-day stone him as a malefactor (Acts xiv.
18, 19: cf. xxviii. 4-6); even as Roman emperors
would one day have blasphemous honors paid to
them  by the populace, and the next their bodies
would be dragged by a hook through the streets of
the city, to be flung into the common sewer.  Or
note again in what close alliance hardness and softness, cruelty and self-indulgence ("lust hard by
hate"), are continually found; or in law, how tile
sum.mum jus, where unredressed by equity, becomes the summa injutria, as in the case of Shylock's pound of flesh, which was indeed no more
than was in the bond.  Or observe on a greater
scale, as lately in France, how a wild and lawless
democracy may be transformed by the base trick
of a conjuror into an atrocious military tyranny.'t
* Chi dinanzi mi pinge. di dietro mi tinge.
f How and why it is that extremes here meet, and what are the




102           POETRY, ETC., OF PROVERBS.
Or read thougltfally the history of the church and
of the sects, and you will not fail to note what
things apparently the most remote are yet in the
most fearful proximity with one another: how often,
for example, a false ascetism  has issued in frantic
outbreaks of fleshly lusts, and those who avowed
themselves at one  time ambitious to  live  lives
above men, have ended in living lives below beasts.
Again, take note of England  at the Restoration
exchanging all in a moment the sour strictness of
the puritans for a license and debauchery unknown
to it before. Or, once more, consider the exactly
similar position in respect of scripture, taken up by
the Romanists on the one side, the quakers and
familists on the  other.  Seeming, and  in  much
being, so remote from  one another, they yet have
this fundamental in common, that scripture, insufficient in itself, needs a supplement from  without,
those finding it in a pope, and these in what they
call the "inward light."  Witl these examples before you, not to speak of the many others which
might be adduced,* you will own, I think, that this
proverb, Extremes meet-or its parallel, Too far east
is west —reiches very far into the heart of things:
and with tllis, for the present, I must conclude.
inner affinities between a democracy and a tyranny, Plato has wonderfully traced (Rep. ii. p. 217).
* "Extremes meet. Truths, of all others the most awful and intercsting, arc too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power
of truths, and lie, bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side
with the most despised and exploded errors."-Coleridge, Aids, &c.




THE MORALITY PROVERBS..         103
LECTURE Y.
THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS.
THE morality of proverbs is a subject which I
have not been able to leave wholly untouched until
now, for of necessity it has offered itself to us continually, in one shape or anotherl; yet hitherto I
have not regularly dealt with or considered it. To
it I propose to devote the present lecture. But
how, it may be asked at the outset, can any general
verdict be pronounced about them? In a family
like theirs, spread so widely over the face of the
earth, are there not to be found worthy members
and unworthy, proverbs noble and base, holy and
profane, heavenly and earthly;-yea, heavenly,
earthly, and devilish? What common judgment
of phrase or censure can be pronounced on all
these? Evidently none. The only question, therefore, for our consideration must be, whether there
exists any such large and unquestionable preponderance either of the better sort or of the worse, as
shall give us a right to pronounce a judgment on
the whole in their favor or against them, to affirm
of them that their prevailing influence and weight




104        THIE MORALITY OF PROVERBS.
are thrown into the balance of the good or of the
evil.
And here I am persuaded that no one can have
devoted any serious attention to this aspect of the
subject, but will own (and seeing how greatly popular morals are affected by popular proverbs, will
own with thankfulness), that, if not without serious
exceptions, yet still in the main they range themselves under the banners of the right and of the
truth; le will allow that of so many as move in
an ethical sphere at all, very far more are children
of light and the day than of darkness and night.
Indeed, the comparative paucity of unworthy proverbs is a very noticeable fact, and one to the causes
of which I shall have presently to recur.
At the same time, when I affirm this, I find it
necessary to make certain explanations, to draw
certain distinctions. In the first place, I would not
in so saying, in the least deny that an ample number of coarse proverbs are extant: it needs but to
turn over a page or two of Ray's Collection of
English Proverbs, or indeed of any collection in
any tongue, which has not been weeded carefully,
to convince oneself of the fact; nor yet would I
deny,that of these many may, more or less, live on
the lips of men. Having their birth, for the most
part, in a period of a nation's literature and life
when men are much more plain-spoken, and have
far fewer reticences than is afterward the case, it




PROVERBS SEEMINGLY IMMIORAL.        105
is nothing strange that some of them, employing
words forbidden now, but not forbidden then, should
sound coarse and indelicate enough in our ears:
while indeed there are others, whose offence and
grossness these considerations, while they may mitigate, are quite insufficient to excuse.  But at the
same time, gross words and images (I speak not of
wanton ones), bad as they may be, are altogether
different from immoral maxims and rules of life.
And it is these immoral maxims, unrighteous, selfish, or otherwise unworthy rules, of which I would
affirm  the number to be, if not absolutely, yet relatively small.
And then further, in estimating the morality of
proverbs, this also will claim in justice not to be
forgotten. In the same manner as coarse proverbs
are not necessarily immoral, so the application
which is made of a proverb by us may very often
be hardhearted and selfish, while yet the proverb
itself is very far from  so being. This selfishness
and hardness lay not in it of primary intention, but
only by our abuse; and in the cases of several,
these two things, the proverb itself, and the ordinary employment of it, will demand to be kept carefully apart from one another. For instance: Hre
has made -his bed, anrd niow   e qmnust lie on it; As
he has brewed, so he 2must drin k; As he has sown,
so must he recap;  if these are employed to justify
* They have for their Latin equivalents such as these: Colo quod
5*




106        THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS.
us in refusing to save others, so far as we may, from
the consequences of their own folly, or imprudence,
or even guilt, why then one can only say that they
are very ill employed: and there are few of us
with whom it would not have gone hardly, had all
those about us acted in the spirit of these proverbs
so misinterpreted; had they refused to mitigate for
us, so far as they could, the consequences of our
errors.  But if the words are taken in their true
sense, as homely announcements of that law  of
divine retaliations in the world, according to which
men shall eat of the fruit of their own doings, and
be filled with their own ways, who shall gainsay
them? What affirm they more than every page of
Scripture, every turn of human life, is affirming too,
namely, that the everlasting order of God's universe can not be violated with impunity, that there
is a continual returning upon men of what they
have done, and that in their history we may read
their judgment.
Charity beyins at home, is the most obvious and
familiar of these proverbs, selfishly abused.  It
may be, no doubt it often is, made the plea for a
selfish withholding of assistance from all but a few,
whom men may include in their " at home," while
sometimes the proverb receives a narrower interpretation still, and self and self only, is accounted
aptasti, ipsi tibi nendum est;-Ut sementem feceris, ita metes;-Qui
vinum bibit, faecem bibat.




SELFISH ABUSE OP PROVElRBS.           107
to be "at home."  And yet, in truth, what were
that charity worth, which did not begin at home,
which did not preserve the divine order and proportion  and degree     Not for nothing have we
been grouped in families, neighborhoods, and nations; and lie who will not recognise the divinely
appointed nearnesses to himself of some over others,
who thinks to be a cosmopolite without being a
patriot, a philanthropist without owning a distinguishing love for them that are peculiarly "his
own," who would thus have a circumference without a centre, deceives his own heart, and affirming
all men to be equally dear to him, is indeed affirming  them  to be equally indifferent.  Home, the
family, this is as the hearth at'which the affections
which are afterward to go forth and warm  in a
larger circle, are themselves to be kept lively and
warm; and the charity which  did not exercise
itself in outcomings of kindness and love in the
narrower, would be little likely to seek a wider
range for itself. Wherever else it may end, and
the larger the sphere which it makes for itself the
better, it must yet begin at home.*;
There are, again, proverbs which, from another
point of view, might seem of an ignoble cast, and
* In respect of other proverbs, such as the following, Tunica pallio
propior;-Frons occipitio prior; —I have greater doubt. The misuse
lies nearer; the selfishness may very probably be in the proverb
itself, and not in our application of it; though even these seem not
incapable of a fair interpretation.




108        THE MIORALITY OF PROVERBS.
as calculated to lower the tone of morality among
those that received them; proposing as they do
secondary, and therefore unworthy, motives to actions, which ought to be performed out of the highest. I mean such as this: Honesty is the best policy; wherein honesty is commended, not because
it is right, but because it is most prudent and
politic, and has the promise of this present world.
Now doubtless there are proverbs not a few which,
like this, move in the region of what has been well
called "prudential morality;" and did we accept
them as containing the whole circle of motives to
honesty or other right conduct, nothing could be
worse, or more fitted to lower the moral standard
of our lives. I-e who resolves to be honest because,
and only because, it is the best policy, will be little
likely long to continue honest at all. But the proverb does not pretend to usurp the place of an
ethical rule'; it does not presume to cast down the
higher law which should determine to honesty and
uprightness, that it may put itself in its place; it
only declares that honesty, let alone that it is the
right thing, is also, even for this present world, the
wisest.  Nor dare we, let me further add, despise
prudential morality, suel as is embodied in sayings
like this. The motives which it suggests are helps
to a weak and tempted virtue, may prove great
assistances to it ill some passing moment of a violent temptation, however little they can be regarded




PROVERBS ABOUT SELFISHNESS.      109
as able to make men for a continuancce even outwardly upright and just.
And once more, proverbs are not to be accounted
selfish, which announce selfishness; unless they do
it either avowedly recommending it as a rule and
maxim  of life, or, if not so, yet with an evident
complacency and satisfaction in the announcement
which they make, and in this more covert and perhaps still more mischievous way, taking part with
the evil which they proclaim. There are a great
many proverbs, which a lover of his race would be
very thankful if there had been nothing in the
world to justify or to provoke; for the convictions
they embody, the experiences on which they rest
must be regarded as very far from complimentary
to human nature; but seeing that there is, it would
be idle to wish them away, to wish that this evil
had not found its utterance. Nay, it is much better that it should so have done; for thus taking
form  and shape, and being brought directly under notice, it may be better watched against and
avoided.
Such proverbs, not selfish, but rather detecting
selfishness and laying it bare, are the following;
this Russian, on the only too slight degree in which
we are touched with other men's troubles: The
burden is light on the shoulders of another; with
which the French may be compared: One has
always enough strength to bear the misfortunes of




110         THE IMORALITY OF PIOTVERBS.
one's friends.*   Such is this Italian: Every one
draws the water to his own mill;t or as it appears
in its Eastern shape, which brings up the desertbivouac before one's eyes: Every one rakes the
embers to his own cake; such this Latin, on the
comparative wastefulness wherewith that which is
another's is too often used: -ien cut broad thongs
from other men's leather;  with many more of the
same character, which it would be only too easy to
bring together.
With all this, I would not of course in the least
deny that immoral proverbs, and only too many of
them, exist. For if they are, as we have recognised
them to be, the genuine transcript of what is stirring in the hearts, and uttering itself by the lips, of
men, then, since there is cowardice, untruth, selfishness, unholiness, profaneness, there, how should
they be wanting here?  The world is not so consummate a hypocrite as the entire absence of all
such would imply.  There will be proverbs merely
selfish, as our own; Every one for himself, and
God for us all; or as this Dutch: Self's the man;
or more shamelessly cynical still, as the French;
* On a toujours assez de force pour supporter le malheur de ses
amis. I confess this sounds to me rather like an imitation of Rochefoucault than a genuine proverb.
t Ognun tira l'acqua al suo molino.
i Ex alieno tergore lata secantur lora.
~ Zelf is de Man.




IM3ORiAL PROVERBS.               111
Better a gyrcte for me, than two figs for thee;* or
such as proclaim a doubt and disbelief in the existe-ce of any  high  morlal integrity  anywhere, as
f'very man has his price; or assume that poor
men  can scarcely be honest, as It is hard for an
erpty sack to stand straight; or take it for granted
that every man would cheat every other if he could,
as the French: Count after your father;t  or, if
they do not actually " speak good of the covetous,"
yet assume it possible that any blessing can wait
oi that which a wicked covetousness has heaped
together, as the Spanish: Blessed is the son whose
father went to the Devil; or find cloaks and apologies for sin, as the German: Once is never;: or
sich as would imply that the evil of a sin lay not
i:\ its sinfulness, but in the outward disgrace anrexed to it, as the Italian: A  sin concealed is half
forgiven.~   Or again  there will be proverbs dastardly and base, as the Spanish maxim  of caution,
- hich advises to Draw  the snake from  its hole by
c;nother man's hand; to put, that is, another, and
it may be for your own profit, to the peril from
hich you shrink yourself; or more dastardly still,
* J'aime mieux un raisin pour moi que deux figues pour toi.
t Comptez apres votre pore. Compare the Spanish: Entre dos
atjgos un notario y dos testigos.: Einma, keinmal. This proverb was turned to such bad uses,
that a German divine thought it necessary to write a treatise against
it. There exist indeed several old works in German with such
titles as the following, Ungodly Proverbs and their Refutation.
~ Peccato celato, mezzo perdonato.




112        THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS.
" scoundrel maxims," an old English poet has called
them; as for instance, that one which is acted on
only too often: One must howl with the wolves;*
in other words, when a general cry is raised against
any, it is safest to join in it, lest one be supposed to
sympathize with its object; he must howl with the
wolves, who would not be hunted by them. In the
whole circle of proverbs I know no baser, nor more
dastardly than this. And yet who will say that he
has never traced in himself the cowardly temptation
to obey it?  And there will be, of which I shall
spare you any examples, proverbs wanton and impure, and not merely proverbs thus earthly and
sensual, but devilish; such as some of those Italian
on revenge which I quoted in my third lecture.
But for all this these immoral proverbs, rank
weeds among the wholesome corn, are comparatively rare. In the minority with all people, they
are immeasurably in the minority with most. The
fact is not a little worthy of our note. Surely there
lies in it a solemn testimony, that however men
may and do in their conduct continually violate
the rule of right, yet these violations are ever felt
to be such, are inwardly confessed not to be the
law of man's life, but the transgressions of the law;
and thus, stricken as with a secret shame, and
paying an unconscious homage to the majesty of
* Badly turned into a rhyming pentameter:Consonus esto lupis, cum quibus esse cupis.




FRUGALITY INCULCATED.           113
goodness, they do not presume to raise themselves
into maxims, nor for all the frequency with which
they may be repeated pretend to claim recognition
as abiding standards of action.
As the sphere in which the proverb moves is no
imaginary world, but that actual and often very
homely world which is round us and about us —as
it does not float in the clouds, but sets its feet firmly on this common earth of ours from which itself
once grew, being occupied with present needs and
every-day cares-it is only natural that the proverbs
having reference to money should be numerous;
and in the main it would be well if the practice of
the world rose to the height of its convictions as
expressed in these. Frugality is connected with
so many virtues-at least, its contrary makes so
many impossible —that the numerous proverbial
maxims inculcating this, than which none perhaps
are more frequent on the lips of men, must be regarded as belonging to the better order; especially
when taken with the check of others, which forbid
this frugality from degenerating into a sordid and
dishonorable parsimony; such, I mean, as our own;
The groat is ill saved which shames its master.
In how many the conviction speaks out that the
hastily-gotten will hardly be the honestly-gotten,
that "he who makes haste to be rich shall not be
innocent," as when the Spaniards say: He who will




114          THE BMORALITY OF PROVERBS.
be rich in. a year, at the half-year they hang him;*
in how  many others, the confidence that the illwon will also be the ill-spent,t that he who shuts
up unlawful gain in his storehouses, is shutting up
a fire that will one day destroy them.  Very solemn
and weighty in  this sense  is the German  proverb: Thle unrighteous penny corrupts the righteous
p)oand;    and the Spanish, too, is striking: T/at
whqich is another's sal7ways yearns for its lord; ~ it
yearns, that is to be gone and get to its true owner.
In how many the conviction is expressed that this
mammon, which more than  anything else men are
tempted to think God does not concern  himself
about, is yet given and taken  away by him  according to the laws of his righteousness; given
sometimes to his enemies and for their greater punislhment, that under its fatal influence they may
grow  worse  and worse, for The more  the  carle
riches, he wretches; but oftener withdrawn, because no due acknowledgment of him was made in
its use; as when  the German  proverb  declares:
Charity  gives  itself rich;  covetousness  hoards
itselfpoor;1 and the Danish: Give alms, that thy
* Quien en un afio quiere ser rico, al medio le ahorcan.
1 Male parta male dilabuntur.-Wie gewonnen, so zerronnen.
$ Ungerechter Pfennig verzehrt gerechten Thaler.
~ Lo ageno siempre pia por su dueno.
[ Der Geiz sammlet sich arm, die Milde giebt sich reich. In the
sense of the latter half of this proverb, we say, Driawn wells are
seldom dry; though this word is capable of very far wider application.




PROVERBS ABOUT RICHES.                    115
children  may not asic them; and the  rabbis, with
a yet deeper significance: Alms are  the salt of
riches;  the  true antiseptic, which  as such  shall
prevent them from themselves corrupting, and from
corrupting those that have them; which shall hinder them   from   developing  a germ  of corruption,
such as shall in the end involve in one destruction
them  and their owners.*   At the  same  time, as it
is the very character of proverbs to look at matters all round, there are others to remind  that even
this very giving itself shall be with forethought and
discretion; thus there is a Danish which says, So
give to-dacy, t/at thou  shalt be  able  to  give  tomorrow; and  another: So give to one, that thou
shalt have to give to another.t
Let me further invite you to observe and to ad* There is one remarkable Latin proverb on the moral cowardliness which it is the character of riches to generate, saying more
briefly the same which Wordsworth said when he proclaimed"That riches are akin
To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death;"
it is this: Timidus Plutus; and has sometimes suggested to me the
question whether he might not have had it in his mind when he composed his great sonnet in prospect of the invasion:"These times touch moneyed worldlings with dismay;"
not that his genius needed any such solicitation from without; for
the poem is only the natural outgrowth of that spirit and temper in
which the whole series of noble and ennobling poems, the Sonnets
to Liberty, is composed, and in perfect harmony with the rest; yet
is it, notwithstanding, in a very wonderful way shut up in the two
words of the ancient proverb.
{ Giv saa i Dag, at du og kandst give i morgen.-Giv een at du
kand give en anden.




116         THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS.
mire the prevailing tone of manliness which pervades the great body of the proverbs of all nations:
let me urge you to take note how very few there
are which would fain persuade you that " luck is
all," or that your fortunes are in any other hands,
under God, than your own.  There are some, but
they are exceptions, to which the gambler, the
idler, the so-called " waiter upon Providence," can
appeal. For the most part, however, they courageously accept the law of labor, XNo pains, no gains;
No sweat, no sweet; No mill, no meal,* as the appointed law and condition of man's life. Where
wilt thou go, ox, that thou wilt not have to plough?t
is the Catalan remonstrance, addressed to one who
imagines by any outward change of circumstances
to evade the inevitable task and toil of existence.
And this is Turkish: It is not with saying, Honey,
honey, that sweetness will come into the moutl;
and to many languages another with its striking
image, Sloth, the key of poverty,4 belongs; while,
on the other hand, there are in almost all tongues
such proverbs as the following: God helps them
that help themselves;~ or, as it appears with a slight
* This is the English form of that worthy old classical proverb:
(^y)yv CyXvov, aiXtra pE~vyE, or in Latin: Qui vitat molam, vitat
farinam.
t Ahont aniras, bou, que no Ilaures? I prefer this form of it to
the Spanish: Adonde yra el buey, que no are?
t Pereza, lave de pobreza.
~ Dii facietites adjuvant.




PROVERBS ON SELF RELIANCE.         117
variation in the Basque, God is a good worker, but
he loves to be helped. And these proverbs, let me
observe by the way, were not strange, in their import at least, to the founder of that religion which
is usually supposed to inculcate a blind and indolent fatalism-however some who call themselves
by his name may have forgotten the lesson which
they convey. Certainly they were not strange to
Mahomet himself, if the following excellently-spoken word has been rightly ascribed to him. One
evening, we are told, after a weary march through
the desert, he was camping with his followers, and
overheard one of them  saying, "I will loose my
camel and commit it to God;" on which Mahomet
took him up:. " Friend, tie thy camel, and commit
it to God;"* do, that is, whatever is thine to do,
and then leave the issue in higher hands; but till
thou hast done this, till thou hast thus helped thyself, thou hast no right to look to Heaven to help
thee.
How excellently this unites genuine modesty and
manly self-assertion: Sit in your own place, and
no man can make you rise; and how good is this
Spanish, on the real dignity which there often is in
doing things for ourselves, rather than in standing
by and suffering others to do them for us: Who
has a mouth, let him not say to another, Blow.+
* According to the Spanish proverb: Quien bien ata, bien desata.
t Quien tiene boca, no diga & otro, Sopla.




118        THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS.
And as a part of this, which I have called the
manliness of proverbs, let me especially note the
noble utterances which so many contain, summoning to a brave encountering of adverse fortune, to
perseverance under disappointment and defeat, and
a long-continued inclemency of fate.  Where one
door shAts, another opens;*  this belongs to too
many nations to allow of our ascribing it especially
to any one. And this Latin, The sun of all days
has not yet gone down,t however, in its primary
application, intended for those who are at the
top of Fortune's wheel, to warn them that they
be not high-minded-for there is yet time for
many a revolution in that wheel-is equally good
for those at the bottom, and as it contains warning for those, so strength and encouragement for
these; for, as the Italians say, The world is his
who has patience.4  And then, to pass over some
of our own, so familiar that they need not be adduced, how manful a lesson is contained in this
Persian proverb: A stone that is fitfor the wall is
not left in the way. It is a saying made for them
who appear for a while to be overlooked, neglected,
passed by; who perceive in themselves capacities,
which as yet no one else has recognised or cared to
turn to account. Only be fitfor the wall; square,
* Donde una puerta se cierra, otra se abre.
f Nondum omnium dierum sol occidit.
t II mondo e, di chi ha pazienza.




MANLINESS OF PROVERBS.           119
polish, prepare thyself for it; do not limit thyself
to the bare acquisition of such knowledge as is absolutely necessary for thy present position; but
rather learn languages, acquire useful information,
stretch thyself out on this side and on that, cherishing and making much of whatever aptitudes thou
findest in thyself; and it is certain thy turn will
come. Thou wilt not be left in the way; sooner or
later the builders will be glad of thee; the wall will
need thee to fill up a place in it, quite as much as
thou needest a place to occupy in the wall. For
the amount of real capacity in this world is so small,
that places want persons to fill them quite as really
as persons want to fill places; although it must be
allowed, they are not always as much aware of
their want.
And this proverb, Italian and Spanish, If I have
lost the ring, yet the fingers are still here,* is
another of these brave utterances of which I have
been speaking. In it is asserted the comparative
indifference of that loss which reaches but to things
external to us, so long as we ourselves remain, and
are true to ourselves. The fingers are far more
than the ring: if indeed those had gone, then the
man would have been maimed; but another ring
may come for that which has disappeared, or even
with none the fingers will be fingers still. And as
* Se ben ho perso ]'anello, ho pur anche le ditta;-Si se perdieron
los anillos, aqui quedaron los dedillos.




120         THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS.
at once a contrast and complement to this, take
another, current among the free blacks of Hayti,
and expressing well the little profit which there will
be to a man in pieces of mere good luck, which are
no true outgrowths of anything which is in him;
the manner in which, having no root in himself out
of which they grew, they will, as they came to him
by hazard, go from  him  by the same: The knife
which thou hast found in the highway, thou wilt
lose in the highway.*
But these numerous proverbs, urging self-reliance, bidding us first to aid ourselves, if we would
have Heaven to aid us, must not be dismissed without a word or two at parting. Prizing them, as we
well may, and the lessons which they contain, at
the highest, yet it will be profitable for us, at the
same time, always to remember that to such there
lies very near such a mischievous perversion as
this: "Aid thyself, and thou wilt need no other
aid;" even as they have been sometimes, no doubt,
understood in this sense. As, then, the pendant
and counter-weight to them  all, not as unsaying
what they have said, but as fulfilling the other
hemisphere in the complete orb of truth, let me
remind you of such also as the following, often
quoted or alluded to by Greek and Latin authors:
* In their bastard French it runs thus: Giambette ous trouve nen
gan chimin, nen gan chimin ous va pede li. It may have been
originally French, at any rate the French have a proverb very much
to the same effect: Ce qui vient par la flute, s'en.va par le tambour.




PROVERBS FOR YOUNG MEN.              121
The net of the sleeping  (fisherman) takes;*  a
proverb the more interesting, that we should have
in the words of the Psalmist (Ps. cxxvii. 2), were
they accurately translated, a beautiful and perfect
parallel: " He giveth his beloved" (not "sleep," as
in  our version, but) "in  their sleep;"  his gifts
gliding into their bosoms, they knowing not how,
and as little expecting as having labored for them.
Of how many of the best gifts of every man's life
will lie not thankfully acknowledge this to have
been true; or, if he refuse, and will acknowledge
no eudcemonia, no "favorable providence," in his
prosperities, but will see them all as of work, how
little he deserves, how little likely he is, to retain
them to the end.  Let us hold fast, then, this proverb, as the most needful complement of those.
I feel that I should be wanting to hearers such
as those who are assembled here, that I should fail
in that purpose which has been, more or less, present to me even in dealing with the lighter portions
of my subject, if I did not earnestly remind you of
the many of these sayings that there are, which,
wlile they have their lesson for all, yet seem more
directly addressed to those standing, as not a few
*   tLidvrr,pros atpE. —Dormienti rete trahit. The reader with a'ltltarch's Lives within his reach, may turn to the very instructive
little history told in connection with this proverb, of Timotheus the
Atlhenian commander; a history which only requires to be translated into Christian language to contain a deep moral for all.(Sulla, c. 6.)
6




122        THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS.
of us here, at the threshold of the more serious
and earnest portion of their lives. Lecturing to a
Young Men's Society, I shall not unfitly press these
upon your notice. Take this Italian one, for instance: When you grind your corn, give not the
flour to the devil, and the bran to God; in the distribution, that is, of your lives, apportion not your
best years, your strength, and your vigor, to the
service of sin and of the world, and only the refuse
and rejected to your Maker-the wine to others,
and the lees only to him. Not so; for there is
another ancient proverb,* which we have made
very well our own, and which in English runs thus,
It is too late to spare when all is spent. The words
have obviously a primary application to the goods
of this present life; it is ill saving here, when nothing, or next to nothing, is left to save. But they
are applied well by a heathen moralist (and the
application lies very near) to those who begin to
husband precious time, and to live for life's true
ends, when life is nearly gone, is now at its dregs;
for, as he well urges, it is not the least only which
remains at the bottom, but the worst.t  On the
other hand, The morning hour has gold in its
month;4  and this, true in respect of each of our
* Sera in imo parsimonia.
t Seneca (Ep. i.): Non enim tantum minimum in imo, sed pessimum remanet.
i Morgenstund' hat Gold im Mund.




ECONOMY OF TIME.             123
days, in which the earlier hours given to toil will
yield larger and more genial returns than the later,
is true in a yet higher sense, of that great life-day,
whereof all the lesser days of our life make up the
moments-is true in respect of moral no less than
mental acquisition. The evening hours have often
only silver in their mouths at the best. Nor is this
Arabic proverb, as it appears to me, other than a
very solemn one, being far deeper than at first sight
it might seem: Every day in thy life is a leaf in
thy history-a leaf which shall once be turned back
to again, that it may be seen what was written there;
and that whatever was written may be read out in
the hearing of all.
And among the proverbs having to do with a
prudent ordering of our lives from the very first,
this Spanish seems well worthy to be adduced:
That wZhich the fool does in the end, the wise man
does at the beginning;* the wise with a good grace
what the fool with an ill; the one to much profit
what the other to little or to none. A word worth
laying to heart; for, indeed, that purchase of the
Sibylline books by the Roman king, what a significant symbol it is of that which at one time or
another, or, it may be, at many times, is finding
place in almost every man's life; the same thing to
be done in the end, the same price to be paid at the
last, with only the difference, that much of the ad* Lo que hace el loco  la postre, hace sabio al principio.




124        THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS.
vantage as well as grace of an earlier compliance
has passed away. The nine precious volumes have
shrunk to six, and these dwindled to three, while
yet the like price is demanded for the few as for the
many; for the remnant now as would once have
made all our own.
I have already, in a former lecture, adduced a
proverb which warns against a bad book as the
worst of all robbers.  In respect, too, of books
which are not bad-nay, of which the main staple
is good, but in which there is yet an admixture of
evil, as is the case with so many that have come
down to us from that old world not as yet partaker
of Christ-there is a proverb, which may very
profitably accompany us in our study of all these:
Where the bee sucks honey, the spider sucks poison.
Very profitably may this word be kept in mind by
such as at any time are making themselves familiar
with the classical literature of antiquity, the great
writers of heathen Greece and Rome. How much
of noble, how much of elevating, what love of
country, what zeal for wisdom, may be drawn from
them: yea, even to us Christians, what intellectual,
what moral gains will they yield! Let the student
be as the bee looking for honey, and from the fields
and gardens of classical literature he may store it
abundantly in his hive. And yet from this same
body of literature what poison is it possible to
draw; what loss, through familiarity with evil, of




ILL-DOERS ARE ILL-DEEIMERS.      125
all vigorous abhorrence of it, till even the foulest
enormities shall come to be regarded with a speculative curiosity rather than with an earnest hatred!
yea, what lasting defilement of the imagination and
the heart, may be contracted hence, till nothing
shall be pure, the very mind and conscience being
defiled. Let there come one whose sympathies and
affinities are with the poison, and not with the
honey; and in these fields it will not be impossible
for him  to find deadly flowers and weeds from
which he may suck poison enough.
And here is one with an insight at once subtle
and profound into the heart of man, Ill-doers are
ill-deemers; and instead of any commentary on
this of my own, let me quote some words which
were not intended to be a commentary upon it at
all, and which furnish, notwithstanding, a better
than any which I could hope to give. They are
words of a great English divine of the seventeenth
century, who is accounting for the offence which
the Pharisee took at the Lord's acceptance of the
affectionate homage and costly offering of the
woman that was a sinner: "Which familiar and
affectionate officiousness, and sumptuous cost, together with that sinister fame that woman was
noted with, could not but give much scandal to the
Pharisees there present. For that dispensation of
the law under which they lived making nothing
perfect, but only curbing' the outward actions of




126         THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS.
men; it might very well be that they, being conscious to themselves of no better motions within
than of either bitterness or lust, how fair soever
they carried without, could not deem Christ's acceptance of so familiar and affectionate a service
from  a woman of that fame to proceed from  anything better than some loose and vain principle....
for by how much every one is himself obnoxious to
temptation, by so much more suspicious he is that
others transgress, when there is anything that may
tempt out the corruptions of a man."*
With a few remarks on one proverb more, I will
bring this lecture to an end. It is this: Better a
diamond with a flaw, than a pebble without one.
Here, to my mind, is the assertion of a great Christian truth, and of one which reaches deep down
to the very foundations of Christian morality, the
more valuable as coming to us from a people-the
Chinese-beyond the range and reach of the influences of direct revelation. We may not be all
aware of the many and malignant assaults which
were made on the Christian faith, and on the morality of the Bible, through the character of David, by
the blind and self-righteous deists of a century or
more ago. Taking the scripture testimony about
* Henry More, On Godliness, b. 8. How remarkable a confirmation of the fact asserted in that proverb and in this passage, lies in
the uses of the Greek word KacorOsca; having, for its first meaning,
an evil disposition in a man's self, it has for its second an interpreting
on his part for the worst of all the actions of other men.




CHARAC'ER OF DAVID.          127
him, that he was the man after God's heart, and
putting beside this the record of those great sins
which he committed, they sought to set these great
yet still isolated offences in the most hateful light;
and thus to bring at once him, and those who praised
him, to a common shame. But all this while, with
the question of the man, what he was-with this,
with the moral sum total of his life, to which alone
the scripture testimony bore witness, and to which
alone it was pledged-they concerned themselves
not at all: which yet was a far more important
question than what any of his single acts may have
been, and that which, in the estimate of his character, was really at issue. To this question we answer, a diamond, which, if a diamond with aflaw,
as are all but the one " whole and perfect chrysolite," would yet outvalue a mountain of pebbles
without one, such as they were; even assuming the
pebbles to be without, and not merely to seem so,
because their flaw was an all-pervading one, and
only not so quickly detected, inasmuch as the contrast was wanting of any clearer material which
should at once reveal its presence.




128       THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
LECTURE  VI.
THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
I SOUGHT, as best I could, in my last lecture, to
enable you to estimate the ethical worth of proverbs. Their theology alone remains; the aspects,
that is, under which they contemplate, not now
any more man's relations with his fellow-man, but
those on which in the end all other must depend,
his relations with God. Between the subject-matter, indeed, of that lecture and of this, I have found
it nearly impossible to draw any accurate line of
distinction. Much which was there might nearly
as fitly have been here; some which I have reserved for this might already have found its place
there. It is this, however, which I propose more
directly to consider, namely, what proverbs have to
say concerning the moral government of the world,
and, more important still, concerning its Governor?
How does all this present itself to the popular mind
and conscience, as attested by these? What, in
short, is their theology? for such, good or bad, it
is evident that abundantly they have.
Here, as everywhere else, their testimony is a




THE GLORY OF PROVERBS.          129
mingled one. The darkness, the error, the confusion of man's heart, out of which he oftentimes
sees distortedly, and sometimes sees not at all, have
all embodied themselves in his word. Yet still, as
it is the very nature of the false, in its separate
manifestations, to resolve into nothingness, though
only to be succeeded by new births in a like kind,
while the true abides and continues, it has thus
come to pass that we have generally in these utterances on which the stamp of permanence has been
set, the nobler voices, the truer faith of humanity,
in respect of its own destinies and of him by whom
those destinies are ordered.
I would not hesitate to say that the great glory
of proverbs in this their highest aspect, and that
which makes many of them  so full of blessing to
those who cordially accept them, is the conviction
of which they are full, that, despite all appearances
to the contrary, this world is God's world, and not
the world of the devil or of those wicked men who
may be prospering for their hour; their faith that
in the long run it will approve itself to be such:
which being so, that it must be well in the end
with the doer of the right, the speaker of the truth;
no blind " whirligig of time," but the hand of the
living God, in due time " bringing round its revenges." It is impossible to estimate too highly
their bold and clear proclamation of this conviction;
for it is, after all, the belief of this or the denial of
6*




130         THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
this, on which everything in the life of each one of
us turns; on this depends whether we shall separate
ourselves from the world's falsehood and evil, and
do vigorous battle against them; or acquiesce in,
and be ourselves absorbed by, them.
Listen to proverbs such as these; surely they are
penetrated with the assurance that one who, himself being the truth, will make truth in small and
in great to triumph at the last, is ruling over all.
And first, hear a proverb of our own: A lie has no
legs; it is one true alike in its humblest application
and its highest; be the lie the miserable petty falsehood which disturbs a family or a neighborhood for
a day; or one of the larger frauds, the falsehoods
not in word only but in act, to which a longer date
and a far larger sphere is assigned, which for a time
seem to fill the world, and to carry everything in
triumph before them.  Still the lie, in that it is a
lie, always carries within itself the germs of its
own dissolution.  It is sure to destroy itself at
last. Its priests may prop it up from without, may
set it on its feet again after it has once fallen
before  the  presence of the truth, yet this all
will be labor in vain; it will only be, like Dagon,
again to fall, and more shamefully and more irretlievably than before.*  On the other hand, the
* Perhaps the Spanish form of this proverb is still better: La
mentira tiene cortas las piernas; for the lie does go, though not far.
Compare the French: La vdrit6, commQ l'huile, vient audessus.




TELL THE TRUTH.              131
vivacity of the truth, as contrasted with this shortlived character of the lie, is well expressed in a
Swiss proverb: It takes a good many shovelfuls
of earth to bury the truth. For, bury it as deep as
men may, it will have a resurrection notwithstanding. They may roll a great stone, and seal the
sepulchre in which it is laid, and set a watch upon
it, yet still, like its Lord, it comes forth again at its
appointed hour. It can not die, being of an immortal race; for, as the Spanish proverb nobly
declares, The truth is daughter of God.*
Again, consider this proverb: Tell the truth, and
shame the devil. It is one which will well repay a
few thoughtful moments bestowed on it, and the
more so, because, even while we instinctively feel
its truth, the deep moral basis on which it rests
may yet not reveal itself to us at once. Nay, the
saying may seem  to contradict the actual experience of things; for how often telling the truthconfessing, that is, some great fault, taking home
to ourselves, it may be, some grievous sin-would
appear anything rather than shaming the devil;
shaming indeed ourselves, but rather bringing glory
to him, whose glory, such as it is, is in the sin and
shame of men.  And yet the word is true, and deeply
true, notwithstanding. The element of lies is that
in which alone he who is " the father of them" lives
and thrives. So long then as a wrong-doer presents
* La verdad es hija de Dios.




132       THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
to himself, or seeks to present to others, the actual
facts of his conduct different from what they really
are, conceals, palliates, denies them, so long, in
regard of that man, Satan's kingdom stands. But
so soon as the things concerning himself are seen
and owned by a man as they indeed exist in God's
sight, as they are when weighed in the balances of
the eternal righteousness; when once a man has
brought himself to tell the truth to himself, and,
where need requires, to others also, then having
done, and in so far as he has done this, he has abandoned the devil's standard, he belongs to the kingdom of the truth; and as belonging to it he may
rebuke, and does rebuke and put to shame, all
makers and lovers of a lie, even to the very prince
of them all. " Give glory to God," was what Joshua
said to Achan, when he would lead him to confess
his guilt. This is but the other and fairer side of the
tapestry; this is but shame the devil, on its more
blessed side.
Once more;-the Latin proverb, The voice of
the people, the voice of God,* is one which it is
well worth our while to understand.  If it were
affirmed in this that every outcry of the multitude,
supposing only it be loud enough and wide enough,
ought to be accepted as the voice of God speaking
through them, no proposition more foolish or more
impious could well be imagined. But the voice of
* Vox populi, vox Tei.




VOX POPULT, VOX DEI.           133
the people is something very different from this.
The proverb rests on the assumption that the foundations of man's being are laid in the truth; from
which it will follow, that no conviction which is
really a conviction of the universal humanity, but
reposes on a true ground: no faith, which is indeed
the faith of mankind, but has a reality corresponding to it; for, as Jeremy Taylor has said, "it is
not a vain noise, when many nations join their
voices in the attestation or detestation of an action."
The task and difficulty, of course, must ever be to
discover what this faith and what these convictions
are; and this can only be done by an induction
from a sufficient number of facts, and in sufficiently
different times, to enable us to feel confident that
we have indeed seized that which is the constant
quantity of truth in them all, and separated this
from the inconstant one of falsehood and error,
evermore offering itself in its room; that we have
not taken some momentary cry, wrung out by interest, by passion, or by pain, for the voice of God;
but claimed this august title only for that true voice
of humanity, which, unless everything be false, we
have a right to assume an echo of the voice of God.
Thus, to take an example, the natural horror
everywhere felt in regard of marriages contracted
between those very near in blood, has been always
and with right appealed to as a potent argument
against such marriages. The induction is so large,




134        THE THEOLOOY OF PROVERBS.
that is, the nations who have agreed in entertaining
this horror are so many, oftentimes nations disagreeing in almost everything besides -the times
during which this instinctive revolt against such
unions has been felt, extend through such long
ages -that the few exceptions, even where they are
of civilized nations, as of the Egyptians who married their sisters, or of the Persians, among whom
marriages more dreadful still were allowed, and
with yet better reason the exception of any savage
tribes in whom the true humanity had disappeared,
can not be allowed any weight. They can not only
be regarded as violations of the divine order of
man's life; not as evidences that we have falsely
imagined an order where there was none. Here
is a true voice of the people; and on the grounds
laid down above, we have a right to assume this to
be a voice of God as well.  And so too, with
respect to the existence of a First Cause, Creator
and Upholder of all things, the universal consent
and conviction of all people, the consensus gentium,
must be considered of itself a mighty evidence in
its favor; a testimony which God is pleased to
render to himself through his creatures. This man
or that, this generation or the other, might be deceived, but all men and all generations could not;
the voxopopuli makes itself felt as a vox Dei. The
existence here and there of an atheist no more disturbs our conclusion that it is of the essence of




VOLTAIRE- AND) OTIrER INFIDELS.   135
mn's nature to believe in a God, than do such
monstrous births as from time to time fnd place,
children with two heads or with no arms, shake our
assurance that it is the normal condition of man to
have one head and two arms.
This last is one of the proverbs which may be
said to belong to the Apology for Natural Religion.
There are others, of which it would not be farfetched to affirm that they belong to the Apology
for Revealed. Thus it was very usual with Voltaire and other infidels of his time to appeal to the
present barrenness and desolation of Palestine, in
proof that it could never have supported the vast
population which the Scripture everywhere assumes
or affirms. A proverb in the language of the archscoffer himself might, if he had given heed to it,
have put him on the right track, had he wished to
be put upon it, for understanding how this could
have been: As the man is worth, his land is worth.*
Man is lord of his outward condition to a far greater extent than is commonly assumed; even climate
which seemg at first sight so completely out of his
reach, it is his immensely to modify; and if Nature
stamps herself on him, he stamps himself yet more
powerfully on Nature.
It is not a mere figure of speech, that of the psalmis:, " A fruitful land maketh he barren for the wickedness of them that dwell therein." (Ps. cvii. 34.)
* Tant vaut l'homme, tant vaut sa terre.




136        THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
God makes it barren, and ever less capable of nturishing its inhabitants; but he makes it so through
the sloth, the indolence, the short-sightedness of
those that should have dressed and kept it.  In the
condition of a land may be found the echo, the reflection, the transcript of the moral and spiritual
condition of those that should cultivate it; where
one is waste, the other will be waste also. Under
the desolating curse of Mohammedan domination
the fairest portions of the earth have gone back
from  a garden to a wilderness: but only let that
people for whom Palestine is yet destined return to
it again, and return a righteous nation, and in a
little while all the descriptions of its earlier fertility
will be more than borne out by its later, and it will
easily sustain its millions again.
How many proverbs, which can not be affirmed
to have been originally made for the kingdom of
heaven, do yet in their highest fulfilment manifestly
belong to it, so that it seems as of right to claim
that for its own, even as it claims, or rather reclaims,
whatever else- is good or true in the world, the
seeds of truth wherever dispersed abroad, as belonging rightfully to itself. Thus there is that beautiful
proverb, of which Pythagoras is reputed the author,
The things of friends are in common.*  Where
does this find its exhaustive fulfilment, but in the
* Kotra ra rTov OiXwv.




THE DIVINE VOICES.          137
communion of saints, their communion not with
one another merely, though indeed this is a part
of its fulfilment, but in their communion with
him who is the friend of all good men? That such
a conclusion lay legitimately in the words Socrates
plainly saw; who argued from it, that since good
men were the friends of the gods, therefore whatever things were the gods' were also theirs; being,
when he thus concluded, as near as one who had
not the highest light of all, could be to that great
word of the apostle's, " All things are yours."
Nor can I otherwise than esteem  the ancient
proverb as a very fine one, and one which we may
gladly claim for our own, Many meet the gods, but
few salute them. How often do the gods (for I will
keep in the language which this proverb suggests and
supplies) meet men in the shape of a sorrow which
might be a purifying one, of a joy which might elevate their hearts to thankfulness and praise; in a
sickness or a recovery, a disappointment or a success; and yet how few, as it must be sadly owned,
salute them-how few recognise their august presences in this joy or this sorrow, this blessing added
or this blessing taken away! As this proverb has reference to men's failing to see the Divine presences,
so let me observe, by the way, there is a very grand
French one which expresses the same truth, under
the image of a failing to hear the Divine voices,
those voices being drowned by the deafening hub



138        THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
bub of the world: Tlie noise is so great, one can
not hear God thunder.*
Here is another proverb which the church has
long since claimed, at least in its import, for her
own: One man, no man.t  I should- find it very
hard indeed to persuade myself that whoever uttered
it first, attached to it no deeper meaning than Erasmus gives him credit for- namely, that nothing important can be effected by a single man, destitute
of the help of his fellows.4  The word is a far more
profound one than this, and rests on that great truth
upon which the deeper thinkers of antiquity laid so
much stress-namely, that in the idea the state
precedes the individual, man not being merely accidentally gregarious, but essentially social.  The
solitary man, it would say, is a monstrous conception, so utterly maimed and crippled must he be;
the condition of solitariness involving so entire a
suppression of all which belongs to the development
of that wherein the true idea of humanity resides,
of all which differences man from the beasts of the
field; and in this sense One man is no man; and
this, I am sure, the proverb from the first intended.
Nor may we stop here. This word is capable of,
and seems to demand, a still higher application to
man, as a destined member of the kingdom  of
* Le bruit est si fort, qu'on n'entend pas Dieu tonner.
t Eit  dvavp, oUSEls dvnp.
t Sensus est nihil egregium praestari posse ab uno homine, omni
auxilio destituto.




ONE MAN, NO MAN.             139
Heaven. But he can only be in training for this,
when he is, and regards himself, as not alone, but
the member of a family. As one man he is no
man; and the strength and value of what is called
church teaching is greatly this, that it does recognise and realize this fact, that it contemplates and
deals with the faithful man, not as isolated, but as
one of an organic body, with duties which flow as
moral necessities from his position therein; rather
than by himself, and as one whose duties to others
are indeed only the exercise of private graces for
his own benefit. And all that are called church
doctrines, when they really understand themselves,
have their root and their real strength in that great
truth which this proverb declares, that One man is
no man, that only in a fellowship and communion
is or can any man be aught.
And then there is another proverb, which Plato
so loved to quote against the sophists, the men
who flattered and corrupted the nobler youth of
Athens, promising to impart to them  easy short
cuts to the attainment of wisdom and knowledge
and philosophy; and this, without demanding the
exercise of any labor or patience or self-denial on
their parts. But with the proverb, Good things are
hard,* he continually rebuked their empty pretensions; with this he made at least suspicious their
promises; and this proverb, true in the sense where* XaXe7r3T ra KaXa.




140         THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
in Plato used it-and  that sense was earnest and
serious enough —yet surely reappears, glorified and
transfigured, but recognisable still, in the Savior's
words: "The kingdom  of heaven is taken by violence, and the violent take it by force."
This method of looking in proverbs for a higher
meaning than any which lies on their surface, or
which they seem to bear on their fronts-or rather
of searching out their highest intention, and claiming that as their truest, even though it should not
be that seen in them by most, or that which lay
nearest to them at their first generation-is one
that will lead us in many interesting paths. And
it is not merely those of heathen antiquity which
shall thus be persuaded often, and that without any
forcing, to render up a Christian meaning; but (as
was indeed to be expected) still more often those
of a later time, even those which the world had
seemed to claim for its own, shall be found to move
in a spiritual sphere as their truest. Let me offer
in evidence of this these four or five, which come to
us from Italy: He who has love in his heart, has
spurs in his sides. —love rules without law. —Love
rules his kingdom without a sword. —Love knows
nothing of labor. —ove is the master of all arts.*
Take these, even with the necessary drawbacks of
* Chi ha l'amor nel petto, ha lo sprone a i fianchi.-Amor regge
senza legge. (Cf. Romn. xiii. 9, 10.)-Amor regge il suo regno senza
spada.-Amor non conosce travaglio. (Cf. Gen. xxix. 20, 30.)-Di
tutte le arti maestro e amore.




WITNESSES FOR TIE TRUTH.         141
my English translation, but still more in their original beauty; and how exquisitely do they set forth,
in whatever light you regard them, the free creative
impulses of love, its delight to labor and to serve;
how worthily do they glorify the kingdom of love
as the only kingdom of a free and joyful obedience.
While yet at the same time, if we would appreciate
them at all their worth, is it possible to stop short
of an application of them to that kingdom of love,
which, because it is in the highest sense such, is
is also a kingdom  of heaven?  And then, what
precious witness do these utterances contain, the
more precious as current among a people nursed in
the theology of Rome, against the shameless assertion that selfishness is the only motive sufficient to
produce good (?) works: for in such an assertion
the Romish impugners of a free justification constantly deal, charging this which we hold, of our
justification by faith only, which when translated
into the language of ethics is at least as important
in the province of morality as it is in that of faith,
with being an immoral doctrine, and not so fruitful
in deeds of love as one which should connect these
deeds with a selfish thought of promoting our own
safety thereby.
There are proverbs which reach the height of
evangelical morality. "Little gospels"  the Spaniard has somewhat too boldly entitled his; yet are
* Evangelios pequefios.




142         THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
there certainly many which at once we feel could
nowhere have arisen or obtained their circulation
but under the influence of Christian faith, being in
spirit, and often in form as well as in spirit, the
outbirths of it. Thus is it with that exquisitely
beautiful proverb of our own, The way to heaven is
by IFeeping-Cross;* nor otherwise with the Spanish, God never wounds with both handst —not with
both, for he ever reserves one with which to bind
up and to heal.  And another Spanish, evidently
intended to give the sum and substance of all which
in life is to be desired the most, Peace and patience,
and death with penitence, gives this sum certainly
only as it presents itself to the Christian eye. And
this of ours is Christian both in form and in spirit:
Every cross hath its inscription — the name, that
is, inscribed upon it, of the person for whom it was
shaped. It was intended for those shoulders upon
which it is laid, and will adapt itself to them: that
fearful word is never true which a spirit greatly
vexed spake in the hour of its impatience: " I have
little faith in the paternal love which I need; so
ruthless or so negligent seems the government of
this earth."~
* Der Weg zum Himmel geht durch Kreuzdorn. Compare the
medieval obverse of the same: Via Crucis, via lucis.
t No hiere Dios con dos manos.
t Paz y paciencia, y muerte con penitencia.
~ Memoirs of Margaret Fuller, vol. 3, p. 266. In respect of words
like these, wrung out from moments of agony, and not the abiding
convictions of the utterer, may we notventure to hope that our own




CHRISTIAN PROVERBS.              143
So too is it with that ancient German proverb,
When God loathes aught, men presently loathe it
too.*  He who first uttered this must have been
one who had watched long the ways by which
shame and honor travel in this world; and, in this
watching, must have noted how  it ever came to
pass that even worldly honor tarried not long with
them  from  whom  the true honor which cometh
from  God had departed.  For the worldly honor is
but a shadow and reflex that waits upon the heavenly; it may indeed linger for a little, but it will
be only for a little, after it is divorced from its
substance.  Where the honor from  him  has been
withdrawn, he causes in one way or another the
honor from  men, ere long, to be withdrawn too.
When he loathes, presently man loathes also. The
saltless salt is not m*ely cast out by him, but is
trodden under foot of men (Matt. v. 13). A Louis
the Fifteenth's death-bed is, in its way, as hideous
to the natural as it is to the spiritual eye.t
It would be interesting to collect, as with reverence one might, variations on scriptural proverbs or
sayings, which the proverbs of this world supply:
proverb, For mad words deaf ears, is often graciously true, even in
the very courts of heaven t
* Wenn Gott ein Ding verdreufst, so verdreufst es auch bald die
Menschen.
t The following have all a right to be termed Christian proverbs:
Chi non vuol servir ad un solo Signor, a molti ha da servir; - E padron
del mondo chi lo disprezza, schiavo chi lo apprezza;- Quando Dios
quiere, con todos vientos llueve.




144         THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
and this, both in those cases where the latter have
grown out of the former, owing more nearly or
more remotely their existence to them, and in those
also where they are independent of them-so far,
that is, as anything true can be independent of the
absolute truth. Some of those which follow evidently belong to one of these classes, some to the
other.  Thus Solomon has said, "It is better to
dwell in the corner of the housetop than with a
brawling woman in a wide house" (Prov. xxi. 9);
and again, " Better a dry morsel and quietness therewith, than a house full of sacrifices with strife"
(Prov. xvii. 1). With these compare the two proverbs, a Latin and a Spanish, adduced below.* The
psalmist has said, "As he loved cursing, so let it
come unto him" (Ps. cix. 17). The Turks express
their faith in this same lavof the divine retaliations: Curses, like chickens, always come home to
roost; they return, that is, to those from whom
they went forth. In the Yoruba language there is
a proverb to the same effect, Ashes alwaysfly back
in the face of him  that throws them; while our
own, Harm  watch, harm  catch, and the Spanish,
Whlo sows thorns, let him not go unshod,t are utterances of very nearly the same conviction.  Our
Lord declares, that without his Father there falls
t Non quam late sed quam lete habites, refert.-Mas vale un
pedazo de pan con amor, que gallinas con dolor.
* Quien siembra abrojos, no ande descalzo. Compare the Latin:
Si vultur es, cadaver expecta.




SCRIPTURAL PROVERBS.                145
no single sparrow to the ground, that "' not one of
them is forgotten before God" (Luke xii. 6). The
same truth of a providentia specialissima (between
which and no providence at all there is indeed no
tenable position) is asserted in the Catalan proverb,
No lectf moves but God wills it.*   Again, he has
said, " No man can serve two masters" (Matt. vi.
21).  And the Spanish  proverb, He who  has to
serve two masters, has to lie to one.t  Or compare
with Matt. xix. 29, this remarkable Arabic proverb,
Purchase the next world with this, so shalt thou
win both.  He has spoken of " mammon of unrighteousness;" indicating thereby, in Leiglton's words,
that " iniquity is so involved in the notion of riches,
that it can very hardly be separated from  them;"
and this phrase Jerome illustrates by a proverb
that would not otherwise have reached us: "That
saying," he says, " appears true to me: A rich man
is either himself an unjust one, or the heir of one.`"
Again, the Lord has said, " Many be called, but few
chosen" (Matt. xx. 16); many have the outward
marks of a Christian profession, few the inner substance.  Some early fathers loved much  to bring
* No se mou la fulla, que Deu no ha vulla. This is one of the
proverbs of which the peculiar grace and charm nearly disappears
in the rendering.
t Quien a dos sefores ha de servir, al uno ha de mentir.
t Verum mihi videtur illud: Dives ant iniquns, ant iniqui hares.
Out of a sense of the same, as I take it, the striking Italian proverb)
had its rise: Mai divento flume grande, chi non v'entrasse acqua
torbida.
7




146          THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
into comparison with this a Greek proverb, spoken
indeed quite independently of it, and long pleviously, and the parallel certainly is a singularly
happy one: the thyrsus-bearers are many, but the
bacchantsfew;* many assume the signs and outward  tokens of inspiration, whirling the thyrsus
aloft; but those whom  the god indeed fills with his
spirit are few all the while.t
It has been sometimes a matter of consideration
to  me whether we of the clergy might not make
larger use, though of course it would be only occasional, of proverbs in our public teaching thall
we do.  Great popular preachers of time past-or,
seeing that this phrase has now so questionable a
sound, great preachers for the people, such as have
found their way to the universal heart of their fellows, addressing themselves not to that which some
men had different from  others, but to that rather
which each had in common with all -have been ever
* loXX)oi) rot vapOnKo06fol, traIuv  di 6 re fa'KXol.
t The fact which this proverb proclaims, of a great gulf existing
oetween what men profess and what they are, is one too frequently
repeating itself and thrusting itself on the notice of all, not to have
found its utterance in an infinite variety of forms, although none
perhaps so deep and poetical as this. Thus there is another Greek
line, fairly represented by this Latin:Qui tauros stimulent multi, sed rarus arator;
and there is the classical Roman proverb: Non omnes qui habent
citharam, sunt citharcedi; and the medieval rhyming verse:Non est venator quivis per cornua flator;
and this Eastern word: Hast thou mounted the pulpit, thou art not
therefore a preacher; with many rnore.




PROVERBS IN SERMONS.          147
great employers of proverbs. Thus he who would
know the riches of those in the German tongue,
with the vigorous manifold employment of which
they are capable, will find no richer mine to dig in
than the works of Luther. And such employment
of them would, I believe, with our country congregations, be especially valuable. Any one, who by
after investigation has sought to discover how much
our rustic hearers carry away even from the sermons to which they have attentively listened, will
find that it is hardly evelr the course and tenor of
the argument, supposing the discourse to have contained such; but if anything was uttered, as it
used so often to be by the best puritan preachers,
tersely, pointedly, epigrammatically, this will have
stayed by them, while all beside has gone. Now,
the merits of terseness and point, which have caused
other words to be remembered, are exactly those
which signalize the proverb, and generally in a yet
higher degree.
It need scarcely be observed, that, if thus used,
they will have to be employed with prudence and
discretion, and with a careful selection. Thus, even
with the example of so grave a divine as Bishop
Sanderson, I should hesitate to employ in a sermon
such a proverb as Over shoes, over boots-one
which he declares to be the motto of some, who
having advanced a certain way in sin, presently become utterly wretchless, caring not, and counting




148        THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
it indifferent how much further they advance. Nor
would I exactly recommend such use of a proverb
as St. Bernard makes, who, in a sermon on the
angels, desiring to show, a priori, the extreme
probability of their active and loving ministries in
the service of men, adduces the Latin proverb, Who
loves me, loves my dog;* and proceeds to argue
thus: We are the dogs under Christ's table; the
angels love him, they therefore love us.
But, although not exactly thus, the thing, I am
persuaded, might be done, and with profit. Thus,
in a discourse warning against sins of the tongue,
there are many words which we might produce of
our own to describe the mischief it inflicts, that
would be flatter, duller, less likely to be remembered than the old proverb, The tongue is not steel,
but it cuts. On God's faithfulness in sustaining,
upholding, rewarding his servants, there are feebler
things which we might bring out of our own treasure-house, than to remind our hearers of that word,
lie who serves God, serves a good Master. And
this one might sink deep, telling of the enemy
whom  every one of us has the most to fear: No
nman has a worse friend than he brings with him
fron, home. It stands in striking agreement with
Augustine's remarkable prayer, " Deliver me from
* Qui me amat, amat et canem meum. (In Fest. S. iMich., Serm.
1 ~ 3.)




PROVERBS IN SERMONS.           149
the evil man, from myself."*  Or again, Ill weeds
grow apace; with how lively an image does this
set forth to us the rank, luxuriant up-growth of sinful lusts and desires in the garden of an uncaredfor, untended heart. I know not whether we might
presume sufficient quickness of apprehension on the
part of our hearers to venture on the following: The
horse which draws its halter is not quite escaped;
but I can hardly imagine a happier illustration of
the fact, that so long as' any remnant of a sinful
habit is retained by us, so long as we draw this
halter, we make but an idle boast of our liberty;
we may, by aid of that which we still drag with us,
be at any moment again entangled altogether in
the bondage, from which we seemed to have entirely escaped.
In every language, some of its noblest proverbs,
such as oftentimes are admirably adapted for this
application of which I am speaking, are those embodying men's confidence in God's moral government of the world, in his avenging righteousness,
however much there may be in the confusions of
the present evil time to provoke a doubt or even
a denial of this. Thus, Punzishment is lame, but it
comes-which, if not old, yet rests on an image derived from antiquity-is good; although inferior
in every way, in energy of expression as in fulness
of sense, to the ancient Greek one: The mill of
* Libera me ab homine malo, a meipso.




150        THIE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
God grinds late, but grinds to powder;* for this
brings in the further thought, that his judgments,
however long they tarry, yet when they arrive are
crushing ones.  There is, indeed, another of our
own, not unworthy to be set beside this, announcing,
though with quite another image, the same fact of
the tardy but terrible arrivals of judgment: God
comes with leaden feet, but strikes with iron hands.
And then, how awfully sublime another which has
come down to us as part of the wisdom  of the
ancient heathen world; I mean the following: The
feet of the (avenging) deities are shod with wool.t
Here a new thought is introduced: the noiseless
approach and advance of these judgments, as noiseless as the steps of one whose feet were wrapped in
wool-the manner in which they overtake secure
sinners even in the hour of their utmost security.
Who that has studied the history of the great
crimes and criminals of the world, but will with a
shuddering awe set his seal to the truth of this
proverb? Indeed, meditating on such and on the
source from which we have derived them, one is
sometimes tempted to believe that the faith in a
Divine retribution evermore making itself felt in
the world, this sense of a Nemesis, as men used to
* )'04    Oe6v dXioIat iA6XOL, dXEovot Sd  Xe7rra.
Wa may compare the Latin: Habet Dens suas horas, et moras;
and the Spanish: Dios no se queja, mas lo suyo no lo deja.
t Dii laneos habent pedes.




CURIOSITY ABOUT EVIL.          151
call it, was stronger and deeper in the earlier and
better days of heathendom, than alas! it is in a
sunken Christendom now.
But to resume. Even those proverbs which have
acquired a use which seems to unite at once the
trivial and the profane, may yet, on closer inspection, be found to be very far from having either
triviality or profaneness cleaving to them. There
is one, for instance, often taken lightly enough
upon the lips, Talk of the devil, and he is sure to
appear; or, as it used to be, Talk of the devil, and
his imps will appear; or, as in German it is, Paint
the devil on the wall, and he will show himself
anon: which yet contains truth serious and important enough, if we would only give heed to it; it
contains, in fact, a very solemn warning against a
very dangerous sin-I mean, curiosity about evil.
It has been often noticed, and is a very curious
psychological fact, that there is a tendency in a
great crime to reproduce itself-to call forth, that
is, other crimes of the same character: and there is
a fearful response which the evil we may hear or
read about, is in danger of finding in our own
hearts. This danger, then, assuredly makes it true
wisdom and a piece of moral prudence, on the part
of all to whom this is permitted, to avoid knowing
or learning about the evil; especially when neither
duty nor necessity oblige them thereto. It is men's
wisdom to talk as little about the devil, either with




152        TIE THEOLOGY OF PIOVERBS.
themselves or with others, as they can, lest he appear to them.  " I agree with you," says Niebuhr
very profoundly, in one of his letters,*   that it is
better not to read books in which you make the acquaintance of the devil."  And certainly there is a
remarkable commentary on this proverb, so interpreted, in the earnest warning given to the children
of Israel, that they should not so much as inquire
how the nations which were before them in Canaan,
served their gods, with what cruelties, with what
abominable impurities, lest through this inquiry
they should be themselves entangled in the same
(Deut. xii. 29, 30). They were not to talk about
the devil, lest he should appear to them.
And other proverbs, too, which at first sight may
seem  over-familiar with the name of the great
enemy of mankind, yet contain lessons which it
would be an infinite pity to lose; as this German,
Where the devil can not come, he will send;t a
proverb of very serious import, which excellently
sets out to us the penetrative character of temptations, and the certainty that they will follow and
find men out in their secretest retreats.  It rebukes
the absurdity of supposing that by any outward
arrangements, cloistral retirements, flights into the
wilderness, sin can be kept at a distance. So far
* Life, vol. i, p. 312.
t Wo der Teufel nicht hin mag komrnmen, da send er seinen
Boten hin.




PROVERBS NOT PROFANE.           153
from this, temptations will inevitably overleap all
these outward and merely artificial barriers which
may be raised up against them; for our great
enemy is as formidable from a seeming distance as
in close combat; where e ecaz not come, he will
send. There are others of the same family, as the
following: The devil's meal is half bran —or all
bran, as the Italians still more boldly proclaim it;*
unrighteous gains are sure to disappoint the getter;
the pleasures of sin, even in this present time, are
largely dashed with its pains. And this, He had
need of a long spoon that eats with the devil; men
fancy they can cheat the arch-cheater, can advance
in partnership with him up to a certain point, and
then, whenever the connection becomes too dangerous, break it off at their will; being sure in this
to be miserably deceived. Granting these and the
like to have been often carelessly uttered, yet they
all rest upon a true moral basis in the main.
I have adduced in the course of these lectures
no inconsiderable number of proverbs, and have
sought for the most part to draw from them lessons,
which were lessons in common for us all. There
is one, however, which I must not pass over, for I
feel that it contains an especial lesson for myself,
and a lesson which I should do wisely and well,
at this present time, to lay to heart. When the
Spaniards would describe a tedious writer, one who
* La farina del diavolo se ne vA in semola.
7*




154        THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS.
possesses the art of exhausting the patience of his
readers, they say of him, He leaves nothing in his
inkstand. The phrase is a singularly happy one;
for assuredly there is no such secret of tediousness,
no such certain means of wearing out the attention
of our readers or our hearers, as the attempt to say
everything ourselves, instead of leaving something
to be filled up by their intelligence; while the
merits of a composition are often displayed as
really, if not so prominently, in what is passed over
as in what is set down; in nothing more than in
the just measure of the confidence which it shows
in the capacities and powers of those to whom it is
addressed. I would not willingly come under the
condemnation which waits on them who thus leave
nothing in their inkstand; and, lest I should do
so, I will bring now this my final lecture to its
close, and ask you to draw out for yourselves those
further lessons from proverbs, which I am sure they
are abundantly capable of yielding.




APPENDIX.
ON  THE  METRICAL  LATIN PROVERBS OF THE
MIDDLE AGES. (See p. 37.)
I HAVE not seen anywhere brought together a collection of these medieval proverbs cast into the form
of a rhyming hexameter. Erasmus, though he often
illustrates the proverbs of the ancient world by those of
the new, does not quote, as far as I am aware, through
the whole of his enormous collection, a single one of
these which occupy a middle place between the two; a
fact which in its way is curiously illustrative of the
degree to which the attention of the great Humanists,
at the revival of learning, was exclusively directed to
the classical literature of Greece and Rome.  Yet
proverbs in this form exist in considerable number;
being of very various degrees of merit, as will be seen
from the following selection; in which some are keen
and piquant enough, while others are of very subordinate value; those which seemed to me utterly valueless
-and they were not few —I have excluded altogether.
the reader familiar with proverbs, will detect correspondents to very many of them, besides the few which
I have quoted, in one modern language or another, often
in many.




156                     APPENDIX.
Accipe, sume, cape, tria sunt gratissima Papae.
Let me observe here, once for all, that the lengthening of the
final syllable in cape, is not to be set down to the ignorance
or carelessness of the writer; but in the theory of the medieval hexameter, the unavoidable stress or pause on the first
syllable of the third foot was counted sufficient to lengthen
the shortest syllable in that position.
Ad secreta poll curas extendere noli..Egro sanato, frustra dices, Nuinerato.
Amphora sub veste raro portatur honeste.
Ante Dei vultum nihil unquam restat inultum.
Ante molam primus qui venit, non molat imus.
A rule of natural equity: Prior tempore, prior jure; First
come, first serve. —"Whoso first cometh to the mill, first
grint." - Chaucer.
Arbor naturam  dat fructibus atque figuram.
Arbor ut ex fructu, sic nequam noscitur actu.
Ars compensabit quod vis tibi magna negabit.
Artem natura superat sine vi, sine cura.
Aspera vox, Ite, sed vox est blanda, Venite.
An allus'on to Matt. xxv. 34, 41.
Cari rixantur, rixantes conciliantur.
Carius est carum, si praegustatur amarum.
Casus dementis correctio fit sapientis.
Catus saepe satur cum capto mure jocatur.
Cautus homo cavit, si quem natura notavit.
Conjugium sine prole, dies veluti sine sole.
Contra vim mortis non herbula crescit in hortis.
Cui puer assuescit, major dimittere nescit.
The same appears also in a pentameter, and under an Horatian
image: Quod nova testa capit, inveterata sapit.




LATIN PROVE:IS.                   157
Cum jocus est verus, jocus est malus atque severns.
So the Spanish: Malas son las burlas verdaderas.
Curvum se preebet quod in uncum crescere debet.
Curia Romana non quaerit ovem sine lanA.
Dat bene, dat multum, qui dat cum munere vultum.
"He that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness.' (Rom. xii. 8.)
Cf. Ecclus. xxxv. 9; SENECA, De Benef, i. 1.
Deficit ambobus qui vult servire duobus.
Dormit secure, cui non est functio curae.
Farfrom court, far from care.
Ebibe vas totum, si vis cognoscere potum.
Est facies testis, quales intrinsecus estis.
Est nulli certum cui pugna velit dare sertum.
Ex lingua stulta veniunt incommoda multa.
Ex minimo crescit, sed non cito fama quiescit.
Fcemina ridendo flendo fallitque canendo.
Frangitur ira gravis, cum fit responsio suavis.
Fures in lite pandunt abscondita vitae.
So in Spanish: Ririen les comrades, y dicense las verdades.
Furtivus potus plenus dulcedine totus.
Hoc retine verbum, frangit Deus omne superbum.
Illa mihi patria est, ubi pascor, non ubi nascor.
Impedit omne forum defectus denariorum.
In vestimentis non stat sapientia mentis.
In vili veste nemo tractatur honeste.
The Russians have a worthier proverb: A man's reception is
according to his coat; his dismissal according to his sense.




158                    APPENDIX.
Linguam fraenare plus est quam castra domare.
Lingua susurronis est pejor felle draconis.
Musca, canes, mimi veniunt ad fercula primi.
MIus salit in stratum, cum scit non adfore catum.
Ne credas undam, placidaml non esse profundam.
Nil cito mutabis, donec meliora parabis.
Nobilitas morum plus ornat quam genitorum.
Non colit arva bene, qui semen mandat arenm.
Non est in mundo dives qui dieit, Abundo.
Non habet anguillam, per caudam qui tenet illam.
Non stat securus, qui protinus est ruiturus.
Non vult scire satur quid jejunus patiatur.
Omnibus est nomen, sed idem non omnibus omen.
In a world of absolute truth, every name would be the exact
utterance of the thing or person that bore it; but in our
world, not every Ireneus is peaceable, nor every Blanche a
blonde. Vigilantius ought rather, according to Jerome, to
have been named Dormitantius; and Antiochus Epiphanes
(the Illustrious), was for the Jews Antiochus Epimanes (the
Insane).
Parvis imbutus tentabis grandia tutus.
Pelle sub agnina latitat mens saepe lupina.
Per multum, Cras, Cras, omnis, consumitur setas.
Prodigus est natus de parco patre creatus.
Quando tumet venter, produntur facta latenter.
Qui bene vult fari, debet bene preemeditari.
Quidquid agit mundus, monachus vult esse secundus.
Qui petit alta nimis, retro lapsus ponitur imis.
Qui pingit florem non pingit floris odorem.
Qui se non noscat, vicini jurgia poscat.
Quisquis amat luscam, luscam putat esse venustam.




LATIN PROVERBS.                   159
Quisquis amat ranam, ranam putat esse Dianam.
Quod raro cernit oculi lux, cor cito spernit.
Quo minime reris, de gurgite pisce frueris.
Quos vult sors ditat, et quos vult sub pede tritat.
Res satis est nota, plus ftetent stercora mota.
Scribatur portis, Meretrix est janua mortis.
Sepes calcatur, qua pronior esse putatur.
Si curiam curas, pariet tibi curia curas.
Si nequeas plures, vel te solummodo cures.
Si non morderis, cane quid latrante vereris?
Stare diu nescit, quod non aliquando quiescit.
Subtrahe ligna focis, flammam restinguere si vis.
Sunt asini multi solum bino pede fulti.
Sus magis in cceno gaudet quam fonte sereno.
Tam male nil cusum, quod nullum prosit in usum.
Tota equidem novi plus testa pars Valet ovi.
Ultra posse viri non vult Deus ulla requiri.
Verba satis celant mores, eademque revelant.
Vos inopes nostis, quis amicus quisve sit hostis.
Vulpes vult fraudem, lupus agnum, fcemina laudem.
Add to these a few of the same description, but unrhymed:Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantam.
It is with this proverb, which is almost of all languages, that
Lady Macbeth taunts her husband, as one 
"Letting,'I dare not,' wait upon,'I would,'
Like the poor cat i' tile ta(age." - Act I. Scene 7.




160                   APPENDIX.
Cochlea consiliis, in factis esto volucris.
Dat Deus omne bonum, sed non per cornua taurum.
The Chinese say: Even the ripest fruit does not drop into
one's mouth; and another Latin: Non volat in buccas assa
columba tuas.
Ense cadunt multi, perimit sed crapula plures.
Furfure se miscens porcorum dentibus estur.
With a slight variation the Italian: Chi si fa fango, il porco
lo calpesta.
Ipsa dies quandoque parens, quandoque noverca.
Invidus haud eadem semper quatit ostia Daemon.
Mirari, non rimari, sapientia vera est.
Nomina si nescis, perit et cognitio rerum.
Non stillant omnes quas cernis in aere nubes.
Non venit ad silvam, qui cuncta rubeta veretur.
Pro ratione Deus dispertit frigora vestis.
Quod rarum carum; vilescit quotidianum.
Sermones blandi non radunt ora loquentis.
Stultorum calami carbones, moenia chartae.
So the French: Muraille blanche, papier des sots.
Add further a few which occupy two lines:Argue consultum, te diliget; argue stultum,
Avertet vultum, nec te dimittet inultum.
Balnea cornici non prosunt, nec meretrici;
Nec meretrix munda, nec cornix alba fit unda.




LATIN PROVERBS.                  161
Dives eram dudum; fecerunt me tria nudum;
Alea, vina, Venus; tribus his sum factus egenus.
Quando mulcetur villanus, pejor habetur;
UJngentem pungit, pungentem rusticus ungit.
Latin medieval ones in the same spirit abound: among others
this detestable one with its curious triple rhyme: Rustica
gens est optima flens, et pessima ridens.
Si bene barbatum faceret sua barba beatum,
Nullus in hoc circo queat esse beatior hirco.
Si qua sede sedes, et sit tibi commoda sedes,
11a sede sede, nec ab ilia sede recede.
Hoc scio pro certo, quod si cum stercore certo,
Vinco seu vincor, semper ego maculor.
Multum deliro, si cuique placere requiro;
Omnia qui potuit, hac sine dote fuit.
Permutant mores homines, cum dantur honores 
Corde stat inflato pauper, honore dato.
THE END.