Chapter III: Part 3

[45] 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 cædit, cogit.

[46] This was the judgment of Salmasius, who says: Inter Europæos Hispani in his excellunt, Itali vix cedunt, Galli proximo sequuntur intervallo.

[47] 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 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, and condition in life of the person from whom it was derived.

[48] Las manos blancas no ofenden.

[49] Bien sabe el asno en cuya cara rebozna.

[50] Quando vierás tu casa quemar, llega te á escalentar.

[51] El Rey va hasta do puede, y no hasta do quiere.

[52] Socorros de España, ó tarde, ó nunca.

[53] Matarás, y matarte han, y matarán a quien te matare.

[54] _Curiosities of Literature_, p. 391. London: 1838.

[55] These may serve as examples: Chi ha sospetto, di rado è in difetto.—Fidarsi è bene, ma non fidarsi è meglio.—Da chi mi fido, mi guardi Iddio; da chi non mi fido, mi guarderò io.—Con arte e con inganno si vive mezzo l’anno; con inganno e con arte si vive l’altra parte.

[56] Vendetta, boccon di Dio.

[57] Aspetta tempo e loco à far tua vendetta, che la non si fa mai ben in fretta. Compare another: Vuoi far Vendetta del tuo nemico, governati bene ed è bell’e fatta.

[58] Vendetta di cent’anni ha ancor i lattaiuoli.

[59] Con l’Evangelo si diventa eretico.

[60] Gli amici legono la borsa con un filo di ragnatelo.

[61] Ad un uomo dabbene avanza la metà del cervello; ad un tristo non basta ne anche tutto.

[62] 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. There is an excellent article on “Tuscan Proverbs” in _Fraser’s Magazine_, Jan. 1857.

[63] _Arabic Proverbs of the Modern Egyptians._ London: 1830.

[64] 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_.

[65] En casa del Moro no hables algarabia.

[66] Sermon sin Agostino, olla sin tocino.

[67] Gross und leer, wie das Heidelberger Fass.

[68] Doctor Luther’s Schuhe sind nicht allen Dorfpriestern gerecht.

[69] Cum duplicantur lateres, Moses venit.

[70] La gente pone, y Dios dispone.—Der Mensch denkt’s; Gott lenkt’s.

[71] La padella dice al pajuolo, Fatti in là, che tu mi tigni.

[72] Dijó la corneja al cuervo, Quítate allá, negro.

[73] Ein Esel schimpft den andern, Langohr.

[74] Γλαῦκας εἰς Ἀθήνας.

[75] Wer sich auf der Achsel sitzen lässt, dem sitzt man nachher auf dem Kopfe.

[76] Se ti lasci metter in spalla il vitello, quindi a poco ti metteran la vacca.

[77] Dame donde me asiente, que yo haré donde me acueste.

[78] Qui se fait brebis, le loup le mange.

[79] There is a Catalan proverb to the same effect: Qui de tot es moll, de tot es foll.

[80] Autant pèche celui qui tient le sac, que celui qui met dedans.

[81] Wer die Leiter hält, ist so schuldig wie der Dieb.

[82] Quien no adoba gotera, adoba casa entera.

[83] Benedetto è quel male, che vien solo.—Un mal è la vigilia dell’altro.—Un male ed un Frate di rado soli.

[84] Al villano, se gli porgi il dito, ei prende la mano.

[85] Dieu donne le froid selon le drap.—Cada cual siente el frio como anda vestido.

[86] Cui serpe mozzica, lucerta teme.

[87] El rio passado, el santo olvidado.

[88] Passato il punto, gabbato il santo.

LECTURE IV.

THE POETRY, WIT, AND WISDOM OF PROVERBS.

It will be my endeavour in the three lectures which 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 that there are proverbs, coarse, selfish, unjust, cowardly, profane; “maxims” wholly undeserving of the honour implied by that name.[89] Still as my pleasure, and I doubt not yours, is rather in the wheat than in the tares, I shall, while I do not conceal this, prefer to dwell in the main on the nobler features which they present.

[Sidenote: Poetic imagery.]

And first, in regard of the poetry of proverbs—whatever is _from_ the people, or truly _for_ 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, imagination, 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 palled 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, and proverbs being, as we have seen, the sayings that have found favour 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 entertain.

Thus we may expect to find that they will contain often bold imagery, striking comparisons; and such they do. Let serve as an example our own: _Gray hairs are death’s blossoms_;[90] or the Italian: _Time is an inaudible file_;[91] or the Greek: _Man a bubble_;[92] 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 but a handful of dust will fill the eye of man_; or another from the same quarter, worthy of Mecca’s prophet himself, and of the earnestness with which he realized Gehenna, whatever else he may have come short in: _There are no fans in hell_; or this other, also from the East: _Hold all skirts of thy mantle extended, when heaven is raining gold_; improve, that is, to the uttermost the happier crises of thy spiritual life; or this Indian, to the effect that good should be returned for evil: _The sandal tree perfumes the axe that fells it_; or this one, current in the Middle Ages: _Whose life lightens, his words thunder_;[93] or once more, this Chinese: _Towers are measured by their shadows, and great men 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 beautiful Spanish proverb: _La verdad es siempre verde_, which I must leave in its original form; for were 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, which I must also despair of adequately rendering: _Gloria vana florece, y no grana_; 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 think, refuse the title of poetry to this Eastern proverb, in which the wish that a woman may triumph over her enemies, clothes itself thus: _May her enemies stumble 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 fall.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Witty proverbs.]

And then, how exquisitely witty many proverbs are. Thus, not to speak of one familiar to us all, which is perhaps the queen of all proverbs: _The road to hell is paved with good intentions_;[94] take this Scotch one: _A man may 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 evermore proclaiming 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 flagrant, 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: _When rogues go in procession, the devil holds the cross_;[95] 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 honour as is going. Or consider how happily the selfishness and bye-ends which too often preside at men’s very prayers are noted in this Portuguese: _Cobblers go to mass, and pray that cows may die_;[96] that is, that so leather may be cheap. Or, take another, a German one, 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_; or this from the Talmud, of which I will leave the interpretation to yourselves: _All kinds of wood burn silently, except thorns, which crackle and call out, We too are wood_.

The wit of proverbs spares few or none. They are, as may be supposed, especially intolerant of fools. _We_ say: _Fools grow without watering_; no need therefore of adulation or flattery, to quicken them to a ranker growth; for indeed _The more you stroke the cat’s tail, the more he raises his back_;[97] and the Russians: _Fools are not planted or sowed; they grow of themselves_; while the Spaniards: _If folly were a pain, there would be crying in every house_;[98] having further an exquisitely witty one on learned folly as the most intolerable of all follies: _A fool, unless he know Latin, is never a great fool_.[99] And here is excellently unfolded to us the secret of the fool’s confidence: _Who knows nothing, doubts nothing_.[100]

[Sidenote: Bohemian proverb.]

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,[101] 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 offended a clerk, kill him; else you never will have peace with him_.[102] 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 risen up in the Church: _By the vicar’s skirts the devil climbs up into the belfry_.[103] Nor do physicians appear in the middle ages to have been in very high reputation for piety; for a Latin medieval proverb boldly proclaims: _Where there are three physicians, there are two atheists_.[104] And as for lawyers, this of the same period, _Legista, nequista_,[105] 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 neckcloth, which takes a thief by the throat every morning?_[106] 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.

[Sidenote: Proverbs about pride.]

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 forcibly uttered: _Thou shalt sooner detect an ant moving in the dark night on the black earth, than all the motions of pride in thine heart_. And on the wide reach of this sin the Italians say: _If pride were as art, how many graduates we should have_;[107] and how excellent and searching is this word of theirs on the infinitely various shapes which this protean sin will assume: _There are who despise pride with a greater pride_,[108] 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 he 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 splendours; the lowest place and the 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_.

Sometimes 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 foe is too many; and an hundred friends too few_.[109] 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 _animosity_, 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 knows: of sins, of debts, of years, and of foes_; and this Spanish: _One father can support ten children; ten children cannot 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 affection 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.

[Sidenote: French proverb.]

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_.[110] 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 on a level with the trudging upon foot of him, who has no horse to fall back on at 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 master, and thou art master, who shall drive the asses?_[111]

Again, how clever is the satire of the following Haytian 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. These, 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: _Mulattoes fight, kids die_.[112]

[Sidenote: Fuller’s use of proverbs.]

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 an 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 exactions of the Papal See gave birth to in England during 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_;[113] the very loudness of the clamour 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 _Richard the Third_, who, having helped the tyrant to a throne, afterwards 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 cannot remember ever to have met any of the following, which yet sound like proverbs—the first on solitude as preferable to ill fellowship: _Better ride alone than have a thief’s company_;[114] 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_,[115] and in this he warns against despising in any the tokens of honourable toil: _Mock not a cobbler for his black thumbs_.[116]

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, _apt for action_ and use.[117]

[Sidenote: Wisdom of silence.]

Thus, how many of these popular sayings and what good ones there are on the wisdom of governing the tongue,—I speak not now of those urging the _duty_, though such are by no means wanting,—but 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: _Who speaks, sows; who keeps silence, reaps_;[118] and on the _safety_ that is in silence, I know none happier than another from the same quarter, and one most truly characteristic of Italian caution: _Silence was never written down_;[119] 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.[120] Our own, _He who says what he likes, shall hear what he does not like_, gives a further motive for self-government in speech; while this Spanish is in an higher strain: _The evil which issues from thy mouth falls into thy bosom_.[121] 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, as the Chinese have said very well: _He who laughs at an impertinence, 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: _He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas_;[122] or, again, in the old Hebrew one: _Two dry sticks will set on fire one green_; or, in another from the East, which has to do with the same theme, and plainly shows whither such companionship will lead: _He that takes the raven for a guide, shall light upon carrion_.

[Sidenote: Good sense in proverbs.]

What warnings do many contain against unreasonable expectations, against a looking for perfection in a world of imperfection, and generally a demanding of more from life than life can yield. _We_ note very well the folly of one addicted to this, saying: _He expects better bread than can be made of wheat_; and the Portuguese: _He that will have an horse without fault, let him go afoot_; and the French: _Where the goat is tied, there she must browse_.[123] 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: _Measure thy cloth ten times; thou canst cut it but once_. And in this Spanish the final issues of procrastination are well set forth: _By the street of “By-and-bye” one arrives at the house of “Never.”_[124] In how pleasant a way discretion in avoiding 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 which thine enemy may not know_. Here is a word which we owe to Italy, and which, laid to heart, might keep men out of law-suits, or, being in them, from refusing to accept tolerable terms of accommodation: _The robes of lawyers are lined with the obstinacy of suitors_.[125] Other words of wisdom and warning, for so I must esteem them, are these; this, on the danger of being overset by prosperity: _Everything may be borne, except good fortune_;[126] with which may be compared our own: _Bear wealth, poverty will bear itself_; and another Italian which says: _In prosperity no altars smoke_.[127] This 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, is stripped in the middle of the street_;[128] he is detected and laid bare when and where detection is most shameful.

Of the same miscellaneous character, and derived from quarters the most diverse, but all of them of an excellent sense or shrewdness, are the following. This is from Italy: _Who sees not the bottom, let him not pass the water_.[129] This is current among the free blacks of Hayti: _Before fording the river, do not curse Mrs. Alligator_;[130] provoke not wantonly those in whose power you presently may be. This is Spanish: _Call me not “olive,” till you see me gathered_;[131] being nearly parallel to our own: _Praise a fair day at night_; and this French: _Take the first advice of a woman, and not the second_;[132] 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 cannot but think that for as many as are seeking diligently to improve their time and opportunities of knowledge, with at the same time little 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: _Compendia, 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 are content to 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 meagre and so hungry, 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 labour and money is bestowed upon them; and every wise man will set his seal to this word, as wisely as it is grandly spoken: “All spacious minds, attended with the felicities of means and leisure, will fly abridgements as bane.”

[Sidenote: Proverbs about books.]

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_.[133] Indeed, none worse, nor so bad; other robbers may spoil us of our money; but this robber of our “goods”—of our time at any rate, even assuming the book to be only negatively bad; but of how much more, of our principles, our faith, our purity of heart, supposing its badness to be positive, and not negative only. And one more on books may fitly find place here: _Dead men open living men’s eyes_; at least I take it to be such; and to contain implicitly the praise of history, and an announcement of the instruction which it will yield us.[134]

Here are one or two prudent words on education. _A child may have too much of its mother’s 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_.[135] And this, like many others, is found in so many tongues, that it cannot be ascribed to one rather than another: _More springs in the garden than the gardener ever sowed_.[136] 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.

[Sidenote: Gold’s worth is gold.]

Proverbs will sometimes outrun and implicitly anticipate conclusions, which 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_.[137] What millions upon millions of national wealth have been as much lost as if they had been 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 gainsaying—so long as the talk about the balance of trade being in favour 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_;[138]—surely a far wiser and far manlier word than the puling yet mischievous babble of our shallow Peace Societies, which, while they fancy that they embody, and they only embody, the true spirit of Christianity, proclaim themselves in fact ignorant of all which it teaches; for they dream of having peace the fruit, 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 men’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, _he bears peace_.[139]

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.

[Sidenote: Scriptural proverb.]

It is nothing strange that with words of Eternal Wisdom this should be so, and in respect of them my assertion cannot 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: _Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together_; (Matt. xxiv. 28;) and which probably He had taken 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 thus 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 eagles that by unerring instinct gathered round it to complete its doom. The Greek Church in the seventh century was too nearly a carcase 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 black-legs, and preyed on by these? Everywhere it is true that _Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together_.

[Sidenote: Extremes meet.]

[Sidenote: Too far East is West.]

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 heat would have done,—the extremities alike of joy and of grief finding utterance in tears,—that which is above all value declared to have no value at all, to be “invaluable,”—the second singular “thou” instead of the plural “you,” employed in 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: _Who paints me before, blackens me behind_;[140] 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 honours 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 the _summum jus_, where unredressed by equity, becomes the _summa injuria_, 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.[141] Or read thoughtfully 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 asceticism 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 licence 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 the “inward light.”[142] With these examples before you, not to speak of the many others which might be adduced,[143] you will own, I think, that this proverb, _Extremes meet_, or its parallel, _Too far East is West_, reaches very far into the heart of things; and with this for the present I must conclude.

Footnotes

[89] Regulæ quæ inter _maximas_ numerari merentur.

[90] In German: Grau’ Hare sind Kirchhofsblumen.

[91] Il tempo è una lima sorda.

[92] Πομφόλυξ ὁ ἄνθρωπος.

[93] Cujus vita fulgor, ejus verba tonitrua. Cf. Mark iii. 17: υἱοὶ βροντῆς.

[94] Admirably glossed in the _Guesses at Truth_: “Pluck up the stones, ye sluggards, and break the devil’s head with them.”

[95] Quando i furbi vanno in processione, il diavolo porta la croce.

[96] Vaô á missa çapateiros, rogaô a Deos que morraô os carneiros.

[97] This is Swedish: Zu mera man stryken Katten pá Swanzen, zu mera pyser pan.

[98] Si la locura fuese dolores, en cada casa darian voces.

[99] Tonto, sin saber latin, nunca es gran tonto.

[100] Qui rien ne sçait, de rien ne doute.

[101] 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.

[102] It is Huss who, denouncing the sins of the clergy of his day, has preserved this proverb for us: Malum proverbium contra nos confinxerunt, dicentes, Si offenderis clericum, interfice eum; alias nunquam habebis pacem cum illo.

[103] Por los haldas del vicario sube el diablo al campanario.

[104] Ubi tres Medici, duo Athei. Of course those which imply that they shorten rather than prolong the term of life, are numerous, as for instance, the old French: Qui court après le mière, court après la bière.

[105] In German: Juristen, bösen Christen.

[106] Bebel: Dicitur in proverbio nostro; nihil esse audacius indusio molitoris, cum omni tempore matutino furem collo apprehendat.

[107] Se la superbia fosse arte, quanti Dottori avressimo.

[108] Tal sprezza la superbia con una maggior superbia.

[109] Ein Feind ist zu viel; und hundert Freunde sind zu wenig.

[110] Il est aisé d’aller à pied, quand on tient son cheval par la bride.

[111] The Gallegan 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.

[112] Mulates qua battent, cabrites qua morts.

[113] A proverb of many tongues beside our own: thus in the Italian: Quanto più la volpe è maladetta, tanto maggior preda fa.

[114] _Holy State_, b. 3, c. 5.

[115] B. 2, c. 23.

[116] B. 3, c. 2.

[117] Adagia, ad agendum apta; this is the etymology of the word given by Festus.

[118] Chi parla semina, chi tace raccoglie; compare the Swedish: Bättre tyga än illa tala (Better silence than ill speech).

[119] Il tacer non fù mai scritto.

[120] Palabra de boca, piedra de honda.—Palabra y piedra suelta no tiene vuelta.

[121] El mal que de tu boca sale, en tu seno se cae.

[122] Quien con perros se echa, con pulgas se levanta.

[123] La ou la chèvre est attachée, il faut qu’elle broute.

[124] Por la calle de despues se va à la casa de nunca.

[125] Le vesti degl’avvocati sono fodrate dell’ostinazion dei litiganti.

[126] Ogni cosa si sopporta, eccetto il buon tempo.

[127] Nella prosperità non fumano gl’altari.

[128] Quien con ropa agena se viste, en la calle se queda encueros.

[129] Chi non vede il fondo, non passi l’acqua.

[130] Avant traversé rivier, pas juré maman caiman. This and one or two other Haytian proverbs quoted in this volume I have derived from a curious article, _Les mœurs et la littérature négres_, by Gustave D’Alaux, in the _Revue des deux Mondes_, Mai 15me, 1852.

[131] No me digas oliva, hasta que me veas cogida.

[132] Prends le premier conseil d’une femme, et non le second.

[133] Non v’è il peggior ladro d’un cattivo libro.

[134] Los muertos abren los ojos a los vivos.

[135] Es ist besser, das Kind weine denn der Vater.

[136] Nace en la huerta lo que no siembra el hortelano.

[137] Oro è, che oro vale;—and of the multitudes that are rushing to the Australian gold-fields, some may find this also true: Più vale guadagnar in loto che perder in oro.

[138] Una spada tien l’altra nel fodro.

[139] Qui porte épée, porte paix.

[140] Chi dinanzi mi pinge, di dietro mi tinge. The history of the word “sycophant,” and the manner in which it has travelled from its original to its present meaning, is a very striking confirmation of this proverb’s truth.

[141] How and why it is that extremes here meet, and what are the inner affinities between a democracy and a tyranny, Plato has wonderfully traced, _Rep._, ii. p. 217.

[142] See Jeremy Taylor’s _Dissuasive from Popery_, part 2, b. 1. sect. 11, § 6.

[143] “_Extremes meet._ Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as _so_ true, that they lose all the power of truths, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.”—COLERIDGE, _Aids to Reflection_.

LECTURE V.

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 another; 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, must there not 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 praise or censure can be pronounced upon all of 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 favour or against them, to affirm of them that their preponderating influence and weight is 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; he 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.

[Sidenote: Coarse proverbs.]

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, by what I have said, 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 of Howell’s, 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 upon 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 afterwards the case, it 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: _He has made his bed, and now he must lie on it_;—_As he has brewed, so he must drink_;—_As he has sown, so must he reap_;[144]—if these are employed to justify 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 cannot 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?

[Sidenote: Charity begins at home.]

_Charity begins 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 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? It is not for nothing that we have been grouped in families, neighbourhoods, and nations; and he 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 afterwards 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.[145]

[Sidenote: Prudential morality.]