CHAPTER III
"The Book of Merry Riddles"—Introduction of Proverbs in our Literature—A Surfeit of Proverbs—"The two Angrie Women of Abington"—Fuller on the Misuse of Proverbs—The Sayings of Hendyng—Proverbs in Works of Chaucer, Lydgate, Spenser, Dryden, Shakespeare, and other Writers—The "Imitation of Christ"—Glitter is not necessarily Gold—The Cup and the Lip—Comparisons odious—The Rolling-Stone—The "Vision of Piers Plowman"—Guelph and Ghibelline—Dwellers in Glass Houses—A Spade is a Spade—Chalk and Cheese—Silence gives Consent—A Nine Days' Wonder—The little Pot soon Hot—Weakest to the Wall—Proverb-Hunting through our old Literature.
Throughout the Middle Ages a great use was made, as we have seen, of these popular adages on tapestries, rings, and in fact wherever they could be employed. Shakespeare, it will be recalled, writes of a but moderately good poetaster as one "whose poetry was
For all the world like cutler's poetry
Upon a knive, 'Love me, and leave me not,'"[65:A]
and we shall therefore naturally expect to find numerous allusions to this wealth of proverb-lore in the writings of the day. The works of the Elizabethan dramatists are brimming over with them. Such a fund of material as the "Book of Merry Riddles" must have been often drawn upon. The first edition was printed in 1600, and contained, amongst other entertaining material, a collection of "choice and witty proverbs." It was often re-issued, and our last chapter has revealed to us how many other collections of like nature were issued and immediately became available.
We propose to devote now some little space to exploring in search of proverbial allusions a little of the literary wealth of our country, and we may say at once that proverbs, like everything else, require discreet use, and it is not difficult to overdo the thing. A person who would be always dragging in these adages would be a terrible nuisance in conversation, and no less so in literature. In such a case "Enough is as good as a feast." One would quickly weary of a page or two of this sort of thing—a brochure during the days of a suggested invasion of England by "Boney"—
"Our foes on the ocean sent plenty of ships,
But 'It's not the best carpenter makes the most chips';
They promise to give Britain's sailors a beating,
Though 'the proof of the pudding is found in the eating.'
The French have big armies, but their threats are but froth,
For 'too many cooks do but spoil good broth';
They are welcome Britannia to catch when they get her,
But though 'Brag is a good dog yet Holdfast's a better.'
For their threats of invasion we ne'er care a rush—
'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush';
They may think, open-mouthed, to devour us like sharks,
But 'Till the sky falls we must wait to catch larks.'"
"The pleasant historie of the two angrie women of Abington"[66:A] is, despite its self-assertion of its pleasantness, rendered very tedious by this abuse and superabundance of proverbs—one of the characters in the play, one Nicholas Prouerbes, introducing them ad nauseam. To give any notion of the drift of the play is beside our present need. We will content ourselves, therefore, with some few extracts that will suffice to indicate the point before us, the excessive use of these popular adages:
"Nicholas. O maister Philip forbeare. You must not leape ower the stile before you come to it; haste makes waste; softe fire makes sweet malte; not too fast for falling; there's no hast to hang true men.
"Philip. Now will I see if my memorie will serue for some prouerbes too. O, a painted cloath were as well worth a shilling as a theefe worth a halter; wel, after my heartie commendations, as I was at the making therof. He that trots easilie will indure. You have most learnedly proverbde it, commending the virtue of patience and forbearance, but yet you know forbearance is no quittance.
"Nich. I promise ye, maister Philip, you have spoken as true as steele.
"Phil. Father, there's a prouerbe well applied.
"Nich. And it seemeth vnto me that you mocke me; do you not kno mocke age and see how it will prosper?
"Phil. Why ye prouerbe booke bound up in follio, have ye no other sense to answere me but euery word a prouerbe, no other English?"
Presently a dispute arises outside, and Nicholas is asked, "Wilt thou not go see the fraye?" to which this inveterate proverb-monger replies:
"No indeed, even as they brew so let them bake—I will not thrust my hand into a flame and neede not—'Tis not good to have an oare in another man's boat—Little said is soone amended, and in a little medling commeth great rest. 'Tis good sleeping in a whole skin—so a man might come home by weeping-crosse. No, by Lady, a friend is not so soone gotten as lost—blessed are the peace-makers—they that strike with the sword shall be beaten with the zcabberd."
To this flow of wisdom Philip replies:
"Well said, Prouerbes, is ne're another to that purpose?"
The too ready Nicholas makes reply:
"Yes, I could have said to you, Syr, take heede is a good reede."
His fellow serving-man at one portion of the play sees well to call Nicholas "tripe-cheeke, fat asse," and other epithets of like nature; upon which he replies:
"Good words cost nought, ill words corrupt good manners, Richard, for a hasty man never wants woe, and I had thought you had been my friende, but I see alle is not golde that glisters, time and truth tryeth all, and 'tis an old prouerbe and not so olde as true, bought wit is the best. I can see day at a little hole. I knowe your minde as well as though I were within you: goe to, you seeke to quarrell, but beware of lead I wist; so long goes the potte to the water at length it comes home broken. I knowe you are as goode a man as ever drew sword, as ere lookt man in the face, as ere broke bred or drunke drinke; but he is propper that hath propper conditions, be not you like the Cowe that gives a good sope of milke and casts it downe with his heeles. I speak, plainely, for plaine dealing is a Iewell, yet Ile take no wrong, if hee had a head as big as Brasse and lookt as high as Poules steple."
Coomes, not quite liking the tone of these remarks, replies:
"Sirra, thou grashoper, thou shal skip from my sword as from a sithe. Ile cut thee out in collops and steakes and frye thee with the fier I shall strike from the pike of thy Bucklet."
To this appalling threat, not best adapted to soothe matters over, or pour oil on the troubled waters, Nicholas replies:
"Brag's a good dog: threatened folkes liue long."
Further quotation is quite needless; enough, amply enough, has been brought forward to convince us how terrible a bore the inveterate quoter of proverbs can readily become. We are prepared after this to sympathise entirely with the sentiments of old Fuller: "Adages and prouerbs are to be accounted only as Sauce to relish Meat with, but not as substantial Dishes to make a Meal on; and therefore were never good but upon proper Subjects and Occasions, where they may serve to give a lively Force and pleasant Turn to what is said: but to apply them wrong and crack them off too thick, like Sancho in 'Don Quixote,' is abominably foppish, ridiculous and nauseous." We had our eye on Sancho Panza, but any comments that we might have made on his conduct in cracking off proverbs so thick become needless, since Fuller has already said all that need be hurled against so hardened an offender.
A very curious early manuscript has come under our notice, in which the common proverbs of the time are quoted by one of the villains. It is arranged in stanzas of six lines, each being then followed by a proverb. This latter is sometimes in two lines and sometimes in one, but is in every case attributed to the villains, "Ce dit li vilains." It deals with the proverbs current in Bretaigne, and commences:
"Qui les proverbes fist
Premierement bien dist
Au tans qu'alors estoit
Or est tout en respit.
En ne chante ne lit
D'annor en nul endroit
'Que a la bone denrée
A mauvaise oubliée'
Ce dit li vilains."
This quaint old French may be thus Anglicised: "He who first made proverbs spoke well to the people of his time; now all is forgotten, people neither sing nor read of honour in any place. He who has the good ware has forgotten the bad—so says the villain." The moral does not seem somehow to quite fit, unless indeed we read it to mean that when people had abundant supply of this proverb-law they had the good, and were so enamoured of it that it had supplanted in their hearts all desire for what they once preferred—the evil that was now quite driven from their hearts and forgotten.
Another verse terminates thus:
"Qui n'aime son mestier
Ne son mestier lui
Ce dit li vilains"—
"Who likes not his business his business likes not him." Another proverb that remains a very familiar one, as to the folly of not taking full precautions, and only shutting the stable door when the horse has already been taken, appears as
"Quant le cheval est emble
Dounke ferme fols l'estable
Ce dit li vilains."
The date of this poem is about the year 1300. How long the proverbs given therein date before its appearance—centuries possibly—we cannot say; but even if we took this poem as a point to start from, it is very interesting to reflect that this stolen horse and his unlocked stable have been for hundreds of years a warning to the heedless, and as well known to the men of Cressy and Agincourt as to those of this present day. However men, as Cavaliers or Roundheads, Lancastrians or Yorkists, priests or presbyters, differed from each other in much else, all agreed in this recognition of the folly of not taking better care of the steed they all knew so well.
We have an imitation of this old French poem in an English one that was almost contemporaneous, and, as in the preceding poem, each stanza is an amplification of the idea in the proverb that immediately follows, though in either case this gloss or development is not always very much to the point.
The first verse is dedicatory, invoking the Divine blessing:
"Mon that wol of wysdom heren
At wyse Hendyng he may lernen
That wes Marcolmes sone:
Gode thonkes out monie thewes
For te teche fele shrewes
For that wes ever is wone
Jhesu Crist al folke red
That for us all tholede ded
Upon the rode tre
Lene us all to ben wys
Ant to ende in his servys.
Amen, par charite.
God biginning maketh god endyng
Quoth Hendyng."
"Of fleysh lust cometh shame," and "if thou will fleysh overcome" the wisest course is flight from the temptation:
"Wel fytht that wel flyth
Quoth Hendyng."
If you would avoid the evils that follow hasty speech keep the tongue with all diligence in subjection, for though one's tongue has no bone in it itself it has been the cause of many a broken bone in the quarrels that it has fostered:
"Tonge breketh bon
Ant nad hire selve non
Quoth Hendyng."
"Al too dere," he warns us, "is botht that ware that we may wythoute care," gather at a terrible risk to ourselves. It is the grossest folly to find a momentary pleasure in any act that will bring misery in its train, for
"Dere is boht the hony that is licked of the thorne
Quoth Hendyng."
Where counsel fails, experience may step in and exact a higher price for the lesson taught:
"So that child withdraweth is hond
From the fur ant the brond
That hath byfore ben brend
Brend child fur dredeth
Quoth Hendyng."[72:A]
The Italians still more powerfully say that "A scalded dog dreads cold water," the meaning of this clearly being that those who have suffered in any direction have an exaggerated fear in consequence, and are afraid, even when there is no cause, really, for terror. This idea is even more strongly brought out in the old Rabbinical adage, "He who has been bitten by a serpent fears a piece of rope," a quite imaginable state of mind to arrive at.[72:B]
Up till now we have shown how one writer may use many proverbs; we will turn to the other alternative and seek to show how one proverb is used by many writers. In doing so we are at once struck by the variety of garb in which it may appear. The inner spirit and meaning, the core, remains inviolate naturally, but its presentation to us is by no means in one set formula. We are warned not to judge alone by outward appearance, nor to assume too hastily precious metal in what may prove to be but dross or a poor counterfeit of the real thing. Hence Chaucer warns us, "All thing which that shineth as the gold He is no gold, as I have heard it told." Lydgate, writing on "the Mutability of human affairs," declares truly enough that "all is not golde that outward showeth bright"; while Spenser, in his "Faerie Queene," hath it that "Gold all is not that doth golden seem"; and Shakespeare, in the "Merchant of Venice," writes, "All that glisters is not gold."[73:A] Dryden's version, in the "Hind and Panther," is very similar, "All, as they say, that glitters is not gold"; and Herbert, in the "Jacula Prudentum," reverses the wording into "All is not gold that glisters." In "Ralph Roister Doister" we find the reading, "All things that shineth is not by and by pure gold"; while the Italians have the equivalent, "Non é oro tutto quel che luce."
In Greene's "Perimedes," published in the year 1588, we find the passage, "Though men do determine the gods doo dispose, and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip." The first portion of this passage is almost invariably cited in French—"l'homme propose et le Dieu dispose"—giving the impression that the saying is of Gallic origin. How far back into the ages this proverb goes we cannot trace. We find it in the "Imitation of Christ" of Thomas à Kempis as, "Nam homo proponit sed Deus disponit." It is possible that the French rendering became current in our midst because the "Imitation," when first translated from the original Latin, was rendered into French. The book at once sprang into notice and esteem, and the passages under our consideration would be noticeable not only from its declaration of a great truth but from its rhythm—a rhythm that was well preserved in its French rendering. The French translation of the "Imitation of Christ" appeared in 1488, while the first English version was not produced till the year 1502. In the "Vision of Piers ploughman," written somewhere about the year 1360, we find the saying given in Latin, while George Herbert, who died in 1633, introduces it as "Man proposeth, God disposeth."
The possibilities that may exist in the short interval of time between raising the cup to the lips and setting it down again are made the subject of a warning proverb that is of immense antiquity. The Samian king, Ancæus, while planting a vineyard was warned by a diviner that he would not live to take its fruits. Time passed on and the vineyard prospered, until at length one day the king, goblet in hand, was to taste for the first time the wine it had yielded. He recalled the prophecy, and derided the power of the seer as he stood before him. At this moment a messenger arrived with the news that a wild boar was ravaging the vineyard, and Ancæus, hastily putting down the cup, seized his spear and rushed out to slay the boar, but himself fell a victim to the onslaught of the furious beast.[74:A] Thus, to quote a considerably more modern authority, Jonson's "Tale of a Tub," "you see the old adage verified—many things fall between the cup and lip."
It is a wise rule of conduct to bear in mind that great offence may be given by comparing one thing with another, as the process is almost sure to end to the more or less detriment of one or the other, or possibly, when the spirit of criticism is rampant, in the depreciation of both. Hence Lydgate writes in 1554, "Comparisons do oftimes great grevance," and in More's "Dial" the idea recurs—"Comparysons be odyouse." Gascoigne, in the year 1575, declares in his "Posies," "I will forbear to recyte examples by any of mine owne doings, since all comparisons are odious." Dr John Donne in an "Elegy" has the line, "she and comparisons are odious," and we find the same idea in Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," in Heywood's play, "A Woman Killed with Kindness," in "Don Quixote," and many other works.
Shakespeare, in his "Much Ado about Nothing," puts into the mouth of Dogberry the variation "comparisons are odorous." Swift, in his "Answer to Sheridan's Simile," writes:
"We own your verses are melodious,
But then comparisons are odious."
Lilly, in the "Euphues," seems to think that comparisons may at times be an offence when the objects of such a scrutiny are incomparable in their excellence; that each is so perfect that any suggestion of comparison becomes necessarily a depreciation and a dethronement. Hence he writes—"But least comparisons should seeme odious, chiefly where both the parties be without comparison, I will omitte that," and he returns to this idea in his "Midas," where he distinctly lays down the proposition that "Comparisons cannot be odious where the deities are equall."
The picturesque adage, "a rolling stone gathers no moss," is still popular amongst our people. In Turner's "Five hundred pointes of good husbandrie," a book written between three and four hundred years ago, we find the same precept:
"The stone that is rouling can gather no mosse;
Who often remoueth is sure of losse.
The rich it compelleth to paie for his pride;
The poore it vndooeth on euerie side."
Marston, in "The Fawn," written in the year 1606, has an allusion to this proverb:
"Thy head is alwaies working: it roles and it roles,
Dondolo, but it gathers no mosse."
In the "Vision of Piers Plowman" we appear at first sight to have a quaint and interesting variant—"Selden mosseth the marbelston that men ofte treden." But it will be seen that in thus altering the wording from the type-form we have also varied its significance; it is, in fact, a new saying, and of different application. To point out to a restless and aimless ne'er-do-well, throwing up one position after another, that no moss will be found growing on the doorstep of some busy office would be an entirely pointless proceeding not tending to edification.
Another familiar proverb is "well begun is half done." We find its equivalent in Horace and the severer Juvenal. Many of our proverbs were as familiar to Horace as to ourselves. "Money in purse will always be in fashion," and to "harp on the same string" are expressions, for instance, that were very familiar to the ancient Romans, and which are quite as intelligible to-day.
In the "Confessio Amantis" of Gower we find:
"A prouerbe I haue herde saie,
That who that well his worke beginneth,
The rather a good ende he winneth."
This proverb has historic interest, as its use on one fateful occasion was the final cause of desolating civil war that long ravaged Tuscany. When Boundelmonte broke his engagement with a lady of the family of the Amadei, and married into another, the kinsmen assembled in council to consider how the slight should be avenged, and atonement made for their wounded honour. Some of the more impetuous demanded the death of the young cavalier as the only possible reparation; but others hesitated, not from any particular regard for the traitor, but because of the great issues involved—consequences which in the after-event proved so disastrous to the Florentines. At length Mosca Lamberti, tired of this hesitation, sprang to his feet, and declared that those who talked were not likely to do anything else but talk, that the consideration of the matter from every point of view would lead to no worthy result, and make them objects of contempt, and then quoted the adage familiar to them all—"Capo a cosa fatta"—well begun is half done. This sealed the fatal determination, the die was cast, Boundelmonte was murdered, and thus was Florence at once involved in the strife between Guelph and Ghibelline, and the fair land of Tuscany became the battlefield of those contending factions.
The incident is referred to by Dante in the "Inferno." Amid his wanderings in these gloomy shades he presently arrives where
"One deprived of both his hands, who stood
Lifting the bleeding stumps amid the dim
Dense air, so that his face was stained with blood,
Cried—'In thy mind let Mosca take a place,
Who said, alas! "Deed done is well begun,"
Words fraught with evil to the Tuscan race.'"
It is a widely recognised principle that those who live in glass houses themselves should be very careful how they throw stones at others, as retaliation is so fatally easy.[77:A] In a collection of "Proverbes en rimes," published in Paris in 1664, we find—
"Qui a sa maison de verre
Sur le voisin ne jette pierre."
In the "Troilus" of Chaucer we find the same prudent abstinence from stone-throwing advocated, but in this case it is the stone-thrower's head and not his house that is in danger of reprisals.
"Who that hath an hede of verre
Fro caste of stones war hym in the werre."
The use of the word "verre" instead of glass seems to suggest that the French version was so far current in England that all would know it, and that it was immaterial whether the rendering was in French or in English. When James of Scotland succeeded, at the death of Elizabeth, to the English throne, one of the first results was that London became inundated with Scotchmen, all anxious to reap some benefit from the new political position. This influx caused a considerable amount of jealousy, and the Duke of Buckingham organised a movement against them, and parties were formed for the purpose of breaking their windows, and in a general way making them feel the force of an adverse public opinion. By way of retaliation, a number of Scotchmen smashed the windows of the duke's mansion in St Martin's Fields, known as "the Glass House," and on his complaining to the king His Majesty replied, "Steenie, Steenie, those who live in glass houses should be carefu' how they fling stanes." The story is told in Seton's "Life of the Earl of Dunfermline," and it will be appreciated that the quotation by our "British Solomon" of this ancient adage was very neatly put in.
Those who pride themselves on a certain blunt directness of speech, and who declare that they always speak their mind, further define the position they take up by declaring that they call a spade a spade. There certainly are occasions when such a course is the only honest one, when a man has to make his protest and refuse to connive at any circumlocution or whittling away of principle. There are other occasions when a regard for the feelings of others makes such a proceeding sheer brutality, and it is, we believe, a well-established fact that the audience of those who pride themselves on speaking their mind ordinarily find that they are the victims of a somewhat unpleasant experience. Baxter declares, "I have a strong natural inclination to speak of every subject just as it is, and to call a spade a spade, so as that the thing spoken of may be fullest known by the words. But I unfeignedly confess that it is faulty because imprudent." "I am plaine," we read in Marprelate's "Epitome," "I must needs call a spade a spade," and Ben Jonson advises to "boldly nominate a spade a spade."
In the year 1548 Archbishop Cranmer was busily engaged on a design for the better unity of all the Protestant churches by having one common confession and one body of doctrine drawn out of Holy Writ, to which all could give their assent. Melancthon, amongst others, was consulted by the archbishop, and was very favourable to the idea, but he strongly advised him, if the matter were to be carried to a successful issue, "to avoid all ambiguities of expression, call a spade a spade, and not cast words of dubious meaning before posterity as an apple of discord." Wise and weighty words that never fructified.
John Knox, who was not by any means the man to go out of his way to prophesy smooth things or palliate wrong-doing by any euphuism or a prudent turning away of the head, declares, "I have learned to call wickedness by its own terms, and to call a fig a fig and a spade a spade"; while Shakespeare, in his "Coriolanus," goes equally straight to the mark: "We call a nettle but a nettle, and the faults of fools but folly." Erasmus writes: "Ficus ficus, ligonem ligonem vocat" of a certain man.
Boileau in like manner writes, "J'appelle un chat un chat"; and Rabelais, "Nous sommes simples gents, puisqu'il plaist à Dieu: et appellons les figues figues, les prunes prunes, et les poires poires."
In the pages of Plutarch we read that Philip of Macedon, in answer to an irate ambassador, who complained to him that the citizens on his way to the palace had called him a traitor, replied: "My subjects are a blunt people, and call things always by their right names. To them figs are figs, and they call spades spades." The adage is one of unknown antiquity, and may be found in the writings of Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Lucian, and other classic authors. Erasmus, in his "Apophthegmes," published in 1542, tells the story of the discomfiture of the embassy to the Macedonian court very quaintly: "When those persons that were at Lasthenes found themselfes greued and toke fumishly that certain of the traine of Phillipus called theim traitours, Phillipus answered that the Macedonians were feloes of no fine witte in their termes, but altogether grosse, clubbish, and rusticall, as the whiche had not the witte to cal a spade by any other name than a spade, alluding to that the commen vsed prouerbe of the Grekes calling figgues figgues, and a bote a bote. As for his mening was that they were traitours in very deede. And the fair flatte truthe that the vplandishe or homely and play-clubbes of the countree dooen use, nameth eche thinge of the right names."
In Taverner's "Garden of Wysdome," published in 1539, the Macedonians are described as "very homely men and rudely brought vppe, which call a mattok nothing els but a mattok, and a spade a spade"—a very right and proper thing for Macedonians or anyone else to do on most occasions, but sometime a little too much like the unconscious brusqueness of children, who have in such matters no discretion, and who forget, or have never been taught, the more cautious precept that "all truths are not to be told on all occasions."
Those who, avoiding one difficulty, rashly run into a still greater dilemma, are warned, as in More's "Dial," that "they lepe lyke a flounder out of the fryenge panne into the fyre." Tertullian, Plato, and other early writers vary the wording to "Out of the smoke into the fire," but the pith of the matter is the same. Fire and smoke play their part in several adages. One of these, "If you will enjoy the fire you must not mind the smoke," recalls the days when the domestic arrangements were somewhat cruder than in those more luxurious days, but it still remains a valuable reminder that whatever advantages we may enjoy we must also be prepared for certain drawbacks. The Latin "Commodatis quævis sua fert incommoda secum" covers the same ground; and the French, "Nul feu sans fumée"—no fire without smoke, no good without some inconvenience—echoes the same idea. On the other hand, "Where there is smoke there is fire," the appearance of evil is a warning that the evil exists, the loose word implies the loose life. As the effect we see cannot be causeless, it is a danger-signal that we must not ignore. The present whiff of smoke, if disregarded, may be the herald of half an hour hence a raging conflagration, spreading ruin on every side.
When a strong comparison, the expression of a marked difference, is called for, we may, in the words of Shaclock, in his "Hatchet of Heresies," published in 1565, exclaim, "Do not these thynges differ as muche as chalcke and chese?" or, turning to the "Confessio Amantis" of Gower, find for our purpose, "Lo, how they feignen chalk for cheese!" while Heywood hath it:
"That as well agreeth the comparison in these,
As alyke to compare in tast, chalk and cheese."
Another popular proverb of our ancestors was "Fast bind, fast find." Hence, on turning to the "Merchant of Venice," we find the admonition, "Do as I bid you. Shut doors after you: fast bind, fast find—a proverb never stale in thrifty mind"; and the counsel is found repeated in the "Jests of Scrogin," published in 1565: "Wherefore a plaine bargain is best, and in bargaines making, fast bind, fast find"—a certain business shrewdness, a legal document, even the turning of a key in a door, will at times preserve to us unimpaired property that carelessness would have lost to us.
"The more the merrier" is an adage that has a pleasantly hospitable ring about it, though we are reminded in addition that the multiplicity of guests may lead to a certain pinching in the supplies. Heywood reminds us how
"The more the merrier we all day here see,
Yea, but the fewer the better fare, sayd he";
while Gascoigne, in his "Poesies," while he quotes with approval the old adage, "Store makes no sore"—no one is the worse for having a little reserve laid by—yet "Mo the merier is a proverbe eke" that must not be overlooked. "More the merrier" is the happy title of a book of epigrams published in 1608, and we may come across the sentiment in two or three of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, and in many other directions.
Our readers will recall Spenser's eulogium on
"Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,
On Fame's eternal beadroll worthie to be fyled."
The proverb-seeker finds in his picturesque pages abundant store. The "nonne preeste" exclaims, "Mordre wol out, that see we day by day," and in the Reve's prologue he reminds us that "Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken"; or, as a later writer hath it, "E'en in our ashes live our wonted fires." Chaucer again reminds us that "The proverbe saith that many a small makith a grete"; or, as it is sometimes given, "Many a little makes a mickle." The French tell us that even the drainage of the great deep is possible if only there be sufficient patience: "Goutte à goutte la mer s'egoute."[82:A] Every heart knows its own bitterness, knows all about that skeleton in the cupboard that the world has no suspicion of, knows just where the shoe pinches. Hence Chaucer exclaims, "But I wot best when wryngeth me my scho";[83:A] and in his "Testament of Love," where he writes, "Lo, eke an old proverb, he that is still seemeth as he granted," or, as we should say now-a-days, "Silence gives consent."[83:B] Another well-known adage and piece of worldly wisdom is, "Of two ills choose the least," a proverb found in the "Imitation of Christ" of À Kempis, in Hooker's "Polity," and elsewhere. Chaucer is to the fore with the saying, "Of harmes two the lesse is for to cheese." The saying appears as "E duobus malis minimum eligendum" in the pages of Cicero, so that it is not by any means an adage of yesterday's creation. It was, doubtless, a venerable saying long before Cicero employed it. When the idea got compacted into a recognised wisdom-chip, who can say? The rule of conduct is so clear and so in accordance with common-sense that we may well believe that the practice, if not the precept, would date from about the year one.
A "nine days' wonder" appears in the pages of the "Troilus" of Chaucer, as "Eke wonder last but nine daies never in towne." A thing makes a great sensation for a few days, and then something else arises, and the former matter is quite forgotten. Chaucer's addition to the adage of the limitation to town is curious, though on consideration a good deal can be said for it, since in towns incidents succeed each other quickly, and aid this obliteration of the past. Sometimes the proverb is extended into "A nine days' wonder, and then the puppy's eyes are open"—in allusion to the fact that dogs, like cats and several other animals, are born blind. One may read this as referring to those who make a wonder of an ordinary thing; the blindness of these little new-born puppies, or, in somewhat less literal sense, the puppies whose eyes are presently open, are those people who are blind and puzzled over some incident which they presently see through and unravel, and then lose all interest in.
As an encouragement to those who seem to be the victims of one misfortune after another, of continued ill fortune, the ancient saw is quoted, "'Tis a long lane has no turning." The expression is a picturesque one, and no doubt carries comfort and teaches patience. In the pages of Chaucer it appears as "Som tyme an end ther is on every deed." The only time we knew it absolutely to fail was in the case of an old man named Lane, who had his full share of the worries of life, and to whom one kindly well-wisher after another quoted this well-worn saying. Each thought that he had hit upon a happy idea, and applied it there and then, in full faith that it would be of soothing efficacy, but as, in the aggregate, the old fellow had had it fired off at him some hundreds of times, it acted instead as a powerful irritant! It was one trouble the more to carry through life.
One might, in the same way, though we have by no means exhausted the Chaucerian wealth of proverb-lore, hunt through the pages of Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and other writers, and should reap an abundant harvest. It may be somewhat of a shock that Milton's name should appear in such a connection, since the stately dignity of his work would appear entirely alien to the general tone of the popular adage; but one sees in this passage from "Comus"—
"Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining to the night?"—
a beautiful allusion to a well-known proverb. The plays of Shakespeare abound with these proverbial allusions. In the "Taming of the Shrew," for instance, we find, "Now, were I a little pot and soon hot," a proverb applied to short-tempered people who on slight cause wax wroth. The homely pot plays its part in homely conversation. The man whom Fortune has thwarted "goes to pot," waste and refuse metal to be cast into the melting-pot. The man on hospitable thoughts intent may invite his neighbour to pot-luck, to such chance repast, good or bad, as the "pot au feu" may yield. People who deride or scorn others for matters in which they are at least as much concerned are compared to the pot that called the kettle black,[85:A] while the rashness of those who, insufficiently provided with this world's goods, seek to rival others better provided and come to grief in the experiment, are reminded how the brazen and earthen pot swam down together on the swirling flood and collided to the detriment of the pitcher.[85:B] In "King Henry VI." we have "Ill blows the wind that profits nobody,"[85:C] and "Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep." In "Hamlet" the familiar adage, "Murder will out," appears as "Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak." "Every dog has his day"; we say: every man his chance, so in "Hamlet" we find—
"Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day."
In "Othello" we come across an equally well-known proverb, "They laugh that win," so quaintly curtailed by Heywood into "He laugth that winth." Another familiar adage is that "Use is second nature," and this Shakespeare, in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," refines into "How use doth breed a habit in a man!" In "As You Like It" another well-known saw presents itself in the lines, "If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue." The bush in question was an ivy-bough, the emblem of Bacchus, and the custom of marking the wine-shop by this dates from Roman days. "Vino vendibili hedera non opus est." The custom was continued throughout the Middle Ages; but a good article, the proverb tells us, needs no advertisement, or, as the French proverb hath it, "Au vin qui se vend bien il ne faut point de lierre."
In the days of our forefathers the streets were narrow, and there were no pavements; while discharging pipes and running gutters by the sides of the walls made the centre of the road the more agreeable place for the traveller. Wheeled conveyances of divers sorts passing and repassing forced the foot-passenger to the side of the road, and any tumult or street fight would drive the conquered pell-mell to take refuge in the houses or to the shelter of the wall out of the rush. Hence the proverb, "The weakest goes to the wall." In "Romeo and Juliet" Sampson and Gregory are found in the market-place of Verona, and the former declares, "I will take the wall of any man or maid of Montague's"; to whom the latter unsympathetically replies, "That shows thee a weak slave, for the weakest goes to the wall."
The wisdom of our ancestors discovered that "He who is born to be hanged will never be drowned," and our readers will recall how in the "Tempest" Gonzalo comforts himself in the contemplation of the villainous ugliness of the boatswain. "I have great comfort," he says, "from this fellow: methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is perfect gallows. Stand fast, good fate, to his hanging! Make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage! If he be not born to be hanged our case is miserable."
To make our list of quotations exhaustive, and therefore probably exhausting, is by no means necessary; we give but samples from the bulk, and in conclusion of our present chapter give some few of our commoner saws and one, or at most two, references to some old writer's work where it may be encountered. Naturally, the wording of some of the more ancient quotations is not always quite that of to-day.
"The potte may goo so longe to water that atte the last it is broken" we found in a manuscript of about the year 1545, entitled, "The book of the Knight of La Tour." The very ancient proverb, familiar to us in its Biblical garb, about the folly of the blind leading the blind, will be found in Gower's "Confessio Amantis"—
"As the blinde another ledeth,
And, till they falle, nothing dredeth."
The constant dropping that wears at length away a stone we found referred to in a manuscript of the time of Henry VIII. "So long may a droppe fall that it may perse a stone."
"The common proverb, as it is read,
That we should hit the nail on the head,"
is a couplet in a little book, "Wit Restor'd," issued in 1568, and we also find Skelton writing, "He hyt the nayle on the hede."
A caution to those who try and steer a deceitful course between those of opposing interests, treacherously allowing each to think they have exclusive support, has duly been crystallised into a proverb, and Lily introduces it in the following passage:—"Whatsouer I speake to men, the same also I speake to women. I meane not to run with the Hare and holde with the Hounde." "By hook or by crook" will be found in Spenser's "Fairie Queene." "Diamond cut diamond" is in Ford's play of "the Lover's Melancholy." "Every tub must stand upon its own bottom" occurs in the "Pilgrim's Progress." "He must have a long spoon that would eat with the devil" is found in Chaucer and Shakespeare, amongst other writers. That "The moon is made of green cheese" is re-asserted by Rabelais and in the pages of "Hudibras."
In Swift's "polite conversation," proverbs are thickly strewn. We find the old statement that "You must eat a peck of dirt before you die," the well-meant impertinence of "teaching one's grandmother to suck eggs," the communistic doctrine that "Sauce for the goose is no less sauce for the gander," and many other well-worn scraps of ancestral belief and practice. The wisdom of suiting your position to your circumstances, of cutting one's garment according to the material available, is emphasised in a "Health to the gentlemanly profession of Serving-Men," a brochure issued in 1598, where these worthies are warned, "You, with your fraternitie in these latter dayes cannot be content to shape your coate according to your cloth." In Marston's play of "What you Will," written in 1607, we have a familiar and homely caution borrowed from the experience of the kitchen—"Faith, Doricus, thy braine boils; keele it, keele it, or all the fatts in the fire," a proverb employed when by some inadvertence a man brings against himself a sudden blaze of wrath.
Proverb-hunting is a very pleasant recreation. We have left a vast field practically untrodden. We cannot do better than conclude in the quaint words of a little pamphlet that we once came across—"a collection of the Choycest Poems relating to the late Times" (1662). "Gentlemen, you are invited here to a feast, and if variety cloy you not, we are satisfied. It has been our care to please you. These are select things, a work of time, which for your sake we publish, assuring you that your welcome will crown the entertainment. Farewell."
FOOTNOTES:
[65:A] "Love me little, love me long" is found in the writings of Christopher Marlowe: "Pray, love me little, so you love me long," in Herrick.
[66:A] "The Pleasant Historie of the two Angrie Women of Abington, with the humerous mirthe of Dick Coomes and Nicholas Prouerbes, two seruingmen. As it was lately played by the Right Honourable the Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admirall, his Servants. By Henry Porter, gent. Imprinted at London for Joseph Hunt and William Farbrand, and are to be solde at the corner of Colman Street, neere Loathburie. 1599."
"Why urge yee me? My hart doth boyle with heate
And will not stoope to any of your lures:
A burnt child dreads the ffyre."—Timon, c. 1590.
[72:B] Ovid writes: "Tranquillas etiam naufragus horret aquas"—the man who has been wrecked dreads still water. The Portuguese make the cat the subject of their proverb—"Gato escaldado d'agua fria tem medo."
[73:A] We need scarcely point out that any reference to the use of any proverb is not intended to imply that this is the only use of it by that writer. "Yet gold is not that doth golden seem" is equally Shakespeare with the quotation given above. One passage will ordinarily suffice, but not because it is the only one available.
[74:A] The story is told by Pausanias: "Multa cadunt inter calicem supremaque labra."—Horace.
[77:A] "Stones and idle words are things not to be thrown at random."
[82:A] "Petit à petit l'oiseau fait son nid."
"What cloke for the rayne so ever yee bring mee,
Myselfe can tell best where my shoee doth wring mee."—Heywood.
[83:B] In "Cymbeline" Shakespeare writes—
"But that you shall not say I yield, being silent, I would not speak." It was a proverb of Ancient Rome, "Qui tacet consentire videtur," and in Modern Italy it reappears as "Chi ta ce confessa." In France it is "Assez consent qui ne dit mot."
[85:A] Or, to quote another expressive and homely English proverb, "The chimney-sweep told the collier to go wash his face." In France they say "La pêle se moque du fourgon," the shovel makes game of the poker.
[85:B] "Burden not thyself above thy power, and have no fellowship with one that is mightier or richer than thyself. For how agree the kettle and the earthen pot together? For if one be smitten against the other it shall be broken."—Ecclesiasticus xiii. 2.
[85:C] "An yll wynd that blowth no man good."—Heywood, Song against Idleness, 1540.
"It is an old proverb and a true,
I sware by the roode,
It is an il wind that blows no man to good."
—"Marriage of Wit and Wisdom," 1570.
