PROVERB MISASCRIBED TO DEFOE.
In an article on the writings of Daniel Defoe, in a late number of the Edinburgh Review, the critic refers to the True-Born Englishman, the opening quatrain of which is quoted as being “all that will ever be remembered of the poem.”
Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The devil is sure to build a chapel there;
And ’twill be found, upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.
A recent number of Chambers’s Papers for the People also contains an article on Defoe, in which the same lines are quoted as having since grown into a proverb. It is evident that the two critics believed the idea to be original with Defoe. But they were both in error; for in an old tract, entitled The Vineyarde of Vertue, printed in 1591, seventy-seven years before Defoe was born, may be found the following sentence:—
It is oftentimes seene, that as God hath his Churche, so will the Deuill have a Chappell.
It was also used before Defoe’s time by George Herbert and Robert Burton. The former says, in his Jacula Prudentum, “No sooner is a temple built to God, but the Devil builds a chapel hard by;” and the latter, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, thus expresses it: “Where God hath a Temple the Devil will have a Chapel.” It is evident that Defoe only versified a well-known proverb of his day.