How sound again the teaching, "He is not poor that hath little, but he that desireth much." "God provides for him that trusteth." "A cheerful look makes a dish a feast." "Sometimes the best gain is to lose." "He that sows trusts in God." "Divine ashes are better than earthlie meale."
How excellent the prudence that gives value to the following: "Send a wise man on an errand and say nothing unto him." "Although it rain cast not away thy watering-pot." "Who hath no more breade than nede must not keepe a dog." "The best remedy against an ill man is much ground between." "Love your neighbour, yet pull not down your hedge." "Send not a catt for lard." It is well, too, to remember that "Courtesie on one side only lasts not long," that a commensurate price has to be paid for everything, and so "a lion's skin is never cheape," that one's position must be frankly accepted and its duties adequately met, for "he that serves must serve," that gentle measures will often succeed better than rough ones, for "he that will take the bird must not skare it." It is at once a comfort and a warning that "none is a foole alwaies, everyone sometimes," and that the crafty at last over-reach themselves and in the end Nemesis awaits them. "At length the fox is brought to the furrier," and the farmyard knows him no more.
What an excellent lesson against jumping to conclusions is seen in this, "Stay till the lame messenger come, if you will know the truth of the thing," against concluding too hastily that the work we are engaged upon is finished, for "One flower does not make a garland."
The evil wrought by the tongue is a constant and perennial theme of the moralist, and the makers of proverbs are in complete accord, "The tongue talks at the head's cost." "More have repented speech than silence." Those who suffer at the hands, or rather the tongues, of others may learn how effectually to avenge themselves, for "Pardon and pleasantnesse are great revengers of slanders," and the experiment is one that is well worth trial. In any case, "Neither prayse nor disprayse thyself: thy actions serve the turne." "The effect speakes, the tongue need not." How full of wisdom is this final cluster of pearls, this sheaf of javelins: "A gift much expected is paid, not given." "Pleasing ware is half sould." "The hole calls the thief"—a warning against putting temptation in the way and thereby causing a brother to offend. The man who has gone far on the path of reformation is not safe so long as any relic of the past yet clings round his heart, for "The horse that draws after him his halter has not altogether escaped." "Whither shall the oxe goe where he shall not labour?" How can one hope to evade the responsibilities of his position? The proverb is an interesting reminder of the custom once common enough, and which we ourselves have seen in Sussex and Wiltshire, on the heavy down-lands, of ploughing with a yoke of oxen. There is quaint humour in this, "The chicken is the countrey's, but the citie eateth it." "If the old dog barke he gives counsell." "A married man turns his staffe into a stake," his wandering days are over.
A not unpleasant cynicism gives point to the assertion that "Nothing dries sooner than a teare," while it is equally one's experience of life that "When the tree is fallen all goe with their hatchet," and that "Men speak of the fair as things went with them there." It is a rather touching assertion that "The reasons of the poor weigh not," and it is too true. Their poverty makes the poor despised and their words unheeded by many who, richer in this world's goods, treat with contempt the struggling and the unsuccessful. Poverty is not a crime: it may be a badge of shame if the result of vice, or it may be a badge of honour where a man has scorned to stoop to shuffling dishonesties that may have enriched some who presume to despise him.
In 1659 James Howell issued a series of proverbs, and some of these were incorporated in Randle Cotgrave's dictionary in the following year. This latter has been deemed "that most amusing of all dictionary makers." He quotes many French proverbs, and then gives English adages that more or less match them. Thus under faim he gives "A la faim il n'y a point de mauvais pain," which, he explains, means that "To him who is hungry any bread seems good"—not quite a sufficiently literal translation, we should have thought, for a dictionary-maker—and adds, "We say hungrie dogs love durtie pudding."[49:A] Howell's proverbs were, as a whole, not very judiciously selected, and he had the presumption and bad taste to spin out of his own imagination a series of what he called "New Sayings which may serve for Proverbs for posterity." These were very poor, and posterity has declined to have anything to do with them.
In this same year, 1659, a small volume of adages, compiled by N. R. (Nathaniel Richards), appeared.
They are all in English, but are mostly of foreign origin, and are of no great interest or value.
A much more notable book is the "Gnomologia: Adagies and proverbs; wise sentences and witty sayings, ancient and modern, foreign and British, collected by Thomas Fuller, M.D." As the compiler gives over six thousand proverbs, we may regard the book as a fairly adequate one. He gives in it no indication of the sources from whence the adages are derived, adds no explanatory notes, and works on no system. This is equivalent to writing a natural history and leading off with panther and earwig. It is, as a matter of fact, very difficult to classify a collection of such disconnected units as proverbs. If we attempt to do it by countries we may soon find that it is in most cases quite impossible to guess where the adage originated, and the general borrowing that has been going on for centuries makes anything like a local claim to exclusive possession impossible. It would be quite easy to write out a list of fifty proverbs, illustrating them exclusively by passages from Cervantes and other Spanish writers, and, on the strength of this, claiming them as Spanish, but it would be equally easy afterwards for Dane, Russian, and German, Englishman, Italian, and Greek to come and each claim so many of these items that the speedy outcome would be an almost absolute disappearance from our list of anything purely Iberian.
There is a good deal to be said in favour of the alphabetical arrangement, but only on condition that the leading word of the adage be taken. It is a mere absurdity to take the first word. How can we reasonably put under letter A, "A rolling stone gathers no moss"? It may be objected that we are putting an extreme case, but extreme cases have to be considered as much as any others. In one book before us we find that the old author in scores of instances produces results as grotesquely inadequate. Under the letter D, for instance, we find, "Do not spur a willing horse," though surely everyone, with the exception of the compiler of the list, would at once realise that the pith of the adage does not in any way rest in "do." We may at once see this if we take the proverb in another of its popular forms, "Spur not a willing horse."
