We have seen that rhymes are commonly used as a means of impressing proverbs on the memory. The four couplets—one from Gower's "Confessio Amantis"; one from Burns, from his "Tam O'Shanter"; one from "An Honest Man's Fortune," written by John Fletcher three hundred years ago; and the fourth from "The Lady's Dream" of Hood—that we now quote are equally worth remembrance:
"Lo now, my son, what it is,
A man to caste his eyes amis."
"Pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed."
"Our acts are angels, for good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."
"Evil is wrought by want of thought,
As well as want of heart."
Other good proverbs for those at the commencement of life, are: that "A man is valued as he makes himself valuable"; "Crises form not character, but reveal it"; "He that finds it easy to repent will not find it hard to sin"; "Wine neither keeps secrets nor carries out promises"; "Bacchus has drowned more than Neptune"; and, happy truth, "Every slip is not a fall." It must be remembered that, while a man may have enough of the world to drag him down, he will never have enough to satisfy him—peace and satisfaction being found in a quite other direction than what by a strange misnomer is called "life." "A sound conscience is a triple fence of steel," so "Better keep evil out than turn it out." "Character is property," and "A good conscience makes an easy couch"; "Complaining is a contempt upon oneself"; "Thanksgiving is good, thanks-living is better."
Friends, true and false, have made their mark on our proverb store, and counsels of encouragement and of warning are abundantly at our service. How to recognise the true friend, how to detect the counterfeit article, is invaluable knowledge, and if we could only at all times be as wise as our rich mass of proverb-lore would fain have us to be, we should in matters of friendship, and in most other things, make a very prosperous voyage on the sea of life. One seems to detect several grades or qualities of friendship in these adages. There is that, for instance, which is unfailing, which in sickness and health, poverty or wealth, is always true and real; then at the other end of the scale a sham article that soon has all the gilt rubbed off; and then in between these a less obvious failure, which has many of the marks of the real thing, and which will stand by one bravely when all is going smoothly, but which must not be put to any severe strain or it may snap. Then, again, we detect another variety of the article, who appears to be merely some one to be worked on, as, for example, "He is my friend that grindeth at my mill"—who comes to our help in our necessity, lends us money, tools, and so forth, and of whom we presently tire because he loses his yielding properties, or who presently tires of us and our multitudinous wants. Then there is the candid friend, who is theoretically such a helpmate, but who in practice grows unbearable. This by no means exhausts the types one meets with, and we soon find that "friend" is a noun of multitude and stands for many things, from pure gold down to the veriest brass or pinchbeck.
The touchy people who are easily offended are not the people to make friends, or to keep them long if they do make them. "Who would be loved must love," or, with a slightly different shade of meaning, "That you may be loved, forget not to be lovable." To love and to be lovable are both essential if you would be loved. "A man is little the better for liking himself if no one else like him," since self-sufficiency means selfishness, and love does not prosper on that. A very good hint against selfishness is found in the Spanish, "Who eats his dinner alone must saddle his horse alone," for no one will go out of their way to help curmudgeons. It is an excellent maxim, too, that "He who receives a good turn should never forget it; he who does one should never remember it."
All have not the tact of him whose praises Moore sings:
"Whose wit in the combat as gentle as bright
Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade."