Proverbs and Their Lessons / Being the Subject of Lectures Delivered to Young Men's Societies at Portsmouth and Elsewhere

by Richard Chenevix Trench

Ut dicunt multi, cito transit lancea stulti;

in other words: A fool’s bolt is soon shot.

Then, besides this derivation from elder sources, from the literature of nations which as such now no longer exist, besides this process in which a people are merely receivers and borrowers, there is also at somewhat later periods in its life a mutual interchange between it and other nations growing up beside, and cotemporaneously with it, of their own several inventions in this kind; a free giving and taking, in which it is often hard, and oftener impossible, to say which is the lender and which the borrower. Thus the quantity of proverbs not drawn from antiquity, but common to all, or nearly all of the modern European languages, is very great. The ‘solidarity’ (to use a word which it is in vain to strive against) of all the nations of Christendom comes out very noticeably here.

Proverbs claimed by many.

There is indeed nothing in the study of proverbs, in the attribution of them to their right owners, in the arrangement and citation of them, which creates a greater perplexity than the circumstances of finding the same proverb in so many different quarters, current among so many different nations. In quoting it as of one, it often seems as if we were doing wrong to many, while yet it is almost, or oftener still altogether, impossible to determine to what nation it first belonged, so that others drew it at second hand from that one;—even granting that any form in which we now possess it is really its oldest of all. More than once this fact has occasioned a serious disappointment to the zealous collector of the proverbs of his native country. Proud of the rich treasures which in this kind it possessed, he has very reluctantly discovered on a fuller investigation of the whole subject, how many of these which he counted native, the peculiar heirloom and glory of his own land, must at once and without hesitation be resigned to others, who can be shown beyond all doubt to have been in earlier possession of them: while in respect of many more, if his own nation can put in a claim to them as well as others, yet he is compelled to feel that it can put in no better than, oftentimes not so good as, many competitors. [27]

This single fact, which it is impossible to question, that nations are thus continually borrowing proverbs from one another, is sufficient to show that, however the great body of those which are the portion of a nation may be, some almost as old as itself, and some far older, it would for all this be a serious mistake to regard the sum of them as a closed account, neither capable of, nor actually receiving, addition—a mistake of the same character as that sometimes made in regard to the words of a language. So long as a language is living, it will be appropriating foreign words, putting forth new words of its own. Exactly in the same way, so long as a people have any vigorous energies at work in them, are acquiring any new experiences of life, are forming any new moral convictions, for the new experiences and convictions new utterances will be found; and some of the happiest of these will receive that stamp of general allowance which shall constitute them proverbs. And this fact makes it little likely that the collections which exist in print, and certainly not the earlier ones, will embrace all the proverbs in actual circulation. They preserve, indeed, many others; all those which have now become obsolete, and which would, but for them, have been forgotten; but there are not a few, as I imagine, which, living on the lips of men, have yet never found their way into books, however worthy to have done so; and this, either because the sphere in which they circulate has continued always a narrow one, or that the occasions which call them out are very rare, or that Unregistered proverbs. they, having only lately risen up, have not hitherto attracted the attention of any who cared to record them. It would be well, if such as take an interest in the subject, and are sufficiently well versed in the proverbial literature of their own country to recognise such unregistered proverbs when they meet them, would secure them from that perishing, which, so long as they remain merely oral, might easily overtake them; and would make them at the same time, what all good proverbs ought certainly to be, the common heritage of all. [28]

And as new proverbs will be born from life and from life’s experience, so too there will be another fruitful source of their further increase, namely, the books which the people have made heartily their own. Portions of these they will continually detach, most often word for word; at other times wrought up into new shapes with that freedom which they claim to exercise in regard of whatever they thus appropriate to their own use. These, having detached, they will give and take as part of their current intellectual money. Thus “Evil communications corrupt good manners,” [29] (1 Cor. xv. 33,) is word for word a metrical line from a Greek comedy. It is not probable that St. Paul had ever read this comedy, but the words for their truth’s sake had been taken up into the common speech of men; and not as a citation, but as a proverb, he uses them. And if you will, from this point of view, glance over a few pages of one of Shakespeare’s more popular dramas,—Hamlet, for example,—you will be surprised, in case your attention has never been called to this before, to note how much has in this manner been separated from it, that it might pass into the every day use and service of man; and you will be prepared to estimate higher than ever what he has done for his fellow countrymen, the “possession for ever” which his writings have become for them. And much no doubt is passing even now from favourite authors into the flesh and blood of a nation’s moral and intellectual life; and as “household words,” as parts of its proverbial philosophy, for ever incorporating itself therewith. We have a fair measure of an author’s true popularity, I mean of the real and lasting hold which he has taken on his nation’s heart, in the extent to which it has been thus done with his writings.

There is another way in which additions are from time to time made to the proverbial wealth of a people. Some event has laid strong hold of their imagination, has stirred up the depths of their moral consciousness; and this they have gathered up for themselves, perhaps in some striking phrase which was uttered at the moment, or in some allusive words, understood by everybody, and which at once summon up the whole incident before their eyes.