Scriptural proverbs.
Sacred history furnishes us with one example at the least of the generation in this wise of a proverb. That word, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” is one of which we know the exact manner in which it grew to be a “proverb in Israel.” When the son of Kish revealed of a sudden that nobler life which had hitherto been slumbering in him, alike undreamt of by himself and by others, took his part and place among the sons of the prophets, and, borne along in their enthusiasm, praised and prophesied as they did, showing that he was indeed turned into another man, then all that knew him beforehand said one to another, some probably in sincere astonishment, some in irony and unbelief, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” And the question they asked found and finds its application so often as any reveals of a sudden, at some crisis of his life, qualities for which those who knew him the longest had hitherto given him no credit, a nobleness which had been latent in him until now, a power of taking his place among the worthiest and the best, which none until now had at all deemed him to possess. It will, of course, find equally its application, when one does not step truly, but only affects suddenly to step, into an higher school, to take his place in a nobler circle of life, than that in which hitherto he has moved.
The cranes of Ibycus.
Another proverb, and one well known to the Greek scholar, The cranes of Ibycus, [30] had its rise in one of those remarkable incidents, which, witnessing for God’s inscrutable judgments, are eagerly grasped by men. The story of its birth is indeed one to which so deep a moral interest is attached, that I shall not hesitate to repeat it, even at the risk that Schiller’s immortal poem on the subject, or it may be the classical studies of some here present, may have made it already familiar to a portion of my hearers. Ibycus, a famous lyrical poet of Greece, journeying to Corinth, was assailed by robbers: as he fell beneath their murderous strokes he looked round, if any witnesses or avengers were nigh. No living thing was in sight, save only a flight of cranes soaring high over head. He called on them, and to them committed the avenging of his blood. A vain commission, as it might have appeared, and as no doubt it did to the murderers appear. Yet it was not so. For these, sitting a little time after in the open theatre at Corinth, beheld this flight of cranes hovering above them, and one said scoffingly to another, “Lo, there, the avengers of Ibycus!” The words were caught up by some near them; for already the poet’s disappearance had awakened anxiety and alarm. Being questioned, they betrayed themselves, and were led to their doom; and The cranes of Ibycus passed into a proverb, very much as our Murder will out, to express the wondrous leadings of God whereby continually the secretest thing of blood is brought to the open light of day.
Gold of Toulouse [31] is another of these proverbs in which men’s sense of a God verily ruling and judging the earth has found its embodiment. The Consul Q. S. Cæpio had taken the city of Toulouse by an act of more than common perfidy and treachery; and possessed himself of the immense hoards of wealth stored in the temples of the Gaulish deities. From this day forth he was so hunted by calamity, all extremest evils and disasters, all shame and dishonour, fell so thick on himself and all who were his, and were so traced up by the moral instinct of mankind to this accursed thing which he had made his own, that any wicked gains, fatal to their possessor, acquired this name; and of such a one it would be said “He has gold of Toulouse.”
Another proverb, which in English has run into the following posy, There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, descends to us from the Greeks, having a very striking story connected with it: A master treated with extreme cruelty his slaves who were occupied in planting and otherwise laying out a vineyard for him; until at length one of them, the most misused, prophesied that for this his cruelty he should never drink of its wine. When the first vintage was completed, he bade this slave to fill a goblet for him, which taking in his hand he at the same time taunted him with the non-fulfilment of his prophecy. The other replied with words which have since become proverbial: as he spake, tidings were hastily brought of a huge wild boar that was wasting the vineyard. Setting down the untasted cup, the master went out to meet the wild boar, and was slain in the encounter, and thus the proverb, Many things find place between the cup and lip, arose. [32]
A Scotch proverb, He that invented the Maiden, first hanselled it, is not altogether unworthy to rank with these. It alludes to the well-known historic fact that the Regent Morton, the inventor of a new instrument of death called “The Maiden,” was himself the first upon whom the proof of it was made. Men felt, to use the language of the Latin poet, that “no law was juster than that the artificers of death should perish by their own art,” and embodied their sense of this in the proverb.
Memorable words of illustrious men will frequently not die in the utterance, but pass from mouth to mouth, being still repeated with complacency, till at length they have received their adoption into the great family of national proverbs. Gnomes become proverbs. Such were the gnomes or sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, supposing them to have been indeed theirs, and not ascribed to them only after they had obtained universal currency and acceptance. So too a saying, attributed to Alexander the Great, may very well have arisen on the occasion, and under the circumstances, to which its birth is commonly ascribed. When some of his officers reported to him with something of dismay the innumerable multitudes of the Persian hosts which were advancing to assail him, the youthful Macedonian hero silenced them and their apprehensions with the reply: One butcher does not fear many sheep; not in this applying an old proverb, but framing a new, and one admirably expressive of the confidence which he felt in the immeasurable superiority of the Hellenic over the barbarian man;—and this word, having been once set on foot by him, has since lived on, and that, because the occasions were so numerous on which a word like this would find its application.
And taking occasion from this royal proverb, let me just observe by the way, that it would be a great mistake to assume, though the error is by no means an uncommon one, that because proverbs are popular, they have therefore originally sprung from the bosom of the populace. What was urged in my first lecture of their popularity was not at all intended in this sense; and the sound common sense, the wit, the wisdom, the right feeling, which are their predominant characteristics, alike contradict any such supposition. They spring rather from the sound healthy kernel of the nation, whether in high place or in low; and it is surely worthy of note, how large a proportion of those with the generation of which we are acquainted, owe their existence to the foremost men of their time, to its philosophers, its princes, and its kings; as it would not be difficult to show. And indeed the evil in proverbs testifies to this quite as much as the good. Thus the many proverbs in almost all modern tongues expressing scorn of the “villain” are alone sufficient to show that for the most part they are very far from having their birth quite in the lower regions of society, but reflect much oftener the prejudices and passions of those higher in the social scale.
Let me adduce another example of the proverbs which have thus grown out of an incident, which contain an allusion to it, and are only perfectly A Spanish proverb. intelligible when the incident itself is known. It is this Spanish: Let that which is lost be for God; one the story of whose birth is thus given by the leading Spanish commentator on the proverbs of his nation:—The father of a family, making his will and disposing of his goods upon his death-bed, ordained concerning a certain cow which had strayed, and had been now for a long time missing, that, if it were found, it should be for his children, if otherwise for God: and hence the proverb, Let that which is lost be for God, arose. The saying was not one to let die; it laid bare with too fine a skill some of the subtlest treacheries of the human heart; for, indeed, whenever men would give to God only their lame and their blind, that which costs them nothing, that from which they hope no good, no profit, no pleasure for themselves, what are they saying in their hearts but that which this man said openly, Let that which is lost be for God.