[LECTURE IV.]
THE POETRY, WIT, AND WISDOM OF PROVERBS.
It will be my endeavour in the three lectures which I have still to deliver to justify the attention which I have claimed on behalf of proverbs from you, not merely by appealing to the authority of others, who at different times have prized and made much of them, but by bringing out and setting before you, so far as I have the skill to do it, some of the merits and excellencies by which they are mainly distinguished. Their wit, their wisdom, their poetry, the delicacy, the fairness, the manliness which characterize so many of them, their morality, their theology, will all by turns come under our consideration. Yet shall I beware of presenting them to you as though they embodied these nobler qualities only. I shall not keep out of sight that there are proverbs, coarse, selfish, unjust, cowardly, profane; “maxims” wholly undeserving of the honour implied by that name. [89] Still as my pleasure, and I doubt not yours, is rather in the wheat than in the tares, I shall, while I do not conceal this, prefer to dwell in the main on the nobler features which they present.
Poetic imagery.
And first, in regard of the poetry of proverbs—whatever is from the people, or truly for the people, whatever either springs from their bosom, or has been cordially accepted by them, still more whatever unites both these conditions, will have poetry, imagination, in it. For little as the people’s craving after wholesome nutriment of the imaginative faculty, and after an entrance into a fairer and more harmonious world than that sordid and confused one with which often they are surrounded, is duly met and satisfied, still they yearn after all this with an honest hearty yearning, which must put to shame the palled indifference, the only affected enthusiasm of too many, whose opportunities of cultivating this glorious faculty have been so immeasurably greater than theirs. This being so, and proverbs being, as we have seen, the sayings that have found favour with the people, their peculiar inheritance, we may be quite sure that there will be poetry, imagination, passion, in them. So much we might affirm beforehand; our closer examination of them will confirm the confidence which we have been bold to entertain.
Thus we may expect to find that they will contain often bold imagery, striking comparisons; and such they do. Let serve as an example our own: Gray hairs are death’s blossoms; [90] or the Italian: Time is an inaudible file; [91] or the Greek: Man a bubble; [92] which Jeremy Taylor has expanded into such glorious poetry in the opening of the Holy Dying; or that Turkish: Death is a black camel which kneels at every man’s gate; to take up, that is, the burden of a coffin there; or this Arabic one, on the never satisfied eye of desire: Nothing but a handful of dust will fill the eye of man; or another from the same quarter, worthy of Mecca’s prophet himself, and of the earnestness with which he realized Gehenna, whatever else he may have come short in: There are no fans in hell; or this other, also from the East: Hold all skirts of thy mantle extended, when heaven is raining gold; improve, that is, to the uttermost the happier crises of thy spiritual life; or this Indian, to the effect that good should be returned for evil: The sandal tree perfumes the axe that fells it; or this one, current in the Middle Ages: Whose life lightens, his words thunder; [93] or once more, this Chinese: Towers are measured by their shadows, and great men by their calumniators; however this last may have somewhat of an artificial air as tried by our standard of the proverb.
There may be poetry in a play upon words; and such we shall hardly fail to acknowledge in that beautiful Spanish proverb: La verdad es siempre verde, which I must leave in its original form; for were I to translate it, The truth is always green, its charm and chief beauty would be looked for in vain. It finds its pendant and complement in another, which I must also despair of adequately rendering: Gloria vana florece, y no grana; which would express this truth, namely, that vain glory can shoot up into stalk and ear, but can never attain to the full grain in the ear. Nor can we, I think, refuse the title of poetry to this Eastern proverb, in which the wish that a woman may triumph over her enemies, clothes itself thus: May her enemies stumble over her hair;—may she flourish so, may her hair, the outward sign of this prosperity, grow so rich and long, may it so sweep the ground, that her detractors and persecutors may be entangled by it and fall.
Witty proverbs.
And then, how exquisitely witty many proverbs are. Thus, not to speak of one familiar to us all, which is perhaps the queen of all proverbs: The road to hell is paved with good intentions; [94] take this Scotch one: A man may love his house well, without riding on the ridge; it is enough for a wise man to know what is precious to himself, without making himself ridiculous by evermore proclaiming it to the world; or this of our own: When the devil is dead, he never wants a chief mourner; in other words, there is no abuse so enormous, no evil so flagrant, but that the interests or passions of some will be so bound up in its continuance that they will lament its extinction; or this Italian: When rogues go in procession, the devil holds the cross; [95] when evil men have it thus far their own way, then worst is best, and in the inverted hierarchy which is then set up, the foremost in badness is foremost also in such honour as is going. Or consider how happily the selfishness and bye-ends which too often preside at men’s very prayers are noted in this Portuguese: Cobblers go to mass, and pray that cows may die; [96] that is, that so leather may be cheap. Or, take another, a German one, noting with slightest exaggeration a measure of charity which is only too common: He will swallow an egg, and give away the shells in alms; or this from the Talmud, of which I will leave the interpretation to yourselves: All kinds of wood burn silently, except thorns, which crackle and call out, We too are wood.