And proverbs, witty in themselves, often become wittier still in their application, like gems that acquire new brilliancy from their setting, or from some novel light in which they are held. No writer that I know of has an happier skill in thus adding Fuller’s use of proverbs. wit to the witty than Fuller, the Church historian. Let me confirm this assertion by one or two examples drawn from his writings. He is describing the indignation, the outcries, the remonstrances, which the thousandfold extortions, the intolerable exactions of the Papal See gave birth to in England during the reigns of such subservient kings as our Third Henry; yet he will not have his readers to suppose that the Popes fared a whit the worse for all this outcry which was raised against them; not so, for The fox thrives best when he is most cursed; [113] the very loudness of the clamour was itself rather an evidence how well they were faring. Or again, he is telling of that Duke of Buckingham, well known to us through Shakespeare’s Richard the Third, who, having helped the tyrant to a throne, afterwards took mortal displeasure against him; this displeasure he sought to hide, till a season arrived for showing it with effect, in the deep of his heart, but in vain; for, as Fuller observes, It is hard to halt before a cripple; the arch-hypocrite Richard, he to whom dissembling was as a second nature, saw through and detected at once the shallow Buckingham’s clumsier deceit. And the Church History abounds with similar happy applications. Fuller, indeed, possesses so much of the wit out of which proverbs spring, that it is not seldom difficult to tell whether he is adducing a proverb, or uttering some proverb-like saying of his own. Thus, I cannot remember ever to have met any of the following, which yet sound like proverbs—the first on solitude as preferable to ill fellowship: Better ride alone than have a thief’s company; [114] the second against certain who disparaged one whose excellencies they would have found it very difficult to imitate: They who complain that Grantham steeple stands awry, will not set a straighter by it, [115] and in this he warns against despising in any the tokens of honourable toil: Mock not a cobbler for his black thumbs. [116]
But the glory of proverbs, that, perhaps, which strikes us most often and most forcibly in regard of them, is their shrewd common sense, the sound wisdom for the management of our own lives, and of our intercourse with our fellows, which so many of them contain. In truth, there is no region of practical life which they do not occupy, for which they do not supply some wise hints and counsels and warnings. There is hardly a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson, might have saved us from it. “Adages,” indeed, according to the more probable etymology of that word, they are, apt for action and use. [117]
Wisdom of silence.
Thus, how many of these popular sayings and what good ones there are on the wisdom of governing the tongue,—I speak not now of those urging the duty, though such are by no means wanting,—but the wisdom, prudence, and profit of knowing how to keep silence as well as how to speak. The Persian, perhaps, is familiar to many: Speech is silvern, silence is golden; with which we may compare the Italian: Who speaks, sows; who keeps silence, reaps; [118] and on the safety that is in silence, I know none happier than another from the same quarter, and one most truly characteristic of Italian caution: Silence was never written down; [119] while, on the other hand, we are excellently warned of the irrevocableness of the word which has once gone from us in this Eastern proverb: Of thine unspoken word thou art master; thy spoken word is master of thee; even as the same is set out elsewhere by many striking comparisons; it is the arrow from the bow, the stone from the sling; and, once launched, can as little be recalled as these. [120] Our own, He who says what he likes, shall hear what he does not like, gives a further motive for self-government in speech; while this Spanish is in an higher strain: The evil which issues from thy mouth falls into thy bosom. [121] Nor is it enough to abstain ourselves from all such words; we must not make ourselves partakers in those of others; which it is only too easy to do; for, as the Chinese have said very well: He who laughs at an impertinence, makes himself its accomplice.
And then, in proverbs not a few what profitable warnings have we against the fruits of evil companionship, as in that homely one of our own: He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas; [122] or, again, in the old Hebrew one: Two dry sticks will set on fire one green; or, in another from the East, which has to do with the same theme, and plainly shows whither such companionship will lead: He that takes the raven for a guide, shall light upon carrion.
Good sense in proverbs.
What warnings do many contain against unreasonable expectations, against a looking for perfection in a world of imperfection, and generally a demanding of more from life than life can yield. We note very well the folly of one addicted to this, saying: He expects better bread than can be made of wheat; and the Portuguese: He that will have an horse without fault, let him go afoot; and the French: Where the goat is tied, there she must browse. [123] Again, what a good word of caution in respect of the wisdom of considering oftentimes a step which, being once taken, is taken for ever, lies in the following Russian proverb: Measure thy cloth ten times; thou canst cut it but once. And in this Spanish the final issues of procrastination are well set forth: By the street of “By-and-bye” one arrives at the house of “Never.” [124] In how pleasant a way discretion in avoiding all appearance of evil is urged in the following Chinese: In a field of melons tie not thy shoe; under a plum-tree adjust not thy cap. And this Danish warns us well against relying too much on other men’s silence, since there is no rarer gift than the capacity of keeping a secret: Tell nothing to thy friend which thine enemy may not know. Here is a word which we owe to Italy, and which, laid to heart, might keep men out of law-suits, or, being in them, from refusing to accept tolerable terms of accommodation: The robes of lawyers are lined with the obstinacy of suitors. [125] Other words of wisdom and warning, for so I must esteem them, are these; this, on the danger of being overset by prosperity: Everything may be borne, except good fortune; [126] with which may be compared our own: Bear wealth, poverty will bear itself; and another Italian which says: In prosperity no altars smoke. [127] This is on the disgrace which will sooner or later follow upon dressing ourselves out in intellectual finery that does not belong to us: Who arrays himself in other men’s garments, is stripped in the middle of the street; [128] he is detected and laid bare when and where detection is most shameful.
Of the same miscellaneous character, and derived from quarters the most diverse, but all of them of an excellent sense or shrewdness, are the following. This is from Italy: Who sees not the bottom, let him not pass the water. [129] This is current among the free blacks of Hayti: Before fording the river, do not curse Mrs. Alligator; [130] provoke not wantonly those in whose power you presently may be. This is Spanish: Call me not “olive,” till you see me gathered; [131] being nearly parallel to our own: Praise a fair day at night; and this French: Take the first advice of a woman, and not the second; [132] a proverb of much wisdom; for in processes of reasoning, out of which the second counsels would spring, women may and will be, inferior to us; but in intuitions, in moral intuitions above all, they surpass us far; they have what Montaigne ascribes to them in a remarkable word, “l’esprit primesautier,” the leopard’s spring, which takes its prey, if it be to take it at all, at the first bound.
And I cannot but think that for as many as are seeking diligently to improve their time and opportunities of knowledge, with at the same time little of either which they can call their own, a very useful hint and warning against an error which lies very near, is contained in the little Latin proverb: Compendia, dispendia. Nor indeed for them only, but for all, and in numberless respects it often proves true that a short cut may be a very long way home; yet the proverb can never be applied better than to those little catechisms of science, those skeleton outlines of history, those epitomes of all useful information, those thousand delusive short cuts to the attainment of that knowledge, which can indeed only be acquired by them that are content to travel on the king’s highway, on the old, and as I must still call it, the royal road of patience, perseverance, and toil. Surely these compendia, so meagre and so hungry, with little food for the intellect, with less for the affections, we may style with fullest right dispendia, wasteful as they generally prove of whatever time and labour and money is bestowed upon them; and every wise man will set his seal to this word, as wisely as it is grandly spoken: “All spacious minds, attended with the felicities of means and leisure, will fly abridgements as bane.”
Proverbs about books.