Footnotes
- [[182]] Perhaps the Spanish form of this proverb is still better: La mentira tiene cortas las piernas; for the lie does go, though not far. Compare the French: La vérité, comme l’huile, vient au dessus.
- [[183]] La verdad es hija de Dios.
- [[184]] Vox populi, vox Dei.
- [[185]] Tant vaut l’homme, tant vaut sa terre.
- [[186]] Κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων.
- [[187]] Le bruit est si fort, qu’on n’entend pas Dieu tonner.
- [[188]] Εἷς ἀνὴρ, οὐδεὶς ἀνήρ.
- [[189]] Sensus est nihil egregium præstari posse ab uno homine, omni auxilio destituto.
- [[190]] Χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά.
- [[191]] The deepening of a proverb’s use among Christian nations as compared with earlier applications of the same may be illustrated by an example, which however, as not being directly theological, and thus not bearing immediately upon the matter in hand, I shall prefer to append in a note. An old Greek and Latin proverb, A great city, a great solitude, (Magna civitas, magna solitudo,) seems to have dwelt merely on the outside of things, and to have meant no more than this, namely, that a city ambitiously laid out and upon a large scheme would with difficulty find inhabitants sufficient, would wear an appearance of emptiness and desolation; as there used to be a jest about Washington, that strangers would sometimes imagine themselves deep in the woods, when indeed they were in the centre of the city. But with deeper cravings of the human heart after love and affection, the proverb was claimed in an higher sense. We may take in proof these striking words of De Quincey, which are the more striking that neither they nor the context contain any direct reference to the proverb: “No man,” he says, “ever was left to himself for the first time in the streets, as yet unknown, of London, but he must have felt saddened and mortified, perhaps terrified, by the sense of desertion and utter loneliness which belongs to his situation. No loneliness can be like that which weighs upon the heart in the centre of faces never ending, without voice or utterance for him; eyes innumerable that have ‘no speculation’ in their orbs which he can understand; and hurrying figures of men and women weaving to and fro, with no apparent purposes intelligible to a stranger, seeming like a masque of maniacs, or a pageant of shadowy illusions.” A direct reference to the proverb is to be found in some affecting words of Lord Bacon, who glosses and explains it exactly in this sense;—“For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.”
- [[192]] Chi ha l’amor nel petto, ha lo sprone a i fianchi.—Amor regge senza legge. (Cf. Rom. xiii. 9, 10.)—Amor regge il suo regno senza spada.—Amor non conosce travaglio. (Cf. Gen. xxix. 20, 30.)—Di tutte le arti maestro è amore.—Di tutto condimento è amore.
- [[193]] Evangelios pequeños.
- [[194]] Der Weg zum Himmel geht durch Kreuzdorn. Compare the medieval obverse of the same: Via Crucis, via lucis.
- [[195]] No hiere Dios con dos manos.
- [[196]] Paz y paciencia, y muerte con penitencia.
- [[197]] Memoirs of Margaret Fuller, vol. 3, p. 266. In respect of words like these, wrung out from moments of agony, and not the abiding convictions of the utterer, may we not venture to hope that our own proverb, For mad words deaf ears, is often graciously true, even in the very courts of heaven?
- [[198]] Wenn Gott ein Ding verdreufst, so verdreufst es auch bald die Menschen.
- [[199]] The following have all a right to be termed Christian proverbs: Chi non vuol servir ad un solo Signor, à molti ha da servir;—E padron del mondo chi lo disprezza, schiavo chi lo apprezza;—Quando Dios quiere, con todos vientos llueve.
- [[200]] Perimus licitis.
- [[201]] Non quam late sed quam læte habites, refert.—Mas vale un pedazo de pan con amor, que gallinas con dolor.
- [[202]] Quien siembra abrojos, no ande descalzo. Compare the Latin: Si vultur es, cadaver expecta; and the French: Maudissons sont feuilles; qui les seme, il les recueille.
- [[203]] No se mou la fulla, que Deu no ha vulla. This is one of the proverbs of which the peculiar grace and charm nearly disappears in the rendering.
- [[204]] Quien à dos señores ha de servir, al uno ha de mentir.
- [[205]] Verum mihi videtur illud: Dives aut iniquus, aut iniqui hæres. Out of a sense of the same, as I take it, the striking Italian proverb had its rise: Mai diventò fiume grande, chi non v’entrasse acqua torbida.
- [[206]] Πολλοί τοι ναρθηκοφόροι, παῦροι δέ τε βάκχοι.
- [[207]] The fact which this proverb proclaims, of a great gulf existing between what men profess and what they are, is one too frequently repeating itself and thrusting itself on the notice of all, not to have found its utterance in an infinite variety of forms, although none perhaps so deep and poetical as this. Thus there is another Greek line, fairly represented by this Latin:
- Qui tauros stimulent multi, sed rarus arator;
- and there is the classical Roman proverb: Non omnes qui habent citharam, sunt citharœdi; and the medieval rhyming verse:
- Non est venator quivis per cornua flator;
- and this Eastern word: Hast thou mounted the pulpit, thou art not therefore a preacher; with many more.
- [[208]] Qui me amat, amat et canem meum. (In Fest. S. Mich. Serm. 1, § 3.)
- [[209]] Libera me ab homine malo, a meipso.
- [[210]] Ὀψὲ Θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτά. We may compare the Latin: Habet Deus suas horas, et moras; and the Spanish: Dios no se queja, mas lo suyo no lo deja.
- [[211]] Dii laneos habent pedes.
- [[212]] Life, vol. i. p. 312.
- [[213]] Wo der Teufel nicht hin mag kommen, da send er seinen Boten hin.
- [[214]] La farina del diavolo se ne và in semola.
[APPENDIX.]
ON THE METRICAL LATIN PROVERBS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. (See p. [29].)
I have not seen anywhere brought together a collection of these medieval proverbs cast into the form of a rhyming hexameter. Erasmus, though he often illustrates the proverbs of the ancient world by those of the new, does not quote, as far as I am aware, through the whole of his enormous collection, a single one of these which occupy a middle place between the two; a fact which in its way is curiously illustrative of the degree to which the attention of the great Humanists at the revival of learning was exclusively directed to the classical literature of Greece and Rome. Yet proverbs in this form exist in considerable number; being of very various degrees of merit, as will be seen from the following selection; in which some are keen and piquant enough, while others are of very subordinate value; those which seemed to me utterly valueless—and they were not few—I have excluded altogether. The reader familiar with proverbs will detect correspondents to very many of them, besides the few which I have quoted, in one modern language or another, often in many.
Accipe, sume, cape, tria sunt gratissima Papæ.
Let me observe here, once for all, that the lengthening of the final syllable in capê, is not to be set down to the ignorance or carelessness of the writer; but in the theory of the medieval hexameter, the unavoidable stress or pause on the first syllable of the third foot was counted sufficient to lengthen the shortest syllable in that position.
Ad secreta poli curas extendere noli.