“The cod-piece that will house,
Before the head has any,
The head and he shall louse;
So beggars marry many.”
Thus it is also said: “A beggar payeth a benefit with a louse.”
“A cunning knave needs no broker.” This old proverb is quoted by Hume, in “2 Henry VI.” (i. 2):
“A crafty knave does need no broker.”
“A curst cur must be tied short.” With this proverb we may compare what Sir Toby says in “Twelfth Night” (iii. 2), to Sir Andrew: “Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief.”
“A drop hollows the stone,” or “many drops pierce the stone.” We may compare “3 Henry VI.” (iii. 2), “much rain wears the marble,” and also the messenger’s words (ii. 1), when he relates how “the noble Duke of York was slain:”
“Environed he was with many foes;
And stood against them, as the hope of Troy
Against the Greeks, that would have enter’d Troy.
But Hercules himself must yield to odds;
And many strokes, though with a little axe,
Hew down and fell the hardest-timber’d oak.”
“A finger in every pie.” So, in “Henry VIII.” (i. 1), Buckingham says of Wolsey:
“no man’s pie is freed
From his ambitious finger.”
To the same purport is the following proverb:[858] “He had a finger in the pie when he burnt his nail off.”