"Though you cast out nature with a fork, it will still return"—has very much the air of a proverb versified. The same thought is better expressed in a French line which has acquired proverbial currency:—
"Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop."
"Drive away nature, and back it comes at a gallop." This line is very commonly attributed to Boileau, but erroneously. The author of it is Chaulieu (?). The Orientals ascribe to Mahomet the saying, "Believe, if thou wilt, that mountains change their places, but believe not that men change their dispositions."
Cat after kind.
"What is born of a hen will scrape" (Italian).[140] "What is born of a cat will catch mice" (French, Italian).[141] This proverb is taken from the fable of a cat transformed into a woman, who scandalised her friends by jumping from her seat to catch a mouse. "A good hound hunts by kind" (French).[142] "It is kind father to him," as the Scotch say. "Good blood cannot lie" (French);[143] its generous instincts are sure to display themselves on fit occasions. On the other hand, "The son of an ass brays twice a day."[144] We need not say what people that stroke of grave humour belongs to.
She will be more at home there than in the drawing-room. "A sow prefers bran to roses" (French).[145] "Set a frog on a golden stool, and off it hops again into the pool" (German).[146]
There's no making a silk purse of a sow's ear;
or, "A good arrow of a pig's tail" (Spanish);[147] or, "A sieve of an ass's tail" (Greek).
A carrion kite will never make a good hawk.[148]
An inch o' a nag is worth a span o' an aver.—Scotch.
A kindly aver will never make a good nag.—Scotch.