It is very likely that from some of us proverbs have never attracted
the notice which I am persuaded they deserve; and from this it may
follow that, when invited to bestow even a brief attention on them, we
are in some doubt whether they will repay our pains. We think of them
but as sayings on the lips of the multitude; not a few of them have
been familiar to us as far back as we can remember; often employed by
ourselves, or in our hearing, on slight and trivial occasions: and
thus, from these and other causes, it may very well be, that, however
sometimes one may have taken our fancy, we yet have remained blind in
the main to the wit, wisdom, and imagination, of which they are full;
and very little conscious of the amusement, instruction, insight, which
they are capable of yielding. Unless too we have devoted a certain
attention to the subject, we shall not be at all aware how little those
more familiar ones, which are frequent on the lips of men, exhaust
the treasure of our native proverbs; how many and what excellent ones
remain behind, having now for the most part fallen out of sight; or
what riches in like kind other nations possess. We may little guess how
many aspects of interest there are in which our own by themselves, and
our own compared with those of other people, may be regarded.
And yet there is much to induce us to reconsider our judgment, should
we be thus tempted to slight them, and to count them not merely trite,
but trivial and unworthy of a serious attention. The fact that they
please the people, and have pleased them for ages,—that they possess
so vigorous a principle of life, as to have maintained their ground,
ever new and ever young, through all the centuries of a nation’s
existence,—nay, that many of them have pleased not one nation only,
but many, so that they have made themselves an home in the most
different lands,—and further, that they have, not a few of them, come
down to us from remotest antiquity, borne safely upon the waters of
that great stream of time, which has swallowed so much beneath its
waves,—all this, I think, may well make us pause, should we be tempted
to turn away from them with anything of indifference or disdain.
And then further, there is this to be considered, that some of the
greatest poets, the profoundest philosophers, the most learned
scholars, the most genial writers in every kind, have delighted in
them, have made large and frequent use of them, have bestowed infinite
labour on the gathering and elucidating of them. In a fastidious age,
indeed, and one of false refinement, they may go nearly or quite
out of use among the so-called upper classes. No gentleman, says
Lord Chesterfield, or “no man of fashion,” as I think is his exact
phrase, “ever uses a proverb.”[1] And with how fine a touch of nature
Shakespeare makes Coriolanus, the man who, with all his greatness, is
entirely devoid of all sympathy for the people, to utter his scorn _of
them_ in scorn of their proverbs, and of their frequent employment of
these:
“Hang ’em!
They said they were an hungry, sighed forth proverbs;—
That, _hunger broke stone walls_; that, _dogs must eat_;
That, _meat was made for mouths_; that, _the gods sent not
Corn for the rich men only_;—with these shreds
They vented their complainings.”
_Coriolanus_, Act I. Sc. 1.
[Sidenote: Aristotle collected proverbs.]
But that they have been always dear to the true intellectual
aristocracy of a nation, there is abundant evidence to prove. Take but
these three names in evidence, which though few, are in themselves an
host. Aristotle made a collection of proverbs; nor did he count that he
was herein doing aught unworthy of his great reputation, however some
of his adversaries may afterwards have made of the fact that he did so
an imputation against him. He is said to have been the first collector
of them, though many afterwards followed in the same path. Shakespeare
loves them so well, that besides often citing them, and scattering
innumerable covert allusions, rapid side glances at them, which we
are in danger of missing unless at home in the proverbs of England,
several of his plays, as _Measure for Measure_, _All’s well that ends
well_, have popular proverbs for their titles. And Cervantes, a name
only inferior to Shakespeare, has made very plain the affection with
which he regarded them. Every reader of _Don Quixote_ will remember
his squire, who sometimes cannot open his mouth but there drop from it
almost as many proverbs as phrases. I might name others who have held
the proverb in honour—men who though they may not attain to these
first three, are yet deservedly accounted great; as Plautus, the most
genial of Latin poets, Rabelais and Montaigne, the two most original
of French authors; and how often Fuller, whom Coleridge has styled the
wittiest of writers, justifies this praise in his witty employment of
some old proverb: and no reader can thoroughly understand and enjoy
_Hudibras_, none but will miss a multitude of its keenest allusions,
who is not thoroughly familiar with the proverbial literature of
England.
[Sidenote: Proverbs in Scripture.]
Nor is this all; we may with reverence adduce quite another name
than any of these, the Lord himself, as condescending to employ such
proverbs as he found current among his people. Thus, on the occasion of
his first open appearance in the synagogue of Nazareth, he refers to
the proverb, _Physician, heal thyself_, (Luke iv. 23,) as one which
his hearers will perhaps bring forward against Himself; and again
presently to another, _A prophet is not without honour but in his own
country_, as attested in his own history; and at the well of Sychar He
declares, “Herein is that saying,” or that proverb, “true, _One soweth
and another reapeth_.” (John iv. 37.) But He is much more than a quoter
of other men’s proverbs; He is a maker of his own. As all forms of
human composition find their archetypes and their highest realization
in Scripture, as there is no tragedy like Job, no pastoral like Ruth,
no lyric melodies like the Psalms, so we should affirm no proverbs
like those of Solomon, were it not that “a greater than Solomon” has
drawn out of the rich treasure house of the Eternal Wisdom a series of
proverbs more costly still. For indeed how much of our Lord’s teaching,
especially as recorded in the three first Evangelists, is thrown into
this form; and how many of his words have in this shape passed over as
“faithful sayings” upon the lips of men; and so doing, have fulfilled a
necessary condition of the proverb, whereof we shall have presently to
speak.
But not urging this testimony any further,—a testimony too august
to be lightly used, or employed merely to swell the testimonies of
men—least of all, men of such “uncircumcised lips” as, with all their
genius, were more than one of those whom I have named,—and appealing
only to the latter, I shall be justified, I feel, in affirming that
whether we listen to those single voices which make a silence for
themselves, and are heard through the centuries and their ages, or to
that great universal voice of humanity, which is wiser even than these
(for it is these, with all else which is worthy to be heard added to
them), there is here a subject, which those whose judgments should go
very far with us have not accounted unworthy of their serious regard.
And I am sure if we bestow on them ourselves even a moderate share
of attention, we shall be ready to set our own seal to the judgment
of wiser men that have preceded us here. For, indeed, what a body of
popular good sense and good feeling, as we shall then perceive, is
contained in the better, which is also the more numerous, portion
of them; what a sense of natural equity, what a spirit of kindness
breathes out from many of them; what prudent rules for the management
of life, what shrewd wisdom, which though not _of_ this world, is most
truly _for_ it, what frugality, what patience, what perseverance, what
manly independence, are continually inculcated by them. What a fine
knowledge of the human heart do many of them display; what useful, and
not always obvious, hints do they offer on many most important points,
as on the choice of companions, the bringing up of children, the
bearing of prosperity and adversity, the restraint of all immoderate
expectations. And they take a yet higher range than this; they have
their ethics, their theology, their views of man in his highest
relations of all, as man with his fellow man, and man with his Maker.
Be these always correct or not, and I should be very far from affirming
that they always are so, the student of humanity, he who because he
is a man counts nothing human to be alien to him, can never without
wilfully foregoing an important document, and one which would have
helped him often in his studies, altogether neglect or pass them by.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Shortness, sense, salt.]
But what, it may be asked, before we proceed further, is a proverb?
Nothing is harder than a definition. While on the one hand there is
for the most part no easier task than to detect a fault or flaw in the
definitions of those who have gone before us, nothing on the other
is more difficult than to propose one of our own, which shall not
also present a vulnerable side. Some one has said that these three
things go to the constituting of a proverb, _shortness_, _sense_,
and _salt_. In brief pointed sayings of this kind, the second of the
qualities enumerated here, namely _sense_, is sometimes sacrificed to
alliteration. I would not affirm that it is so here: for the words are
not ill spoken, though they are very far from satisfying the rigorous
requirements of a definition, as will be seen when we consider what
the writer intended by his three _esses_, which it is not hard to
understand. The proverb, he would say, must have _shortness_; it must
be succinct, utterable in a breath. It must have _sense_, not being,
that is, the mere small talk of conversation, slight and trivial, else
it would perish as soon as born, no one taking the trouble to keep
it alive. It must have _salt_, that is, besides its good sense, it
must in its manner and outward form be pointed and pungent, having a
sting in it, a barb which shall not suffer it to drop lightly from the
memory.[2] Yet, regarded as a definition, this of the triple _s_ fails,
as I have said; it indeed errs both in defect and excess.
[Sidenote: Proverbs will be concise.]
Thus in demanding _shortness_, it errs in excess. It is indeed quite
certain that a good proverb will be short, as short, that is, as is
compatible with the full and forcible conveying of that which it
intends. Brevity, “the soul of wit,” will be eminently the soul of a
proverb’s wit; it will contain, according to Fuller’s definition, “much
matter decocted into few words.” Oftentimes it will consist of two,
three, or four, and these sometimes monosyllabic, words. Thus _Extremes
meet_;—_Right wrongs no man_;—_Forewarned, forearmed_;—with a
thousand more.[3] But still shortness is only a relative term, and
it would perhaps be more accurate to say that a proverb must be
_concise_, cut down, that is, to the fewest possible words; condensed,
quintessential wisdom.[4] But that, if only it fulfil this condition
of being as short as possible, it need not be absolutely very short,
there are sufficient examples to prove. Thus Freytag has admitted the
following, which indeed hovers on the confines of the fable, into his
great collection of Arabic proverbs: _They said to the camel-bird_,
[i. e., the ostrich,] _“Carry:” it answered, ‘I cannot, for I am a
bird.’ They said, “Fly;” it answered, ‘I cannot, for I am a camel.’_
This could not be shorter, yet, as compared with the greater number
of proverbs, is not short.[5] Even so the _sense_ and _salt_, which
are ascribed to the proverb as other of its necessary conditions, can
hardly be said to be such; seeing that flat, saltless proverbs, though
comparatively rare, there certainly are; while yet, be it remembered,
we are not considering now what are the ornaments of a _good_ proverb,
but the essential marks of all.
And then moreover it errs in defect; for it has plainly omitted one
quality of the proverb, and that the most essential of all—I mean
_popularity_, acceptance and adoption on the part of the people.
Without this popularity, without these suffrages and this consent of
the many, no saying, however brief, however wise, however seasoned with
salt, however worthy on all these accounts to have become a proverb,
however fulfilling all other its conditions, can yet be esteemed as
such. This popularity, omitted in that enumeration of the essential
notes of the proverb, is yet the only one whose presence is absolutely
necessary, whose absence is fatal to the claims of any saying to be
regarded as such.
[Sidenote: Aphorisms not proverbs.]
Those, however, who have occupied themselves with the making of
collections of proverbs have sometimes failed to realize this to
themselves with sufficient clearness, or at any rate have not kept it
always before them; and thus it has come to pass, that many collections
include whatever brief sayings their gatherers have anywhere met with,
which to them have appeared keenly, or wisely, or wittily spoken;[6]
while yet a multitude of these have never received their adoption into
the great family of proverbs, or their rights of citizenship therein:
inasmuch as they have never passed into general recognition and
currency, have no claim to this title, however just a claim they may
have on other grounds to our admiration and honour. For instance, this
word of Goethe’s, “A man need not be an architect to live in an house,”
seems to me to have every essential of a proverb, saving only that it
has not passed over upon the lips of men. It is a saying of manifold
application; an universal law is knit up in a particular example; I
mean that gracious law in the distribution of blessing, which does not
limit our use and enjoyment of things by our understanding of them,
but continually makes the enjoyment much wider than the knowledge; so
that it is not required that one be a botanist to have pleasure in a
rose, nor a critic to delight in _Paradise Lost_, nor a theologian to
taste all the blessings of Christian faith, nor, as he expresses it,
an architect to live in an house. And here is an inimitable saying of
Schiller’s: “Heaven and earth fight in vain against a dunce;” yet it is
not a proverb, because his alone; although abundantly worthy to have
become such;[7] moving as it does in the same line with, though far
superior to, the Chinese proverb, which itself also is good: _One has
never so much need of his wit, as when he has to do with a fool_.
Or to take another example still more to the point. James Howell, a
prolific English writer of the earlier half of the seventeenth century,
one certainly meriting better than that almost entire oblivion into
which his writings have fallen, occupied himself much with proverbs;
and besides collecting those of others, he has himself set down “five
hundred new sayings, which in tract of time may serve for proverbs
to posterity.” As was to be expected, they have not so done; for it
is not after this artificial method that such are born; yet many of
these proverbs in expectation are expressed with sense and felicity;
for example: “Pride is a flower that grows in the devil’s garden;” as
again, the selfishness which characterizes too many proverbs is not ill
reproduced in the following: “Burn not thy fingers to snuff another
man’s candle;” and there is at any rate good theology in the following:
“Faith is a great lady, and good works are her attendants;” and in
this: “The poor are God’s receivers, and the angels are his auditors.”
Yet for all this, it would be inaccurate to quote these as proverbs,
(and their author himself, as we have seen, did not do more than set
them out as proverbs upon trial,) inasmuch as they have remained the
private property of him who first devised them, never having passed
into general circulation; which until men’s sayings have done, maxims,
sentences, apothegms, aphorisms they may be, and these of excellent
temper and proof, but proverbs as yet they are not.
[Sidenote: Not all proverbs true.]
It is because of this, the popularity inherent in a genuine proverb,
that from such an one in a certain sense there is no appeal. You will
not suppose me to intend that there is no appeal from its wisdom,
truth, or justice; from any word of man’s there may be such; but no
appeal from it, as most truly representing a popular conviction.
Aristotle, who in his ethical and political writings often finds very
much more than this in it, always finds this. It may not be, it very
often will not be, an universal conviction which it expresses, but
ever one popular and widespread. So far indeed from an universal, very
often over against the one proverb there will be another, its direct
antagonist; and the one shall belong to the kingdom of light, the other
to the kingdom of darkness. _Common fame is seldom to blame_; here is
the baser proverb, for as many as drink in with greedy ears all reports
to the injury of their neighbours; being determined from the first that
they _shall_ be true. But it is not left without its compensation:
_“They say so,” is half a liar_; here is the better word with which
_they_ may arm themselves, who count it a primal duty to close their
ears against all such unauthenticated rumours to the discredit of
their brethren. _The noblest vengeance is to forgive_; here is the
godlike proverb on the manner in which wrongs should be recompensed:
_He who cannot revenge himself is weak, he who will not is vile_,[8]
here is the devilish. These lines occur in a sonnet which Howell has
prefixed to his collection of proverbs:
“The people’s voice the voice of God we call;
And what are proverbs but the people’s voice?
Coined first, and current made by common choice?
Then sure they must have weight and truth withal;”
It will follow from what has just been said, that, true in the
main, they yet cannot be taken without certain qualifications and
exceptions.[9]
[Sidenote: Popularity essential.]
Herein in great part the force of a proverb lies, namely, that it has
already received the stamp of popular allowance. A man might produce,
(for what another has done, he might do again,) something as witty, as
forcible, as much to the point, of his own; which should be hammered at
the instant on his own anvil. Yet still it is not “the wisdom of many;”
it has not stood the test of experience; it wants that which the other
already has, but which it only after a long period can acquire—the
consenting voice of many and at different times to its wisdom and
truth. A man employing a “proverb of the ancients,” (1 Sam. xxiv.
13,) is not speaking of his own, but uttering a faith and conviction
very far wider than that of himself or of any single man; and it is
because he is so doing that they, in Lord Bacon’s words, “serve not
only for ornament and delight, but also for active and civil use; as
being the edge tools of speech which cut and penetrate the knots of
business and affairs.” The proverb has in fact the same advantage over
the word now produced for the first time, which for present currency
and value has the recognised coin of the realm over the rude unstamped
ore newly washed from the stream, or dug up from the mine. This last
_may_ possess an equal amount of fineness; but the other has been
stamped long ago, has already passed often from man to man, and found
free acceptance with all:[10] it inspires therefore a confidence which
the ruder metal cannot at present challenge. And the same satisfaction
which the educated man finds in referring the particular matter before
him to the universal law which rules it, a plainer man finds in the
appeal to a proverb. He is doing the same thing; taking refuge, that
is, as each man so gladly does, from his mere self and single fallible
judgment, in a larger experience and in a wider conviction.
And in all this which has been urged lies, as it seems to me, the
explanation of a sentence of an ancient grammarian, which at first
sight appears to contain a bald absurdity, namely, that a proverb is
“a saying without an author.” For, however without a _known_ author
it may, and in the majority of cases it must be, still, as we no more
believe in the spontaneous generation of proverbs than of anything
else, an author every one of them must have had. It might, however,
and it often will have been, that in its utterance the author did but
_precipitate_ the floating convictions of the society round him; he
did but clothe in happier form what others had already felt, or even
already uttered; for often a proverb has been in this aspect, “the wit
of one, and the wisdom of many.” And further, its constitutive element,
as we must all now perceive, is not the utterance on the part of the
one, but the acceptance on the part of the many. It is _their_ sanction
which first makes it to be such; so that every one who took or gave it
during the period when it was struggling into recognition may claim
to have had a share in its production; and in this sense without any
single author it may have been. From the very first the people will
have vindicated it for their own. And thus though they do not always
analyse the compliment paid to them in the use of their proverbs, they
always feel it; they feel that a writer or speaker using these is
putting himself on their ground, is entering on their region, and they
welcome him the more cordially for this.[11]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Not all proverbs figurative.]
Let us now consider if some other have not sometimes been proposed as
essential notes of the proverb, which yet are in fact accidents, such
as may be present or absent without affecting it vitally. Into an error
of this kind they have fallen, who have claimed for the proverb, and
made it one of its necessary conditions, that it should be a figurative
expression. A moment’s consideration will be sufficient to disprove
this. How many proverbs, such as _Haste makes waste_;—_Honesty is the
best policy_, with ten thousand more, have nothing figurative about
them. Here again the error has arisen from taking that which belongs
certainly to very many proverbs, and those oftentimes the best and
choicest, and transferring it, as a necessary condition, to all. This
much of truth they who made the assertion certainly had; namely, that
the employment of the concrete instead of the abstract is one of the
most frequent means by which it obtains and keeps its popularity;
for so the proverb makes its appeal to the whole man—not to the
intellectual faculties alone, but to the feelings, to the fancy, or
even to the imagination, as well, stirring the whole man to pleasurable
activity.
By the help of an instance or two we can best realize to ourselves how
great an advantage it thus obtains for itself. Suppose, for example,
one were to content himself with saying, “He may wait till he is a
beggar, who waits to be rich by other men’s deaths,” would this trite
morality be likely to go half so far, or to be remembered half so
long, as the vigorous comparison of this proverb: _He who waits for
dead men’s shoes may go barefoot_?[12] Or again, what were “All men
are mortal,” as compared with the proverb: _Every door may be shut but
death’s door_? Or let one observe: “More perish by intemperance than
are drowned in the sea,” is this anything better than a painful, yet at
the same time a flat, truism? But let it be put in this shape: _More
are drowned in the beaker than in the ocean_;[13] or again in this:
_More are drowned in wine and in beer than in water_;[14] (and these
both are German proverbs,) and the assertion assumes quite a different
character. There is something that lays hold on us now. We are struck
with the smallness of the cup as set against the vastness of the
ocean, while yet so many more deaths are ascribed to that than to this;
and further with the fact that literally none are, and none could be,
drowned in the former, while multitudes perish in the latter. In the
justifying of the paradox, in the extricating of the real truth from
the apparent falsehood of the statement, in the answer to the appeal
made here to the imagination,—an appeal and challenge which, unless
it be responded to, the proverb must remain unintelligible to us,—in
all this there is a process of mental activity, oftentimes so rapidly
exercised as scarcely to be perceptible, yet not the less carried on
with a pleasurable excitement.[15]
[Sidenote: Rhyme in proverbs.]
Let me mention now a few other of the more frequent helps which the
proverb employs for obtaining currency among men, for being listened
to with pleasure by them, for not slipping again from their memories
who have once heard it;—yet helps which are evidently so separable
from it, that none can be in danger of affirming them essential parts
or conditions of it. Of these rhyme is the most prominent. It would
lead me altogether from my immediate argument, were I to enter into a
disquisition on the causes of the charm which rhyme has for us all; but
that it does possess a wondrous charm, that we _like_ what is _like_,
is attested by a thousand facts, and not least by the circumstance
that into this rhyming form a very great multitude of proverbs, and
those among the most widely current, have been thrown. Though such
will probably at once be present to the minds of all, yet let me
mention a few: _Good mind, good find_;—_Wide will wear, but tight
will tear_;—_Truth may be blamed, but cannot be shamed_;—_Little
strokes fell great oaks_;—_Women’s jars breed men’s wars_;—_A
king’s face should give grace_;—_East, west, home is best_;—_Store
is no sore_;—_Slow help is no help_;—_Who goes a-borrowing, goes
a-sorrowing_;—with many more, uniting, as you will observe several of
them do, this of rhyme with that which I have spoken of before, namely,
extreme brevity and conciseness.[16]
[Sidenote: Alliteration in proverbs.]
Alliteration, which is nearly allied to rhyme, is another of the
helps whereof the proverb largely avails itself. Alliteration was at
one time an important element in our early English versification; it
almost promised to contend with rhyme itself, which should be the most
important; and perhaps, if some great master in the art had arisen,
might have retained a far greater hold on English poetry than it now
possesses. At present it is merely secondary and subsidiary. Yet it
cannot be called altogether unimportant; no master of melody despises
it; on the contrary, the greatest, as in our days Tennyson, make the
most frequent, though not always the most obvious, use of it. In the
proverb you will find it of continual recurrence, and where it falls,
as, to be worth anything, it must, on the key-words of the sentence,
of very high value. Thus: _Frost and fraud both end in foul_;—_Like
lips, like lettuce_;—_Meal and matins minish no way_;—_Who swims in
sin, shall sink in sorrow_;—_No cross, no crown_;—_Out of debt, out
of danger_;—_Do in hill as you would do in hall_;[17] that is, Be in
solitude the same that you would be in a crowd. I will not detain you
with further examples of this in other languages; but such occur, and
in such numbers that it seems idle to quote them, in all; I will only
adduce, in concluding this branch of the subject, a single Italian
proverb, which in a remarkable manner unites all three qualities of
which we have been last treating, brevity, rhyme, and alliteration:
_Traduttori, traditori_; one which we might perhaps reconstitute in
English thus: _Translators, traitors_; so untrue, for the most part,
are they to the genius of their original, to its spirit, if not to its
letter, and frequently to both; so do they _surrender_, rather than
_render_, its meaning; not _turning_, but only _overturning_, it from
one language to another.[18]
A certain pleasant exaggeration, the use of the figure hyperbole, a
figure of natural rhetoric which Scripture itself does not disdain
to employ, is a not unfrequent engine with the proverb to procure
attention, and to make a way for itself into the minds of men. Thus
the Persians have a proverb: _A needle’s eye is wide enough for two
friends; the whole world is too narrow for two foes_. Again, of a man
whose good luck seems never to forsake him, so that from the very
things which would be another man’s ruin he extricates himself not
merely without harm, but with credit and with gain, the Arabs say:
_Fling him into the Nile, and he will come up with a fish in his
mouth_; while of such a Fortunatus as this the Germans have a proverb:
_If he flung a penny on the roof, a dollar would come down to him_;[19]
as, again, of the man in the opposite extreme of fortune, to whom the
most unlikely calamities, and such as beforehand might seem to exclude
one another, befall, they say: _He would fall on his back, and break
his nose_.
[Sidenote: Transplanting of proverbs.]
In all this which I have just traced out, in the fact that the proverbs
of a language are so frequently its highest bloom and flower, while
yet so much of their beauty consists often in curious felicities of
diction pertaining exclusively to some single language, either in a
rapid conciseness to which nothing tantamount exists elsewhere, or
in rhymes which it is hard to reproduce, or in alliterations which
do not easily find their equivalents, or in other verbal happinesses
such as these, lies the difficulty which is often felt, which I shall
myself often feel in the course of these lectures, of transferring them
without serious loss, nay, sometimes the impossibility of transferring
them at all from one language to another.[20] Oftentimes, to use an
image of Erasmus,[21] they are like those wines, (I believe the Spanish
Valdepeñas is one,) of which the true excellence can only be known
by those who drink them in the land which gave them birth. Transport
them under other skies, or, which is still more fatal, empty them from
vessel to vessel, and their strength and flavour will in great part
have disappeared in the process.
Still this is rather the case, where we seek deliberately, and only in
a literary interest, to translate some proverb which we admire from
its native language into our own or another. Where, on the contrary,
_it has transferred itself_, made for itself a second home, and taken
root a second time in the heart and affections of a people, in such a
case one is continually surprised at the instinctive skill with which
it has found compensations for that which it has been compelled to let
go; it is impossible not to admire the unconscious skill with which it
has replaced one vigorous idiom by another, one happy rhyme or play on
words by its equivalent; and all this even in those cases where the
extremely narrow limits in which it must confine itself allow it the
very smallest liberty of selection. And thus, presenting itself equally
finished and complete in two or even more languages, the internal
evidence will be quite insufficient to determine which of its forms we
shall regard as the original, and which as a copy. For example, the
proverb at once German and French, which I can present in no comelier
English dress than this,
Mother’s truth
Keeps constant youth;
but which in German runs thus,
_Mutter-treu
Wird täglich neu_;
and in French,
_Tendresse maternelle
Toujours se renouvelle_;
appears to me as exquisitely graceful and tender in the one language as
in the other; while yet so much of its beauty depends on the form, that
beforehand one could hardly have expected that the charm of it would
have survived its transfer to the second language, whichever that may
be, wherein it found an home. Having thus opened the subject, I shall
reserve its further development for the lectures which follow.