In my preceding lecture I occupied your attention with the form and
definition of a proverb; let us proceed in the present to realize to
ourselves, so far as this may be possible, the processes by which a
nation gets together the great body of its proverbs, the sources from
which it mainly derives them, and the circumstances under which such as
it makes for itself of new, had their birth and generation.
And first, I would call to your attention the fact that a vast number
of its proverbs a people does not make for itself, but finds ready
made to its hands: it enters upon them as a part of its intellectual
and moral inheritance. The world has now endured so long, and the
successive generations of men have thought, felt, enjoyed, suffered,
and altogether learned so much, that there is an immense stock of
wisdom which may be said to belong to humanity in common, being the
gathered fruits of all this its experience in the past. Even Aristotle,
more than two thousand years ago, could speak of proverbs as “the
fragments of an elder wisdom, which, on account of their brevity and
aptness, had amid a general wreck and ruin been preserved.” These, the
common property of the civilized world, are the original stock with
which each nation starts; these, either orally handed down to it, or
made its own by those of its earlier writers who brought it into living
communication with the past. Thus, and through these channels, a vast
number of Greek, Latin, and medieval proverbs live on with us, and with
all the modern nations of the world.
[Sidenote: Antiquity of proverbs.]
It is, indeed, oftentimes a veritable surprise to discover the
venerable age and antiquity of a proverb, which we have hitherto
assumed to be quite a later birth of modern society. Thus we may
perhaps suppose that well-known word which forbids the too accurate
scanning of a present, _One must not look a gift horse in the mouth_,
to be of English extraction, the genuine growth of our own soil. I
will not pretend to say how old it may be, but it is certainly as old
as Jerome, a Latin father of the fourth century; who, when some found
fault with certain writings of his, replied with a tartness which he
could occasionally exhibit, that they were voluntary on his part,
free-will offerings, and with this quoted the proverb, _that it did not
behove to look a gift horse in the mouth_; and before it comes to us,
we meet it once more in one of the rhymed Latin verses, which were such
great favourites in the middle ages:
Si quis dat mannos, ne quære in dentibus annos.
Again, _Liars should have good memories_ is a saying which probably
we assume to be modern; yet it is very far from so being. The same
Jerome, who, I may observe by the way, is a very great quoter of
proverbs, and who has preserved some that would not otherwise have
descended to us,[22] speaks of one as “unmindful of the _old_ proverb,
_Liars should have good memories_,”[23] and we find it ourselves in a
Latin writer a good deal older than him.[24] So too I was certainly
surprised to discover the other day that our own proverb: _Good company
on a journey is worth a coach_, has come down to us from the ancient
world.[25]
[Sidenote: Rhymed Latin proverbs.]
Having lighted just now on one of those Latin rhymed verses, let me by
the way guard against an error about them, into which it would be very
easy to fall. I have seen it suggested that these, if not the source
_from_ which, are yet the channels _by_ which, a great many proverbs
have reached us. I should greatly doubt it. This much we may conclude
from the existence of proverbs in this shape, namely, that since these
rhymed or leonine verses went altogether out of fashion at the revival
of a classical taste in the fifteenth century, such proverbs as are
found in this form may be affirmed with a tolerable certainty to date
at least as far back as that period; but not that in all or even in a
majority of cases, this shape was their earliest. Oftentime the proverb
in its more popular form is so greatly superior to the same in this
its Latin monkish dress, that the latter by its tameness and flatness
betrays itself at once as the inadequate translation, and we cannot
fail to regard the other as the genuine proverb. Many of them are “so
essentially Teutonic, that they frequently appear to great disadvantage
in the Latin garb which has been huddled upon them.”[26] Thus, when we
have on one side the English, _Hungry bellies have no ears_, and on the
other the Latin,
Jejunus venter non audit verba libenter,
who can doubt that the first is the proverb, and the second only its
versification? Or who would hesitate to affirm that the old Greek
proverb, _A rolling stone gathers no moss_, may very well have come to
us without the intervention of the medieval Latin,
Non fit hirsutus lapis hinc atque inde volutus?
And the true state of the case comes out still more clearly, where
there are _two_ of these rhymed Latin equivalents for the one popular
proverb, and these quite independent of each other. So it is in respect
of our English proverb: _A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush_;
which appears in this form:
Una avis in dextrâ melior quam quatuor extra;
and also in this:
Capta avis est pluris quam mille in gramine ruris.
Who can fail to see here two independent attempts to render the same
saying? Sometimes the Latin line confesses itself to be only the
rendering of a popular word; thus is it with the following:
_Ut dicunt multi, cito transit lancea stulti_;
in other words: _A fool’s bolt is soon shot_.
Then, besides this derivation from elder sources, from the literature
of nations which as such now no longer exist, besides this process in
which a people are merely receivers and borrowers, there is also at
somewhat later periods in its life a mutual interchange between it and
other nations growing up beside, and cotemporaneously with it, of
their own several inventions in this kind; a free giving and taking,
in which it is often hard, and oftener impossible, to say which is the
lender and which the borrower. Thus the quantity of proverbs not drawn
from antiquity, but common to all, or nearly all of the modern European
languages, is very great. The ‘solidarity’ (to use a word which it is
in vain to strive against) of all the nations of Christendom comes out
very noticeably here.
[Sidenote: Proverbs claimed by many.]
There is indeed nothing in the study of proverbs, in the attribution of
them to their right owners, in the arrangement and citation of them,
which creates a greater perplexity than the circumstances of finding
the same proverb in so many different quarters, current among so many
different nations. In quoting it as of one, it often seems as if we
were doing wrong to many, while yet it is almost, or oftener still
altogether, impossible to determine to what nation it first belonged,
so that others drew it at second hand from that one;—even granting
that any form in which we now possess it is really its oldest of all.
More than once this fact has occasioned a serious disappointment to
the zealous collector of the proverbs of his native country. Proud
of the rich treasures which in this kind it possessed, he has very
reluctantly discovered on a fuller investigation of the whole subject,
how many of these which he counted native, the peculiar heirloom and
glory of his own land, must at once and without hesitation be resigned
to others, who can be shown beyond all doubt to have been in earlier
possession of them: while in respect of many more, if his own nation
can put in a claim to them as well as others, yet he is compelled to
feel that it can put in no better than, oftentimes not so good as, many
competitors.[27]
[Sidenote: Unregistered proverbs.]
This single fact, which it is impossible to question, that nations are
thus continually borrowing proverbs from one another, is sufficient to
show that, however the great body of those which are the portion of a
nation may be, some almost as old as itself, and some far older, it
would for all this be a serious mistake to regard the sum of them as a
closed account, neither capable of, nor actually receiving, addition—a
mistake of the same character as that sometimes made in regard to
the _words_ of a language. So long as a language is living, it will
be appropriating foreign words, putting forth new words of its own.
Exactly in the same way, so long as a people have any vigorous energies
at work in them, are acquiring any new experiences of life, are forming
any new moral convictions, for the new experiences and convictions
new utterances will be found; and some of the happiest of these will
receive that stamp of general allowance which shall constitute them
proverbs. And this fact makes it little likely that the collections
which exist in print, and certainly not the earlier ones, will embrace
all the proverbs in actual circulation. They preserve, indeed, many
others; all those which have now become obsolete, and which would, but
for them, have been forgotten; but there are not a few, as I imagine,
which, living on the lips of men, have yet never found their way into
books, however worthy to have done so; and this, either because the
sphere in which they circulate has continued always a narrow one,
or that the occasions which call them out are very rare, or that
they, having only lately risen up, have not hitherto attracted the
attention of any who cared to record them. It would be well, if such
as take an interest in the subject, and are sufficiently well versed
in the proverbial literature of their own country to recognise such
unregistered proverbs when they meet them, would secure them from that
perishing, which, so long as they remain merely oral, might easily
overtake them; and would make them at the same time, what all _good_
proverbs ought certainly to be, the common heritage of all.[28]
And as new proverbs will be born from life and from life’s experience,
so too there will be another fruitful source of their further increase,
namely, the books which the people have made heartily their own.
Portions of these they will continually detach, most often word for
word; at other times wrought up into new shapes with that freedom which
they claim to exercise in regard of whatever they thus appropriate to
their own use. These, having detached, they will give and take as part
of their current intellectual money. Thus “_Evil communications corrupt
good manners_,”[29] (1 Cor. xv. 33,) is word for word a metrical line
from a Greek comedy. It is not probable that St. Paul had ever read
this comedy, but the words for their truth’s sake had been taken up
into the common speech of men; and not as a citation, but as a proverb,
he uses them. And if you will, from this point of view, glance over a
few pages of one of Shakespeare’s more popular dramas,—Hamlet, for
example,—you will be surprised, in case your attention has never
been called to this before, to note how much has in this manner been
separated from it, that it might pass into the every day use and
service of man; and you will be prepared to estimate higher than ever
what he has done for his fellow countrymen, the “possession for ever”
which his writings have become for them. And much no doubt is passing
even now from favourite authors into the flesh and blood of a nation’s
moral and intellectual life; and as “household words,” as parts of its
proverbial philosophy, for ever incorporating itself therewith. We have
a fair measure of an author’s true popularity, I mean of the real and
lasting hold which he has taken on his nation’s heart, in the extent to
which it has been thus done with his writings.
* * * * *
There is another way in which additions are from time to time made
to the proverbial wealth of a people. Some event has laid strong
hold of their imagination, has stirred up the depths of their moral
consciousness; and this they have gathered up for themselves, perhaps
in some striking phrase which was uttered at the moment, or in some
allusive words, understood by everybody, and which at once summon up
the whole incident before their eyes.
[Sidenote: Scriptural proverbs.]
Sacred history furnishes us with one example at the least of the
generation in this wise of a proverb. That word, “_Is Saul also among
the prophets?_” is one of which we know the exact manner in which
it grew to be a “proverb in Israel.” When the son of Kish revealed
of a sudden that nobler life which had hitherto been slumbering in
him, alike undreamt of by himself and by others, took his part and
place among the sons of the prophets, and, borne along in their
enthusiasm, praised and prophesied as they did, showing that he was
indeed turned into another man, then all that knew him beforehand said
one to another, some probably in sincere astonishment, some in irony
and unbelief, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” And the question they
asked found and finds its application so often as any reveals of a
sudden, at some crisis of his life, qualities for which those who knew
him the longest had hitherto given him no credit, a nobleness which
had been latent in him until now, a power of taking his place among
the worthiest and the best, which none until now had at all deemed him
to possess. It will, of course, find equally its application, when one
does not step truly, but only affects suddenly to step, into an higher
school, to take his place in a nobler circle of life, than that in
which hitherto he has moved.
[Sidenote: The cranes of Ibycus.]
Another proverb, and one well known to the Greek scholar, _The cranes
of Ibycus_,[30] had its rise in one of those remarkable incidents,
which, witnessing for God’s inscrutable judgments, are eagerly grasped
by men. The story of its birth is indeed one to which so deep a moral
interest is attached, that I shall not hesitate to repeat it, even at
the risk that Schiller’s immortal poem on the subject, or it may be
the classical studies of some here present, may have made it already
familiar to a portion of my hearers. Ibycus, a famous lyrical poet
of Greece, journeying to Corinth, was assailed by robbers: as he fell
beneath their murderous strokes he looked round, if any witnesses or
avengers were nigh. No living thing was in sight, save only a flight
of cranes soaring high over head. He called on them, and to them
committed the avenging of his blood. A vain commission, as it might
have appeared, and as no doubt it did to the murderers appear. Yet it
was not so. For these, sitting a little time after in the open theatre
at Corinth, beheld this flight of cranes hovering above them, and
one said scoffingly to another, “Lo, there, the avengers of Ibycus!”
The words were caught up by some near them; for already the poet’s
disappearance had awakened anxiety and alarm. Being questioned, they
betrayed themselves, and were led to their doom; and _The cranes of
Ibycus_ passed into a proverb, very much as our _Murder will out_, to
express the wondrous leadings of God whereby continually the secretest
thing of blood is brought to the open light of day.
_Gold of Toulouse_[31] is another of these proverbs in which men’s
sense of a God verily ruling and judging the earth has found its
embodiment. The Consul Q. S. Cæpio had taken the city of Toulouse
by an act of more than common perfidy and treachery; and possessed
himself of the immense hoards of wealth stored in the temples of the
Gaulish deities. From this day forth he was so hunted by calamity, all
extremest evils and disasters, all shame and dishonour, fell so thick
on himself and all who were his, and were so traced up by the moral
instinct of mankind to this accursed thing which he had made his own,
that any wicked gains, fatal to their possessor, acquired this name;
and of such a one it would be said “He has gold of Toulouse.”
Another proverb, which in English has run into the following posy,
_There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip_, descends to us from
the Greeks, having a very striking story connected with it: A master
treated with extreme cruelty his slaves who were occupied in planting
and otherwise laying out a vineyard for him; until at length one of
them, the most misused, prophesied that for this his cruelty he should
never drink of its wine. When the first vintage was completed, he bade
this slave to fill a goblet for him, which taking in his hand he at
the same time taunted him with the non-fulfilment of his prophecy.
The other replied with words which have since become proverbial: as
he spake, tidings were hastily brought of a huge wild boar that was
wasting the vineyard. Setting down the untasted cup, the master went
out to meet the wild boar, and was slain in the encounter, and thus the
proverb, _Many things find place between the cup and lip_, arose.[32]
A Scotch proverb, _He that invented the Maiden, first hanselled it_,
is not altogether unworthy to rank with these. It alludes to the
well-known historic fact that the Regent Morton, the inventor of a new
instrument of death called “The Maiden,” was himself the first upon
whom the proof of it was made. Men felt, to use the language of the
Latin poet, that “no law was juster than that the artificers of death
should perish by their own art,” and embodied their sense of this in
the proverb.
[Sidenote: Gnomes become proverbs.]
Memorable words of illustrious men will frequently not die in the
utterance, but pass from mouth to mouth, being still repeated with
complacency, till at length they have received their adoption into the
great family of national proverbs. Such were the gnomes or sayings
of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, supposing them to have been indeed
theirs, and not ascribed to them only after they had obtained universal
currency and acceptance. So too a saying, attributed to Alexander
the Great, may very well have arisen on the occasion, and under the
circumstances, to which its birth is commonly ascribed. When some of
his officers reported to him with something of dismay the innumerable
multitudes of the Persian hosts which were advancing to assail him, the
youthful Macedonian hero silenced them and their apprehensions with the
reply: _One butcher does not fear many sheep_; not in this applying
an old proverb, but framing a new, and one admirably expressive of
the confidence which he felt in the immeasurable superiority of the
Hellenic over the barbarian man;—and this word, having been once set
on foot by him, has since lived on, and that, because the occasions
were so numerous on which a word like this would find its application.
And taking occasion from this royal proverb, let me just observe by the
way, that it would be a great mistake to assume, though the error is by
no means an uncommon one, that because proverbs are popular, they have
therefore originally sprung from the bosom of the populace. What was
urged in my first lecture of their popularity was not at all intended
in this sense; and the sound common sense, the wit, the wisdom, the
right feeling, which are their _predominant_ characteristics, alike
contradict any such supposition. They spring rather from the sound
healthy kernel of the nation, whether in high place or in low; and it
is surely worthy of note, how large a proportion of those with the
generation of which we are acquainted, owe their existence to the
foremost men of their time, to its philosophers, its princes, and its
kings; as it would not be difficult to show. And indeed the evil in
proverbs testifies to this quite as much as the good. Thus the many
proverbs in almost all modern tongues expressing scorn of the “villain”
are alone sufficient to show that for the most part they are very far
from having their birth quite in the lower regions of society, but
reflect much oftener the prejudices and passions of those higher in the
social scale.
[Sidenote: A Spanish proverb.]
Let me adduce another example of the proverbs which have thus grown
out of an incident, which contain an allusion to it, and are only
perfectly intelligible when the incident itself is known. It is this
Spanish: _Let that which is lost be for God_; one the story of whose
birth is thus given by the leading Spanish commentator on the proverbs
of his nation:—The father of a family, making his will and disposing
of his goods upon his death-bed, ordained concerning a certain cow
which had strayed, and had been now for a long time missing, that, if
it were found, it should be for his children, if otherwise for God:
and hence the proverb, _Let that which is lost be for God_, arose. The
saying was not one to let die; it laid bare with too fine a skill some
of the subtlest treacheries of the human heart; for, indeed, whenever
men would give to God only their lame and their blind, that which costs
them nothing, that from which they hope no good, no profit, no pleasure
for themselves, what are they saying in their hearts but that which
this man said openly, _Let that which is lost be for God_.
This subject of the generation of proverbs, upon which I have thus
touched so slightly, is yet one upon which whole volumes have been
written. Those who have occupied themselves herein have sought to trace
historically the circumstances out of which various proverbs have
sprung, and to which they owe their existence; that so by the analogy
of these we might realize to ourselves the rise of others whose origins
lie out of our vision, obscure and unknown. No one will deny the
interest of the subject: it cannot but be most interesting to preside
thus at the birth of a saying which has lived on and held its ground in
the world, and has not ceased, from the day it was first uttered, to
be more or less of a spiritual or intellectual force among men. Still
the cases where this is possible are exceedingly rare, as compared with
the far greater number where the first birth is veiled, as is almost
all birth, in mystery and obscurity. And indeed it could scarcely be
otherwise. The great majority of proverbs are foundlings, the happier
foundlings of a nation’s wit, which the collective nation has refused
to let perish, has taken up and adopted for its own. But still, as must
be expected to be the case with foundlings, they can for the most part
give no distinct account of themselves. They make their way, relying
on their own merits, not on those of their parents and authors; whom
they have forgotten; and who seem equally to have forgotten them, or,
at any rate, fail to claim them. Not seldom, too, when a story has been
given to account for a proverb’s rise, it must remain a question open
to much doubt, whether the story has not been subsequently imagined
for the proverb, rather than that the proverb has indeed sprung out of
history.[33]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Employment of proverbs.]
The proverb having thus had its rise from life, however it may be often
impossible to trace that rise, will continually turn back to life
again; it will attest its own practical character by the frequency with
which it will present itself for use, and will have been actually used
upon earnest and important occasions; throwing its weight into one
scale or the other at some critical moment, and sometimes with decisive
effect. I have little doubt that with knowledge sufficient one might
bring together a large collection of instances wherein, at significant
moments, the proverb has played its part, and, it may be, very often
helped to bring about issues, of which all would acknowledge the
importance.
In this aspect, as having been used at a great critical moment, and
as part of the moral influence brought to bear on that occasion for
effecting a great result, no proverb of man’s can be compared with that
one which the Lord used when He met his future Apostle, but at this
time his persecutor, in the way, and warned him, of the fruitlessness
and folly of a longer resistance to a might which must overcome him,
and with still greater harm to himself, at the last: _It is hard for
thee to kick against the pricks_.[34] (Acts xxvi. 14.) It is not always
observed, but yet it adds much to the fitness of this proverb’s use on
this great occasion, that it was already, even in that heathen world to
which originally it belonged, predominantly used to note the madness of
a striving on man’s part against the superior power of the gods; for
so we find it in the chief passages of heathen antiquity in which it
occurs.[35]
I must take the second illustration of my assertion from a very
different quarter, passing at a single stride from the kingdom of
heaven to the kingdom of hell, and finding my example there. We are
told then, that when Catherine de Medicis desired to overcome the
hesitation of her son Charles the Ninth, and draw from him his consent
to the massacre, afterwards known as that of St. Bartholomew, she urged
on him with effect a proverb which she had brought with her from her
own land, and assuredly one of the most convenient maxims for tyrants
that was ever framed: _Sometimes clemency is cruelty, and cruelty
clemency_.
Later French history supplies another and more agreeable illustration.
At the siege of Douay, Louis the Fourteenth found himself with his
suite unexpectedly under a heavy cannonade from the besieged city.
I do not believe that Louis was deficient in personal courage, yet,
in compliance with the entreaties of most of those around him, who
urged that he should not expose so important a life, he was about, in
somewhat unsoldierly and unkingly fashion, immediately to retire; when
M. de Charost, drawing close to him, whispered the well-known French
proverb in his ear: _The wine is drawn; it must be drunk_.[36] The king
remained exposed to the fire of the enemy a suitable period, and it is
said ever after held in higher honour than before the counsellor who
had with this word saved him from an unseemly retreat. Let this on the
generation of proverbs, with the actual employment which has been made
of them, for the present suffice.