[22] Thus is it, I believe, with, Bos lassus fortius figit pedem;
a proverb with which he warns the younger Augustine not to provoke
a contest with him, the weary, but therefore the more formidable,
antagonist.
[23] Oblitus _veteris_ proverbii: mendaces memores esse oportere. Let
me quote here Fuller’s excellent unfolding of this proverb: “Memory
in a liar is no more than needs. For first lies are hard to be
remembered, because many, whereas truth is but one: secondly, because
a lie cursorily told takes little footing and settled fastness in the
teller’s memory, but prints itself deeper in the hearers, who take the
greater notice because of the improbability and deformity thereof; and
one will remember the sight of a monster longer than the sight of an
handsome body. Hence comes it to pass that when the liar hath forgotten
himself, his auditors put him in mind of the lie and take him therein.”
[24] Quintilian, _Inst._ l. 4.
[25] Comes facundus in viâ pro vehiculo est.
[26] Kemble, _Salomon and Saturn_, p. 56.
[27] Kelly, in the preface to his very useful collection of Scotch
proverbs, describes his own disappointment at making exactly such a
discovery as this.
[28] The pages of the excellent _Notes and Queries_ would no doubt be
open to receive such, and in them they might be safely garnered up.
That there are such proverbs to reward him who should carefully watch
for them, is abundantly proved by the immense addition, which, as I
shall have occasion hereafter to mention, a Spanish scholar was able
to make to the collected proverbs, so numerous before, of Spain. Nor
do there want other indications of the like kind. Thus, the editor of
very far the best modern collection of German proverbs, records this
one, found, as he affirms, in no preceding collection, and by himself
never heard but once, and then from the lips of an aged lay servitor
of a monastery in the Black Forest: _Offend one monk, and the lappets
of all cowls will flutter as far as Rome_; (Beleidigestu einen Münch,
so knappen alle Kuttenzipfel bis nach Rom;) and yet who can doubt
that we have a genuine proverb here, and one excellently expressive
of the common cause which the whole of the monastic orders, despite
their inner dissensions, made ever, when assailed from without, with
one another? It is very easy to be deceived in such a matter, and one
must be content often to be so; but the following, which is current
in Ireland, I have never seen in print: “_The man on the dyke always
hurls well_;” the looker-on at a game of hurling, seated indolently on
the wall, always imagines that he could improve on the strokes of the
actual players, and, if you will listen to him, would have played the
game much better than they; a proverb of sufficiently wide application.
[29] Φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρήσθ’ ὁμιλίαι κακαί.
[30] Αἱ Ἰβύκου γέρανοι.
[31] Aurum Tolosanum; see C. Merivale, _Fall of the Roman Republic_, p.
63.
[32] Πολλὰ μεταξύ πέλει κύλικος καὶ χείλεος ἄκρου. The Latin form of
the proverb, Inter os et offam, will not adapt itself to this story.
[33] Livy’s account of “Cantherium in fossâ,” and of the manner in
which it became a rustic proverb in Italy, (23, 47,) is a case in
point, where it is very hard to give credit to the parentage which has
been assigned to the saying. See Döderlein’s _Lat. Synonyme_, v. 4. p.
289.
[34] Σκληρόν σοι πρὸς κέντρα λακτίζειν.
[35] Æschylus, _Prom. Vinct._ 322; Euripides, _Bacch._ 795; Pindar,
_Pyth._ 2. 94-96. The image is of course that of the stubborn ox, which
when urged to go forward, recalcitrates against the sharp-pointed iron
goad, and, already wounded, thus only wounds itself the more.
[36] Le vin est versé; il faut le boire.