[Sidenote: Proverbs characteristic.]
“The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its
proverbs,”—this is Lord Bacon’s well-worn remark; although, indeed,
only well-worn because of its truth. “In them,” it has been further
said, “is to be found an inexhaustible source of precious documents
in regard of the interior history, the manners, the opinions, the
beliefs,[37] the customs of the people among whom they have had their
course.”[38] Let us put these assertions to the proof, and see how
far in this people’s or in that people’s proverbs, their innermost
heart speaks out to us; how far the comparison of the proverbs of one
nation with those of others may be made instructive to us; what this
comparison will tell us severally about each. This only I will ask, ere
we enter upon the subject, that if I should fail here in drawing out
anything strongly characteristic, if the proverbs regarded from this
point of view should not seem to reveal to you any of the true secrets
of national life, you will not therefore misdoubt those assertions with
which my lecture opened; or assume that these documents would not yield
up their secret, if questioned aright; but only believe that the test
has been unskilfully applied; or, if you will, that my brief limits
have not allowed me to make that clear, which with larger space I might
not have wholly failed in doing.
I am very well aware that in following upon this track, one is ever
liable to deceive oneself, to impose upon others, picking out and
adducing such proverbs as conform to a preconceived theory, passing
over those which would militate against it. Quite allowing that
there is such a danger which needs to be guarded against, and also
that there are a multitude of these sayings which cannot be made to
illustrate difference, for they rest on the broad foundation of the
universal humanity, underlying and deeper than that which is peculiar
and national, I am yet persuaded that enough remain, and such as may
with perfect good faith be adduced, to confirm these assertions; I am
convinced that we _may_ learn from the proverbs current among a people,
what is nearest and dearest to their hearts, the aspects under which
they contemplate life, how honour and dishonour are distributed among
them, what is of good, what of evil report in their eyes, with very
much more which it can never be unprofitable to know.
* * * * *
To begin, then, with the proverbs of Greece. That which strikes one
most in the study of these, and which the more they are studied,
the more fills the thoughtful student with wonder, is the evidence
they yield of a leavening through and through of the entire nation
with the most intimate knowledge of its own mythology, history, and
poetry. The infinite multitude of slight and fine allusions to the
legends of their gods and heroes, to the earlier incidents of their
own history, to the Homeric narrative, the delicate side glances at
all these which the Greek proverbs constantly embody,[39] assume an
acquaintance, indeed a familiarity, with all this on their parts among
whom they passed current, which almost exceeds belief. In many and
most important respects, the Greek proverbs considered as a whole are
inferior to those of many nations of modern Christendom. This is
nothing wonderful; Christianity would have done little for the world,
would have proved very ineffectual for the elevating, purifying, and
deepening of man’s life, if it had been otherwise. But, with all this,
as bearing testimony to the high intellectual training of the people
who employed them, to a culture not restricted to certain classes,
but which must have been diffused through the whole nation, no other
collection can bear the remotest comparison with this.
[Sidenote: Roman proverbs.]
It is altogether different with the Roman proverbs. These, the genuine
Roman, the growth of their own soil, are very far fewer in number than
the Greek, as was indeed to be expected from the far less subtle and
less fertile genius of the people. Hardly any of them are legendary
or mythological; which again agrees with the fact that the Italian
pantheon was very scantily peopled as compared with the Greek. Very few
have much poetry about them, or any very rare delicacy or refinement
of feeling. In respect of love indeed, not the Roman only, but Greek
and Roman alike, are immeasurably inferior to those which many modern
nations could supply. Thus a proverb of such religious depth and
beauty as our own, _Marriages are made in heaven_, it would have been
quite impossible for all heathen antiquity to have produced, or even
remotely to have approached.[40] In the setting out not of love, but
of friendship, and of the claims which it makes, the blessings which it
brings, is exhibited whatever depth and tenderness they may have.[41]
This indeed, as has been truly observed,[42] was only to be expected,
seeing how much higher an ideal of that existed than of this, the full
realization of which was reserved for the modern Christian world. Yet
the Roman proverbs are not without other substantial merits of their
own. A vigorous moral sense speaks out in many;[43] and even when this
is not so prominent, they wear often a thoroughly old Roman aspect;
being business-like and practical, frugal and severe, wise saws such
as the elder Cato must have loved, such as must have been often upon
his lips;[44] while in the number that relate to farming, they bear
singular witness to that strong and lively interest in agricultural
pursuits, which was so remarkable a feature in the old Italian
life.[45]
[Sidenote: Number of Spanish proverbs.]
It will not be possible to pass under even this hastiest review more
than two or three of the modern families of proverbs. Let us turn
first to the proverbs of Spain. I put these in the foremost rank,
because the Spanish literature, poor in many provinces wherein other
literatures are rich, is probably richer in this province than any
other in the world, certainly than any other in the western world; and
this I should be inclined to believe, both as respects the quantity and
the quality.[46] In respect of quantity, the mere number of Spanish
proverbs is astonishing. A collection I have been using while preparing
these lectures, contains between seven and eight thousand, and yet
does not contain all; for I have searched it in vain for several with
which from other sources I had become acquainted. Nay, it must be very
far indeed from exhausting the entire stock, seeing that there exists
a manuscript collection brought together by a distinguished Spanish
scholar, in which the proverbs have attained to the almost incredible
amount of from five and twenty to thirty thousand.[47]
[Sidenote: Spanish characteristics.]
And in respect of their quality, it needs only to call to mind some
of those, so rich in humour, so double-shotted with homely sense,
wherewith the Squire in _Don Quixote_ adorns his discourse; being
oftentimes indeed not the fringe and border, but the main woof and
texture of it: and then, if we assume that the remainder are not
altogether unlike these, we shall, I think, feel that it would be
difficult to rate them more highly than they deserve. And some are in a
loftier vein; for taking, as we have a right to do, Cervantes himself
as the truest exponent of the Spanish character, we should be prepared
to trace in the proverbs of Spain a grave thoughtfulness, a stately
humour, to find them breathing the very spirit of chivalry and honour,
and indeed of freedom too;—for in Spain, as throughout so much of
Europe, it is despotism, and not freedom, which is new. Nor are we
disappointed in these our expectations. How eminently chivalresque,
for instance, the following: _White hands cannot hurt_.[48] What a
grave humour lurks in this: _The ass knows well in whose face he
brays_.[49] What a stately apathy, how proud a looking of calamity in
the face, speaks out in the admonition which this one contains: _When
thou seest thine house in flames, approach and warm thyself by it_;[50]
what a spirit of freedom, which refuses to be encroached on even by
the highest, is embodied in another: _The king goes as far as he may,
not as far as he would_;[51] what Castilian pride in the following:
_Every layman in Castile might make a king, every clerk a pope_. The
Spaniard’s contempt for his peninsular neighbours finds its emphatic
utterance in another: _Take from a Spaniard all his good qualities, and
there remains a Portuguese_.
We may too, I think, remark how a nation will occasionally in its
proverbs indulge in a fine irony upon itself, and show that it is
perfectly aware of its own weaknesses, follies, and faults. This the
Spaniards must be allowed to do in their proverb, _Succours of Spain,
either late, or never_.[52] However largely and confidently promised,
these _succours of Spain_ either do not arrive at all, or only arrive
after the opportunity in which they could have served have passed
away. Certainly any one who reads the despatches of England’s Great
Captain during the Peninsular War will find in almost every page of
them that which abundantly justifies this proverb, will own that those
who made it read themselves aright, and could not have designated
broken pledges, unfulfilled promises of aid, tardy and thus ineffectual
assistance, by an happier title than _Succours of Spain_. And then
again what a fearful glimpse of those blood feuds which, having once
begun, seem as if they could never end, blood touching blood, and
violence evermore provoking its like, have we in the following: _Kill,
and thou shalt be killed, and they shall kill him who kills thee_.[53]
The Italians also are eminently rich in proverbs; and yet if ever I
have been tempted to retract or seriously to modify what I shall have
occasion by-and-bye to affirm in regard of a nobler life and spirit as
predominating in proverbs, it has been after the study of some Italian
collection. “The Italian proverbs,” it has been said not without too
much reason, though perhaps also with overmuch severity, “have taken a
tinge from their deep and politic genius, and their wisdom seems wholly
concentrated in their personal interests. I think every tenth proverb
in an Italian collection is some cynical or some selfish maxim, a book
of the world for worldlings.”[54] Certainly many of them are shrewd
enough, and only too shrewd; “ungracious,” inculcating an universal
suspicion, teaching to look everywhere for a foe, to expect, as the
Greeks said, a scorpion under every stone, glorifying artifice and
cunning as the true guides and only safe leaders through the perplexed
labyrinth of life,[55] and altogether seeming dictated as by the very
spirit of Machiavel himself.
[Sidenote: Proverbs on revenge.]
And worse than this is the glorification of revenge which speaks out
in too many of them. I know nothing of its kind calculated to give one
a more shuddering sense of horror than the series which might be drawn
together of Italian proverbs on this matter; especially when we take
them with the commentary which Italian history supplies, and which
shows them no empty words, but the deepest utterances of the nation’s
heart. There is no misgiving in these about the right of entertaining
so deadly a guest in the bosom; on the contrary, one of them, exalting
the sweetness of revenge, declares, _Revenge is a morsel for God_.[56]
There is nothing in them, (it would be far better if there were,)
of blind and headlong passion, but rather a spirit of deliberate
calculation, which makes the blood run cold. Thus one gives this
advice: _Wait time and place to act thy revenge, for it is never well
done in a hurry_;[57] while another proclaims an immortality of hatred,
which no spaces of intervening time shall have availed to weaken:
_Revenge of an hundred years old hath still its sucking teeth_.[58]
We may well be thankful that we have in England, at least as far as I
am aware, no sentiments parallel to these, embodied as the permanent
convictions of the national mind.
How curious again is the confession which speaks out in another Italian
proverb, that the maintenance of the Romish system and the study of
Holy Scripture cannot go together. It is this: _With the Gospel one
becomes an heretic_.[59] No doubt with the study of the Word of God one
does become an heretic, in the Italian sense of the word; and therefore
it is only prudently done to put all obstacles in the way of that
study, to assign three years’ and four years’ imprisonment with hard
labour to as many as shall dare to peruse it; yet certainly it is not a
little remarkable that such a confession should have embodied itself in
the popular utterances of the nation.
[Sidenote: Italian proverbs.]
But while it must be freely owned that the charges brought just now
against the Italian proverbs are sufficiently borne out by too many,
they are not all to be included in the common shame. Very many there
are not merely of a delicate refinement of beauty, as this, expressive
of the freedom in regard of _thine_ and _mine_ which will exist between
true friends: _Friends tie their purses with a spider’s thread_;[60]
of a subtle wisdom which has not degenerated into cunning and deceit;
but also of a nobler stamp; honour and honesty, plain dealing and
uprightness, have here their praises too, and are not seldom pronounced
to be in the end more than a match for all cunning and deceit. How
excellent in this sense is the following: _For an honest man half his
wits is enough, the whole are too little for a knave_;[61] the ways,
that is, of truth and uprightness are so simple and plain, that a
little wit is abundantly sufficient for those that walk in them; the
ways of falsehood and fraud are so perplexed and tangled, that sooner
or later all the wit of the cleverest rogue will not preserve him from
being entangled therein. How often and how wonderfully has this found
its confirmation in the lives of evil men; so true it is, to employ
another proverb and a very deep one from the same quarter, that _The
devil is subtle, yet weaves a coarse web_.[62]
Again, what description of Egypt as it now is, or indeed generally
of the East, could set us at the heart of its moral condition, could
make us to understand all which long centuries of oppression and
misrule have made of it and of its people, what could do this so
effectually as the collection of Arabic proverbs now current in Egypt,
which the traveller Burckhardt gathered, and which, after his death,
were published with his name?[63] In other books, others describe the
modern Egyptians, but here they unconsciously describe themselves. The
selfishness, the utter extinction of all public spirit, the servility,
which no longer as with an inward shame creeps into men’s acts, but
utters itself boldly as the avowed law of their lives, the sense of
the oppression of the strong, of the insecurity of the weak, and,
generally, the whole character of life, alike outward and inward, as
poor, mean, sordid, and ignoble, with only a few faintest glimpses
of that romance which one usually attaches to the East; all this, as
we study these documents, rises up before us in truest, though in
painfullest, outline.
Thus only in a land where rulers, being evil themselves, feel all
goodness to be their instinctive foe, and themselves therefore
entertain an instinctive hostility to it, where they punish but never
reward, where not to be noticed by them is the highest ambition of
those under their yoke, in no other land could a proverb like the
following, _Do no good, and thou shalt find no evil_, have ever come
to the birth. How settled a conviction that wrong, and not right, was
the lord paramount of the world must have grown up in men’s spirits,
before such a word as this, (I know of no sadder one,) could have found
utterance from their lips.[64]
[Sidenote: Irish proverb.]
I have taken a wide circuit of nations; with the proverb of a people
nearer home I must bring this branch of the subject to an end. It is
one, and a very characteristic one, which the poet Spenser, who long
dwelt in Ireland, records as current in his time among the Irish; in
which were contained their offer of service to their native chiefs,
with a statement of what they expected in return: _Spend me, and defend
me_. Their leaders in all times have taken them only too well at their
word in respect of the first half of the proverb, and have not failed
prodigally to _spend_ them; although their undertakings to _defend_
have issued exactly as must ever issue all promises on the part of
others to defend men from those evils, from which none can really
protect them but themselves.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: German proverbs.]
Other families of proverbs would each of them tell its own tale, give
up its own secret; but I must not seek from this point of view to
question them further. I would rather bring now to your notice that
even where they do not spring, as they cannot all, from the centre of
a people’s heart, nor declare to us the secretest things which are
there, but dwell more on the surface of things, in this case also they
have often local or national features, which to study and trace out
may prove both curious and instructive. Of how many, for example, we
may note the manner in which they clothe themselves in an outward form
and shape, borrowed from, or suggested by, the peculiar scenery or
circumstances or history of their own land; so that they could scarcely
have come into existence, not certainly in the shape which they now
wear, anywhere besides. Thus our own, _Make hay while the sun shines_,
is truly English, and could have had its birth only under such variable
skies as ours,—not, at any rate, in those southern lands where, during
the summer time at least, the sun always shines. In the same way there
is a fine Cornish proverb in regard of obstinate wrongheads, who will
take no counsel except from calamities, who dash themselves to pieces
against obstacles, which with a little prudence and foresight they
might easily have avoided. It is this: _He who will not be ruled by
the rudder, must be ruled by the rock_. It sets us at once upon some
rocky and wreck-strewn coast; we feel that it could never have been
the proverb of an inland people. And this, _Do not talk Arabic in the
house of a Moor_,[65]—that is, because there thy imperfect knowledge
will be detected at once,—this we should confidently affirm to be
Spanish, wherever we met it. So also a traveller with any experience
in the composition of Spanish sermons and Spanish ollas could make no
mistake in respect of the following: _A sermon without Augustine is as
a stew without bacon_.[66] Thus _Big and empty, like the Heidelberg
tun_,[67] could have its home only in Germany; that enormous vessel,
known as the Heidelberg tun, constructed to contain nearly 300,000
flasks, having now stood empty for hundreds of years. As regards,
too, the following, _Not every parish-priest can wear Dr. Luther’s
shoes_,[68] we could be in no doubt to what people it appertains.
And this, _The world is a carcase, and they who gather round it are
dogs_, plainly proclaims itself as belonging to those Eastern lands,
where the unowned dogs prowling about the streets of a city are the
natural scavengers, that would assemble round a carcase thrown in the
way. So too the form which our own proverb, _Man’s extremity, God’s
opportunity_, or as we sometimes have it, _When need is highest, help
is nighest_ assumes among the Jews, namely this, _When the tale of
bricks is doubled, Moses comes_,[69] plainly roots itself in the early
history of that nation, being an allusion to Exod. v. 9-19, and without
a knowledge of that history would be unintelligible altogether. The
same may be said of this: _We must creep into Ebal, and leap into
Gerizim_; in other words, we must be slow to curse, and swift to bless.
(Deut. xxvii. 12, 13.)
But while it is thus with some, which are bound by the very conditions
of their existence to a narrow and peculiar sphere, or at all events
move more naturally and freely in it than elsewhere, there are others
on the contrary which we meet all the world over. True cosmopolites,
they seem to have travelled from land to land, and to have made
themselves an home equally in all. The Greeks obtained them probably
from the older East, and again imparted them to the Romans; and from
these they have found their way into all the languages of the western
world.
Much, I think, might be learned from knowing what those truths are,
which are so felt to be true by all nations, that all have loved to
possess them in these compendious forms, wherein they may pass readily
from mouth to mouth: which, thus cast into some happy form, have
commended themselves to almost all people, and have become a portion
of the common stock of the world’s wisdom, in every land making for
themselves a recognition and an home. Such a proverb, for instance, is
_Man proposes, God disposes_;[70] one which I am inclined to believe
that every nation in Europe possesses, so deeply upon all men is
impressed the sense of Hamlet’s words, if not the words themselves:
“There’s a divinity that _shapes_ our ends,
_Rough-hew_ them how we will.”
[Sidenote: Proverbs compared.]
Sometimes the proverb does not actually in so many words repeat itself
in various tongues. We have indeed exactly the same _thought_; but
it takes an outward shape and embodiment, varying according to the
various countries and periods in which it has been current: we have
proverbs totally diverse from one another in their form and appearance,
but which yet, when we look a little deeper into them, prove to be at
heart one and the same, all these their differences being thus only,
so to speak, variations of the same air. These are almost always an
amusing, often an instructive, study; and to trace this likeness in
difference has an interest lively enough. Thus the _forms_ of the
proverb, which brings out the absurdity of those reproving others
for a defect or a sin, to whom the same cleaves in an equal or in a
greater degree, have sometimes no visible connexion at all, or the very
slightest, with one another; yet for all this the proverb is at heart
and essentially but one. We say in English: _The kiln calls the oven,
“Burnt house;”_—the Italians: _The pan says to the pot “Keep off, or
you’ll smutch me;”_[71]—the Spaniards: _The raven cried to the crow,
“Avaunt, blackamoor;”_[72]—the Germans: _One ass nicknames another,
Long-ears_;[73]—while it must be owned there is a certain originality
in the Catalan version of the proverb: _Death said to the man with his
throat cut, “How ugly you look.”_ Under how rich a variety of forms
does one and the same thought array itself here.
[Sidenote: Various proverbs.]
Let me quote another illustration of the same fact. We probably
take for granted that _Coals to Newcastle_ is a thoroughly English
expression of the absurdity of sending to a place that which already
abounds there, water to the sea, faggots to the wood:—and English
of course it is in the outward garment which it wears; but in its
innermost being it belongs to the whole world and to all times. Thus
the Greeks said: _Owls to Athens_,[74] Attica abounding with these
birds; the Rabbis: _Enchantments to Egypt_, Egypt being of old esteemed
the head quarters of all magic; the Orientals: _Pepper to Hindostan_;
and in the middle ages they had this proverb: _Indulgences to Rome_,
Rome being the centre and source of this spiritual traffic; and these
by no means exhaust the list.
Let me adduce some other variations of the same descriptions, though
not running through quite so many languages. Thus compare the German,
_Who lets one sit on his shoulders, shall have him presently sit on
his head_,[75] with the Italian, _If thou suffer a calf to be laid on
thee, within a little they’ll clap on the cow_,[76] and, again, with
the Spanish, _Give me where I may sit down; I will make where I may
lie down_.[77] They all three plainly contain one and the same hint
that undue liberties are best resisted at the outset, being otherwise
liable to be followed up by other and greater ones; but this under how
rich and humorous a variety of forms. Not very different are these
that follow. We say: _Daub yourself with honey, and you’ll be covered
with flies_; the Danes: _Make yourself an ass, and you’ll have every
man’s sack on your shoulders_; while the French: _Who makes himself a
sheep, the wolf devours him_;[78] and the Persians: _Be not all sugar,
or the world will gulp thee down_;[79] to which they add, however, as
its necessary complement, _nor yet all wormwood, or the world will
spit thee out_. Or again, we are content to say without a figure: _The
receiver’s as bad as the thief_; but the French: _He sins as much
who holds the sack, as he who puts into it_;[80] and the Germans:
_He who holds the ladder is as guilty as he who mounts the wall_.[81]
We say: _A stitch in time saves nine_; the Spaniards: _Who repairs
not his gutter, repairs his whole house_.[82] We say: _Misfortunes
never come single_; the Italians have no less than three proverbs to
express the same popular conviction: _Blessed is that misfortune which
comes single_; and again: _One misfortune is the vigil of another_;
and again: _A misfortune and a friar are seldom alone_.[83] Or once
more, the Russians say: _Call a peasant, “Brother,” he’ll demand to be
called, “Father;”_ the Italians: _Reach a peasant your finger, he’ll
grasp your fist_.[84] Many languages have this proverb: _God gives the
cold according to the cloth_;[85] it is very beautiful, but attains not
to the tender beauty of our own: _God tempers the wind to the shorn
lamb_.
And, as in that last example, so not seldom will there be an evident
superiority of a proverb in one language over one, which however
resembles it closely in another. Moving in the same sphere, it will
yet be richer, fuller, deeper. Thus our own, _A burnt child fears
the fire_, is good; but that of many tongues, _A scalded dog fears
cold water_, is better still. Ours does but express that those who
have suffered once will henceforward be timid in respect of that same
thing from which they have suffered; but that other the tendency to
exaggerate such fears, so that now they shall fear even where no fear
is. And the fact that so it will be, clothes itself in an almost
infinite variety of forms. Thus one Italian proverb says: _A dog which
has been beaten with a stick, is afraid of its shadow_; and another,
which could only have had its birth in the sunny South, where the
glancing but harmless lizard so often darts across your path: _Whom
a serpent has bitten a lizard alarms_.[86] With a little variation
from this, the Jewish Rabbis had said long before: _One bitten by a
serpent, is afraid of a rope’s end_; even that which bears so remote
a resemblance to a serpent as this does, shall now inspire him with
terror; and the Cingalese, still expressing the same thought, but with
imagery borrowed from their own tropic clime: _The man who has received
a beating from a firebrand, runs away at sight of a firefly_.
[Sidenote: Rabbinical proverb.]
Some of our Lord’s sayings contain the same lessons which the proverbs
of the Jewish Rabbis contained already; for He was willing to bring
forth even from his treasury things old as well as new; but it is very
instructive to observe how they acquire in his mouth a dignity and
decorum which, it may be, they wanted before. We are all familiar with
that word in the Sermon on the Mount, “Whosoever shall compel thee
to go a mile, go with him twain.” The Rabbis had a proverb to match,
lively and piquant enough, but certainly lacking the gravity of this,
and which never could have fallen from the same lips: _If thy neighbour
call thee ass, put a packsaddle on thy back_; do not, that is, withdraw
thyself from the wrong, but rather go forward to meet it. But thus, in
least as in greatest, it was His to make all things new.
[Sidenote: Progress of ingratitude.]
Sometimes a proverb, without changing its shape altogether, will
yet on the lips of different nations be slightly modified; and
these modifications, slight as often they are, may not the less be
eminently characteristic. Thus in English we say, _The river past,
and God forgotten_, to express with how mournful a frequency He whose
assistance was invoked, it may have been earnestly, in the moment
of peril, is remembered no more, so soon as by his help the danger
has been surmounted. The Spaniards have the proverb too; but it is
with them: _The river past, the saint forgotten_,[87] the saints
being in Spain more prominent objects of invocation than God. And
the Italian form of it sounds a still sadder depth of ingratitude:
_The peril past, the saint mocked_;[88] the vows made to him in
peril remaining unperformed in safety; and he treated something as,
in Greek story, Juno was treated by Mandrabulus the Samian; who,
having under her auspices and through her direction discovered a gold
mine, in his instant gratitude vowed to her a golden ram; which he
presently exchanged in intention for a silver one; and again this
for a very small brass one; and this for nothing at all; the rapidly
descending scale of whose gratitude, with the entire disappearance of
his thank-offering, might very profitably live in our memories, as so
perhaps it would be less likely to repeat itself in our lives.