_Ce qui vient de la flute s'en va au tambour._
What comes by the pipe goes by the tabor.
A loose dissipated officer was performed by le Sieur l'Anglois; the
_Pipe_ by St. Aignan, and the _Tabor_ by le Sieur le Comte! In this
manner every proverb was _spoken in action_, the whole connected by
dialogue. More must have depended on the actors than the poet.[37]
The French long retained this fondness for proverbs; for they still have
dramatic compositions entitled _proverbes_, on a more refined plan.
Their invention is so recent, that the term is not in their great
dictionary of Trevoux. These _proverbes_ are dramas of a single act,
invented by Carmontel, who possessed a peculiar vein of humour, but who
designed them only for private theatricals. Each _proverb_ furnished a
subject for a few scenes, and created a situation powerfully comic: it
is a dramatic amusement which does not appear to have reached us, but
one which the celebrated Catherine of Russia delighted to compose for
her own society.
Among the middle classes of society to this day, we may observe that
certain family proverbs are traditionally preserved: the favourite
saying of a father is repeated by the sons; and frequently the conduct
of a whole generation has been influenced by such domestic proverbs.
This may be perceived in many of the mottos of our old nobility, which
seem to have originated in some habitual proverb of the founder of the
family. In ages when proverbs were most prevalent, such pithy sentences
would admirably serve in the ordinary business of life, and lead on to
decision, even in its greater exigencies. Orators, by some lucky
proverb, without wearying their auditors, would bring conviction home to
their bosoms: and great characters would appeal to a proverb, or deliver
that which in time by its aptitude became one. When Nero was reproached
for the ardour with which he gave himself up to the study of music, he
replied to his censurers by the Greek proverb, "An artist lives
everywhere." The emperor answered in the spirit of Rousseau's system,
that every child should be taught some trade. When Caesar, after anxious
deliberation, decided on the passage of the Rubicon (which very event
has given rise to a proverb), rousing himself with a start of courage,
he committed himself to Fortune, with that proverbial expression on his
lips, used by gamesters in desperate play: having passed the Rubicon, he
exclaimed, "The die is cast!" The answer of Paulus AEmilius to the
relations of his wife, who had remonstrated with him on his
determination to separate himself from her against whom no fault could
be alleged, has become one of our most familiar proverbs. This hero
acknowledged the excellences of his lady; but, requesting them to look
on his shoe, which appeared to be well made, he observed, "None of you
know where the shoe pinches!" He either used a proverbial phrase, or by
its aptness it has become one of the most popular.
There are, indeed, proverbs connected with the characters of eminent
men. They were either their favourite ones, or have originated with
themselves. Such a collection would form a historical curiosity. To the
celebrated Bayard are the French indebted for a military proverb, which
some of them still repeat, "_Ce que le gantelet gagne le gorgerin le
mange_"--"What the gauntlet gets, the gorget consumes." That reflecting
soldier well calculated the profits of a military life, which consumes,
in the pomp and waste which are necessary for its maintenance, the
slender pay it receives, and even what its rapacity sometimes acquires.
The favourite proverb of Erasmus was _Festina lente_!--"Hasten
slowly!"[38] He wished it be inscribed wherever it could meet our eyes,
on public buildings, and on our rings and seals. One of our own
statesmen used a favourite sentence, which has enlarged our stock of
national proverbs. Sir Amias Pawlet, when he perceived too much hurry in
any business, was accustomed to say, "Stay awhile, to make an end the
sooner." Oliver Cromwell's coarse but descriptive proverb conveys the
contempt he felt for some of his mean and troublesome coadjutors: "Nits
will be lice!" The Italians have a proverb, which has been occasionally
applied to certain political personages:--
_Egli e quello che Dio vuole;
E sara quello che Dio vorra!_
He is what God pleases;
He shall be what God wills!
Ere this was a proverb, it had served as an embroidered motto on the
mystical mantle of Castruccio Castracani. That military genius, who
sought to revolutionise Italy, and aspired to its sovereignty, lived
long enough to repent the wild romantic ambition which provoked all
Italy to confederate against him; the mysterious motto he assumed
entered into the proverbs of his country! The Border proverb of the
Douglases, "It were better to hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep,"
was adopted by every Border chief, to express, as Sir Walter Scott
observes, what the great Bruce had pointed out, that the woods and hills
of their country were their safest bulwarks, instead of the fortified
places which the English surpassed their neighbours in the arts of
assaulting or defending. These illustrations indicate one of the sources
of proverbs; they have often resulted from the spontaneous emotions or
the profound reflections of some extraordinary individual, whose
energetic expression was caught by a faithful ear, never to perish!
The poets have been very busy with proverbs in all the languages of
Europe: some appear to have been the favourite lines of some ancient
poem: even in more refined times, many of the pointed verses of Boileau
and Pope have become proverbial. Many trivial and laconic proverbs bear
the jingle of alliteration or rhyme, which assisted their circulation,
and were probably struck off extempore; a manner which Swift practised,
who was a ready coiner of such rhyming and ludicrous proverbs:
delighting to startle a collector by his facetious or sarcastic humour,
in the shape of an "old saying and true." Some of these rhyming
proverbs are, however, terse and elegant: we have
Little strokes
Fell great oaks.