Part 5

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.

Footnotes

[37] The writer might have added, the superstitions; for proverbs not a few involve and rest on popular superstitions, and a collection of these would be curious and in many ways instructive. Such, for instance, is the Latin, (it is, indeed, also Greek): _A serpent, unless it devour a serpent, grows not to a dragon_; (Serpens, nisi serpentem comederit, non fit draco); which Lord Bacon moralizes so shrewdly: “The folly of one man is the fortune of another; for no man prospers so suddenly as by other men’s errors.” Such again is the old German proverb: _The night is no man’s friend_; (Die Nacht ist keines Menschen Freund;) which rests, as Grimm has so truly observed (_Deutsche Mythol._, p. 713) on the wide-spread feeling in the northern mythologies, of the night as an unfriendly and, indeed, hostile power to man. And such, too, the French: _A Sunday’s child dies never of the plague_; (Qui nait le dimanche, jamais ne meurt de peste.)

[38] We may adduce further the words of Salmasius: Argutæ hæ brevesque loquendi formulæ suas habent veneres, et genium cujusque gentis penes quam celebrantur, atque acumen ostendunt.

[39] Thus Ἄϊδoς κυνῆ—Ἄπληστος πίθος.—Ἰλιὰς κακῶν.

[40] This Greek proverb on love is the noblest of the kind which I remember: Μουσικὴν ἔρως διδάσκει, κἄντις ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν.

[41] In this respect the Latin proverb, Mores amici noveris, non oderis, on which Horace has furnished so exquisite a comment (_Sat._ i. 3, 24-93), and which finds its graceful equivalent in the Italian, Ama l’amico tuo con il difetto suo (Love your friend with his fault), is worthy of all admiration.

[42] By Zell, in his slight but graceful treatise, _On the proverbs of the ancient Romans_ (_Ferienschriften_, v. 2, p. 1-96).

[43] Thus, Noxa caput sequitur;—Conscientia, mille testes.

[44] He has preserved for us that very sensible and at the same time truly characteristic one, Quod non opus est, asse carum est.

[45] These are two or three of the most notable—the first against “high farming,” which it is strange if it has not been appealed to in the modern controversy on the subject: Nihil minus expedit quam agrum optime colere. (Pliny, _H. N._, 6. 18.) Over against this, however, we must set another, warning against the attempt to farm with insufficient capital: Oportet agrum imbecilliorem esse quam agricolam; and yet another, on the liberal answer which the land will make to the pains and cost bestowed on it; Qui arat olivetum, rogat fructum; qui stercorat, exorat; qui cædit, cogit.

[46] This was the judgment of Salmasius, who says: Inter Europæos Hispani in his excellunt, Itali vix cedunt, Galli proximo sequuntur intervallo.

[47] What may have become of this collection I know not; but it was formerly in Richard Heber’s library, (see the _Catalogue_, v. 9. no. 1697.) Juan Yriarte was the collector, and in a note to the _Catalogue_ it is stated that he devoted himself with such eagerness to the bringing of it to the highest possible state of completeness, that he would give his servants a fee for any new proverb they brought him; while to each, as it was inserted in his list, he was careful to attach a memorandum of the quarter from which it came; and if this was not from books but from life, an indication of the name, the rank, and condition in life of the person from whom it was derived.

[48] Las manos blancas no ofenden.

[49] Bien sabe el asno en cuya cara rebozna.

[50] Quando vierás tu casa quemar, llega te á escalentar.

[51] El Rey va hasta do puede, y no hasta do quiere.

[52] Socorros de España, ó tarde, ó nunca.

[53] Matarás, y matarte han, y matarán a quien te matare.

[54] _Curiosities of Literature_, p. 391. London: 1838.

[55] These may serve as examples: Chi ha sospetto, di rado è in difetto.—Fidarsi è bene, ma non fidarsi è meglio.—Da chi mi fido, mi guardi Iddio; da chi non mi fido, mi guarderò io.—Con arte e con inganno si vive mezzo l’anno; con inganno e con arte si vive l’altra parte.

[56] Vendetta, boccon di Dio.

[57] Aspetta tempo e loco à far tua vendetta, che la non si fa mai ben in fretta. Compare another: Vuoi far Vendetta del tuo nemico, governati bene ed è bell’e fatta.

[58] Vendetta di cent’anni ha ancor i lattaiuoli.

[59] Con l’Evangelo si diventa eretico.

[60] Gli amici legono la borsa con un filo di ragnatelo.

[61] Ad un uomo dabbene avanza la metà del cervello; ad un tristo non basta ne anche tutto.

[62] Jeremy Taylor appears to have found much delight in the proverbs of Italy. In the brief foot notes which he has appended to the _Holy Living_ alone I counted five and twenty such, to which he makes more or less remote allusion in the text. There is an excellent article on “Tuscan Proverbs” in _Fraser’s Magazine_, Jan. 1857.

[63] _Arabic Proverbs of the Modern Egyptians._ London: 1830.

[64] Yet this very mournful collection of Burckhardt’s possesses at least one very beautiful proverb on the all conquering power of love: _Man is the slave of beneficence_.

[65] En casa del Moro no hables algarabia.

[66] Sermon sin Agostino, olla sin tocino.

[67] Gross und leer, wie das Heidelberger Fass.

[68] Doctor Luther’s Schuhe sind nicht allen Dorfpriestern gerecht.

[69] Cum duplicantur lateres, Moses venit.

[70] La gente pone, y Dios dispone.—Der Mensch denkt’s; Gott lenkt’s.

[71] La padella dice al pajuolo, Fatti in là, che tu mi tigni.

[72] Dijó la corneja al cuervo, Quítate allá, negro.

[73] Ein Esel schimpft den andern, Langohr.

[74] Γλαῦκας εἰς Ἀθήνας.

[75] Wer sich auf der Achsel sitzen lässt, dem sitzt man nachher auf dem Kopfe.

[76] Se ti lasci metter in spalla il vitello, quindi a poco ti metteran la vacca.

[77] Dame donde me asiente, que yo haré donde me acueste.

[78] Qui se fait brebis, le loup le mange.

[79] There is a Catalan proverb to the same effect: Qui de tot es moll, de tot es foll.

[80] Autant pèche celui qui tient le sac, que celui qui met dedans.

[81] Wer die Leiter hält, ist so schuldig wie der Dieb.

[82] Quien no adoba gotera, adoba casa entera.

[83] Benedetto è quel male, che vien solo.—Un mal è la vigilia dell’altro.—Un male ed un Frate di rado soli.

[84] Al villano, se gli porgi il dito, ei prende la mano.

[85] Dieu donne le froid selon le drap.—Cada cual siente el frio como anda vestido.

[86] Cui serpe mozzica, lucerta teme.

[87] El rio passado, el santo olvidado.

[88] Passato il punto, gabbato il santo.

LECTURE IV.

THE POETRY, WIT, AND WISDOM OF PROVERBS.

It will be my endeavour in the three lectures which I have still to deliver to justify the attention which I have claimed on behalf of proverbs from you, not merely by appealing to the authority of others, who at different times have prized and made much of them, but by bringing out and setting before you, so far as I have the skill to do it, some of the merits and excellencies by which they are mainly distinguished. Their wit, their wisdom, their poetry, the delicacy, the fairness, the manliness which characterize so many of them, their morality, their theology, will all by turns come under our consideration. Yet shall I beware of presenting them to you as though they embodied these nobler qualities only. I shall not keep out of sight that there are proverbs, coarse, selfish, unjust, cowardly, profane; “maxims” wholly undeserving of the honour implied by that name.[89] Still as my pleasure, and I doubt not yours, is rather in the wheat than in the tares, I shall, while I do not conceal this, prefer to dwell in the main on the nobler features which they present.

[Sidenote: Poetic imagery.]

And first, in regard of the poetry of proverbs—whatever is _from_ the people, or truly _for_ the people, whatever either springs from their bosom, or has been cordially accepted by them, still more whatever unites both these conditions, will have poetry, imagination, in it. For little as the people’s craving after wholesome nutriment of the imaginative faculty, and after an entrance into a fairer and more harmonious world than that sordid and confused one with which often they are surrounded, is duly met and satisfied, still they yearn after all this with an honest hearty yearning, which must put to shame the palled indifference, the only affected enthusiasm of too many, whose opportunities of cultivating this glorious faculty have been so immeasurably greater than theirs. This being so, and proverbs being, as we have seen, the sayings that have found favour with the people, their peculiar inheritance, we may be quite sure that there will be poetry, imagination, passion, in them. So much we might affirm beforehand; our closer examination of them will confirm the confidence which we have been bold to entertain.

Thus we may expect to find that they will contain often bold imagery, striking comparisons; and such they do. Let serve as an example our own: _Gray hairs are death’s blossoms_;[90] or the Italian: _Time is an inaudible file_;[91] or the Greek: _Man a bubble_;[92] which Jeremy Taylor has expanded into such glorious poetry in the opening of the _Holy Dying_; or that Turkish: _Death is a black camel which kneels at every man’s gate_; to take up, that is, the burden of a coffin there; or this Arabic one, on the never satisfied eye of desire: _Nothing but a handful of dust will fill the eye of man_; or another from the same quarter, worthy of Mecca’s prophet himself, and of the earnestness with which he realized Gehenna, whatever else he may have come short in: _There are no fans in hell_; or this other, also from the East: _Hold all skirts of thy mantle extended, when heaven is raining gold_; improve, that is, to the uttermost the happier crises of thy spiritual life; or this Indian, to the effect that good should be returned for evil: _The sandal tree perfumes the axe that fells it_; or this one, current in the Middle Ages: _Whose life lightens, his words thunder_;[93] or once more, this Chinese: _Towers are measured by their shadows, and great men by their calumniators_; however this last may have somewhat of an artificial air as tried by our standard of the proverb.

There may be poetry in a play upon words; and such we shall hardly fail to acknowledge in that beautiful Spanish proverb: _La verdad es siempre verde_, which I must leave in its original form; for were I to translate it, _The truth is always green_, its charm and chief beauty would be looked for in vain. It finds its pendant and complement in another, which I must also despair of adequately rendering: _Gloria vana florece, y no grana_; which would express this truth, namely, that vain glory can shoot up into stalk and ear, but can never attain to the full grain in the ear. Nor can we, I think, refuse the title of poetry to this Eastern proverb, in which the wish that a woman may triumph over her enemies, clothes itself thus: _May her enemies stumble over her hair_;—may she flourish so, may her hair, the outward sign of this prosperity, grow so rich and long, may it so sweep the ground, that her detractors and persecutors may be entangled by it and fall.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Witty proverbs.]

And then, how exquisitely witty many proverbs are. Thus, not to speak of one familiar to us all, which is perhaps the queen of all proverbs: _The road to hell is paved with good intentions_;[94] take this Scotch one: _A man may love his house well, without riding on the ridge_; it is enough for a wise man to know what is precious to himself, without making himself ridiculous by evermore proclaiming it to the world; or this of our own: _When the devil is dead, he never wants a chief mourner_; in other words, there is no abuse so enormous, no evil so flagrant, but that the interests or passions of some will be so bound up in its continuance that they will lament its extinction; or this Italian: _When rogues go in procession, the devil holds the cross_;[95] when evil men have it thus far their own way, then worst is best, and in the inverted hierarchy which is then set up, the foremost in badness is foremost also in such honour as is going. Or consider how happily the selfishness and bye-ends which too often preside at men’s very prayers are noted in this Portuguese: _Cobblers go to mass, and pray that cows may die_;[96] that is, that so leather may be cheap. Or, take another, a German one, noting with slightest exaggeration a measure of charity which is only too common: _He will swallow an egg, and give away the shells in alms_; or this from the Talmud, of which I will leave the interpretation to yourselves: _All kinds of wood burn silently, except thorns, which crackle and call out, We too are wood_.

The wit of proverbs spares few or none. They are, as may be supposed, especially intolerant of fools. _We_ say: _Fools grow without watering_; no need therefore of adulation or flattery, to quicken them to a ranker growth; for indeed _The more you stroke the cat’s tail, the more he raises his back_;[97] and the Russians: _Fools are not planted or sowed; they grow of themselves_; while the Spaniards: _If folly were a pain, there would be crying in every house_;[98] having further an exquisitely witty one on learned folly as the most intolerable of all follies: _A fool, unless he know Latin, is never a great fool_.[99] And here is excellently unfolded to us the secret of the fool’s confidence: _Who knows nothing, doubts nothing_.[100]

[Sidenote: Bohemian proverb.]

The shafts of their pointed satire are directed with an admirable impartiality against men of every degree, so that none of us will be found to have wholly escaped. To pass over those, and they are exceedingly numerous, which are aimed at members of the monastic orders,[101] I must fain hope that this Bohemian one, pointing at the clergy, is not true; for it certainly argues no very forgiving temper on our parts in cases where we have been, or fancy ourselves to have been, wronged. It is as follows: _If you have offended a clerk, kill him; else you never will have peace with him_.[102] And another proverb, worthy to take its place among the best even of the Spanish, charges the clergy with being the authors of the chiefest spiritual mischiefs which have risen up in the Church: _By the vicar’s skirts the devil climbs up into the belfry_.[103] Nor do physicians appear in the middle ages to have been in very high reputation for piety; for a Latin medieval proverb boldly proclaims: _Where there are three physicians, there are two atheists_.[104] And as for lawyers, this of the same period, _Legista, nequista_,[105] expresses itself not with such brevity only, but with such downright plainness of speech, that I shall excuse myself from attempting to render it into English. Nor do other sorts and conditions of men escape. “The miller tolling with his golden thumb,” has been often the object of malicious insinuations; and of him the Germans have a proverb: _What is bolder than a miller’s neckcloth, which takes a thief by the throat every morning?_[106] Evenhanded justice might perhaps require that I should find caps for other heads; and it is not that such are wanting, nor yet out of fear lest any should be offended, but only because I must needs hasten onward, that I leave this part of my subject without further development.

[Sidenote: Proverbs about pride.]

What a fine knowledge of the human heart will they often display. I know not whether this Persian saying on the subtleties of pride is a proverb in the very strictest sense of the word, but it is forcibly uttered: _Thou shalt sooner detect an ant moving in the dark night on the black earth, than all the motions of pride in thine heart_. And on the wide reach of this sin the Italians say: _If pride were as art, how many graduates we should have_;[107] and how excellent and searching is this word of theirs on the infinitely various shapes which this protean sin will assume: _There are who despise pride with a greater pride_,[108] one which might almost seem to have been founded on the story of Diogenes, who, treading under his feet a rich carpet of Plato’s, exclaimed, “Thus I trample on the ostentation of Plato;” ‘With an ostentation of thine own,’ was the other’s excellent retort;—even as on another occasion he observed, with admirable wit, that he saw the pride of the Cynic peeping through the rents of his mantle: for indeed pride can array itself quite as easily in rags as in purple; can affect squalors as earnestly as splendours; the lowest place and the last is of itself no security at all for humility; and out of a sense of this _we_ very well have said: _As proud go behind as before_.