Part 6

Sometimes in their subtle observation of life, they arrive at conclusions which we would very willingly question or reject, but to which it is impossible to refuse a certain amount of assent. Thus it is with the very striking German proverb: _One foe is too many; and an hundred friends too few_.[109] There speaks out in this a sense of how much more _active_ a principle in this world will hate be sometimes than love. The hundred friends will _wish_ you well; but the one foe will _do_ you ill. Their benevolence will be ordinarily passive; his malevolence will be constantly active; it will be _animosity_, or spiritedness in evil. The proverb will have its use, if we are stirred up by it to prove its assertion false, to show that, in very many cases at least, there is no such blot as it would set on the scutcheon of true friendship. In the same rank of unwelcome proverbs I must range this Persian one: _Of four things every man has more than he knows: of sins, of debts, of years, and of foes_; and this Spanish: _One father can support ten children; ten children cannot support one father_; which, in so far as it rests upon a certain ground of truth, suggests a painful reflection in regard of the less strength which there must be in the filial than in the paternal affection, since to the one those acts of self-sacrificing love are easy, which to the other are hard, and often impossible. But yet, seeing that it is the order of God’s providence in the world that fathers should in all cases support children, while it is the exception when children are called to support parents, one can only admire that wisdom which has made the instincts of natural affection to run rather in the descending than in the ascending line; a wisdom to which this proverb, though with a certain exaggeration of the facts, bears witness.

[Sidenote: French proverb.]

How exquisitely delicate is the touch of this French proverb: _It is easy to go afoot, when one leads one’s horse by the bridle_.[110] How fine and subtle an insight into the inner workings of the human heart is here; how many cheap humilities are here set at their true worth. It _is_ easy to stoop from state, when that state may be resumed at will; easy for one to part with luxuries and indulgences, which he only parts with exactly so long as it may please himself. No reason indeed is to be found in this comparative easiness for the not ‘going afoot;’ on the contrary, it may be to him a most profitable exercise; but every reason for not esteeming the doing so too highly, nor setting it on a level with the trudging upon foot of him, who has no horse to fall back on at whatever moment he may please.

There is, and always must be, some rough work to be done in the world; work which, though rough, is not therefore in the least ignoble; and the schemes, so daintily conceived, of a luxurious society, which repose on a tacit assumption that nobody shall have to do this work, are touched with a fine irony in this Arabic proverb: _If I am master, and thou art master, who shall drive the asses?_[111]

Again, how clever is the satire of the following Haytian proverb, which, however, I must introduce with a little preliminary explanation. It was one current among the slave population of St. Domingo, and with it they ridiculed the ambition and pretension of the mulatto race immediately above them. These, in imitation of the French planters, must have their duels too—duels, however, which had nothing earnest or serious about them, invariably ending in a reconciliation and a feast, the kids which furnished the latter being in fact the only sufferers, their blood that which alone was shed. All this the proverb uttered: _Mulattoes fight, kids die_.[112]

[Sidenote: Fuller’s use of proverbs.]

And proverbs, witty in themselves, often become wittier still in their application, like gems that acquire new brilliancy from their setting, or from some novel light in which they are held. No writer that I know of has an happier skill in thus adding wit to the witty than Fuller, the Church historian. Let me confirm this assertion by one or two examples drawn from his writings. He is describing the indignation, the outcries, the remonstrances, which the thousandfold extortions, the intolerable exactions of the Papal See gave birth to in England during the reigns of such subservient kings as our Third Henry; yet he will not have his readers to suppose that the Popes fared a whit the worse for all this outcry which was raised against them; not so, for _The fox thrives best when he is most cursed_;[113] the very loudness of the clamour was itself rather an evidence how well they were faring. Or again, he is telling of that Duke of Buckingham, well known to us through Shakespeare’s _Richard the Third_, who, having helped the tyrant to a throne, afterwards took mortal displeasure against him; this displeasure he sought to hide, till a season arrived for showing it with effect, in the deep of his heart, but in vain; for, as Fuller observes, _It is hard to halt before a cripple_; the arch-hypocrite Richard, he to whom dissembling was as a second nature, saw through and detected at once the shallow Buckingham’s clumsier deceit. And the _Church History_ abounds with similar happy applications. Fuller, indeed, possesses so much of the wit out of which proverbs spring, that it is not seldom difficult to tell whether he is adducing a proverb, or uttering some proverb-like saying of his own. Thus, I cannot remember ever to have met any of the following, which yet sound like proverbs—the first on solitude as preferable to ill fellowship: _Better ride alone than have a thief’s company_;[114] the second against certain who disparaged one whose excellencies they would have found it very difficult to imitate: _They who complain that Grantham steeple stands awry, will not set a straighter by it_,[115] and in this he warns against despising in any the tokens of honourable toil: _Mock not a cobbler for his black thumbs_.[116]

But the glory of proverbs, that, perhaps, which strikes us most often and most forcibly in regard of them, is their shrewd common sense, the sound wisdom for the management of our own lives, and of our intercourse with our fellows, which so many of them contain. In truth, there is no region of practical life which they do not occupy, for which they do not supply some wise hints and counsels and warnings. There is hardly a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed, but some proverb, had we known and attended to its lesson, might have saved us from it. “Adages,” indeed, according to the more probable etymology of that word, they are, _apt for action_ and use.[117]

[Sidenote: Wisdom of silence.]

Thus, how many of these popular sayings and what good ones there are on the wisdom of governing the tongue,—I speak not now of those urging the _duty_, though such are by no means wanting,—but the wisdom, prudence, and profit of knowing how to keep silence as well as how to speak. The Persian, perhaps, is familiar to many: _Speech is silvern, silence is golden_; with which we may compare the Italian: _Who speaks, sows; who keeps silence, reaps_;[118] and on the _safety_ that is in silence, I know none happier than another from the same quarter, and one most truly characteristic of Italian caution: _Silence was never written down_;[119] while, on the other hand, we are excellently warned of the irrevocableness of the word which has once gone from us in this Eastern proverb: _Of thine unspoken word thou art master; thy spoken word is master of thee_; even as the same is set out elsewhere by many striking comparisons; it is the arrow from the bow, the stone from the sling; and, once launched, can as little be recalled as these.[120] Our own, _He who says what he likes, shall hear what he does not like_, gives a further motive for self-government in speech; while this Spanish is in an higher strain: _The evil which issues from thy mouth falls into thy bosom_.[121] Nor is it enough to abstain ourselves from all such words; we must not make ourselves partakers in those of others; which it is only too easy to do; for, as the Chinese have said very well: _He who laughs at an impertinence, makes himself its accomplice_.

And then, in proverbs not a few what profitable warnings have we against the fruits of evil companionship, as in that homely one of our own: _He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas_;[122] or, again, in the old Hebrew one: _Two dry sticks will set on fire one green_; or, in another from the East, which has to do with the same theme, and plainly shows whither such companionship will lead: _He that takes the raven for a guide, shall light upon carrion_.

[Sidenote: Good sense in proverbs.]

What warnings do many contain against unreasonable expectations, against a looking for perfection in a world of imperfection, and generally a demanding of more from life than life can yield. _We_ note very well the folly of one addicted to this, saying: _He expects better bread than can be made of wheat_; and the Portuguese: _He that will have an horse without fault, let him go afoot_; and the French: _Where the goat is tied, there she must browse_.[123] Again, what a good word of caution in respect of the wisdom of considering oftentimes a step which, being once taken, is taken for ever, lies in the following Russian proverb: _Measure thy cloth ten times; thou canst cut it but once_. And in this Spanish the final issues of procrastination are well set forth: _By the street of “By-and-bye” one arrives at the house of “Never.”_[124] In how pleasant a way discretion in avoiding all appearance of evil is urged in the following Chinese: _In a field of melons tie not thy shoe; under a plum-tree adjust not thy cap_. And this Danish warns us well against relying too much on other men’s silence, since there is no rarer gift than the capacity of keeping a secret: _Tell nothing to thy friend which thine enemy may not know_. Here is a word which we owe to Italy, and which, laid to heart, might keep men out of law-suits, or, being in them, from refusing to accept tolerable terms of accommodation: _The robes of lawyers are lined with the obstinacy of suitors_.[125] Other words of wisdom and warning, for so I must esteem them, are these; this, on the danger of being overset by prosperity: _Everything may be borne, except good fortune_;[126] with which may be compared our own: _Bear wealth, poverty will bear itself_; and another Italian which says: _In prosperity no altars smoke_.[127] This is on the disgrace which will sooner or later follow upon dressing ourselves out in intellectual finery that does not belong to us: _Who arrays himself in other men’s garments, is stripped in the middle of the street_;[128] he is detected and laid bare when and where detection is most shameful.

Of the same miscellaneous character, and derived from quarters the most diverse, but all of them of an excellent sense or shrewdness, are the following. This is from Italy: _Who sees not the bottom, let him not pass the water_.[129] This is current among the free blacks of Hayti: _Before fording the river, do not curse Mrs. Alligator_;[130] provoke not wantonly those in whose power you presently may be. This is Spanish: _Call me not “olive,” till you see me gathered_;[131] being nearly parallel to our own: _Praise a fair day at night_; and this French: _Take the first advice of a woman, and not the second_;[132] a proverb of much wisdom; for in processes of reasoning, out of which the second counsels would spring, women may and will be, inferior to us; but in intuitions, in moral intuitions above all, they surpass us far; they have what Montaigne ascribes to them in a remarkable word, “l’esprit _primesautier_,” the leopard’s spring, which takes its prey, if it be to take it at all, at the first bound.

And I cannot but think that for as many as are seeking diligently to improve their time and opportunities of knowledge, with at the same time little of either which they can call their own, a very useful hint and warning against an error which lies very near, is contained in the little Latin proverb: _Compendia, dispendia_. Nor indeed for them only, but for all, and in numberless respects it often proves true that a short cut may be a very long way home; yet the proverb can never be applied better than to those little catechisms of science, those skeleton outlines of history, those epitomes of all useful information, those thousand delusive short cuts to the attainment of that knowledge, which can indeed only be acquired by them that are content to travel on the king’s highway, on the old, and as I must still call it, the royal road of patience, perseverance, and toil. Surely these _compendia_, so meagre and so hungry, with little food for the intellect, with less for the affections, we may style with fullest right _dispendia_, wasteful as they generally prove of whatever time and labour and money is bestowed upon them; and every wise man will set his seal to this word, as wisely as it is grandly spoken: “All spacious minds, attended with the felicities of means and leisure, will fly abridgements as bane.”

[Sidenote: Proverbs about books.]

And being on the subject of books and the choice of books, let me put before you a proverb, and in this reading age a very serious one; it comes to us from Italy, and it says: _There is no worse robber than a bad book_.[133] Indeed, none worse, nor so bad; other robbers may spoil us of our money; but this robber of our “goods”—of our time at any rate, even assuming the book to be only negatively bad; but of how much more, of our principles, our faith, our purity of heart, supposing its badness to be positive, and not negative only. And one more on books may fitly find place here: _Dead men open living men’s eyes_; at least I take it to be such; and to contain implicitly the praise of history, and an announcement of the instruction which it will yield us.[134]

Here are one or two prudent words on education. _A child may have too much of its mother’s blessing_; yes, for that blessing may be no blessing, but rather a curse, if it take the shape of foolish and fond indulgence; and in the same strain is this German: _Better the child weep than the father_.[135] And this, like many others, is found in so many tongues, that it cannot be ascribed to one rather than another: _More springs in the garden than the gardener ever sowed_.[136] It is a proverb for many, but most of all for parents and teachers, that they lap not themselves in a false dream of security, as though nothing was at work or growing in the minds of the young in their guardianship, but what they themselves had sown there, as though there was not another who might very well have sown his tares beside and among any good seed of their sowing. At the same time the proverb has also its happier side. There may be, there often are, better things also in this garden than ever the earthly gardener set there, seeds of the more immediate sowing of God. In either of its aspects this proverb is one deserving to be laid to heart.

[Sidenote: Gold’s worth is gold.]

Proverbs will sometimes outrun and implicitly anticipate conclusions, which are only after long struggles and efforts arrived at as the formal and undoubted conviction of all thoughtful men. After how long a conflict has that been established as a maxim in political economy, which the brief Italian proverb long ago announced: _Gold’s worth is gold_.[137] What millions upon millions of national wealth have been as much lost as if they had been thrown into the sea, from the inability of those who have had the destinies of nations in their hands to grasp this simple proposition, that everything which could purchase money, or which money would fain purchase, was as really wealth as the money itself. What forcing of national industries into unnatural channels has resulted from this, what mischievous restrictions in the buying and selling of one people with another. Nay, can the truth which this proverb affirms be said even now to be accepted without gainsaying—so long as the talk about the balance of trade being in favour of or against a nation, as the fear of draining a country of its gold, still survive?

Here is a proverb of many tongues: _One sword keeps another in its scabbard_;[138]—surely a far wiser and far manlier word than the puling yet mischievous babble of our shallow Peace Societies, which, while they fancy that they embody, and they only embody, the true spirit of Christianity, proclaim themselves in fact ignorant of all which it teaches; for they dream of having peace the fruit, while at the same time the root of bitterness out of which have grown all the wars and fightings that have ever been in the world, namely the lusts which stir in men’s members, remain strong and vigorous as ever. But no; it is not they that are the peacemakers: in the face of an evil world, and of a world determined to continue in its evil, _He who bears the sword_, and though he fain would not, yet knows how, if need be, to wield it, _he bears peace_.[139]

One of the most remarkable features of a good proverb is the singular variety of applications which it will admit, which indeed it challenges and invites. Not lying on the surface of things, but going deep down to their heart, it will be found capable of being applied again and again, under circumstances the most different; like the gift of which Solomon spake, “whithersoever it turneth, it prospereth;” or like a diamond cut and polished upon many sides, which reflects and refracts the light upon every one. There can be no greater mistake than the attempt to tie it down and restrict it to a single application, when indeed the very character of it is that it is ever finding or making new ones for itself.

[Sidenote: Scriptural proverb.]

It is nothing strange that with words of Eternal Wisdom this should be so, and in respect of them my assertion cannot need a proof. I will, notwithstanding, adduce as a first confirmation of it a scriptural proverb, one which fell from the Lord’s lips in his last prophecies about Jerusalem: _Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together_; (Matt. xxiv. 28;) and which probably He had taken up from Job. (xxxix. 30.) Who would venture to say that he had exhausted the meaning of this wonderful saying? For is it not properly inexhaustible? All history is a comment on these words. Wherever there is a Church or a people abandoned by the spirit of life, and so a carcase, tainting the atmosphere of God’s moral world, around it assemble the ministers and messengers of Divine justice, “the eagles,” (or vultures more strictly, for the true eagle does not feed on aught but what itself has slain,) the scavengers of God’s moral world; scenting out as by a mysterious instinct the prey from afar, and charged to remove presently the offence out of the way. This proverb, for the saying has passed upon the lips of men, and thus has become such, is being fulfilled evermore. The wicked Canaanites were the carcase, when the children of Israel entered into their land, the commissioned eagles that should remove them out of sight. At a later day the Jews were themselves the carcase, and the Romans the eagles; and when in the progress of decay, the Roman empire had quite lost the spirit of life, and those virtues of the family and the nation which had deservedly made it great, the northern tribes, the eagles now, came down upon it, to tear it limb from limb, and make room for a new creation that should grow up in its stead. Again, the Persian empire was the carcase; Alexander and his Macedonian hosts, the eagles that by unerring instinct gathered round it to complete its doom. The Greek Church in the seventh century was too nearly a carcase to escape the destiny of such, and the armies of Islam scented their prey, and divided it among them. In modern times Poland was, I fear, such a carcase; and this one may affirm without in the least extenuating their guilt who partitioned it; for it might have been just for it to suffer, what yet it was most unrighteous for others to inflict. Nay, where do you not find an illustration of this proverb, from such instances on the largest scale as these, down to that of the silly and profligate heir, surrounded by sharpers and black-legs, and preyed on by these? Everywhere it is true that _Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together_.

[Sidenote: Extremes meet.]

[Sidenote: Too far East is West.]

Or, again, consider such a proverb as the short but well-known one: _Extremes meet_. Short as it is, it is yet a motto on which whole volumes might be written, which is finding its illustration every day,—in small and in great,—in things trivial and in things most important,—in the histories of single men, and in those of nations and of Churches. Consider some of its every-day fulfilments,—old age ending in second childhood,—cold performing the effects of heat, and scorching as heat would have done,—the extremities alike of joy and of grief finding utterance in tears,—that which is above all value declared to have no value at all, to be “invaluable,”—the second singular “thou” instead of the plural “you,” employed in so many languages to inferiors and to God, never to equals; just as servants and children are alike called by the Christian name, but not those who stand in the midway of intimacy between them. Or to take some further illustrations from the moral world, of extremes meeting; observe how often those who begin their lives as spendthrifts end them as misers; how often the flatterer and the calumniator meet in the same person: out of a sense of which the Italians say well: _Who paints me before, blackens me behind_;[140] observe how those who yesterday would have sacrificed to Paul as a god, will to-day stone him as a malefactor; (Acts xiv. 18, 19; cf. xxviii. 4-6;) even as Roman emperors would one day have blasphemous honours paid to them by the populace, and the next their bodies would be dragged by a hook through the streets of the city, to be flung into the common sewer. Or note again in what close alliance hardness and softness, cruelty and self-indulgence (“lust hard by hate”), are continually found; or in law, how the _summum jus_, where unredressed by equity, becomes the _summa injuria_, as in the case of Shylock’s pound of flesh, which was indeed no more than was in the bond. Or observe on a greater scale, as lately in France, how a wild and lawless democracy may be transformed by the base trick of a conjuror into an atrocious military tyranny.[141] Or read thoughtfully the history of the Church and of the sects, and you will not fail to note what things apparently the most remote are yet in the most fearful proximity with one another: how often, for example, a false asceticism has issued in frantic outbreaks of fleshly lusts, and those who avowed themselves at one time ambitious to live lives above men, have ended in living lives below beasts. Again, take note of England at the Restoration exchanging all in a moment the sour strictness of the Puritans for a licence and debauchery unknown to it before. Or, once more, consider the exactly similar position in respect of Scripture, taken up by the Romanists on the one side, the Quakers and Familists on the other. Seeming, and in much being, so remote from one another, they yet have this fundamental in common, that Scripture, insufficient in itself, needs a supplement from without, those finding it in a Pope, and these in the “inward light.”[142] With these examples before you, not to speak of the many others which might be adduced,[143] you will own, I think, that this proverb, _Extremes meet_, or its parallel, _Too far East is West_, reaches very far into the heart of things; and with this for the present I must conclude.