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It is very likely that from some of us proverbs have never attracted the notice which I am persuaded they deserve; and from this it may follow that, when invited to bestow even a brief attention on them, we are in some doubt whether they will repay our pains. We think of them but as sayings on the lips of the multitude; not a few of them have been familiar to us as far back as we can remember; often employed by ourselves, or in our hearing, on slight and trivial occasions: and thus, from these and other causes, it may very well be, that, however sometimes one may have taken our fancy, we yet have remained blind in the main to the wit, wisdom, and imagination, of which they are full; and very little conscious of the amusement, instruction, insight, which they are capable of yielding. Unless too we have devoted a certain attention to the subject, we shall not be at all aware how little those more familiar ones, which are frequent on the lips of men, exhaust the treasure of our native proverbs; how many and what excellent ones remain behind, having now for the most part fallen out of sight; or what riches in like kind other nations possess. We may little guess how many aspects of interest there are in which our own by themselves, and our own compared with those of other people, may be regarded.

And yet there is much to induce us to reconsider our judgment, should we be thus tempted to slight them, and to count them not merely trite, but trivial and unworthy of a serious attention. The fact that they please the people, and have pleased them for ages,—that they possess so vigorous a principle of life, as to have maintained their ground, ever new and ever young, through all the centuries of a nation’s existence,—nay, that many of them have pleased not one nation only, but many, so that they have made themselves an home in the most different lands,—and further, that they have, not a few of them, come down to us from remotest antiquity, borne safely upon the waters of that great stream of time, which has swallowed so much beneath its waves,—all this, I think, may well make us pause, should we be tempted to turn away from them with anything of indifference or disdain.

And then further, there is this to be considered, that some of the greatest poets, the profoundest philosophers, the most learned scholars, the most genial writers in every kind, have delighted in them, have made large and frequent use of them, have bestowed infinite labour on the gathering and elucidating of them. In a fastidious age, indeed, and one of false refinement, they may go nearly or quite out of use among the so-called upper classes. No gentleman, says Lord Chesterfield, or “no man of fashion,” as I think is his exact phrase, “ever uses a proverb.” [1] And with how fine a touch of nature Shakespeare makes Coriolanus, the man who, with all his greatness, is entirely devoid of all sympathy for the people, to utter his scorn of them in scorn of their proverbs, and of their frequent employment of these:

“Hang ’em!

They said they were an hungry, sighed forth proverbs;—

That, hunger broke stone walls; that, dogs must eat;

That, meat was made for mouths; that, the gods sent not

Corn for the rich men only;—with these shreds

They vented their complainings.”

Coriolanus, Act I. Sc. 1.

Aristotle collected proverbs.

But that they have been always dear to the true intellectual aristocracy of a nation, there is abundant evidence to prove. Take but these three names in evidence, which though few, are in themselves an host. Aristotle made a collection of proverbs; nor did he count that he was herein doing aught unworthy of his great reputation, however some of his adversaries may afterwards have made of the fact that he did so an imputation against him. He is said to have been the first collector of them, though many afterwards followed in the same path. Shakespeare loves them so well, that besides often citing them, and scattering innumerable covert allusions, rapid side glances at them, which we are in danger of missing unless at home in the proverbs of England, several of his plays, as Measure for Measure, All’s well that ends well, have popular proverbs for their titles. And Cervantes, a name only inferior to Shakespeare, has made very plain the affection with which he regarded them. Every reader of Don Quixote will remember his squire, who sometimes cannot open his mouth but there drop from it almost as many proverbs as phrases. I might name others who have held the proverb in honour—men who though they may not attain to these first three, are yet deservedly accounted great; as Plautus, the most genial of Latin poets, Rabelais and Montaigne, the two most original of French authors; and how often Fuller, whom Coleridge has styled the wittiest of writers, justifies this praise in his witty employment of some old proverb: and no reader can thoroughly understand and enjoy Hudibras, none but will miss a multitude of its keenest allusions, who is not thoroughly familiar with the proverbial literature of England.

Proverbs in Scripture.

Nor is this all; we may with reverence adduce quite another name than any of these, the Lord himself, as condescending to employ such proverbs as he found current among his people. Thus, on the occasion of his first open appearance in the synagogue of Nazareth, he refers to the proverb, Physician, heal thyself, (Luke iv. 23,) as one which his hearers will perhaps bring forward against Himself; and again presently to another, A prophet is not without honour but in his own country, as attested in his own history; and at the well of Sychar He declares, “Herein is that saying,” or that proverb, “true, One soweth and another reapeth.” (John iv. 37.) But He is much more than a quoter of other men’s proverbs; He is a maker of his own. As all forms of human composition find their archetypes and their highest realization in Scripture, as there is no tragedy like Job, no pastoral like Ruth, no lyric melodies like the Psalms, so we should affirm no proverbs like those of Solomon, were it not that “a greater than Solomon” has drawn out of the rich treasure house of the Eternal Wisdom a series of proverbs more costly still. For indeed how much of our Lord’s teaching, especially as recorded in the three first Evangelists, is thrown into this form; and how many of his words have in this shape passed over as “faithful sayings” upon the lips of men; and so doing, have fulfilled a necessary condition of the proverb, whereof we shall have presently to speak.

But not urging this testimony any further,—a testimony too august to be lightly used, or employed merely to swell the testimonies of men—least of all, men of such “uncircumcised lips” as, with all their genius, were more than one of those whom I have named,—and appealing only to the latter, I shall be justified, I feel, in affirming that whether we listen to those single voices which make a silence for themselves, and are heard through the centuries and their ages, or to that great universal voice of humanity, which is wiser even than these (for it is these, with all else which is worthy to be heard added to them), there is here a subject, which those whose judgments should go very far with us have not accounted unworthy of their serious regard.

And I am sure if we bestow on them ourselves even a moderate share of attention, we shall be ready to set our own seal to the judgment of wiser men that have preceded us here. For, indeed, what a body of popular good sense and good feeling, as we shall then perceive, is contained in the better, which is also the more numerous, portion of them; what a sense of natural equity, what a spirit of kindness breathes out from many of them; what prudent rules for the management of life, what shrewd wisdom, which though not of this world, is most truly for it, what frugality, what patience, what perseverance, what manly independence, are continually inculcated by them. What a fine knowledge of the human heart do many of them display; what useful, and not always obvious, hints do they offer on many most important points, as on the choice of companions, the bringing up of children, the bearing of prosperity and adversity, the restraint of all immoderate expectations. And they take a yet higher range than this; they have their ethics, their theology, their views of man in his highest relations of all, as man with his fellow man, and man with his Maker. Be these always correct or not, and I should be very far from affirming that they always are so, the student of humanity, he who because he is a man counts nothing human to be alien to him, can never without wilfully foregoing an important document, and one which would have helped him often in his studies, altogether neglect or pass them by.

Shortness, sense, salt.

But what, it may be asked, before we proceed further, is a proverb? Nothing is harder than a definition. While on the one hand there is for the most part no easier task than to detect a fault or flaw in the definitions of those who have gone before us, nothing on the other is more difficult than to propose one of our own, which shall not also present a vulnerable side. Some one has said that these three things go to the constituting of a proverb, shortness, sense, and salt. In brief pointed sayings of this kind, the second of the qualities enumerated here, namely sense, is sometimes sacrificed to alliteration. I would not affirm that it is so here: for the words are not ill spoken, though they are very far from satisfying the rigorous requirements of a definition, as will be seen when we consider what the writer intended by his three esses, which it is not hard to understand. The proverb, he would say, must have shortness; it must be succinct, utterable in a breath. It must have sense, not being, that is, the mere small talk of conversation, slight and trivial, else it would perish as soon as born, no one taking the trouble to keep it alive. It must have salt, that is, besides its good sense, it must in its manner and outward form be pointed and pungent, having a sting in it, a barb which shall not suffer it to drop lightly from the memory.[2] Yet, regarded as a definition, this of the triple s fails, as I have said; it indeed errs both in defect and excess.

Proverbs will be concise.

Thus in demanding shortness, it errs in excess. It is indeed quite certain that a good proverb will be short, as short, that is, as is compatible with the full and forcible conveying of that which it intends. Brevity, “the soul of wit,” will be eminently the soul of a proverb’s wit; it will contain, according to Fuller’s definition, “much matter decocted into few words.” Oftentimes it will consist of two, three, or four, and these sometimes monosyllabic, words. Thus Extremes meet;—Right wrongs no man;—Forewarned, forearmed;—with a thousand more.[3] But still shortness is only a relative term, and it would perhaps be more accurate to say that a proverb must be concise, cut down, that is, to the fewest possible words; condensed, quintessential wisdom. [4] But that, if only it fulfil this condition of being as short as possible, it need not be absolutely very short, there are sufficient examples to prove. Thus Freytag has admitted the following, which indeed hovers on the confines of the fable, into his great collection of Arabic proverbs: They said to the camel-bird, [i. e., the ostrich,] “Carry:” it answered, ‘I cannot, for I am a bird.’ They said, “Fly;” it answered,‘I cannot, for I am a camel.’ This could not be shorter, yet, as compared with the greater number of proverbs, is not short. [5] Even so the sense and salt, which are ascribed to the proverb as other of its necessary conditions, can hardly be said to be such; seeing that flat, saltless proverbs, though comparatively rare, there certainly are; while yet, be it remembered, we are not considering now what are the ornaments of a good proverb, but the essential marks of all.

And then moreover it errs in defect; for it has plainly omitted one quality of the proverb, and that the most essential of all—I mean popularity, acceptance and adoption on the part of the people. Without this popularity, without these suffrages and this consent of the many, no saying, however brief, however wise, however seasoned with salt, however worthy on all these accounts to have become a proverb, however fulfilling all other its conditions, can yet be esteemed as such. This popularity, omitted in that enumeration of the essential notes of the proverb, is yet the only one whose presence is absolutely necessary, whose absence is fatal to the claims of any saying to be regarded as such.

Aphorisms not proverbs.

Those, however, who have occupied themselves with the making of collections of proverbs have sometimes failed to realize this to themselves with sufficient clearness, or at any rate have not kept it always before them; and thus it has come to pass, that many collections include whatever brief sayings their gatherers have anywhere met with, which to them have appeared keenly, or wisely, or wittily spoken; [6] while yet a multitude of these have never received their adoption into the great family of proverbs, or their rights of citizenship therein: inasmuch as they have never passed into general recognition and currency, have no claim to this title, however just a claim they may have on other grounds to our admiration and honour. For instance, this word of Goethe’s, “A man need not be an architect to live in an house,” seems to me to have every essential of a proverb, saving only that it has not passed over upon the lips of men. It is a saying of manifold application; an universal law is knit up in a particular example; I mean that gracious law in the distribution of blessing, which does not limit our use and enjoyment of things by our understanding of them, but continually makes the enjoyment much wider than the knowledge; so that it is not required that one be a botanist to have pleasure in a rose, nor a critic to delight in Paradise Lost, nor a theologian to taste all the blessings of Christian faith, nor, as he expresses it, an architect to live in an house. And here is an inimitable saying of Schiller’s: “Heaven and earth fight in vain against a dunce;” yet it is not a proverb, because his alone; although abundantly worthy to have become such; [7] moving as it does in the same line with, though far superior to, the Chinese proverb, which itself also is good: One has never so much need of his wit, as when he has to do with a fool.

Or to take another example still more to the point. James Howell, a prolific English writer of the earlier half of the seventeenth century, one certainly meriting better than that almost entire oblivion into which his writings have fallen, occupied himself much with proverbs; and besides collecting those of others, he has himself set down “five hundred new sayings, which in tract of time may serve for proverbs to posterity.” As was to be expected, they have not so done; for it is not after this artificial method that such are born; yet many of these proverbs in expectation are expressed with sense and felicity; for example: “Pride is a flower that grows in the devil’s garden;” as again, the selfishness which characterizes too many proverbs is not ill reproduced in the following: “Burn not thy fingers to snuff another man’s candle;” and there is at any rate good theology in the following: “Faith is a great lady, and good works are her attendants;” and in this: “The poor are God’s receivers, and the angels are his auditors.” Yet for all this, it would be inaccurate to quote these as proverbs, (and their author himself, as we have seen, did not do more than set them out as proverbs upon trial,) inasmuch as they have remained the private property of him who first devised them, never having passed into general circulation; which until men’s sayings have done, maxims, sentences, apothegms, aphorisms they may be, and these of excellent temper and proof, but proverbs as yet they are not.

Not all proverbs true.

It is because of this, the popularity inherent in a genuine proverb, that from such an one in a certain sense there is no appeal. You will not suppose me to intend that there is no appeal from its wisdom, truth, or justice; from any word of man’s there may be such; but no appeal from it, as most truly representing a popular conviction. Aristotle, who in his ethical and political writings often finds very much more than this in it, always finds this. It may not be, it very often will not be, an universal conviction which it expresses, but ever one popular and widespread. So far indeed from an universal, very often over against the one proverb there will be another, its direct antagonist; and the one shall belong to the kingdom of light, the other to the kingdom of darkness. Common fame is seldom to blame; here is the baser proverb, for as many as drink in with greedy ears all reports to the injury of their neighbours; being determined from the first that they shall be true. But it is not left without its compensation: “They say so,” is half a liar; here is the better word with which they may arm themselves, who count it a primal duty to close their ears against all such unauthenticated rumours to the discredit of their brethren. The noblest vengeance is to forgive; here is the godlike proverb on the manner in which wrongs should be recompensed: He who cannot revenge himself is weak, he who will not is vile, [8] here is the devilish. These lines occur in a sonnet which Howell has prefixed to his collection of proverbs:

“The people’s voice the voice of God we call;

And what are proverbs but the people’s voice?

Coined first, and current made by common choice?

Then sure they must have weight and truth withal;”

It will follow from what has just been said, that, true in the main, they yet cannot be taken without certain qualifications and exceptions. [9]

Popularity essential.

Herein in great part the force of a proverb lies, namely, that it has already received the stamp of popular allowance. A man might produce, (for what another has done, he might do again,) something as witty, as forcible, as much to the point, of his own; which should be hammered at the instant on his own anvil. Yet still it is not “the wisdom of many;” it has not stood the test of experience; it wants that which the other already has, but which it only after a long period can acquire—the consenting voice of many and at different times to its wisdom and truth. A man employing a “proverb of the ancients,” (1 Sam. xxiv. 13,) is not speaking of his own, but uttering a faith and conviction very far wider than that of himself or of any single man; and it is because he is so doing that they, in Lord Bacon’s words, “serve not only for ornament and delight, but also for active and civil use; as being the edge tools of speech which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs.” The proverb has in fact the same advantage over the word now produced for the first time, which for present currency and value has the recognised coin of the realm over the rude unstamped ore newly washed from the stream, or dug up from the mine. This last may possess an equal amount of fineness; but the other has been stamped long ago, has already passed often from man to man, and found free acceptance with all:[10] it inspires therefore a confidence which the ruder metal cannot at present challenge. And the same satisfaction which the educated man finds in referring the particular matter before him to the universal law which rules it, a plainer man finds in the appeal to a proverb. He is doing the same thing; taking refuge, that is, as each man so gladly does, from his mere self and single fallible judgment, in a larger experience and in a wider conviction.

And in all this which has been urged lies, as it seems to me, the explanation of a sentence of an ancient grammarian, which at first sight appears to contain a bald absurdity, namely, that a proverb is “a saying without an author.” For, however without a known author it may, and in the majority of cases it must be, still, as we no more believe in the spontaneous generation of proverbs than of anything else, an author every one of them must have had. It might, however, and it often will have been, that in its utterance the author did but precipitate the floating convictions of the society round him; he did but clothe in happier form what others had already felt, or even already uttered; for often a proverb has been in this aspect, “the wit of one, and the wisdom of many.” And further, its constitutive element, as we must all now perceive, is not the utterance on the part of the one, but the acceptance on the part of the many. It is their sanction which first makes it to be such; so that every one who took or gave it during the period when it was struggling into recognition may claim to have had a share in its production; and in this sense without any single author it may have been. From the very first the people will have vindicated it for their own. And thus though they do not always analyse the compliment paid to them in the use of their proverbs, they always feel it; they feel that a writer or speaker using these is putting himself on their ground, is entering on their region, and they welcome him the more cordially for this. [11]

Not all proverbs figurative.

Let us now consider if some other have not sometimes been proposed as essential notes of the proverb, which yet are in fact accidents, such as may be present or absent without affecting it vitally. Into an error of this kind they have fallen, who have claimed for the proverb, and made it one of its necessary conditions, that it should be a figurative expression. A moment’s consideration will be sufficient to disprove this. How many proverbs, such as Haste makes waste;—Honesty is the best policy, with ten thousand more, have nothing figurative about them. Here again the error has arisen from taking that which belongs certainly to very many proverbs, and those oftentimes the best and choicest, and transferring it, as a necessary condition, to all. This much of truth they who made the assertion certainly had; namely, that the employment of the concrete instead of the abstract is one of the most frequent means by which it obtains and keeps its popularity; for so the proverb makes its appeal to the whole man—not to the intellectual faculties alone, but to the feelings, to the fancy, or even to the imagination, as well, stirring the whole man to pleasurable activity.

By the help of an instance or two we can best realize to ourselves how great an advantage it thus obtains for itself. Suppose, for example, one were to content himself with saying, “He may wait till he is a beggar, who waits to be rich by other men’s deaths,” would this trite morality be likely to go half so far, or to be remembered half so long, as the vigorous comparison of this proverb: He who waits for dead men’s shoes may go barefoot? [12] Or again, what were “All men are mortal,” as compared with the proverb: Every door may be shut but death’s door? Or let one observe: “More perish by intemperance than are drowned in the sea,” is this anything better than a painful, yet at the same time a flat, truism? But let it be put in this shape: More are drowned in the beaker than in the ocean; [13] or again in this: More are drowned in wine and in beer than in water; [14] (and these both are German proverbs,) and the assertion assumes quite a different character. There is something that lays hold on us now. We are struck with the smallness of the cup as set against the vastness of the ocean, while yet so many more deaths are ascribed to that than to this; and further with the fact that literally none are, and none could be, drowned in the former, while multitudes perish in the latter. In the justifying of the paradox, in the extricating of the real truth from the apparent falsehood of the statement, in the answer to the appeal made here to the imagination,—an appeal and challenge which, unless it be responded to, the proverb must remain unintelligible to us,—in all this there is a process of mental activity, oftentimes so rapidly exercised as scarcely to be perceptible, yet not the less carried on with a pleasurable excitement. [15]

Rhyme in proverbs.

Let me mention now a few other of the more frequent helps which the proverb employs for obtaining currency among men, for being listened to with pleasure by them, for not slipping again from their memories who have once heard it;—yet helps which are evidently so separable from it, that none can be in danger of affirming them essential parts or conditions of it. Of these rhyme is the most prominent. It would lead me altogether from my immediate argument, were I to enter into a disquisition on the causes of the charm which rhyme has for us all; but that it does possess a wondrous charm, that we like what is like, is attested by a thousand facts, and not least by the circumstance that into this rhyming form a very great multitude of proverbs, and those among the most widely current, have been thrown. Though such will probably at once be present to the minds of all, yet let me mention a few: Good mind, good find;—Wide will wear, but tight will tear;—Truth may be blamed, but cannot be shamed;—Little strokes fell great oaks;—Women’s jars breed men’s wars;—A king’s face should give grace;—East, west, home is best;—Store is no sore;—Slow help is no help;—Who goes a-borrowing, goes a-sorrowing;—with many more, uniting, as you will observe several of them do, this of rhyme with that which I have spoken of before, namely, extreme brevity and conciseness. [16]

Alliteration in proverbs.

Alliteration, which is nearly allied to rhyme, is another of the helps whereof the proverb largely avails itself. Alliteration was at one time an important element in our early English versification; it almost promised to contend with rhyme itself, which should be the most important; and perhaps, if some great master in the art had arisen, might have retained a far greater hold on English poetry than it now possesses. At present it is merely secondary and subsidiary. Yet it cannot be called altogether unimportant; no master of melody despises it; on the contrary, the greatest, as in our days Tennyson, make the most frequent, though not always the most obvious, use of it. In the proverb you will find it of continual recurrence, and where it falls, as, to be worth anything, it must, on the key-words of the sentence, of very high value. Thus: Frost and fraud both end in foul;—Like lips, like lettuce;—Meal and matins minish no way;—Who swims in sin, shall sink in sorrow;—No cross, no crown;—Out of debt, out of danger;—Do in hill as you would do in hall; [17] that is, Be in solitude the same that you would be in a crowd. I will not detain you with further examples of this in other languages; but such occur, and in such numbers that it seems idle to quote them, in all; I will only adduce, in concluding this branch of the subject, a single Italian proverb, which in a remarkable manner unites all three qualities of which we have been last treating, brevity, rhyme, and alliteration: Traduttori, traditori; one which we might perhaps reconstitute in English thus: Translators, traitors; so untrue, for the most part, are they to the genius of their original, to its spirit, if not to its letter, and frequently to both; so do they surrender, rather than render, its meaning; not turning, but only overturning, it from one language to another.[18]

A certain pleasant exaggeration, the use of the figure hyperbole, a figure of natural rhetoric which Scripture itself does not disdain to employ, is a not unfrequent engine with the proverb to procure attention, and to make a way for itself into the minds of men. Thus the Persians have a proverb: A needle’s eye is wide enough for two friends; the whole world is too narrow for two foes. Again, of a man whose good luck seems never to forsake him, so that from the very things which would be another man’s ruin he extricates himself not merely without harm, but with credit and with gain, the Arabs say: Fling him into the Nile, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth; while of such a Fortunatus as this the Germans have a proverb: If he flung a penny on the roof, a dollar would come down to him; [19] as, again, of the man in the opposite extreme of fortune, to whom the most unlikely calamities, and such as beforehand might seem to exclude one another, befall, they say: He would fall on his back, and break his nose.

Transplanting of proverbs.

In all this which I have just traced out, in the fact that the proverbs of a language are so frequently its highest bloom and flower, while yet so much of their beauty consists often in curious felicities of diction pertaining exclusively to some single language, either in a rapid conciseness to which nothing tantamount exists elsewhere, or in rhymes which it is hard to reproduce, or in alliterations which do not easily find their equivalents, or in other verbal happinesses such as these, lies the difficulty which is often felt, which I shall myself often feel in the course of these lectures, of transferring them without serious loss, nay, sometimes the impossibility of transferring them at all from one language to another. [20] Oftentimes, to use an image of Erasmus, [21] they are like those wines, (I believe the Spanish Valdepeñas is one,) of which the true excellence can only be known by those who drink them in the land which gave them birth. Transport them under other skies, or, which is still more fatal, empty them from vessel to vessel, and their strength and flavour will in great part have disappeared in the process.

Still this is rather the case, where we seek deliberately, and only in a literary interest, to translate some proverb which we admire from its native language into our own or another. Where, on the contrary, it has transferred itself, made for itself a second home, and taken root a second time in the heart and affections of a people, in such a case one is continually surprised at the instinctive skill with which it has found compensations for that which it has been compelled to let go; it is impossible not to admire the unconscious skill with which it has replaced one vigorous idiom by another, one happy rhyme or play on words by its equivalent; and all this even in those cases where the extremely narrow limits in which it must confine itself allow it the very smallest liberty of selection. And thus, presenting itself equally finished and complete in two or even more languages, the internal evidence will be quite insufficient to determine which of its forms we shall regard as the original, and which as a copy. For example, the proverb at once German and French, which I can present in no comelier English dress than this,

Mother’s truth

Keeps constant youth;

but which in German runs thus,

Mutter-treu

Wird täglich neu;

and in French,

Tendresse maternelle

Toujours se renouvelle;

appears to me as exquisitely graceful and tender in the one language as in the other; while yet so much of its beauty depends on the form, that beforehand one could hardly have expected that the charm of it would have survived its transfer to the second language, whichever that may be, wherein it found an home. Having thus opened the subject, I shall reserve its further development for the lectures which follow.