In my preceding lecture I occupied your attention with the form and definition of a proverb; let us proceed in the present to realize to ourselves, so far as this may be possible, the processes by which a nation gets together the great body of its proverbs, the sources from which it mainly derives them, and the circumstances under which such as it makes for itself of new, had their birth and generation.
And first, I would call to your attention the fact that a vast number of its proverbs a people does not make for itself, but finds ready made to its hands: it enters upon them as a part of its intellectual and moral inheritance. The world has now endured so long, and the successive generations of men have thought, felt, enjoyed, suffered, and altogether learned so much, that there is an immense stock of wisdom which may be said to belong to humanity in common, being the gathered fruits of all this its experience in the past. Even Aristotle, more than two thousand years ago, could speak of proverbs as “the fragments of an elder wisdom, which, on account of their brevity and aptness, had amid a general wreck and ruin been preserved.” These, the common property of the[27] civilized world, are the original stock with which each nation starts; these, either orally handed down to it, or made its own by those of its earlier writers who brought it into living communication with the past. Thus, and through these channels, a vast number of Greek, Latin, and medieval proverbs live on with us, and with all the modern nations of the world.
Antiquity of proverbs.
It is, indeed, oftentimes a veritable surprise to discover the venerable age and antiquity of a proverb, which we have hitherto assumed to be quite a later birth of modern society. Thus we may perhaps suppose that well-known word which forbids the too accurate scanning of a present, One must not look a gift horse in the mouth, to be of English extraction, the genuine growth of our own soil. I will not pretend to say how old it may be, but it is certainly as old as Jerome, a Latin father of the fourth century; who, when some found fault with certain writings of his, replied with a tartness which he could occasionally exhibit, that they were voluntary on his part, free-will offerings, and with this quoted the proverb, that it did not behove to look a gift horse in the mouth; and before it comes to us, we meet it once more in one of the rhymed Latin verses, which were such great favourites in the middle ages:
Si quis dat mannos, ne qu?re in dentibus annos.
Again, Liars should have good memories is a saying which probably we assume to be modern; yet it is very far from so being. The same Jerome,[28] who, I may observe by the way, is a very great quoter of proverbs, and who has preserved some that would not otherwise have descended to us, [22] speaks of one as “unmindful of the old proverb, Liars should have good memories,” [23] and we find it ourselves in a Latin writer a good deal older than him. [24] So too I was certainly surprised to discover the other day that our own proverb: Good company on a journey is worth a coach, has come down to us from the ancient world. [25]
Rhymed Latin proverbs.
Having lighted just now on one of those Latin rhymed verses, let me by the way guard against an error about them, into which it would be very easy to fall. I have seen it suggested that these, if not[29] the source from which, are yet the channels by which, a great many proverbs have reached us. I should greatly doubt it. This much we may conclude from the existence of proverbs in this shape, namely, that since these rhymed or leonine verses went altogether out of fashion at the revival of a classical taste in the fifteenth century, such proverbs as are found in this form may be affirmed with a tolerable certainty to date at least as far back as that period; but not that in all or even in a majority of cases, this shape was their earliest. Oftentime the proverb in its more popular form is so greatly superior to the same in this its Latin monkish dress, that the latter by its tameness and flatness betrays itself at once as the inadequate translation, and we cannot fail to regard the other as the genuine proverb. Many of them are “so essentially Teutonic, that they frequently appear to great disadvantage in the Latin garb which has been huddled upon them.” [26] Thus, when we have on one side the English, Hungry bellies have no ears, and on the other the Latin,
Jejunus venter non audit verba libenter,
who can doubt that the first is the proverb, and the second only its versification? Or who would hesitate to affirm that the old Greek proverb, A rolling stone gathers no moss, may very well have come to us without the intervention of the medieval Latin,
Non fit hirsutus lapis hinc atque inde volutus?
[30]
And the true state of the case comes out still more clearly, where there are two of these rhymed Latin equivalents for the one popular proverb, and these quite independent of each other. So it is in respect of our English proverb: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; which appears in this form:
Una avis in dextra melior quam quatuor extra;
and also in this:
Capta avis est pluris quam mille in gramine ruris.
Who can fail to see here two independent attempts to render the same saying? Sometimes the Latin line confesses itself to be only the rendering of a popular word; thus is it with the following:
Ut dicunt multi, cito transit lancea stulti;
in other words: A fool’s bolt is soon shot.
Then, besides this derivation from elder sources, from the literature of nations which as such now no longer exist, besides this process in which a people are merely receivers and borrowers, there is also at somewhat later periods in its life a mutual interchange between it and other nations growing up beside, and cotemporaneously with it, of their own several inventions in this kind; a free giving and taking, in which it is often hard, and oftener impossible, to say which is the lender and which the borrower. Thus the quantity of proverbs not drawn from antiquity, but common to all, or nearly all of the modern European languages, is very great. The ‘solidarity’ (to use a word which it is[31] in vain to strive against) of all the nations of Christendom comes out very noticeably here.
Proverbs claimed by many.
There is indeed nothing in the study of proverbs, in the attribution of them to their right owners, in the arrangement and citation of them, which creates a greater perplexity than the circumstances of finding the same proverb in so many different quarters, current among so many different nations. In quoting it as of one, it often seems as if we were doing wrong to many, while yet it is almost, or oftener still altogether, impossible to determine to what nation it first belonged, so that others drew it at second hand from that one;—even granting that any form in which we now possess it is really its oldest of all. More than once this fact has occasioned a serious disappointment to the zealous collector of the proverbs of his native country. Proud of the rich treasures which in this kind it possessed, he has very reluctantly discovered on a fuller investigation of the whole subject, how many of these which he counted native, the peculiar heirloom and glory of his own land, must at once and without hesitation be resigned to others, who can be shown beyond all doubt to have been in earlier possession of them: while in respect of many more, if his own nation can put in a claim to them as well as others, yet he is compelled to feel that it can put in no better than, oftentimes not so good as, many competitors. [27]
[32]
This single fact, which it is impossible to question, that nations are thus continually borrowing proverbs from one another, is sufficient to show that, however the great body of those which are the portion of a nation may be, some almost as old as itself, and some far older, it would for all this be a serious mistake to regard the sum of them as a closed account, neither capable of, nor actually receiving, addition—a mistake of the same character as that sometimes made in regard to the words of a language. So long as a language is living, it will be appropriating foreign words, putting forth new words of its own. Exactly in the same way, so long as a people have any vigorous energies at work in them, are acquiring any new experiences of life, are forming any new moral convictions, for the new experiences and convictions new utterances will be found; and some of the happiest of these will receive that stamp of general allowance which shall constitute them proverbs. And this fact makes it little likely that the collections which exist in print, and certainly not the earlier ones, will embrace all the proverbs in actual circulation. They preserve, indeed, many others; all those which have now become obsolete, and which would, but for them, have been forgotten; but there are not a few, as I imagine, which, living on the lips of men, have yet never found their way into books, however worthy to have done so; and this, either because the sphere in which they circulate has continued always a narrow one, or that the occasions which call them out are very rare, or that[33] Unregistered proverbs. they, having only lately risen up, have not hitherto attracted the attention of any who cared to record them. It would be well, if such as take an interest in the subject, and are sufficiently well versed in the proverbial literature of their own country to recognise such unregistered proverbs when they meet them, would secure them from that perishing, which, so long as they remain merely oral, might easily overtake them; and would make them at the same time, what all good proverbs ought certainly to be, the common heritage of all. [28]
[34]
And as new proverbs will be born from life and from life’s experience, so too there will be another fruitful source of their further increase, namely, the books which the people have made heartily their own. Portions of these they will continually detach, most often word for word; at other times wrought up into new shapes with that freedom which they claim to exercise in regard of whatever they thus appropriate to their own use. These, having detached, they will give and take as part of their current intellectual money. Thus “Evil communications corrupt good manners,” [29] (1 Cor. xv. 33,) is word for word a metrical line from a Greek comedy. It is not probable that St. Paul had ever read this comedy, but the words for their truth’s sake had been taken up into the common speech of men; and not as a citation, but as a proverb, he uses them. And if you will, from this point of view, glance over a few pages of one of Shakespeare’s more popular dramas,—Hamlet, for example,—you will be surprised, in case your attention has never been called to this before, to note how much has in this manner been separated from it, that it might pass into the every day use and service of man; and you will be prepared to estimate higher[35] than ever what he has done for his fellow countrymen, the “possession for ever” which his writings have become for them. And much no doubt is passing even now from favourite authors into the flesh and blood of a nation’s moral and intellectual life; and as “household words,” as parts of its proverbial philosophy, for ever incorporating itself therewith. We have a fair measure of an author’s true popularity, I mean of the real and lasting hold which he has taken on his nation’s heart, in the extent to which it has been thus done with his writings.
There is another way in which additions are from time to time made to the proverbial wealth of a people. Some event has laid strong hold of their imagination, has stirred up the depths of their moral consciousness; and this they have gathered up for themselves, perhaps in some striking phrase which was uttered at the moment, or in some allusive words, understood by everybody, and which at once summon up the whole incident before their eyes.
Scriptural proverbs.
Sacred history furnishes us with one example at the least of the generation in this wise of a proverb. That word, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” is one of which we know the exact manner in which it grew to be a “proverb in Israel.” When the son of Kish revealed of a sudden that nobler life which had hitherto been slumbering in him, alike undreamt of by himself and by others, took his part and place among the sons of the[36] prophets, and, borne along in their enthusiasm, praised and prophesied as they did, showing that he was indeed turned into another man, then all that knew him beforehand said one to another, some probably in sincere astonishment, some in irony and unbelief, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” And th............