Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 — The Philosophy of Proverbs, part 3

There are domestic proverbs which originate in incidents known only to the natives of their province.

Italian literature is particularly rich in these stores.

The lively proverbial taste of that vivacious people was transferred to their own authors; and when these allusions were obscured by time, learned Italians, in their zeal for their national literature, and in their national love of story-telling, have written grave commentaries even on ludicrous, but popular tales, in which the proverbs are said to have originated.

They resemble the old facetious _contes_, whose simplicity and humour still live in the pages of Boccaccio, and are not forgotten in those of the Queen of Navarre.

The Italians apply a proverb to a person who while he is beaten, takes the blows quietly:-- _Per beato ch' elle non furon pesche!

_ Luckily they were not peaches!

And to threaten to give a man-- _Una pesca in un occhio.

_ A peach in the eye, means to give him a thrashing.

This proverb, it is said, originated in the close of a certain droll adventure.

The community of the Castle Poggibonsi, probably from some jocular tenure observed on St. Bernard's day, pay a tribute of peaches to the court of Tuscany, which are usually shared among the ladies in waiting, and the pages of the court.

It happened one season, in a great scarcity of peaches, that the good people of Poggibonsi, finding them rather dear, sent, instead of the customary tribute, a quantity of fine juicy figs, which was so much disapproved of by the pages, that as soon as they got hold of them, they began in rage to empty the baskets on the heads of the ambassadors of the Poggibonsi, who, in attempting to fly as well as they could from the pulpy shower, half-blinded, and recollecting that peaches would have had stones in them, cried out-- _Per beato ch' elle non furon pesche!

_ Luckily they were not peaches!

_Fare le scalee di Sant' Ambrogio_; "To mount the stairs of Saint Ambrose," a proverb allusive to the business of the school of scandal.

Varchi explains it by a circumstance so common in provincial cities.

On summer evenings, for fresh air and gossip, the loungers met on the steps and landing-places of the church of St. Ambrose: whoever left the party, "they read in his book," as our commentator expresses it; and not a leaf was passed over!

All liked to join a party so well informed of one another's concerns, and every one tried to be the very last to quit it,--not "to leave his character behind!"

It became a proverbial phrase with those who left a company, and were too tender of their backs, to request they would not "mount the stairs of St. Ambrose."

Jonson has well described such a company: You are so truly fear'd, but not beloved One of another, as no one dares break Company from the rest, lest they should fall Upon him absent.

There are legends and histories which belong to proverbs; and some of the most ancient refer to incidents which have not always been commemorated.

Two Greek proverbs have accidentally been explained by Pausanias: "He is a man of Tenedos!"

to describe a person of unquestionable veracity; and "To cut with the Tenedian axe;" to express an absolute and irrevocable refusal.

The first originated in a king of Tenedos, who decreed that there should always stand behind the judge a man holding an axe, ready to execute justice on any one convicted of falsehood.

The other arose from the same king, whose father having reached his island, to supplicate the son's forgiveness for the injury inflicted on him by the arts of a step-mother, was preparing to land;

already the ship was fastened by its cable to a rock; when the son came down, and sternly cutting the cable with an axe, sent the ship adrift to the mercy of the waves: hence, "to cut with the Tenedian axe," became proverbial to express an absolute refusal.

"Business to-morrow!"

is another Greek proverb, applied to a person ruined by his own neglect.

The fate of an eminent person perpetuated the expression which he casually employed on the occasion.

One of the Theban polemarchs, in the midst of a convivial party, received despatches relating to a conspiracy: flushed with wine, although pressed by the courier to open them immediately, he smiled, and in gaiety laying the letter under the pillow of his couch, observed, "Business to-morrow!"

Plutarch records that he fell a victim to the twenty-four hours he had lost, and became the author of a proverb which was still circulated among the Greeks.

The philosophical antiquary may often discover how many a proverb commemorates an event which has escaped from the more solemn monuments of history, and is often the solitary authority of its existence.

A

national event in Spanish history is preserved by a proverb.

_Y vengar quiniento sueldos_; "And revenge five hundred pounds!"

An odd expression to denote a person being a gentleman!

but the proverb is historical.

The Spaniards of Old Castile were compelled to pay an annual tribute of five hundred maidens to their masters, the Moors; after several battles, the Spaniards succeeded in compromising the shameful tribute, by as many pieces of coin: at length the day arrived when they entirely emancipated themselves from this odious imposition.

The heroic action was performed by men of distinction, and the event perpetuated in the recollections of the Spaniards by this singular expression, which alludes to the dishonourable tribute, was applied to characterise all men of high honour, and devoted lovers of their country.

Pasquier, in his _Recherches sur la France_, reviewing the periodical changes of ancient families in feudal times, observes, that a proverb among the common people conveys the result of all his inquiries; for those noble houses, which in a single age declined from nobility and wealth to poverty and meanness, gave rise to the proverb, _Cent ans bannieres et cent ans civieres!

_ "One hundred years a banner and one hundred years a barrow!"

The Italian proverb, _Con l'Evangilio si diventa heretico_, "With the gospel we become heretics,"--reflects the policy of the court of Rome; and must be dated at the time of the Reformation, when a translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue encountered such an invincible opposition.

The Scotch proverb, _He that invented the maiden first hanselled it_; that is, got the first of it!

The maiden is that well-known beheading engine, revived by the French surgeon Guillotine.

This proverb may be applied to one who falls a victim to his own ingenuity; the artificer of his own destruction!

The inventor was James, Earl of Morton, who for some years governed Scotland, and afterwards, it is said, very unjustly suffered by his own invention.

It is a striking coincidence, that the same fate was shared by the French reviver; both alike sad examples of disturbed times!

Among our own proverbs a remarkable incident has been commemorated; _Hand over head, as the men took the Covenant!

_ This preserves the manner in which the Scotch covenant, so famous in our history, was violently taken by above sixty thousand persons about Edinburgh, in 1638; a circumstance at that time novel in our own revolutionary history, and afterwards paralleled by the French in voting by "acclamation."

An ancient English proverb preserves a curious fact concerning our coinage.

_Testers are gone to Oxford, to study at Brazennose.

_ When Henry the Eighth debased the silver coin, called _testers_, from their having a head stamped on one side; the brass, breaking out in red pimples on their silver faces, provoked the ill-humour of the people to vent itself in this punning proverb, which has preserved for the historical antiquary the popular feeling which lasted about fifty years, till Elizabeth reformed the state of the coinage.

A northern proverb among us has preserved the remarkable idea which seems to have once been prevalent, that the metropolis of England was to be the city of York; _Lincoln was, London is, York shall be!

_ Whether at the time of the union of the crowns, under James the First, when England and Scotland became Great Britain, this city, from its centrical situation, was considered as the best adapted for the seat of government, or for some other cause which I have not discovered, this notion must have been prevalent to have entered into a proverb.

The chief magistrate of York is the only provincial one who is allowed the title of Lord Mayor; a circumstance which seems connected with this proverb.

The Italian history of its own small principalities, whose well-being so much depended on their prudence and sagacity, affords many instances of the timely use of a proverb.

Many an intricate negotiation has been contracted through a good-humoured proverb,--many a sarcastic one has silenced an adversary; and sometimes they have been applied on more solemn, and even tragical occasions.

When Rinaldo degli Albizzi was banished by the vigorous conduct of Cosmo de' Medici, Machiavel tells us the expelled man sent Cosmo a menace, in a proverb, _La gallina covava!

_ "The hen is brooding!"

said of one meditating vengeance.

The undaunted Cosmo replied by another, that "There was no brooding out of the nest!"

I give an example of peculiar interest; for it is perpetuated by Dante, and is connected with the character of Milton.

When the families of the Amadei and the Uberti felt their honour wounded in the affront the younger Buondelmonte had put upon them, in breaking off his match with a young lady of their family, by marrying another, a council was held, and the death of the young cavalier was proposed as the sole atonement for their injured honour.

But the consequences which they anticipated, and which afterwards proved so fatal to the Florentines, long suspended their decision.

At length Moscha Lamberti suddenly rising, exclaimed, in two proverbs, "That those who considered everything would never conclude on anything!"

closing with an ancient proverbial saying--_cosa fatta capo ha!

_ "a deed done has an end!"

The proverb sealed the fatal determination, and was long held in mournful remembrance by the Tuscans; for, according to Villani, it was the cause and beginning of the accursed factions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

Dante has thus immortalised the energetic expression in a scene of the "Inferno."

Ed un, ch' avea l'una e l'altra man mozza, Levando i moncherin per l'aura fosca, Si che 'l sangue facea la faccia sozza, Grido:--"Ricorderati anche del Mosca, Che dissi, lasso: _Capo ha cosa fatta_, Che fu 'l mal seme della gente Tosca."

----Then one Maim'd of each hand, uplifted in the gloom The bleeding stumps, that they with gory spots Sullied his face, and cried--"Remember thee Of Mosca too--I who, alas!

exclaim'd 'The deed once done, there is an end'--that proved A seed of sorrow to the Tuscan race."

CARY'S _Dante_.

This Italian proverb was adopted by Milton; for when deeply engaged in writing "The Defence of the People," and warned that it might terminate in his blindness, he resolvedly concluded his work, exclaiming with great magnanimity, although the fatal prognostication had been accomplished, _cosa fatta capo ha!

_ Did this proverb also influence his awful decision on that great national event, when the most honest-minded fluctuated between doubts and fears?

Of a person treacherously used, the Italian proverb says that he has eaten of _Le frutte di fratre Alberigo.

_ The fruit of brother Alberigo.

Landino, on the following passage of Dante, preserves the tragic story:-- ------Io son fratre Alberigo, Io son quel dalle frutta del mal orto Che qui reprendo, &c. Canto xxxiii.

"The friar Alberigo," answered he, "Am I, who from the evil garden pluck'd Its fruitage, and am here repaid the date More luscious for my fig." CARY'S _Dante_.

This was Manfred, the Lord of Fuenza, who, after many cruelties, turned friar.

Reconciling himself to those whom he had so often opposed, to celebrate the renewal of their friendship he invited them to a magnificent entertainment.

At the end of the dinner the horn blew to announce the dessert--but it was the signal of this dissimulating conspirator!

--and the fruits which that day were served to his guests were armed men, who, rushing in, immolated their victims.

Among these historical proverbs none are more entertaining than those which perpetuate national events, connected with those of another people.

When a Frenchman would let us understand that he has settled with his creditors, the proverb is _J'ai paye tous mes Anglois_: "I have paid all my English."

This proverb originated when John, the French king, was taken prisoner by our Black Prince.

Levies of money were made for the king's ransom, and for many French lords; and the French people have thus perpetuated the military glory of our nation, and their own idea of it, by making the _English_ and their _creditors_ synonymous terms.

Another relates to the same event--_Le Pape est devenu Francois, et Jesus Christ Anglais_: "Now the Pope is become French and Jesus Christ English;" a proverb which arose when the Pope, exiled from Rome, held his court at Avignon in France; and the English prospered so well, that they possessed more than half the kingdom.

The Spanish proverb concerning England is well known-- _Con todo el mondo guerra, Y paz con Inglaterra!

_ War with the world, And peace with England!

Whether this proverb was one of the results of their memorable armada, and was only coined after their conviction of the splendid folly which they had committed, I cannot ascertain.

England must always have been a desirable ally to Spain against her potent rival and neighbour.

The Italians have a proverb, which formerly, at least, was strongly indicative of the travelled Englishmen in their country, _Inglese Italianato e un diavolo incarnato_; "The Italianised Englishman is a devil incarnate."

Formerly there existed a closer intercourse between our country and Italy than with France.

Before and during the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First that land of the elegant arts modelled our taste and manners: and more Italians travelled into England, and were more constant residents, from commercial concerns, than afterwards when France assumed a higher rank in Europe by her political superiority.

This cause will sufficiently account for the number of Italian proverbs relating to England, which show an intimacy with our manners that could not else have occurred.

It was probably some sarcastic Italian, and, perhaps, horologer, who, to describe the disagreement of persons, proverbed our nation--"They agree like the clocks of London!"

We were once better famed for merry Christmases and their pies; and it must have been the Italians who had been domiciliated with us who gave currency to the proverb--_Ha piu da fare che i forni di natale in Inghilterra_: "He has more business than English ovens at Christmas."

Our pie-loving gentry were notorious, and Shakspeare's folio was usually laid open in the great halls of our nobility to entertain their attendants, who devoured at once Shakspeare and their pasty.

Some of those volumes have come down to us, not only with the stains, but inclosing even the identical piecrusts of the Elizabethan age.

I have thus attempted to develope THE ART OF READING PROVERBS; but have done little more than indicate the theory, and must leave the skilful student to the delicacy of the practice.

I am anxious to rescue from prevailing prejudices these neglected stores of curious amusement, and of deep insight into the ways of man, and to point out the bold and concealed truths which are scattered in these collections.

There seems to be no occurrence in human affairs to which some proverb may not be applied.

All knowledge was long aphoristical and traditional, pithily contracting the discoveries which were to be instantly comprehended and easily retained.

Whatever be the revolutionary state of man, similar principles and like occurrences are returning on us; and antiquity, whenever it is justly applicable to our times, loses its denomination, and becomes the truth of our own age.

A proverb will often cut the knot which others in vain are attempting to untie.

Johnson, palled with the redundant elegancies of modern composition, once said, "I fancy mankind may come in time to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connexion, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made."

Many a volume indeed has often been written to demonstrate what a lover of proverbs could show had long been ascertained by a single one in his favourite collections.

An insurmountable difficulty, which every paraemiographer has encountered, is that of forming an apt, a ready, and a systematic classification: the moral Linnaeus of such a "systema naturae" has not yet appeared.

Each discovered his predecessor's mode imperfect, but each was doomed to meet the same fate.

[40] The arrangement of proverbs has baffled the ingenuity of every one of their collectors.

Our Ray, after long premeditation, has chosen a system with the appearance of an alphabetical order; but, as it turns out, his system is no system, and his alphabet is no alphabet.

After ten years' labour, the good man could only arrange his proverbs by commonplaces--by complete sentences--by phrases or forms of speech--by proverbial similes--and so on.

All these are pursued in alphabetical order, "by the first letter of the most 'material word,' or if there be more words '_equally material_,' by that which usually stands foremost."

The most patient examiner will usually find that he wants the sagacity of the collector to discover that word which is "the most material," or, "the words equally material."

We have to search through all that multiplicity of divisions, or conjuring boxes, in which this juggler of proverbs pretends to hide the ball.

[41] A still more formidable objection against a collection of proverbs, for the impatient reader, is their unreadableness.

Taking in succession a multitude of insulated proverbs, their slippery nature resists all hope of retaining one in a hundred; the study of proverbs must be a frequent recurrence to a gradual collection of favourite ones, which we ourselves must form.

The experience of life will throw a perpetual freshness over these short and simple texts; every day may furnish a new commentary;

and we may grow old, and find novelty in proverbs by their perpetual application.

There are, perhaps, about twenty thousand proverbs among the nations of Europe: many of these have spread in their common intercourse; many are borrowed from the ancients, chiefly the Greeks, who themselves largely took them from the eastern nations.

Our own proverbs are too often deficient in that elegance and ingenuity which are often found in the Spanish and the Italian.

Proverbs frequently enliven conversation, or enter into the business of life in those countries, without any feeling of vulgarity being associated with them: they are too numerous, too witty, and too wise to cease to please by their poignancy and their aptitude.

I have heard them fall from the lips of men of letters and of statesmen.

When recently the disorderly state of the manufacturers of Manchester menaced an insurrection, a profound Italian politician observed to me, that it was not of a nature to alarm a great nation; for that the remedy was at hand, in the proverb of the Lazzaroni of Naples, _Meta consiglio, meta esempio, meta denaro!

_ "Half advice, half example, half money!"

The result confirmed the truth of the proverb, which, had it been known at the time, might have quieted the honest fears of a great part of the nation.

Proverbs have ceased to be studied or employed in conversation since the time we have derived our knowledge from books; but in a philosophical age they appear to offer infinite subjects for speculative curiosity.

Originating in various eras, these memorials of manners, of events, and of modes of thinking, for historical as well as for moral purposes, still retain a strong hold on our attention.

The collected knowledge of successive ages, and of different people, must always enter into some part of our own!

Truth and nature can never be obsolete.

Proverbs embrace the wide sphere of human existence, they take all the colours of life, they are often exquisite strokes of genius, they delight by their airy sarcasm or their caustic satire, the luxuriance of their humour, the playfulness of their turn, and even by the elegance of their imagery, and the tenderness of their sentiment.

They give a deep insight into domestic life, and open for us the heart of man, in all the various states which he may occupy--a frequent review of proverbs should enter into our readings; and although they are no longer the ornaments of conversation, they have not ceased to be the treasuries of Thought!

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Taylor's Translation of Plato's works, vol v. p. 36. [30] Shakspeare satirically alludes to the quality of such rhymes in his _Merchant of Venice_, Act v. Sc.

1. Speaking of one "------ whose poesy was For all the world like cutler's poetry Upon a knife, _Love me, and leave me not_."

[31] One of the _fruit trenchers_, for such these roundels are called in the _Gent.

Mag.

_ for 1798, p. 398, is engraved there, and the inscriptions of an entire set given.

--See also the Supplement to that volume, p. 1187. The author of the "Art of English Poesie," 1589, tells us they never contained above one verse, or two at the most, but the shorter the better.

Two specimens may suffice the reader.

One, under the symbol of a skull, thus morally discourses:-- "Content thyself with thine estate, And send no poor wight from thy gate;

For why, this counsel I you give, To learne to die, and die to live."

On another, decorated with pictures of fruit, are these satirical lines:-- "Feed and be fat: hear's pears and plums, Will never hurt your teeth or spoil your gums.

And I wish those girls that painted are, No other food than such fine painted fare."

[32] This constant custom of engraving "posies," as they were termed, on rings, is noted by many authors of the Elizabethan era.

Lilly, in his "Euphues," addresses the ladies for a favourable judgment on his work, hoping it will be recorded "as you do the posies in your rings, which are always next to the finger not to be seene of him that holdeth you by the hand, and yet knowne by you that weare them on your hands."

They were always engraved withinside of the ring.

A MS.

of the time of Charles I. furnishes us with a single posy, of one line, to this effect--"This hath alloy; my love is pure."

From the same source we have the two following rhyming, or "double posies"-- "Constancy and heaven are round, And in this the emblem's found."

"Weare me out, love shall not waste;

Love beyond tyme still is placed."

[33] Heywood's "Dialogue, conteyninge the Number in Effecte of all the Proverbes in the English Tunge, 1561." There are more editions of this little volume than Warton has noticed.

There is some humour in his narrative, but his metre and his ribaldry are heavy taxes on our curiosity.

[34] The whole of Tusser's "Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie," 1580, was composed in quaint couplets, long remembered by the peasantry for their homely worldly wisdom.

One, constructed for the bakehouse, runs thus:-- "New bread is a drivell (waste);

Much crust is as evil."

Another for the dairymaid assures her-- "Good dairie doth pleasure;

Ill dairie spends treasure."

Another might rival any lesson of thrift:-- "Where nothing will last, Spare such as thou hast."

[35] Townshend's Historical Collections, p. 283. [36] It was published in 1616: the writer only catches at some verbal expressions--as, for instance:-- The vulgar proverb runs, "The more the merrier."

The cross,--"Not so!

one hand is enough in a purse."

The proverb, "It is a great way to the bottom of the sea."

The cross,--"Not so!

it is but a stone's cast."

The proverb, "The pride of the rich makes the labours of the poor."

The cross,--"Not so!

the labours of the poor make the pride of the rich."

The proverb, "He runs far who never turns."

The cross,--"Not so!

he may break his neck in a short course."

[37] It has been suggested that this whimsical amusement has been lately revived, to a certain degree, in the _acting of charades_ among juvenile parties.

[38] Now the punning motto of a noble family.

[39] At the ROYAL INSTITUTION there is a fine copy of Polydore Vergil's "Adagia," with his other work, curious in its day, _De Inventoribus Rerum_, printed by Frobenius, in 1521. The _wood-cuts_ of this edition seem to me to be executed with inimitable delicacy, resembling a pencilling which Raphael might have envied.

[40] Since the appearance of the present article, several collections of PROVERBS have been attempted.

A little unpretending volume, entitled "Select Proverbs of all Nations, with _Notes_ and _Comments_, by Thomas Fielding, 1824," is not ill arranged; an excellent book for popular reading.

The editor of a recent miscellaneous compilation, "The Treasury of Knowledge," has whimsically bordered the four sides of the pages of a Dictionary with as many proverbs.

The plan was ingenious, but the proverbs are not.

Triteness and triviality are fatal to a proverb.