Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/548

* PBOVEKB. 480 PROVERB. Provencal and Latin; and we find, too, the Turkish "God makes a nest for the blind bird." Sterne had come across tlie saving, clothed it in exquisite language, and made it immortal. As in tliis specific case, the proverb is made by many hands. Like the ballad and the fairy tale, it is" impersonal : and, like them, it goes back to the remotest times. The age of proverb-makiug is the age of the folksong. Its frequent meta- phor and alliteration suggest this. Later times remold what comes to them. Among nations far advanced in civilization new proverbs are rare. The press throws off phrases of a proverbial character, but they do not often become a part of our speech. They serve their purpose and then disappear. It is" the old phrases that we em- ploy, as those relative to sour grapes, the gift horse, the prophet honored elsewhere than at home, haste and waste, honesty and policy. Ex- cept in certain cases, as in the examples just given, we do not usually quote proverbs at length, but some phrase or word from them. With these remnants our speech and our very best literature are pervaded. Shakespeare, for ex- ample, refers to two proverbs in the same scene of the Tempest (II. ii.) : "Good liquor will make a cat speak," and "He must have a long spoon who must eat with the devil." As we have implied, all countries have their proverbs as well as their folk-songs. There is a rich mine in the East — Arabic, Persian, Hindu- stani, Japanese, and Chinese. "Where the corpse is, there the vultures gather," for example, is an Indian i)roverb. Of ancient Hebrew proverbs, a whole book is extant. The language of Christ and the Evangelists is ornamented with them. They were turned to the highest spiritual uses in the Sermon on the IMount. Roman proverbs, often relating to husbandry, inculcate frugality, patience, and independence. Trench cites this against high farming: "Xihil minus expedit quam agrum optime colere" (Xothing pays less than over-cultivation). Italian proverbs are of various import, teaching now distrust and c ii- cisni, now subtle wisdom and plain-dealing. At- tention has frequently been called to the respect shown to the Devil in the Italian proverb: where- as in the Teutonic proverb — German. Dutch, and Scandinavian — he is a ridiculous figure. The Gallic wit of French literature is curiously ab- sent from the French proverb. Proverbs appear in Anglo-Saxon poetry, espe- cially in the gnomic verses. In length the gnomic verse proverbs vary from lialf a line to eight lines. Here are two Anglo-Saxon proverbs : "The wyrds [fates] change not God," and "O lythe [pleasant] it is on land to him whom his love constrains." At the Renaissance this fund of native philosophy was augmented by impor- tation. Chaucer's Dame Partlet turns the Latin "Somnia ne cures" into "Xe do no fors of dremes" (Heed not dreams). In the early part of the seventeenth century appeared two not- able collections of proverbs, partly English and partly foreign — George Herljert's Jacula Pru- dentinn (1640), and the volume added to James Howell's Lexicon Teirafflotton, published sepa- rately in IC.'jO, under the title "Proverbs or old Sayed Saws and Adages in English or the Saxon tongue, Italian, French, and Spanish ; where- unto the British [Welsh] for their gieat an- tiquity and weight are added." Of all coun- tries, Spain possesses the largest and best store of proverbs. Don Juan de Iriarte (eighteenth century) collected at least 24,000. Cervantes hardly exaggerated the employment of them among the peasants when he made them crowd thick into the mouth of Sancho Panza and come out haphazard. Even after admonished by Don Quixote, Sancho in the next sentence utters four: "In a plentiful house siljiper is soon dressed;" "He that cuts does not deal;" "With the repique in hand the game is sure;" "He is no fool who can both spend and spare." As in England, the proverb in Spain was a part of popular poetry. The so-called Spanish copla (couplet) is a witty proverbial thrust. There now remains the question of the origin of the similarity between proverbs in various countries. Have those resembling one another a common ancestry ? "One swallow does not make a spring," is current in some form among many peoples, and was a proverb some two thou- sand years ago. Have all the forms of this proverb a common parent ? Such a question cannot be safely answered. All that can be done is to attempt to settle the date when a proverb appears in different countries. The tendency, of course, is to say that all forms derive from the oldest. In many cases the investigation leads to the East, and it is perfectly evident that the native proverbs of Europe liave been enriched from that source. The media of dif- fusion were the Bible, the Arabs in Spain, travel- ers in the East, and mediicval Latin literature. Still more easy is it to understand how proverbs have been exchanged by the peoples of Western Europe, and how Englishmen, Welshmen, and Irishmen have freely given and taken. In spite of all this, it must be remembered that men's minds work in common ways. That one swallow does not make the spring or sununer is a natural observation. The thought may have lieen ex- pressed by a hundred different men far apart in space and time. So, too, it is not probable that "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb" derives from "God makes a nest for the blind bird." On the other hand, "Where the carrion is, there the eagles gather," seems to be a variant of the Eastern '■Where the corpse is, there the vultures gather." Collections. General: Erasmus, Adagia (Paris, 1500: Eng. trans., London, 1814), and Gryna^us. Adafiia (Frankfort, 164.3). E.nglisH: The Old-English Gnomic Verses; Heywood. Prov- erbs (London. 1346?), and Epigrams (London, 1562?), reprinted for the Spenser Society (Lon- don, 1807) ; Herbert and Howell as cited above; Ray, Collection of English Proverbs (Cambridge, 1670) ; Bohn, Handbook (London and Xew York, 1855), and Polyglot of Foreign Proverbs, with translations (London and X'ew York. 1857; new ed. 1889) : and W. C. Hazlitt. English Proverbs (London. 1859; new ed.. 1882) ; the agreeable essay by Trench, Lessons in Proverbs (Xew York, 1858) ;'Salbach. Proverbial Treasury (ib.. ISSO) ; Hoyt and Ward, Cycloprerlia of Practical Quota- tio'ns (ib., 1882) ; R. Inwards, Weather Lore (ib., 1898). Scotch : Collections bv Fergusson (Edin- burgh, 1641), Kellv (London, 1721). Ramsey (Edinburgh. 1737) ," Henderson (ib., 1832), and Hislop (2d ed., Glasgow. 1868). Gaelic: Mac- intosh (Edinburgh, 1785). Xicolson (ib.. 1882). French: Proverbes com m uns (fiiteenth century); Lebon, Adages et provcrbcs (Paris, 1576) : Pan- coucke, Dictionnaire des proverbes (ib., 1749);