Proverb Lore Part 17

Another writer gives the very wise advice to take some little care of what goes into the mouth, but much more of what comes out of it. Bacon, in his "Advancement of Learning," speaks of "The sun which pa.s.seth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before," and Milton adopts the thought but modifies it into this: "Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam." It has been said that "Ridicule is the test of truth," but one scarcely sees why, and we see that Carlyle, referring to it in one of his books, says, "We have, oftener than once, endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism."

Another adage, which we find in France as well as in England, is that "All truth must not be told at all times." Expediency is a somewhat doubtful guide, but expediency at its best is good common-sense, and common-sense admits the truth of this adage. A much more doubtful saying is that, "That is true which all men say," practically an echo of "Vox populi, vox Dei," though in the highest and deepest sense a great truth is involved in it. To a.s.sert that the clamour of the mob is necessarily inspired by the wisdom of Heaven is mere blasphemy; self-interest, prejudice, pa.s.sion, are too evidently factors, and what all men are saying at a certain period may be but a pa.s.sing emotion built on the shifting sand. Such a proverb so employed may serve well enough as a plea for drifting with the stream and shouting with the crowd, but if we go deeper the proverb is profoundly true. Man, born in the image of G.o.d, marred as that image now is, preserves yet something of the divine, and far below popular clamour and waves of pa.s.sion is the seed of truth and righteousness; and where this throughout humanity blossoms into detestation of slavery, unjust war, or other outrage against the conscience of mankind, and the cry goes to Heaven against the iniquity, the Spirit of G.o.d is dwelling in the souls of men, and they become co-workers with Deity.

Falsehood, like truth, has its attendant proverbs. How true, for instance, is this, "Subterfuge is the coward's defence," or this, "Falsehood stings those who meddle with it."

"O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive."

Hence the French say, "Il faut qu'un menteur ait bonne memoire"--"Liars need to have good memories"; while the Scotch say very happily, "Frost and fausehood hae baith a dirty wa'-gang." Other adages are: "To conceal a fault is to add to it another,"[206:A] "The credit that is got by a lie only lasts till the truth comes out," "Ill doers are ill deemers,"

"No poverty like poverty of spirit," "Better lose good coat than good conscience," "Half a truth is often a whole falsehood," "He who breaks his word bids others be false to him." "Almost, and very nigh, saves many a lie," is a saw that is somewhat difficult to cla.s.sify; it appears to be on the side of truth, and yet it seems to suggest a way of coming nearly to the boundary-line without actually crossing into the domain of falsehood. In an old book of morals we find the precept, "In relating anything extraordinary it is better, in case of doubt, to be within rather than beyond the line of fact"--a somewhat half-hearted precept this!

"Travellers' tales" have long been under suspicion, and certainly some of the earlier explorers did expose the credence of their auditors and readers to a severe strain in some of their narrations. On the other hand, we must have the grace to admit that later explorers have verified many statements that were long held impossible. The Persians say that "Whoso seeth the world telleth many a lie"; while human nature is so essentially the same all the world over that in the sayings of a savage tribe in West Africa we meet with this, "He who travels alone tells lies." The common experience of mankind is unfortunately against the traveller, and he must sometimes be content to wait, years or centuries maybe, before his wonderful experiences are fully accepted.

It is a true and far-reaching proverb that "Error, though blind herself, sometimes brings forth seeing children." Thus from alchemy, with its _elixir vitae_ and _aurum potabile_, has sprung the science of chemistry; and astrology, a farrago of superst.i.tious rubbish, had yet within it the seed that should afterwards develop into the grandest of all sciences, astronomy.

"Flattery," Swift tells us, "is the food of fools," and Gray speaks of "Painted flattery with its serpent train," while Goldsmith dwells on the

"Flattering painter who made it his care To draw men as thy ought to be, not as they are."

The lines in "Julius Caesar" will also be recalled, where Shakespeare writes, "But when I tell him he hates flatterers, He says he does, being then most flattered."[207:A] These various pa.s.sages sufficiently indicate that when we tag on flattery to the end of our section on falsehood, the arrangement is not far wrong. Those only are the recipients of flattery from whom some benefit may be obtained; hence "Flatterers haunt not cottages" we are told, with quaint humour. That such incense is appreciated by its objects rather than plain truths may be gathered from another quaint old adage, "Flattery sits in the parlour when plain-dealing is kicked out of doors." Perhaps this is a little the fault of plain-dealing, its directness being not always tempered with courtesy. The man who boasts that he always speaks his mind is not invariably the pleasantest of companions. There must be a happy medium somewhere between acidulated brutality of frankness and the sugared seductiveness of flattery.

The virtue of industry and the vice of sloth are factors in life that have not by any means escaped the notice of the builders-up of our proverb lore and store. The praise and inculcation of industry may very happily be seen, for example, in this gleaning: "Every man's task is his life-preserver," for rust consumes more than use wears. "He who serves well need not fear to ask his wages"; "Those that trust to their neighbours may wait for their harvest"; "It is better to do the thing than to wish it done"; "A wise man makes more opportunities than he finds"; "He that will eat the kernel must crack the nut"; "Learn to labour and to wait, but learn to labour first"; "Well begun is half done";[208:A] "G.o.d calls men when they are busy, Satan when they are idle"; "Work provides easy chairs for old age"; "Time wasted is existence, used is life"; "Save yourself pains by taking pains"; "Things don't turn up, they must be turned up"; "If you don't open the door to the devil he goes away"; "One grain fills not the sack, but it helps"; "Prudence is not satisfied with maybe"; "Nothing venture nothing have"; "It is working that makes a workman"; "Industry is Fortune's right hand";[209:A] "A willing helper does not wait till asked"; "We must not spend all the time whetting the scythe"; "Love labour, for if you want it not for food you may for physic"; "Bustle is not necessarily industry"; "The deeper the ploughing the heavier the reaping"; "He that begins many things finishes but few"; "Good beginning makes good ending." To these one could readily add one hundred more.

It is a true saying that "Every man is the son of his own works," and another good old saw is that "The burden which one likes is not felt."

The labour is then wonderfully lightened, and those who are fond of their calling think little of the attendant toil, but perform as a pleasure what others consider a weariness.

A proverb still in common use is that "Many hands make light work"; while sometimes one can do better work by not working at all, for "The master's eye will do more than his two hands," the supervision being of more value than the sharing in the toil.

An interesting old relic and reminder of old times, when the spinning-wheel was in daily use, is seen in the saying, "I have tow on my distaff"--in other words, I have work all ready to engage my attention. Chaucer and other old writers introduce this proverb, but now the lapse of time, or, rather, the change of customs, has made it obsolete, a distaff being as utterly out of date as a battle-axe or a pair of snuffers.

The entirely accepted, and very justifiable, belief that "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do," is seen in such proverbs as, "If the devil catch a man idle he will set him to work," and its parallel, "Our idle days are Satan's busy days." It has been said, again, that "An idle brain is the Devil's workshop," and that "It is an ill army where the Devil carries the colours." Chaucer is in full agreement, and says that "Idlenesse is the gate of all harmes. An idel is like to a place that hath no walles; theras deviles may enter on every side," while Bishop Hall declares that "The idle man is the Devil's cushion, upon which he taketh his free ease."

Amongst the many proverbs that have the dispraise of idleness as their theme we may quote the following:--"Easy it is to bowl down hill"; "He is but idle who might be better employed"; "They must starve in frost who will not toil in heat"; "Idleness is the greatest prodigality"; "Idleness always envies industry"; "Business neglected is business lost"; "He that maketh his bed ill must be content to lie ill"; "Better to do a thing than wish it done"; "More die of idleness than of hard work"; "There is more fatigue in laziness than in labour"; "Shameful craving must have shameless refusing"; "Fish are not caught in one's sleep"; "Like a pig's tail, going all day, and nothing done at night"; "Lie not in the mud and cry for Heaven's aid"; "Were wishes horses beggars would ride"; "One of these days is none of these days"; "Wishing is of all employments the poorest paid"; "Accusing the times is excusing ourselves"; "There belongs more than whistling in going to plough."

Life, however brief, is made yet shorter by waste of its opportunities, and it has been very truly said that "He who will not work until he feels himself in the proper mood will soon find himself in the proper mood never to work at all." For years we have had illuminated round our study walls the stirring words: "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave," and they have lightened for us many a burden, and given an impulse to many an undertaking.

A Spanish proverb says that "She that gazes much spins little"--the distraction caused by externals being fatal to concentration of thought on the work. "No mill, no meal," is an old English proverb, signifying that if the necessary rattle of the machinery and the supervision of it is an offence one must be content to forego the benefits. "Black will take no other colour," is to be read as a hint that vicious people are seldom or never satisfactorily reclaimed. Camden, writing in 1614, tells a story of "A l.u.s.ty gallant that had wasted much of his patrimony, seeing a gentleman in a gowne, not of the newest cut, tolde him that he had thought it had beene his great-grandfather's gowne. 'It is so,'

saith he, 'and I have also my great-grandfather's lands, and so have not you.'" We see that Fuller declares "Oil of whip to be the proper plaister for the cramp of lazinesse"; while Cowper compares the idler to "A watch that wants both hands, As useless if it goes as if it stands"--a very happy idea.

One Smart, whom we may without offence cla.s.s amongst the lesser poets, wrote an ode on "Idleness," in which he declares that that is the goal, and work merely its means of attainment. He thus apostrophises his ideal:

"For thee, O Idleness, the woes Of life we patiently endure; Thou art the source whence labour flowes, We shun thee but to make thee sure."

The aspirations, the temptations, the duties of youth, form the subject of divers proverbs. These we may ill.u.s.trate sufficiently by a judicious selection from the great ma.s.s of material available. How excellent the advice: "Be true to the best of yourself"; or this, "Rather set than follow example"; or yet, again, this, "Take care to be what thou wouldst seem to be." How good the teaching: "Liberty is not the freedom to do as we like, but as we ought"; that "Golden age never was present age"; that "Trinkets are no true treasure"; and that "In seeking happiness we may overlook content"--the first may perhaps be ours, but the second should always be obtainable.

The very familiar adage, "As the twig is bent so is the tree inclined,"

remains as true as ever; therefore "Guard well thy thoughts, for thoughts are heard in Heaven."[212:A] Another writer very aptly declares that "It is better to hammer and forge one's character than to dream oneself into one"; while the old adage, "Keep good company and be one of the number," is excellent advice, pithily put.

Tusser, some three hundred or more years ago, declared that

"The greatest preferments that childe we can giue, Is learning and nurture, to traine him to liue."

It has been well said that "Ignorance is a voluntary misfortune," and that "If the brain sows not corn it plants thistles." Were a farmer to leave a field a year untilled, not only would the corn supply that it might have yielded be lost, but the ground would produce in abundance useless weeds that would scatter their seed on the wind over the whole country-side; neither brain nor cornfield will remain neutral and dormant; a crop of something or other is inevitable. "If a man empties his purse," says the proverb, "into his head no man can take it from him;" and other good adages are: "Not the studies, but the study, makes the scholar"; "Inquirers who are always inquiring never learn anything"; "It is less painful to learn in youth than to be ignorant in age"; while the doctrine of plain living and high thinking was admirably foreshadowed in this: "Cater frugally for the body, but feed the mind sumptuously"--an altogether excellent precept, and we must remember that, when all is done, the best and most important part of a man's education is that which he gives himself, and which fits him in this great workshop of the world to use his tools to the best advantage, and contribute something of value to the general store.

It is a wise counsel to "Read not books alone but men, and chiefly to be careful to read oneself"--to take stock of oneself from time to time; that youth should remember what seems too difficult then to realise, that a day will come when youth has fled, when the demands of life will continue, and the power to meet them will have weakened. Such proverbs as these should be pondered over: "Reckless youth makes rueful age"; "If youth knew what age would crave, it would both get and save"; "A young man negligent, an old man necessitous." The same truth is put as clearly, but not so lugubriously, in the quainter saying: "He that saveth his dinner will have the more for his supper"--he that spares, that is, when he is young may the better spend when he is old. We have this, again, in a slightly varied and more intense form in the French, "He sups ill who eats all at dinner."

When the youth goes forth into the world his knowledge of the trials and temptations of life is small, while his faith in himself is great, and he sadly needs, far more than he knows, guidance, human and divine.

What of counsel and of warning will our proverbs yield here?

The following precepts answer this weighty question, and all are rich in wisdom and guidance:--"No one is mighty but he that conquers himself"; "As we sow the habit so we reap the character"; "Let others' shipwrecks be your beacons"; "Careless watch invites vigilant foe"; "Every day is a leaf in our history"; "We live in the body, not as the servant but as the master"; "One vice is more expensive than many virtues"; "Consider not pleasures as they come, but as they go"; "Wade not where you see no bottom"; "The path of virtue is the path of peace"; "Clean glove may hide soiled hand"; "Satan promises the best and pays the worst"; "Those that would be kept from harm must keep out of harm's way"; "One bad example spoils many good precepts"; "The day has eyes, the night has ears"; "He who makes light of small faults will fall into great ones"; "He that cometh into needless danger dies the Devil's martyr." Each of these will amply repay quiet pondering over.

We give two verses of a very striking poem from a ma.n.u.script of the fifteenth century. It is ent.i.tled, "Man his own Woe," and is fifteen verses long:

"I made covienaunte trewe to be When I fiyrste crystened was, I wente to the worlde, and turned fro Thee, And folowede the fend and his trace.

Fro wrathe and enuye wolde I not pa.s.se, With covetyse I was bawte also, My flesh hadde his wyll, alas, I wyte myselfe myne owene woo.

"Ryche manne a thefe ys another, That of covetyse woll not slake, What he with wronge begyle his brother, In blysse ful sone shall he forsake.

Byfore G.o.d for thefte hit ys take, All that wyth wronge he wynneth so; But he the radure amends make He shall wyte hymeself hys owen wo."

We have seen that rhymes are commonly used as a means of impressing proverbs on the memory. The four couplets--one from Gower's "Confessio Amantis"; one from Burns, from his "Tam O'Shanter"; one from "An Honest Man's Fortune," written by John Fletcher three hundred years ago; and the fourth from "The Lady's Dream" of Hood--that we now quote are equally worth remembrance:

"Lo now, my son, what it is, A man to caste his eyes amis."

"Pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, its bloom is shed."

"Our acts are angels, for good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."

"Evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart."

Other good proverbs for those at the commencement of life, are: that "A man is valued as he makes himself valuable"; "Crises form not character, but reveal it"; "He that finds it easy to repent will not find it hard to sin"; "Wine neither keeps secrets nor carries out promises"; "Bacchus has drowned more than Neptune"; and, happy truth, "Every slip is not a fall." It must be remembered that, while a man may have enough of the world to drag him down, he will never have enough to satisfy him--peace and satisfaction being found in a quite other direction than what by a strange misnomer is called "life." "A sound conscience is a triple fence of steel," so "Better keep evil out than turn it out." "Character is property," and "A good conscience makes an easy couch"; "Complaining is a contempt upon oneself"; "Thanksgiving is good, thanks-living is better."

Friends, true and false, have made their mark on our proverb store, and counsels of encouragement and of warning are abundantly at our service.

How to recognise the true friend, how to detect the counterfeit article, is invaluable knowledge, and if we could only at all times be as wise as our rich ma.s.s of proverb-lore would fain have us to be, we should in matters of friendship, and in most other things, make a very prosperous voyage on the sea of life. One seems to detect several grades or qualities of friendship in these adages. There is that, for instance, which is unfailing, which in sickness and health, poverty or wealth, is always true and real; then at the other end of the scale a sham article that soon has all the gilt rubbed off; and then in between these a less obvious failure, which has many of the marks of the real thing, and which will stand by one bravely when all is going smoothly, but which must not be put to any severe strain or it may snap. Then, again, we detect another variety of the article, who appears to be merely some one to be worked on, as, for example, "He is my friend that grindeth at my mill"--who comes to our help in our necessity, lends us money, tools, and so forth, and of whom we presently tire because he loses his yielding properties, or who presently tires of us and our mult.i.tudinous wants. Then there is the candid friend, who is theoretically such a helpmate, but who in practice grows unbearable. This by no means exhausts the types one meets with, and we soon find that "friend" is a noun of mult.i.tude and stands for many things, from pure gold down to the veriest bra.s.s or pinchbeck.

The touchy people who are easily offended are not the people to make friends, or to keep them long if they do make them. "Who would be loved must love," or, with a slightly different shade of meaning, "That you may be loved, forget not to be lovable." To love and to be lovable are both essential if you would be loved. "A man is little the better for liking himself if no one else like him," since self-sufficiency means selfishness, and love does not prosper on that. A very good hint against selfishness is found in the Spanish, "Who eats his dinner alone must saddle his horse alone," for no one will go out of their way to help curmudgeons. It is an excellent maxim, too, that "He who receives a good turn should never forget it; he who does one should never remember it."

All have not the tact of him whose praises Moore sings:

"Whose wit in the combat as gentle as bright Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade."

An old adage says, "Leave jesting ere it ceaseth to please"; while another warns us that "A joke never gains over an enemy, but often loses a friend."[217:A] Some folk have a bantering manner that is disastrous, and if not held sternly in check will presently turn a warm-hearted friendship into indifference and repulsion.

The part of the candid friend is a very difficult one; nothing short of transparent honesty and abounding sympathy will make it possible. "Few there are," says the adage, "that will endure a true friend"; while another runs, "I will be thy friend, but not thy vice's friend," but we should imagine that the recipient would scarcely take kindly to such a remark. "Better a little chiding than a great deal of heart-break," but few can bear it. On the other hand, "Toleration should spring from our charity, and not from our indifference." "Reproach is usually honest--the same cannot always be said of praise"; but the happiest proverb is, "Charity is greater than all." Those who live their lives in the light of that will need no lessons in the art of friendship, but will be already in the midst of friends, and themselves of that happy company.

Some people's notion of acquaintance seems to be what they can get out of it, and though they talk freely of "my friend," such folk have little notion of friendship. The following proverbs, though not exclusively theirs, point to this state of mind: "A friend in need is a friend indeed," "Short reckonings make long friends," "The begging of a courtesy is selling of liberty," "He is not charitable that will not be so privately," "Lenders have better memories than borrowers," "He is my friend that succoureth me, not he that pitieth me," "Promises may get friends, but performance keeps them," "He that gives his heart will not deny his money," "He loseth his thanks who promiseth and delayeth."

Chaucer, in the "Romant of the Rose," writes:

"Soth to saie Of him that loueth trew and well Frendship is more than is cattell, For frend in Court aie better is Then penny in purse certis";

while one of our old proverbs declares, "As a man is friended, so the law is ended." This seems to imply that in the case of the man who has friends on the bench Justice will be a little blinder than usual, but it is evident that an unknown and friendless culprit must necessarily start under a disadvantage.

The following proverbs we see we have cla.s.sed in our rough notes as pertaining to "friends you have not proved,"[219:A] and this cla.s.sification may very well stand. It includes such sayings as "Friends got without desert will be lost without cause," "A friend is never known till one have need," "Before you make a friend eat a bushel of salt with him." Heywood seems to have got very near to the root of the matter in these lines of his: