essence of a proverb. Passing other inadequate definitions, we resort to etymology. Proverbium' is from pro, 'publicly,' and verbum, 'a word'; and the Greek correlative paramia,* imports 'a trite, roadside expression.' Whether 'adagium' may be traced to 'ad agendum aptum' is more problematical; but, if so, it points to a distinction between proverbium' and 'adagium,' the latter embracing the moral side of the former and more general word. At all events, the verbal interpretation of proverbium, paræmia, and the Spanish refran (a referendo) tends to shew that triteness, common usage, and popular acceptance are essential features of the proverb. To this Cooper testifies in his Thesaurus' (1584), where he englishes proverbium,' an 'an old sayed sawe;' and James Howell, ever a great authority when proverbs are on the tapis, attaches the same importance to popular acceptance when he likens proverbs to 'natural children legitimated by prescription and long tract of ancestriall time.' Truly their parentage is involved in mystery: they cannot claim the advantages of rank and prestige-they are unable to point to illustrious progenitors-yet never were foundlings less in a position to feel their situation, for while they have become the common charge and property, they meet in society a welcome that never fails or fluctuates in heartiness-which is more than can always be said for lengthier lucubrations of acknowledged wisdom.

Of foundlings, it might be urged, it were lost labour to investigate the genealogy. And yet in the case of proverbs this is hardly so. Though the sire may remain unknown to the end of time, it is possible to trace up many a proverb to remote antiquity, and establish its claim to precedence through many generations. Often may the curious find all the excitement of the chase, in hunting a proverb from country to country, perhaps after all only to lose the scent, and not run it to earth. The nations and languages of Europe, Asia, and Africa, have each and all their special stores of wit and wisdom in the shape of proverbs; yet in all and each there is so much that seems akin to the rest, that an investigator is driven either to look for some common origin, or to accept the hypothesis of an universal wisdom manifesting itself variously in the pithy sayings of all nations, barbarous and civilized. Few who have not specially studied the subject can possibly appreciate the richness of the proverb-literature of ancient Greece, or estimate the debt which modern Europe owes to it. The loan indeed has not been contracted through principals, and the Latin language has generally acted as a

* Παροιμία, from παρὰ and οἶμος.

go-between

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go-between. Let it be remembered how far back the age of the Seven Sages takes us; how deep we must dive into the past to reach the fabulist sop, whose epimyths are all proverbs in their way; and how rich in celebria dicta' is the prince of poets, Homer, and it will be admitted that, until clas sical literature has been ransacked, and its proverbial sayings made ‘publici juris' to the unlettered and the learned, we are not in a position to speak certainly of the antiquity of proverbs, or to compute the interest of a debt contracted we know not when nor where. It was a favourite suggestion of the lamented Sir George Cornewall Lewis that something should be done to make English readers acquainted with Greek and Latin paramiology; and though, in the limits of an article, we can only do scant justice to so wide a subject, yet it may be that more profit may accrue from giving special and primary attention to the proverbs of antiquity than to those of modern nations, which are not only more accessible, but more familiarly known. In illustrating the old proverbs, there will be incidental notice of the new; and while making antiquity our vantage-ground, we shall hope to do justice, as far as space permits, to the cream of modern proverbial literature.

But, it may be urged, is classical literature to be the sole mine from which we are to dig ancient proverbs? What becomes then of the Old Testament? of its short sentences, which have passed into proverbs; of its express proverbs, such as that in 1 Sam. xxiv. 13, Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked'? and, above all, of the Book of Proverbs, compiled, it would seem, partly by Solomon, whose home and foreign intercourse gave him abundance of materials, partly by some transcriber of the saws of Lemuel and Agur, and partly by the men of Hezekiah, who are recorded to have copied out a sort of appendix in four chapters? Yet though it is possible that Greek and Latin proverbs may owe a debt, which we have no means of estimating, to anterior sources, sacred and profane, it is still not so much to Solomon, or to sacred sources, as to classical writers, that we must look for satisfaction in tracing up the genealogy of modern proverbs. From the establishment of the Macedonian empire the Greek language was the key to all international relations; and so this well-nigh universal tongue has naturally preserved a far larger proportion of proverbs than the Egyptian, Persian, Indian, or even Hebrew. Seeing, too, that this tongue was the appointed vehicle through which the Scriptures of the New Testament were to be transmitted to the Gentiles, what wonder if from its store of proverbs, rather than from other ancient sources, are drawn those sayings of this kind which St. Paul quotes in his

epistles,

epistles, as well as some two or three which Christ* used? In an old Greek proverb, a scorpion for a perch,'† we find the germ of the expression, so familiar to us from the words of our Lord, 'If a son ask bread, wll he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?' Again, though we cannot trace the ownership of 'No one having drunk old wine straightway desireth new,' &c. (St. Luke v. 39), yet the fact that the Evangelist's version of the words contains a pure Greek Iambic justifies our surmise that the proverb comes from some Greek poet. And more than all, as annotators love to point out, the ascended Saviour used, when He addressed the prostrate Saul, an adage familiar to the Gentile world from the Odes of Pindar, the tragedies of Eschylus and Euripides, and the later dramas of the comic poets of Rome - It is hard for thee to kick against the goad.'§

Before adducing samples of Greek proverbial wisdom, the earliest traces of which may be found in the responses of oracles, it may be as well to indicate the sources from which the supply is drawn. The adages of Greek antiquity are sown broadcast over the remains of philosophers, sophists, dramatists, prose writers, and poets. Hesiod and Homer, the Seven Sages, the fabulist Æsop, the lyrist Pindar, the gnomic poets, Solon and Theognis, the tragic and comic poets (notably Menander, whose 'Sententia Monosticha' are a rare collection in themselves) contribute more or less to the stock, as coiners or quoters. Aristotle and Plato, Theophrastus, Clearchus of Soli, with the antiquarians and grammarians, have also left behind them an abundant wealth in this kind. Nor should we omit the name of Pythagoras, connected with proverbs by the Aurea Carmina' (attributed to him and commented on by Hierocles), and by the proverbial rules for his disciples, which crop out in most collections of Adagia. Up and down Plutarch's || works occur a great number of proverbs; and a collection bearing his name is incorporated with those of other

In His Sermon on the Mount He uses apparently national Jewish proverbs, to be found in the Talmud, e. g. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,'' Cast not your pearls before swine, &c.

† ἀντὶ περκῆς σκορπίον. Zenob. i. 88.

* πιών παλαιὸν εὐθέως θέλει νέον.

§ Pind. Pyth., ii. 173; Esch. Prom., 323; Eur. Bacch., 794; Ter. Phorm., i. 2, 28: in Plautus, Truc., iv. 2, 55, we have the naked fist instead of the heel, 'si stimulos pugnis cædis, manibus plus dolet'so much the worse for your hands'; but the old Greek adage refers to a restive ox kicking out against the goad, and so hurting itself all the more.

| Πλουτάρχου παροιμίαι αἷς ̓Αλεξανδρεῖς ἐχρῶντο. Schneidewin does not hesitate to affirm that Plutarch's name has been usurped by some impostor. See Præfat., xxxvi.

collectors

collectors in the Paromiographi Græci. The service of these collectors to posterity is even greater than that of the original coiners, since but for their labour in amassing so many gnomic sentences, and reducing their heaps to system and order, a synoptic view of the real wealth of classical proverb-literature would have been next to impossible. It was in the days of the Roman empire that such collectors thus turned their antiquarian tastes to account, availing themselves of the previous labours of Lucillus of Tarrha in Crete, and Didymus, a contemporary of Cicero. The chief of them were Zenobius, a grammarian of Hadrian's reign, and Diogenianus, of the same æra; to whom we may add, though very much later, Gregorius Cyprius, Macarius, and Apostolius, ecclesiastical writers between A.D. 1200 and 1450.

Such are the foremost of the Greek proverb-mongers, a few specimens of whose wares will shew that the influence of Greece upon posterity, as regards this branch of literature, has been great beyond comparison. Nor perhaps less salutary than great. No scurrility or vulgarity impairs the value of this legacy, of which the Paromiographers have acted as trustees. Pointed, lively, and brief, they are yet unspiced by scandalous gossip or 'double entendres.' Some owe their origin to the fable literature early diffused in Greece and its colonies; some to the mythical stories of that land of legends. Some have their basis in momentous events of history; some have fixed for ever the off-hand sayings of men of eminence. A few more seem to be the bright sparkles of instantaneous wit, called forth by some passing observation, and judged worthy to be made public property by the common fiat of those to whom they have been handed on. All, however, are characterised chiefly in contradistinction to the Roman ones by the high intellectual training that seems to have belonged to all classes, and by a refinement and delicacy foreign to Rome.

Let us glance at one or two which are traceable to the fable. Zenobius (i. 42) records a Greek form of our adage about 'counting chickens before they are hatched' (the full force of which, by the bye, as a bad omen, is often overlooked), to wit, The she-goat has not yet yeaned, yet the kid is playing before the house, which, like the adage about washing a blackamoor white,' is traceable to sop, that is, to the traditional fables which went by his name. This fable, apropos of attempting

*

6

αἲξ οὔπω τέτοκεν, ἔριφος δ ̓ ἐπὶ δώματι παίζει. The Spanish has, * Aun no es parida la cabra, y el cabrito mama,'-'The goat has not yet a kid, and she gives milk.'-Collins, p. 56.

to

to achieve impossibilities, is the subject of an epigram,* which may be rendered,

"Why scrub the Indian's skin? Nay, cease your trade!

You can't make sunshine out of black night-shade;'

and it is curious to trace how the proverbs of many languages are indebted to the like figure. The prophet in the Old Testament asks 'Can the Ethiopian change his skin?' The Latins, it may be, run off the groove in their 'Laterem lavas' (you're washing a brick); but the sententious Spaniard comes back to the Greek and the Scriptures, in 'The bath hath sworn not to make the negro white.'† The French preserve the notion of washing in their adage Wash a dog, comb a dog, still a dog is but a dog; while we retain the antithesis between 'black' and 'white' in our homely proverb, 'There's no getting white flour out of a coal-sack.' The negro's own version of this same 'impossibility of changing nature' is supplied by Burton, in his Wit and Wisdom of West Africa.' In the Oji tongue they say, Every one who washes in lemon-juice becomes sweetscented; so the Ahho (a foul red ant) said he would go on the lemon-tree and live there; but still he stinks.' +

Another proverb of the Greeks, 'To play the fox to another fox,' said of such as try to outwit people who are up to trap, appears to be referable to Babrius. The lion, having a hankering for venison, pretended to be sick, and sent the fox to offer the stag the reversion of his crown. The dying monarch nearly bites off his successor's ear in the midst of his hints on good government. The stag profits by experience, and retorts, in answer to the renewed temptations of the emissary fox,

'Go play the fox to others yet untaught

In foxy wiles.'

To those who seek modern instances, parallels will occur in 'Diamond cut diamond,' and I'se Yorkshire, too;' and the ancient Carians and Cretans preserve a character for being 'wide awake, from the proverbs πρὸς Κάρα καρίζεις, and πρὸς Κρῆτα KpηTiles. Akin to this is another Greek adage, from the same fable, You won't catch a fox a second time,' which Erasmus preserves in Annosa vulpes haud capitur laqueo,' and the French reproduce in 'Un renard n'est pas pris deux fois à une piége.' Our proverb, 'Set a thief to catch a thief,' and Cato's adage, 'Ars

* Anthol. Palat, xi. 428. Ed. Tauchn.

Collins, Sp. Prov.,' p. 182, Jurado ha el baño, de negro no hacer blanco. Burton, p. 99.

§ ¿λwπekíŠeiv mрds étéρav åλútekα, Zenob., i. 70. Compare Babrius, i. Fab. 95, p. 86 Engl. translation.

deluditur