Proverbs and Their Lessons - Gordon College

1 Proverbs and Their Lessons By Richard Chenevix Trench London: G Routledge, 1861 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE Lectures here published were never delivered as a complete course, but only one here and two there, as little by little the materials grew under my hands; yet so that very much the larger part of what is contained in this volume has been at one time or another actually delivered. I publish them, because no one of the works on Proverbs which I know is exactly that book for all readers which I could have wished to see. Either they include matter which cannot be fitly placed before all or they address themselves to the scholar alone, or if not so, are at any rate inaccessible to the mere English reader or they contain bare lists of Proverbs , with no endeavour to compare, illus- trate, and explain them or if they seek to vi Proverbs and Their Lessons .

2 Explain, yet they do it without attempting to sound the depths, or measure the real signifi- cance, of that they undertake to unfold. From these or other causes it has come to pass, that with a multitude of books, many of them admir- able, on a subject so popular, there is no single one which is frequent in the hands of men. I will not deny that, with all the slightness and shortcomings of my own, I have still hoped to supply, at least for the present, this deficiency. ITCHENSTOKE: December 13, 1857. CONTENTS. LECTURE I. PAGE THE FORM AND DEFINIITION OF A PROVERB 1 LECTURE II.

3 THE GENERATION OF Proverbs 24 LECTURE III. THE Proverbs OF DIFFERENT NATIONS COMPARED 45 LECTURE IV. THE POETRY, WIT, AND WISDOM OF Proverbs 73 LECTURE V. THE MORALITY OF Proverbs 99 LECTURE VI. THE THEOLOGY OF Proverbs 126 APPENDIX. ON THE METRICAL LATIN Proverbs OF THE MIDDLE AGES 153 Proverbs AND Their Lessons LECTURE I.

4 THE FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB. IT may very well be that Proverbs have never attracted from us the notice they deserve; and thus it may easily come to pass that, when invited to bestow even a brief attention on them, we are in doubt whether they will repay our pains. We think of them but as sayings on the lips of the multitude; not a few of them have been familiar to us as far back as we can remember; they have been often employed by ourselves, or in our hearing, on slight and trivial occasions: and thus, however one or another may have taken our fancy, we yet have remained blind in the main to the wit, wisdom, and imagination, of which they are full ; and very little aware of the amusement, instruction, insight into matters the most important, which they are capable of yielding.

5 Unless too we have devoted a certain attention to the subject, we shall be utterly unconscious how little those more familiar ones, which are frequent on the lips of ,men, 2 Form and Definition of a Proverb, LECT. exhaust the treasure of our native Proverbs ; how many and what excellent ones remain behind, having now for the most part fallen out of use and of sight; or what riches in like kind other nations possess, and are prepared to contribute to the common stock. We shall not so much as suspect the manifold points of interest from which our own by themselves, and our own brought into comparison with those of other nations, may be regarded. And yet there is much to induce us to reconsider our judgment, should we be, thus tempted to slight them, and to count them not merely trite, but trivial and unworthy of a serious regard.

6 The fact that they please the people, and have pleased them for ages, that they possess so vigorous a principle of life, as to have maintained, many of them, Their ground, ever- new and ever young, through all the centuries of a nation's existence, nay, that Proverbs not a few have pleased not one nation only, but many, so that they have made themselves a home in lands the most different, and further, that they have, not a few of them, come down to us from remotest antiquity; borne safely upon the waters of that great stream of, time, which has swallowed so much beneath its waves, all this, I think, may well make us pause, should we be disposed to turn away from them with indif- ference or disdain. And then further, there is this to be considered, that some of the greatest poets, the profoundest philosophers, the most learned scholars, the most genial writers in every kind, have delighted in them, have made large and frequent use of them, have bestowed infinite labour on the gathering and eluci- I.

7 Best Writers delight in Proverbs . 3 dating of them. In a fastidious age, indeed, and one of false refinement, they may go nearly or quite out of use among the so-called upper classes. 'No gentleman,' says Lord Chesterfield, or 'no man of fashion,' as I think is his exact phrase, ever uses a proverb. 1 And with, how fine a touch of nature Shakespeare makes Coriolanus, the man who, with all his greatness, is entirely devoid of all sympathy for the people, to utter hiss scorn of them in scorn of Their Proverbs , and Their frequent employment of these: 'Hang 'em! They said they were an hungry, sighed forth Proverbs ; That, hunger broke stone walls: that, dogs must eat; That, meat was made for mouths; that, the gods sent not Corn for the rich men only;--with these shreds They vented Their complainings.

8 ' 2 But that they have been always dear to the true intellectual aristocracy of a nation, there is abundant evidence to prove. Take but these three lames in evidence, which though few, are in themselves a host. Aristotle made a collection of Proverbs ; nor did he count that he was herein doing aught unworthy of his high reputation, hovcsever some of his adversaries may afterwards have made of this fact an imputa- tion against him. He is said to have been the first collector of them, though many afterwards followed in the same Shakespeare loves them so well, 1 A similar contempt of them speaks out in the antithesis of the French Jesuit, Bouhours: Les proverbes sont les sentences du peuple, et les sentences sont les proverbes des honnetes gens.

9 2 Coriolanus, Act I. Sc. I. 3 Nopitsch, in his Literature of Proverbs , Nuremberg, 1833, 4 Form and Definition of a Proverb. LECT. that besides often citing them, and scattering in- numerable covert allusions, rapid side glances at them, which we are in much danger of missing unless at home in the Proverbs of England, several of his plays, as Measure for Measure, All's well that ends well, have popular Proverbs for Their titles. And Cervantes, a name only inferior to Shakespeare, has made very plain the affection with which he regarded them. Every reader of Don Quixote will remember his squire, who can hardly open his mouth but there drop from it almost as many Proverbs as phrases. I might name others who have held the proverb in honour men who though they may not attain to these first three, are yet deservedly accounted great; as Plautus, the most genial of Latin poets, Rabelais and Montaigne, the two most original of French authors while Chaucer literally swarms with allusions, nearer or more remote, to the Proverbs current in his day.

10 How often too Fuller, whom Coleridge has styled the wittiest of writers, justifies this praise in his witty employment of some old proverb: and no reader can thoroughly understand and enjoy Hudibras, none but will miss a multitude of its keenest allusions, who is not thoroughly familiar with the proverbial literature of England. Nor is this all; we may with reverence adduce quite another name than any of these, the Lord Him- self, as condescending to employ such Proverbs as He found current among his people. Thus, on the occasion of his first open appearance in the syna- enumerates nearly two thousand collections, small and great, of these, which have been published. I. Proverbs in Scripture 5 gogue of Nazareth, He refers to the proverb, Physician, heal thyself (Luke iv.)