Proverb Lore Many sayings, wise or otherwise, on many subjects, gleaned from many sources — A Reader’s Guide

verbs to be found in the early Greek and Roman writers. The book is a monument of perseverance and erudition; it still remains unrivalled, and it became on its issue the medium through which the knowledge of many proverbs was disseminated throughout Europe: the similarity of many of the proverbs of England, Holland, Germany, Italy, Spain, was at least in some measure owing to the fact that the Latin treatise of Erasmus supplied an abundant store for general appropriation.

Erasmus was one of the many who sought to reform the Church. The dissolute were denounced whatever their rank, and abuses were fulminated against with unsparing zeal, so that the people were prepared for some great change either of mending or ending. Hence it has been said that Erasmus laid the egg of the Reformation and Luther hatched it. Great enmity was aroused, and the divines who had had cause to wince, endeavoured to persuade the Pope, Leo X., to have the "Adagia" condemned. The morals and comments added to some of the proverbs told very heavily against the clergy, and they very naturally did not take kindly to the issue of such a book. The ecclesiastics, however, in session at the Council of Trent, before whom the matter was brought, liberally decided that the book was of too great value to be wholly suppressed, so they contented themselves with ordering its strict revision, everything which they deemed offensive to the papal sway and the influence of the priesthood being under their ban. This garbled version was published in Florence in the year 1575, the name of the author being suppressed, but the book had ere this passed through so many editions and had been scattered so far and wide over Europe that any action of this kind came altogether too late to be of any efficacy.

Taverner, an Englishman, issued a book of proverbs, axioms, and epigrams in the year 1539. It is in black-letter, and has avowedly been largely constructed "with newe addicions" out of the monumental work of Erasmus. It is "the Garden of Wysdome, conteyning pleasant floures, that is to saye, propre and quycke sayinges of Princes, Phylosphers, and other sortes of men, Drawen forth of good Authours by Rycharde Tauerner." His comments on the various adages are often very shrewd. "Lawes," he says, "be lyke spyders webbes, wherein the weakest and most feble beastes be catched and stycke faste, but the strongest breake out. So lawes do bynde the poore and meane persons but the rich cobbes escape vnpunyshed"; and again, "An angrye bodye dothe nothynge dyffer from a mad man, but in the tariannce of tyme, sygnifyeng that wrathe is a short frensye." Many of his "quycke sayinges"[35:A] are very happy, thus, "Demanded what is a frend, Zeno answered an other I, sygnifyeng that an entyer and hartye frende no lesse loveth his frende then hymselfe." We read, too, with interest, of "a certayne person which rose erly in the mornynge and found his hose knawen and eaten of the rattes, and being troubled wyth this syght, thynkyng it a prognosticatiō (a tokē of some misfortune) he cometh to Cato to aske his coūsaile and to know of hym what euyl thys thyng portended. Cato maketh hym thys answere, Certes my frend it is no mōstrouse syght to se rattes eat mens hose, but yf thy hose had eaten the rattes that had been a monstrouse syght." This answer was so entirely to the point that one would fain hope that the man of the knawen hose went on his way rejoicing that he knew the worst.

Books of like nature with that of Taverner will be found in the works of Florio--one of these is entitled "Merie proverbes, Wittie Sentences and golden Sayings," and another is the "Garden of Recreation." This latter contains some six thousand Italian proverbs. They doubtless passed through divers editions; the copies that came under our own notice were dated 1578 and 1591 respectively.