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Transcriber’s Note


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transcriber’s note at the end of the text.




  PROVERBS AND THEIR LESSONS.




  PROVERBS AND THEIR LESSONS:
  BEING
  THE SUBSTANCE OF LECTURES
  DELIVERED TO YOUNG MEN’S SOCIETIES
  AT PORTSMOUTH AND ELSEWHERE.

  BY
  RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D.,
  DEAN OF WESTMINSTER.

  _FIFTH EDITION._

  LONDON:
  JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND.
  MDCCCLXI.




PREFACE.


It may be as well to state, that the lectures which are here published
were never delivered as a complete course, but only one here and two
there, as matter gradually grew under my hands; yet so that very much
the greater part of what is contained in this volume has been at one
time or another actually delivered. Although I have always taken a
lively interest in national proverbs, I had no intention at the first
of making a book about them; but only selected the subject as one
which I thought, though I was not confident of this, might afford
me sufficient material for a single lecture, which I had undertaken
some time ago to deliver. I confess that I was at the time almost
entirely ignorant of the immense number and variety of books bearing
on the subject. Many of these I still know only by name. With some of
the best, however, I have made myself acquainted, and by their aid,
with the addition of such further material as I could myself furnish,
these lectures have assumed their present shape; and I publish them,
because none of the works on proverbs which I know are 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, illustrate, and explain
them—or if they seek to explain, yet they do it without attempting to
sound the depths, or measure the real significance, of that which they
undertake to unfold. From these or other causes it has come to pass,
that with a multitude of books, many of them admirable, 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, 1852_.




CONTENTS.


LECTURE I.
                                                PAGE
 THE FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB              1

 LECTURE II.
 THE GENERATION OF PROVERBS                       26

 LECTURE III.
 THE PROVERBS OF DIFFERENT NATIONS COMPARED       46

 LECTURE IV.
 THE POETRY, WIT, AND WISDOM OF PROVERBS          70

 LECTURE V.
 THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS                         96

 LECTURE VI.
 THE THEOLOGY OF PROVERBS                        121


 APPENDIX                                        149




PROVERBS AND THEIR LESSONS.




LECTURE I.

THE FORM AND DEFINITION OF A PROVERB.


It is very likely that from some of us proverbs have never attracted
the notice which I am persuaded they deserve; and from this it may
follow that, when invited to bestow even a brief attention on them, we
are in some 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; often employed by
ourselves, or in our hearing, on slight and trivial occasions: and
thus, from these and other causes, it may very well be, that, however
sometimes one 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 conscious of the amusement, instruction, insight, which
they are capable of yielding. Unless too we have devoted a certain
attention to the subject, we shall not be at all aware how little those
more familiar ones, which are