author's spleen was a little out of order when
he made it, or he would have given us credit for
being not such bad laughers when the humour
was on. Suppose he was a bilious foreigner,
and make allowances for him!

The article we have put at the head of our
specimens is the worst we could find. We shall
improve very rapidly as we advance.

We have always entertained a stealthy
affection for that which in proverb-lore must
by need be a sort of heresy, for proverbs which
are fantastic, mysterious, not so plain, neither
so common. Commend us to such as, "Backare
quoth Mortimer to his sow!" "Away with it!
quoth Washington;" "I trow not, quoth
Dinnis;" or "Veal! quoth the Dutchman."

Now, who, for goodness' sake, was Mortimer?
He was a sensible man, at any rate, who thought
that dog-Latin was good enough for any sow.
There is something imperial about Mr.
Washington. Who can he have been? He was not
President George. We shall not inquire after
Dinnis, because we are tired of putting
questions and getting no answers. Hap-hazard,
we should imagine him an Irish gentleman, who
passed through life in a state of universal
incredulity; but this is a mere surmise.

The next is altogether choicer:

    Best please and serve those,
    That best does, and least owes.

The editor was indebted, we believe, for the
foregoing proverbial poemet or poetastrical
proverb to a London tradesman of thirty years'
standing, to whom it was a guide, rule, and
comfort in his long professional career, now
lately closed. The verse may be said to be
smooth, harmonious, and impressive; and upon
its doctrinal wisdom there cannot be two
opinions. We prefer not raising the question
of grammar; it is a proof of a confined mind
very often, and it has gone a good deal out of
fashion.

"Dirty hands make clean money," is an
adage to our liking. It is all English. It is
industrial. A vision of the black country rises
up before us. It is better than the notion of
clean hands making dirty money.

"Good meat we may pick from a goose's
eye," a learned writer upon the goose, in his
work entitled "The Goose," gives us to know.
Next to the goose, his eye then, but the goose
first.

"He'll go where the devil can't, between the
oak and the rind," say the Cornish chaps of
"Cousin Jacky," when they see that he knows
"How many blue beans go to make five."

"It is as great pity to see a woman weep, as
a goose to go barefoot," is in a book of 1526,
and was of course part of our treasure-trove.
It seems to fulfil all Mr. Ward's conditions.
Can it be true, though?

"Money's round: it truckles." Short, plain,
figurative, and, by your leave, true.

"Still swine eat all the draff." The quietest
porker is the cunningest. He eats while the
rest are singing or snoozing,

"The king must wait while his beer's drawing,"
has a fine touch of morality about it.
We make the public a present of its
suggestiveness.

The next is long rather than short, occult
rather than plain, unique rather than common,
personal rather than figurative, ancient
probably, true not probably. "This is he that
killed the blue spider in Blanchepowder Land!"
A proverb intended to perpetuate the dishonour
of an Englishman, (?) whose name, unfortunately
for the object of the satire, has not come
down. It is like the surviving label over some
lost work of art. It inspires the same feelings
as an empty pillory might.

"To find guilty Gilbert, where he had hid
the brush," has a similarly disappointing effect.
We want data. An editor ought to take in
hand these matters.

To talk well with some women doth as much good
As a sick man to eat up a load of green wood.

The "humour" of which is Nothing. The
following is true, ancient, and plain:

When the rain raineth, and the goose winketh,
Little woteth the gosling what the goose thinketh.

Little indeed!

This proverb-literature is a sort of philosophy
and lay religion of the common people. Their
wise saws the country-folk prize above book-
learning. They make their proverbs suit their
occasions, and they answer "all the year
round."

Every shire has its own. Every season has
its share. There might be a whole calendar
drawn up, filled with nothing else. They are
the speaking picture of the national superstitions,
abiding testimonies of usages, sentiments,
opinions, and transient events without number,
all the more perishable parts in most cases
gone. Or they are axioms, simple and pure,
without local or temporary colouring, and then
time does not stale their newness, nor rob them
of their first moral.

    He that heweth over high,
    The chips will fall in his eye,

will always keep green, and bear applying;
and there are thousands of such-like, as good—
and better.

The Robin Hood proverbs are not so numerous
as might be expected, but, such as they are,
our budget has most of them.

"Good even, good Robin Hood!" is as old
as Henry the Eighth's time, and was a kind of
Shylock's courtesy, a greeting under protest, a
civility with a very warm and genuine malediction
at the bottom of it. We do not say
"Good even, good Robin Hood!" any longer,
but we put it differently, as "How d'ye do? (and
be hanged to ye)." The thing remains; the
form has undergone change.

In our way of thinking, it was better for
people to swear, as they did formerly, by Robin
Hood and Maid Marian than by whom and
what we swear by sometimes. It was giving a