pastoral prettiness, a greenwood flavour, a sort
of first of May twang, to a disagreeable usage—
making it as palatable as possible.

Lumping weight went once by the name of
"Robin Hood's pennyworths," for he was a man,
this Robin, who, from the peculiarly
advantageous circumstances under which he bought,
was enabled to sell at the most reasonable
prices.

Every one of us has heard of "Hobson's
choice" as a narrow option which, in olden time,
a certain Cambridge carrier afforded his
customers: "This horse, sir, or none!" But there
was also "Robin Hood's choice," to which,
Robin Hood having lived first, we are inclined
to yield precedence.

Robin's field of selection was not much
broader than Master Hobson's; and it was his
invariable rule to have the first pick, you coming
second, or, if you did not like that—in short,
getting Robin Hood's choice, of which the
alternative was not unlike the unknown
quantity x.

There are loads of what we may call natural-
history proverbs among these mislaid gems—
fox proverbs, cat and dog proverbs, fish
proverbs, &c.

There is the ancient transmitted legend of
the Fox and the Grapes, and here is the adage in
its earliest shape: The fox, when he cannot
reach the grapes, says they are not ripe. It
was current in this form in James the First's
day.

"At length the fox is brought to the furrier"
is a proverbial allegory, of which we are too
respectful to the reader to offer the key.

We like foxes, in theory, for such pleasant
stories used to be narrated to us of them in
our youth, when we were always sorry if the
fox got the worst of it, and we confess to liking
these vulpine adages. Our friend dropped a
good many of them, luckily for us: we can help
him to another or so.

"He that hath a fox for his mate, hath need
of a net at his girdle."

"A hare is more subtle than a fox, for she
makes more doubles than old Reynard."

We are very strong in the natural-history
section. From foxes to cats is the gentlest
transition we can think of.

"A gloved cat can catch no mice" reads like
a truism, but it is, on the contrary, a very
sound piece of doctrine, as well as a neat
paraphrase of what would be a familiar household
experience if it were tried. "A cat's walk,
there and back," is as much as to say no walk
at all; but this must be taken with allowance,
for cats walk more than fishermen; theirs, the
saying goes, is "three steps and overboard."

There is a valuable proverbial suggestion for
travellers, not to be found in Murray: "In every
country dogs bite," and there is another aphorismn
adapted for general circulation: "Cut off a dog's
tail, and he'll be a dog still;" or, in other words,
"a dog's a dog for a' that."

What has gone before must appear to the
graver sort disgracefully puerile, and so what
will be thought of the next? "The dog gnaws
the bone—because he cannot swallow it."

"I was taken by a morsel, says the fish,"
we do not find in the most complete collection
in the language; but ichthyological aphorisms
are not plentiful. Fishes are neither of the
heavens nor of the earth, but of the water,
watery; out of their own country; Aquarius is
their only friend. To the water most properly
belong watery proverbs, drinking proverbs,
item, drunken proverbs, as,

"The river past, and God forgotten."

"If you could run as you drink, you could
catch a hare."

"A drunkard thinks aright, that the world
goes round."

"When the drink goes in, then the wit goes
out."

"He drives turkeys to market."

There is every probability that the two which
succeed were made by anticipation for a late
eminent fruiterer in Piccadilly:

"He that burns his house, warms himself
once."

"He will burn his house to warm his hands."

In the same way, somebody composed this
ensuing maxim, foreseeing its practical application
in a remote age to a royal duke lately
deceased: "Into a mouth shut, flies fly not."

In Chaucer's time there was some dictum in
vogue equivalent to our "Every Jack has his
Jill," for he says in one passage:

    Noon so gray a goos gotte in the lake,
   ———woll be withouten mate.

"Chaque pot a son couvercle," the French
have it.

Patience is known to be a scarce virtue; but
it may be rather new that "He that hath
patience hath fat thrushes for a farthing."

"He goes where the devil can't, between the
oak and the rind," and "Between the devil and
the deep sea," are fresh diabolical aspects of
this literature, fresh to many at least. The first
signifies a more than ordinary talent for
arithmetic, and the second is a West of England
way of describing a gentleman in a difficulty.

We have instanced above several individuals
who have attained celebrity of a very special
kind through their accidental association with
a proverb, like Mortimer, who said to his sow,
"Backare, quoth he."

In a single immortal line, Mortimer survives
for us: and the same may be said of Crowder,
of Wallace (not Sir William), and of Smoothy:

"As cunning as Crowder."

"Away the mare, quoth Wallace."

"All of one side, like Smoothy's wedding."

The pity is, that the name of the person has
been irrevocably lost in whom originated the
saying recorded by Shakespeare:

"As jealous as the man who searched a
hollow walnut for his wife's lover."

Older than Shakespeare is that adage,
"Thieves falling out, true men come by their
goods." It was probably popular before he
was born, and it is the title of a tract printed