have done, the extremities alike of joy and of grief finding utterance in tears, that which is above all value declared to have no value at all, to be "invaluable," the second singular "thou" instead of the plural "you," employed in so many languages to inferiors and to God, never to equals ; just as servants and children are alike called by the Christian name, but not those who stand in the midway of intimacy between them. Or to take some further illustrations from the moral world, of extremes meeting; observe how often those who begin their lives as spendthrifts end them as misers; how often the flatterer and the calumniator meet in the same person; out of a sense of which the Italians say well: Who paints me before, blackens me behind;* observe how those who yesterday would have sacrificed to Paul as a god, will to-day stone him as a malefactor; (Acts xiv. 18, 19; cf. xxviii. 4—6;) even as Roman emperors would one day have blasphemous honours paid to them by the populace, and the next their bodies would be dragged by a hook through the streets of the city, to be flung into the common Or note again in what close alliance hardness and softness, cruelty and self-indulgence ("lust hard by hate"), are continually found; or in law,

sewer.

* Chi dinanzi mi pinge, di dietro mi tinge. The history of the word "sycophant," and the manner in which it has travelled from its original to its present meaning, is a very striking confirmation of this proverb's truth.

how the summum jus, where unredressed by equity, becomes the summa injuria, as in the case of Shylock's pound of flesh, which was indeed no more than was in the bond. Or observe on a greater scale, as lately in France, how a wild and lawless democracy may be transformed by the base trick of a conjuror into an atrocious military tyranny.* Or read thoughtfully the history of the Church and of the sects, and you will not fail to note what things apparently the most remote are yet in the most fearful proximity with one another: how often, for example, a false asceticism has issued in frantic outbreaks of fleshly lusts, and those who avowed themselves at one time ambitious to live lives above men, have ended in living lives below beasts. Again, take note of England at the Restoration exchanging all in a moment the sour strictness of the Puritans for a licence and debauchery unknown to it before. Or, once more, consider the exactly similar position in respect of Scripture, taken up by the Romanists on the one side, the Quakers and Familists on the other. Seeming, and in much being, so remote from one another, they yet have this fundamental in common, that Scripture, insufficient in itself, needs a supplement from without, those finding it in a Pope, and these in the "inward light." With these examples before you, not to speak of the many others which

*How and why it is that extremes here meet, and what are the inner affinities between a democracy and a tyranny, Plato has wonderfully traced, Rep., ii. p. 217.

might be adduced,* you will own, I think, that this proverb, Extremes meet, or its parallel, Too far East is West, reaches very far into the heart of things; and with this for the present I must conclude.

"Extremes meet. Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truths, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors."-COLERIDGE, Aids to Reflection.

96

LECTURE V.

THE MORALITY OF PROVERBS.

HE morality of proverbs is a subject which I have not been able to leave wholly untouched until now, for of necessity it has offered itself to us continually, in one shape or another; yet hitherto I have not regularly dealt with or considered it. To it I propose to devote the present lecture. But how, it may be asked at the outset, can any general verdict be pronounced about them? In a family like theirs, spread so widely over the face of the earth, must there not be found worthy members and unworthy, proverbs noble and base, holy and profane, heavenly and earthly ;-yea, heavenly, earthly, and devilish? What common judgment of praise or censure can be pronounced upon all of these? Evidently none. The only question, therefore, for our consideration must be, whether there exists any such large and unquestionable preponderance either of the better sort or of the worse, as shall give us a right to pronounce a judgment on the whole in their favour or against them, to affirm of them that their preponderating influence and weight is thrown into the balance of the good or of the evil.

And here I am persuaded that no one can have

devoted any serious attention to this aspect of the subject, but will own, (and seeing how greatly popular morals are affected by popular proverbs, will own with thankfulness,) that, if not without serious exceptions, yet still in the main they range themselves under the banners of the right and of the truth; he will allow that of so many as move in an ethical sphere at all, very far more are children of light and the day than of darkness and night. Indeed, the comparative paucity of unworthy proverbs is a very noticeable fact, and one to the causes of which I shall have presently

to recur.

At the same time, when I affirm this, I find it necessary to make certain explanations, to draw certain distinctions. In the first place, I would not, by what I have said, in the least deny that an ample number of coarse proverbs are extant: it needs but to turn over a page or two of Ray's Collection of English Proverbs, or of Howell's, or indeed of any collection in any tongue, which has not been weeded carefully, to convince oneself of the fact; nor yet would I deny, that of these many may, more or less, live upon the lips of men. Having their birth, for the most part, in a period of a nation's literature and life, when men are much more plain-spoken, and have far fewer reticences than is afterwards the case, it is nothing strange that some of them, employing words forbidden now, but not forbidden then, should sound coarse and indelicate enough in our ears: while indeed there are others, whose offence and gross

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