APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

LYLY'S PROVERBS COMPARED WITH HEYWOOD'S AND WITH THOSE NOTED IN THE PROMUS' AND USED IN THE PLAYS.

THERE are upwards of three hundred and eighty proverbs used by Lyly in his Euphues. Of these only the eight following proverbs have been found also in Heywood's collection, and none of the eight are in the Promus nor in the Plays:

To stand as if he had a flea in his ear.

To give an inch and take an ell.

It is an ill wool that will not take a dye.

Prove your friend with the touchstone.

When the fox preaches, beware of your geese.

A burnt child dreads the fire.

To catch a hare with a taber.

A new broom sweeps clean.

There are about fifteen other proverbs or sayings in Euphues which are made the subject of notes in the Promus and quoted in the Plays:

Euphues thought

by wit to obtain some conquest and . . . laid reason in water, being too salt for his taste. (Comp. Promus, No. 693.)

Like wax, apt to receive any form. (Comp. Promus, No. 832.) Sweetest fruit turneth to sharpest vinegar. (Comp. Promus, No. 571.) The cammocke the more it is bowed the better it is.

(Comp. Promus, No. 500.) Cherries be fulsome when they be through ripe, because they be plenty, and books be stale when they be printed in that they be common. (Comp. Promus, No. 149.) your lordship with your little finger do but hold me up by the chynne, I shall swimme.-Epistle Dedicatory.

If

(Comp. Promus, No. 473.)

Himself knoweth the price of corn, not by the market folks, but by his own foote. (Comp. Promus, No. 642.)

Green rushes are for strangers. (Comp. Promus, No. 118.)
Thou shalt come out of a warm sun into God's blessing.

(Comp. Promus, No. 661.)

If these are compared with the Promus entries, it will be seen that there is hardly an instance in which the entry is exactly like the original; and in the last example the proverb is actually inverted by Bacon, and appears thus: Out of God's blessing into the warm sun;' and this is the form in which it is also introduced in Lear, ii. 2.

The following eleven proverbs or sayings from Lyly's Euphues are also to be found in the Plays, though not in the Promus :— The weakest to the wall. (Rom. Jul. i. 1.)

The greatest serpent in the greenest grass. (Ib. iii. 2.)

Fire from a flint. (2 H. VI. iii. 2; L. L. L. iv. 2.)
Comparisons are odious. (M. Ado, iii. 5.)

The fly that playeth with the fire is singed. (Mer. Ven. ii. 9.)
He that touches pitch is defiled. (2 Hen. VI. ii. 1; M. Ado, iii. 3.)

Hence it appears that out of upwards of three hundred and eighty English proverbs used by Lyly, only about nineteen are used in the Plays, although the rest of the three hundred and eighty were equally popular, equally 'in everybody's mouth,' and for the most part as wise and as pithy as the two hundred proverbs from Heywood's epigrams which Bacon notes and Shakespeare quotes.

It is reasonable to suppose that Bacon would not wish to draw too freely from so well-known and fashionable a book as Euphues. And when he repeats any saying from its pages, it is, as has been said, almost always with a change in the meaning, yet it is interesting to compare the Promus entries with the turns of speech and metaphors used by Lyly. We see how true is Mr. Spedding's remark, that there is little in Bacon's writings that is absolutely original; the originality is in his manner of applying

his knowledge. We see, too, an ever-present illustration of Bacon's own observation, that no man can imagine that of which he has no knowledge, and that all 'invention' is but a kind of memory.

APPENDIX B.

6

ENGLISH PROVERBS FOUND IN HEYWOOD'S EPIGRAMS' AND IN THE PLAYS WHICH ARE NOT IN THE PROMUS;' SEVERAL OF THEM, HOWEVER, ARE SIMILAR TO THE FRENCH PROVERBS OF THE PROMUS.'

Make hay while the sun shines.

The sun shines hot, and if we long delay,

The winter mars our hoped-for hay. (3 Hen. VI. iv. 8.)

Sweet meat has sour sauce.

Sweetest nut has sourest rind. (As Y. L. iii. 2, ver.)

A nine days' wonder.

I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder when you came. (As Y. L. iii. 2.)

Look before you leap.

Who . . . winking leaped into destruction. (2 H. IV. ii. 1.)

Suffrance is no quittance.

Omittance is no quittance. (As Y. L. iii. 5.)

Own is own.

A poor virgin, sir, an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own.

(As Y. L. v. 4.)

? A scabbed horse is good enough for a scald squire.

Petruchio, . . . his horse tripped with an old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred; besides possessed with the glanders and like to have mose in the chine; troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed in the back, and shoulder-shotten. (Tam. Sh. iii. 2.)

As mad as a March hare.

Such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the cripple. (Mer. Ven. i. 2.)

Harping on a string.

Harp not on that. (M. M. v. 1.)

Harp not on that string. (R. III. iv. 4; and Cor. ii. 3.)

Thou hast harped my fear aright. (Macb. iv. 1.)

Ill weeds grow apace.

Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace. (R. III. ii. 4.) Sweet flowers are slow, and weeds make haste. (Ib.)

Idle weeds are fast in growth. (Ib. iii. 1.)

He's a rank weed, Sir Thomas. (Ib. v. 1.)

A friend should be proved.

My approved friend. (Tam. Sh. i. 2.)

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, &c. (Ham. i. 3.)

Rub a galled horse and he will kick.

Let the galled jade wince, our withers are unwrung. (Ham. iii. 2.) Ay, there's the rub. (Ib. iii. 1.)

God is no botcher but when he made

you two.

I should have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated nature so abominably.

Thou madest thy daughters thy mothers; for when thou gavest them the rod, and put'st down thine own breeches, &c. (Lear, i. 4.)

Fast bind, fast find.

Fast bind, fast find,

A proverb never stale in thrifty mind. (Mer. Ven. ii. 6.)

Small pitchers have wide ears.

Pitchers have ears, and I have many servants. (Tam. Sh. iv. 5.)

Good madam, be not angry with the child:

Pitchers have ears. (R. III. ii. 3.)

You may saye the crowe is whyte.

With the dove of Paphos might the crow
Vie feathers white. (Per. iv. Chorus.)

They cleave like burrs.

I am a kind of burr-I shall stick. (M. M. iv. 3.)

They are but burrs, cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday foolery. If we walk not in the trodden paths our very petticoats will catch them. These burrs are on my heart. (As Y. L. i. 3.)

They are burrs, I can tell you-they'll stick where they are thrown. (Tr. Cr. iii. 2.)

Every dog has his day.

The cat will mew, the dog will have his day. (Ham. v. 1.)

Put the cart before the horse.

May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse? (Lear, 1. 4.)

You set circumquaques to make me believe

Or think that the moon is made of green cheese,
And then ye have made me a loute in all these,
Ye would make me go to bed at noon.

Lear. We'll go to supper in the morning-so, so, so.
Fool. And I'll go to bed at noon. (Lear, iii. 6.)

To cut thongs of another man's leather.

He shall have the skin of our enemies to make dogs' leather of.

The citizens are mum and say not a word.

(R. III. iii. 7, Mer. Wiv. v. 2, 5, M. M. v. i., M. Ado, ii. 1, Tam. Sh. i. 1, and Lear, i. 4.)

He setteth the cocke on the hoope.

You will make a mutiny among my guests!
You will set cock-a-hoop! (Rom. Jul. i. 5.)

More haste less speed.

His tongue, all impatient to speak and not see,

Did stumble with haste in his eyesight to be. (L. L. L. ii. 1.)