ost unto piller tost shall thou be."
"Over head and eares."
"Go to the ant."
"A man may contende, God geueth victory."
"Of two evils chose the least."

These are but the more striking specimens. An examination of the "Ship,"
and especially of the "Eclogues," for the purpose of extracting their whole
proverbial lore, would be well worth the while, if it be not the duty, of
the next collector in this branch of popular literature. These writings
introduce many of our common sayings for the first time to English
literature, no writer prior to Barclay having thought it dignified or worth
while to profit by the popular wisdom to any perceptible extent. The first
collection of proverbs, Heywood's, did not appear until 1546, so that in
Barclay we possess the earliest known English form of such proverbs as he
introduces. It need scarcely be said that that form is, in the majority of
instances, more full of meaning and point than its modern representatives.

Barclay's adoption of the language of the people naturally elevated him in
popular estimation to a position far above that of his contemporaries in
the matter of style, so much so that he has been traditionally recorded as
one of the greatest improvers of the language, that is, one of those who
helped greatly to bring the written language to be more nearly in
accordance with the spoken. Both a scholar and a man of the world, his
phraseology bears token of the greater cultivation and wider knowledge he
possessed over his contemporaries. He certainly aimed at clearness of
expression, and simplicity of vocabulary, and in these respects was so far
in advance of his time that his works can even now be read with ease,
without the help of dictionary or glossary. In spite of his church training
and his residence abroad, his works are surprisingly free from Latin or
French forms of speech; on the contrary, they are, in the main,
characterised by a strong Saxon directness of expression which must have
tended greatly to the continuance of their popularity, and have exercised a
strong and advantageous influence both in regulating the use of the common
spoken language, and in leading the way which it was necessary for the
literary language to follow. Philologists and dictionary makers appear,
however, to have hitherto overlooked Barclay's works, doubtless owing to
their rarity, but their intrinsic value as well as their position in
relation to the history of the language demand speci