;
He shall be what God wills!

Ere this was a proverb, it had served as an embroidered motto on the
mystical mantle of Castruccio Castracani. That military genius, who
sought to revolutionise Italy, and aspired to its sovereignty, lived
long enough to repent the wild romantic ambition which provoked all
Italy to confederate against him; the mysterious motto he assumed
entered into the proverbs of his country! The Border proverb of the
Douglases, "It were better to hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep,"
was adopted by every Border chief, to express, as Sir Walter Scott
observes, what the great Bruce had pointed out, that the woods and hills
of their country were their safest bulwarks, instead of the fortified
places which the English surpassed their neighbours in the arts of
assaulting or defending. These illustrations indicate one of the sources
of proverbs; they have often resulted from the spontaneous emotions or
the profound reflections of some extraordinary individual, whose
energetic expression was caught by a faithful ear, never to perish!

The poets have been very busy with proverbs in all the languages of
Europe: some appear to have been the favourite lines of some ancient
poem: even in more refined times, many of the pointed verses of Boileau
and Pope have become proverbial. Many trivial and laconic proverbs bear
the jingle of alliteration or rhyme, which assisted their circulation,
and were probably struck off extempore; a manner which Swift practised,
who was a ready coiner of such rhyming and ludicrous proverbs:
delighting to startle a collector by his facetious or sarcastic humour,
in the shape of an "old saying and true." Some of these rhyming
proverbs are, however, terse and elegant: we have

Little strokes
Fell great oaks.

The Italian--

_Chi duo lepri caccia
Uno perde, e l'altro lascia._

Who hunts two hares, loses one and leaves the other.

The haughty Spaniard--

_El dar es honor,
Y el pedir dolor._

To give is honour, to ask is grief.

And the French--

_Ami de table
Est variable._

The friend of the table
Is very variable.

The composers of these short proverbs were a numerous race of poets,
who, probably, among the dreams of their immortality never suspected
that they were to descend to posterity, themselves and their works
unknown, while their extempore thoughts would be repeated by their own
nation.

Proverbs were at length consigned to the pe