Three Obscure English Proverbs

Author(s): Roland M. Smith

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 65, No. 7 (Nov., 1950), pp. 441-447
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Modern Language Notes

Volume LXV

THREE

NOVEMBER, 1950

OBSCURE ENGLISH

Number 7

PROVERBS

Of the proverbsdiscussedhere,the firstis not traceableto a

period earlierthan the fourteenthcentury;the second and third
appear to have been commonplacesfromveryearlytimes.
1. The game is not worththe candle.
The earliestcitationof thisproverbin Apperson1 is dated 1640;
ODEP,2 however,traces it to 1603, when Florio translatedMontaigne's Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle (Ess. ii, xvii) as "The
play is not worththe candle." NED (s. v. Candle, II. f.) labels
the proverb"of French origin" and refersto Cotgrave,who in
1611 explainedit in English: "It will not quit cost; therewill
be nothinggot by him that toyles,or deales, in it." 3 There can
be little doubt that it goes back to a much earlier stage in the
historyof gamingin bothEngland and France. As earlyas 1550
'-English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (London, 1929), p. 242.
2
The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, compiled by WV.G. Smith
and J. E. ieseltine (Oxford, 1935), p. 439. The 1948 edition of this work,
which appeared after this article was accepted for publication, notes a
slightly earlier occurrence of the proverb in 1602, in The Jesuits' Catechism (27b: "As good fellowes vse to say, The sport is worthy of a
candle ").
s The 1660 and later editions of Cotgrave add nothing new. With Cotgrave's "Brusler la chandelle par les deux bouts. To wast, or spend,
things disorderedly; to squander hee cares not how, nor what; also (but
lesse properly) to play the micher, nigardize it, goe very neerely to
worke," compare lines 203-4 in Deschamps's Dit du Gieu:
Que tu n' as deux coups pour tes velles
Et deux coiffespour tes chandelles.

441

442 MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, NOVEMBER, 1950

Crowleywrotein his Way to Wealth:4 "Intendynge,therefore,
to playe the parte of a true Englyshman,and to do all that in me
shall ly to plucke thysstinckingwede [sedition] vp by the rote,
I shal in thysgood businesdo as, in theireuell exercise,the diseplayars (that haue nothyngeto playe for . . .) do:-llolde the
candle to themthat haue wherewyth,
and wyll settelustilyto it."
The proverbmayevenhavebeenknownto Chaucerand the Frenchspeakingcourtsofhis day,forin Deschamps'sDit du Gieu des Dez,5
which points out, more directlythan does Chaucer's Pardoner's
Tale, that "iHasard is verraymooder of lesynges" and "Gret
6 there are half a dozen refersweryngis a thyngabhominable,"
ences to candles and their uses (and abuses) by dice-players.7
Similar,and of thesameperiod,is theproverbGieu endommageaux
ne vault rien,occurringin the collectionentitledBonum Spatium
(Bibl. Nat. MS Lat. 10360), which" sembleremonter
a la 2e moitie
du XIVe siecle."8 I can findno evidencethat candles were used
similarlyby dice-playersin earliercenturies. In any event,there
is everyreasonto believethat ArcherTaylor's explanationof this
" unexplainedallusion" 9 is close to the truth.
2. He thatwillswearwill lte.
Appersongives as the earliestEnglish occurrence,in 1630, the
firstline of a quatrainin Taylor's Wit and Mirth:10
4Ed. Cowper, EETS. ES xv (1872), 131, lines 15-22.
5Ed. Raynaud, SATF, vii (1891), 253-65.
6 Canterbury Tales, C 591 and 63.
With the Pardoner's "outrageous "
oaths (lines 651-55) compare Deschamps's lines 155 ff. et passim; with
Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale 124-25 compare lines 84-87.
7See lines 157, 195, 204, 279, 282, 306.
8 J. Morawski, Proverbes Fran'ais
Ant6rieurs au XTVe Si6cle (Paris,
1925), pp. 36 (no. 988) and viii. On related proverbs see Morawski's
comments in his article " Locutions at Proverbes Obscurs," Romania L
(1924), 503.
9 Taylor, The Proverb, pp. 74-75: " as is more plausibly suggested, it
refers to the fact that gamblers were required to pay for the candles to
light the gambling rooms, and obviously the game was no longer worth
the candle when the stakes became small." With this allusion to small
stakes compare Crowley's reference (above) to dice-players " that haue
nothynge to playe for."
10Apperson, p. 613: "1630: Taylor (Water-Poet), Workes, 2nd pagin.,
189." Not in ODEP ed. 1935, but ed. 1948 (see note 2 above) cites two

THREE OBSCURE ENGLISH

PROVERBS

443

The prouerbe saies, hee that will sweare will lie,

He that will lie will steale by consequency:
Swearers are lyers, lyers most are thieues,
Or God helpe laylors, and true VTndershrieves.

Earlier, about 1622,11 the Clown in Rowley's Birth of Merlin

(ii. i. 29) remarked: "Swearing and lying goes togetherstill."
Althoughneitherformis givenby Cotgrave,the proverbappears
to have come from France, where it occurredas early as the
fourteenthcenturyin the poem by Deschamps already named
above,in the formMaint mententqui jurent.L2 Still earlier,lines
18136-37of the Roman de la Rose hint at Jean de Meun's familiaritywiththe proverb:
Plus hardiement que nus on
Certainement jurent e mentent.13

But even thenthe proverbhad been of long standing:witnessthe

14 as well as Cicero's Qui
Latin Qui facile jurat, facile perjumrat
mentirisolet,peierareconsuevit.15
3. Life is a pilgrimage.
Accordingto ODEP, this proverb(not cited by Apperson) first
appeared in English in 1579, in Lyly's Euphues, in the form:
thewholecourseof life'is but a meditationof death,a pilgrymage,
a warfare.16It occursagain earlierin the same work: our lyfeis
earlier variants: 1601 (" Swearing and lying, be of very neare kindred")
and 1606 (" Who knowes not lying and swearing are partners").
11According to Fleay, and accepted by Tucker Brooke, The Shakespeare
Apocrypha, p. xlvi.
The proverbial nature of the saying
1'2 Ed. Raynaud, vii, 262, line 273.
was overlooked by Whiting in his " Proverbs in Deschamps " (Appendix A,
Chaucer's Use of Proverbs, pp. 207-242), as well as by Erich Fehse, Sprichwort und Sentenz bei Eustache Deschamps (Erlangen, 1905), pp. 21-22.
13 Ed.
Langlois, SATF, Iv, 216. Langlois offers no comment on this
passage.
14 Strafforello,La
Sapienza del Mondo ovvero Dizionario Universale dei
Proverbi di Tutti i Popoli (Torino, 1883), II, 237. On the Latin use of
perjurare " pro mentiri, simpliciter," see Forcellini, Totius Latinitatis
Lexicon, s. v. Periuro 2, p. 553.
Cf. the Italian Soventi
'1 Pro Q. Roscio Comoedo Oratio, xvi, 46.
giurare fa spesso spergiurare (Strafforello,II, 237).
16 Arber reprint, p. 181, as cited in ODEP, p. 262.
For sixteenth-

444 MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, NOVEMBER, 1950

but a shadow,a warfare,a pilgrimage.17 Both of Lyly's definitions
of life are, of course, composites,the equation with warfare
formin Italian:
occurringin versified
La vita dell' uom su questa terra
Altro non a che una continua guerra.18

Anotherearly composite(not cited in ODEP) appeared in 1597

in Politeuphuia,Wit's Commonwealth(I, 169): Lfe is a pilgrimage,a shadowof joy, a glasse of infirmitie,
and theperfectpathway to death.19 But, like the otherelementsin thesecomposites,
theequationof lifewitha pilgrimage20 was in existencein England
long beforethe sixteenthcentury,forit was no doubtin Chaucer's
mind when in the Knight's Tale, soon after Arcite's dying outburston the pathosof humanmortality,
in whichhe asks, " What
is this world?what askethmen to have? ", Theseus observes:
This world nys but a thurghfareful of wo,
And we been pilgrymes, passynge to and fro.21

Chaucer'sphrase "a thurghfareful of wo,"22 like the currently

familiar"vale of tears,"had no doubtbecomea stockexpression
throughsuch visions as that of Tundale, which was extremely
popularfortwo centuriesbeforeChaucerand was translatedfrom
century instances, see M. P. Tilley, Elizabethan Proverb Lore (New York,
1926), pp. 206-07.
"7Ibid., p. 112.
18 Strafforello,iII, 762.
Boccaccio employs the rime terra-guerra frequently in both the Teseide and the Filostrato, though neither poem is the
source of the Italian couplet.
19 Part I, commonly attributed to Bodenham, was probably edited by
Nicholas Ling (London, 1597).
20 Related to this comparison, but later, are Breton's " The world is
a long journey " (1616: Crossing of Proverbs, Part II, App. iii) and
Herbert's "The life of man is a winter way" (1640: Jacula Prudentum,
2nd ed., 1651).
21 Complete Works of GeoffreyChaucer, ed. Robinson, pp. 52-53, lines
2777, 2847-48. The sententious nature of these lines has not been noted
by Whiting, Chaucer's Use of Proverbs, pp. 78-83, 169.
22 Compare
Thys world is butt a chery ffare,
Replett with sorow & fulfylld with care
(F. A. Patterson, Middle English Penitential Lyric, New York 1911, p. 101,
no. 35, lines 24-25) and the comparison (1559) in the Mirror for Magistrates, ed. Campbell, p. 237: "as a chery fayre ful of wo."

THREE OBSCURE ENGLISH

PROVERBS

445

Latin into French,German,Norse, Irish, and otherlanguages.28

24 written
undertheinfluence
The visionof Tundale was admittedly
of St. Bernard,for whomthe world "had no meaningsave as a
place of banishmentand trial, in which men are but 'strangers
and pilgrims.'"25
The expanded formof the proverbin Chaucer,for whichBocis due in part to the metrical
caccio's Teseide offeredno source,26
needs of the poet.27 Robinsonbelievesthat "the familiarfigure
" 28 and refersto Hebrews
of the pilgrimageis perhapsscriptural
23 A. Wagner, Visio Tungdali (Erlangen, 1882); Tundale, das mittelenglische Gedicht (Halle a. S., 1893) ; Friedel and Meyer, La Vision de Tondale
(Paris, 1907). With the " vale tenebrouse" of the French texts (== Irish
" glenn u'athmar") compare the ME. version (c. 1400), which renders
the phrase " thys sorowfull vale / Of trowbull of woo and of hevynes."
The phrasing of the Visio Tnudgali, written in 1149 by the Irish Marcus, is
to be traced in turn to the Vulgate (or Old Latin?) dolor et gemitus of
Isaiah xxxv, 10 and the stridor dentium of Matthew and Luke. Edmund
Spenser employed the medieval figurewhen, translating the Axiochus (note
35 below), he expanded adrraXXaTTovo'L TOV (V (literally " release from life ";
Welsdalius: [citius] e vita subducunt) into " take out of this vale of
wretchednes." Everywhere the translation reverberates with Spenserian
phrases, such as this and "madding multitude," " rascal rout," " idle
losels," and the almost Chaucerian "wavering will of the witless many"
(cf. Clerk's Tale, 995-1001, etc.).
24
Friedel and Meyer, op. cit., p. xii.
See Mabillon, Sancti Bernardi
2G Encycl. Brit., 14 ed., s. v. Bernard.
Opera Omnia (Milan, 1851), II, 155-57: Sermo vii, " De peregrino,"
which quotes Heb. xiii, 14; Ps. xxxviii, 13 [ = xxxix, 12] Quoniam advens
ego sum apud te et peregrinus, sicut omnes patres mei); Ephes. ii, 19
(Iam non estis hospites et advenae, etc.) also II, 112-18: In Epiphania,
Sermo, I, beginning Gratias Deo, per quem sic abundat consolatio nostra
in hac peregrinatione,in hoc exilio, in hac miseria.
26 See H. M. Cummings, The Indebtedness of Chaucer's Works to the
Italian Works of Boccaccio (1916), pp. 131-146; cf. Teseide XI, 11. With
Arcite's question and Theseus's " response " compare Modesta's lines in
The Birth of Merlin (ii. ii. 38-44): "What's this world . . . but a sad
passage . . . ? "
27 Cf. Hoepffner's comment (Oeuvres de Guillaume de Machaut, SATF,
III, iii) on Machaut's Confort d'Ami, whose connection with Chaucer's
Monk's Tale I discuss elsewhere: " Tant6t, mais plus rarement, il
amplifie . .. . Les divergences s'expliquent en partie par les necessites de
la versification . . ."
28 Op. cit., p. 785, note on line 2847.
Compare also Chaucer's balade
of Truth, lines 17-20. With Robinson's mention of Heb. xi, 13 f. compare
Heb. xiii, 14, cited by Bernard (note 25 above).

446 MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, NOVEMBER, 1950

xi, 13 f. But a closerresemblanceto the figuremay be foundin
the Vulgate version29 of Ecclesiastes vii, 1, which suggeststhe
source for both the " shadow" and " pilgrimage" equations in
Euphues and in Wit's Comnmtonwealth:
Quid necesse est homini majora se quaerare, cum ignoret quid conducat
sibi in vita sua numero dierum peregrinationis suae, et tempore quod velut
'imbra praeterit?

The equationswithwarfareand the pilgrimage,on the otherhand,

are combinedby Marcus Aurelius in a commentary
on mundane
uncertainty:" Life is a warfareand a pilgrim'ssojourn."30 Somewhat earlier is Plutarch's descriptionof men as peregrini et
hospites;31 later is Gregory'ssimilar comparison,Vita nostra
nauigantisimilrisest.32 That the figureof the pilgrimagewas a
commonplace
longbeforeMarcusAureliusor Plutarchis clearfrom
the commentary
in Erasmus'sAdagia: 33
Vita hominis peregrinatio.
6 fbos, id est, Peregrinatio quaedam est vita.
Tis
EeTLV
ILape7rL6fl/.La
Socrates in Axiocho Platonis adfert hane sententiam, vt vulgo apud omnes
29 Cf. also Eccles. xvi, 15:
Omnis misericordia,faciet locum unicuique,
secundum meritum operum suorum, et secundum intellectum peregrinationis ipsius. The ultimate source may be not, or not only, the Vulgate but
an Old-Latin pre-Hieronymianversion.
"0 As translated by Haines (Loeb Classical Library), II, 17, p. 41:
06 pl8OS 7OrXeAOS Ka (6'vov evrt6dla. It is not necessaryto suppose that
Marcus was indebted to the Axiochus for his Platonic reliance upon Philosophy as the only help, as it was a commonplace in his day.
31 Plutarch, Moralia (Basel, 1552), p. 93 d; see also index: Peregrini
& hospites in hoc mundo omnes homines sumus.
31Domenico Nani Mirabelli, Polyanthea (Venetijs, 1507), p. 215v, col.
1. For the attribution to " Gregorius .i. Registri " see Migne, Patrol. Lat.,
vols. 75-79. For this and the referenceto Plutarch I am indebted to the
kindness of Mr. James L. Jackson.
33Ed. 1574, p. 828 (==ed. 1612, p. 1105, no. 74; ed. 1703, p. 1177),
Chil. iv, Cent. x. Not to be found in the earliest editions during Erasmus's
lifetime, ed. 1520 (which ends, pp. 301r-303r, " Erasmi Proverbiorum
Quartae Chiliadis Centuria Quinta, sed imperfecta") and 1530, or in
ed. 1548 (which continues into Centuria vii). In strong contrast with the
proverb is the philosophic comment of Erasmus in Apophthegmatum Opus
(Lutetiae, 1547), p. 149: Dicenti miserum esse uiuere: Non, inquit,
miserum est, sed male uiuere miserum est. Vulgus miseram appellat
uitam, laboribus, doloribus, morbis, damnis, exilijs, multisque hoc genus
incommedis obnoxiam. At philosophus nihil malum aut miserum esse
ducebat, nisi quod cum turpitudine coniunctum esset.

THREE OBSCURE ENGLISH

PROVERBS

447

decantatam. Quanquam is dialogus habetur inter nothos. Videtur esse

potius hominis Christiani, qui Platonem voluerit imitari. Haec enim
sententia frequenter occurrit in sacris voluminibus, Vitam hanc esse
exilium, esse incolatum & peregrinationem: quanquam & Socrates Platonicus narrat animas hominum e coelo fuisse delapsas, quo sibi per philosophiae studium parant reditum.

In the Platonic dialogue,whichErasmusquotesaccuratelyenough,

the sayingis already,about threecenturiesbeforeChrist,spoken
of as a " familiarenoughcommonplace."
3 And in 1592 Edmund
Spenserrecognizedit as a commonplacein English whenhe translated the Axiochus,:" and lastlyshould mooue thee that common
saying,whichis wornein all mens mouths; That this our life is
a Pilgrimage

. ." 35

The University of Illinois

ROLAND M. SMITH

34As translated by E. H. Blakeliey, The Axiochus (London, 1937), p. 22.

The Axiochus of Plato translated by Edmund Spenser, ed. F. M.

Padelford (Baltimore, 1934), p. 42. For the Greek and Latin texts see
p. 69, lines 4 if. The Latin reads: et tritum illud ac apud omnes peruagatum considerabis, Quod vita nostra sit peregrinatio quaedam, etc.
Spenser's revision of his translation of the Axiochus (in 1591?) may well
have influencedthe writing of lines 372-73 of the Daphnaida (on the date
of which see Variorum Spenser, Minor Poems, I [1943], 435-38):
31

For I will walke this wandring pilgrimage,

Throughout the world fromone to other end.
Cf. also Daphn. 456, "whilest I in this wretched vale do stay" (note 23
above) ; with the "threeds" of Daphn. 17 compare Ax. "how wretched a
thread of life" (p. 49, line 5), etc. But on "the hardship of the earthly
pilgrimage " as a " constantly recurring subject in Tudor literature," see
Padelford's introduction,p. 29. Despite the arguments of Freyd and Swan,
there seems to be no valid reason, in my opinion, for doubting that Spenser
was the translator of the 1592 Axiochus. The poet later found in Socrates
and Axiochus (" True indeed 0 Socrates . . . ") apt models for his Irenius
and Eudoxus (" You say very true . . . ," an opening used seven times by
Irenius) .
Since this note was accepted for publication, the appearance of Spenser's
Prose Works in the ninth volume of the Variorum Spenser (Baltimore,
1949) makes it possible to read the Axiochus with comfort, although
Padelford's edition will continue to be valuable for the Greek and Latin
texts., The new editor, Professor Gottfried,argues eloquently for Spenser's
authorship, though he does not note all the parallels. The opening phrase
" Marry, I will tell you " is natural for Irenius but alnachronistic for
Socrates. The pun in Socrates' " dew debt to death," based on Welsdalius's
debitum vitam (Ax. 163), recalls the colntemporarypun with which
Falstaff begins his famous catechism (1 Henry IV., v. i. 26-27).