Still, though so many thousands have been collected, many thousands still remain unpublished, known only among the traditions of the humbler classes of society, that have given birth to them all. Juan de Yriarte, a learned man, who was nearly forty years at the head of the King’s Library at Madrid, collected, about the middle of the eighteenth century, no less than twenty-four thousand; and yet it is not to be supposed that a single individual, however industrious, living in Madrid, could exhaust their number, as they belong rather to the provinces than to the capital, and are spread everywhere among the common people, and through all their dialects.[233] [233] Vargas y Ponce, Declamacion, Madrid, 1793, 4to, App., p. 93. Why proverbs should abound so much more in Spain than in any other country of Christendom, it is not possible to tell. Perhaps the Arabs, whose language is rich in such wisdom, may have furnished some of them; or perhaps the whole mass may have sprung from the original soil of the less cultivated classes of Spanish society. But however this may be, we know they are often among the pleasantest and most characteristic ornaments of the national literature; and those who are most familiar with them will be most ready to agree with the wise author of the “Dialogue on Languages,” when he says, and repeats the remark, that we must go to the old national proverbs for what is purest in his native Castilian.[234] [234] Mayans y Siscar, Orígenes, Tom. I. pp. 188-191, and the Diálogo de las Lenguas, p. 12, where the author says, “In our proverbs, you see the purity of the Castilian language”; and p. 170, where he says, “The purest Castilian we have is in our proverbs.” The “Don Quixote” will occur to every body as a book that proves how much proverbs enter into Spanish literature; but I should rather cite the “Celestina,” where their number is, I think, equally great in proportion, and their _serious_ application more effective. * * * * *