Taverner, an Englishman, issued a book of proverbs, axioms, and epigrams in the year 1539. It is in black-letter, and has avowedly been largely constructed "with newe addicions" out of the monumental work of Erasmus. It is "the Garden of Wysdome, conteyning pleasant floures, that is to saye, propre and quycke sayinges of Princes, Phylosphers, and other sortes of men, Drawen forth of good Authours by Rycharde Tauerner." His comments on the various adages are often very shrewd. "Lawes," he says, "be lyke spyders webbes, wherein the weakest and most feble beastes be catched and stycke faste, but the strongest breake out. So lawes do bynde the poore and meane persons but the rich cobbes escape vnpunyshed"; and again, "An angrye bodye dothe nothynge dyffer from a mad man, but in the tariannce of tyme, sygnifyeng that wrathe is a short frensye." Many of his "quycke sayinges"[35:A] are very happy, thus, "Demanded what is a frend, Zeno answered an other I, sygnifyeng that an entyer and hartye frende no lesse loveth his frende then hymselfe." We read, too, with interest, of "a certayne person which rose erly in the mornynge and found his hose knawen and eaten of the rattes, and being troubled wyth this syght, thynkyng it a prognosticatiō (a tokē of some misfortune) he cometh to Cato to aske his coūsaile and to know of hym what euyl thys thyng portended. Cato maketh hym thys answere, Certes my frend it is no mōstrouse syght to se rattes eat mens hose, but yf thy hose had eaten the rattes that had been a monstrouse syght." This answer was so entirely to the point that one would fain hope that the man of the knawen hose went on his way rejoicing that he knew the worst. Books of like nature with that of Taverner will be found in the works of Florio--one of these is entitled "Merie proverbes, Wittie Sentences and golden Sayings," and another is the "Garden of Recreation." This latter contains some six thousand Italian proverbs. They doubtless passed through divers editions; the copies that came under our own notice were dated 1578 and 1591 respectively. A valuable sixteenth century collection of proverbs may be found in a rhyming treatise written by John Heywood. The first edition that we have seen is a black-letter quarto of the year 1547. It is entitled "A Dialogue, contayning in effect the number of al the Proverbs in the English tongue, compact in a matter concerning two Marriages." In an issue in 1598 that has come under our notice the title is, "A dialogue wherein are pleasantlie contrived the number of all the effectuall proverbs in our English tongue, compact in a matter concerning two marriages. Together with three hundred epigrams upon three hundred proverbs." Heywood always refers to the proverbs as already old sayings and praises them, though he at times dressed up as proverbs some of his own ideas, and altered others, depriving them of somewhat of their rugged directness. He says of them: