a beautiful allusion to a well-known proverb. The plays of Shakespeare abound with these proverbial allusions. In the "Taming of the Shrew," for instance, we find, "Now, were I a little pot and soon hot," a proverb applied to short-tempered people who on slight cause wax wroth. The homely pot plays its part in homely conversation. The man whom Fortune has thwarted "goes to pot," waste and refuse metal to be cast into the melting-pot. The man on hospitable thoughts intent may invite his neighbour to pot-luck, to such chance repast, good or bad, as the "pot au feu" may yield. People who deride or scorn others for matters in which they are at least as much concerned are compared to the pot that called the kettle black,[85:A] while the rashness of those who, insufficiently provided with this world's goods, seek to rival others better provided and come to grief in the experiment, are reminded how the brazen and earthen pot swam down together on the swirling flood and collided to the detriment of the pitcher.[85:B] In "King Henry VI." we have "Ill blows the wind that profits nobody,"[85:C] and "Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep." In "Hamlet" the familiar adage, "Murder will out," appears as "Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak." "Every dog has his day"; we say: every man his chance, so in "Hamlet" we find-- "Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day." In "Othello" we come across an equally well-known proverb, "They laugh that win," so quaintly curtailed by Heywood into "He laugth that winth." Another familiar adage is that "Use is second nature," and this Shakespeare, in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," refines into "How use doth breed a habit in a man!" In "As You Like It" another well-known saw presents itself in the lines, "If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue." The bush in question was an ivy-bough, the emblem of Bacchus, and the custom of marking the wine-shop by this dates from Roman days. "Vino vendibili hedera non opus est." The custom was continued throughout the Middle Ages; but a good article, the proverb tells us, needs no advertisement, or, as the French proverb hath it, "Au vin qui se vend bien il ne faut point de lierre."