A caution to those who try and steer a deceitful course between those of opposing interests, treacherously allowing each to think they have exclusive support, has duly been crystallised into a proverb, and Lily introduces it in the following passage:--"Whatsouer I speake to men, the same also I speake to women. I meane not to run with the Hare and holde with the Hounde." "By hook or by crook" will be found in Spenser's "Fairie Queene." "Diamond cut diamond" is in Ford's play of "the Lover's Melancholy." "Every tub must stand upon its own bottom" occurs in the "Pilgrim's Progress." "He must have a long spoon that would eat with the devil" is found in Chaucer and Shakespeare, amongst other writers. That "The moon is made of green cheese" is re-asserted by Rabelais and in the pages of "Hudibras." In Swift's "polite conversation," proverbs are thickly strewn. We find the old statement that "You must eat a peck of dirt before you die," the well-meant impertinence of "teaching one's grandmother to suck eggs," the communistic doctrine that "Sauce for the goose is no less sauce for the gander," and many other well-worn scraps of ancestral belief and practice. The wisdom of suiting your position to your circumstances, of cutting one's garment according to the material available, is emphasised in a "Health to the gentlemanly profession of Serving-Men," a brochure issued in 1598, where these worthies are warned, "You, with your fraternitie in these latter dayes cannot be content to shape your coate according to your cloth." In Marston's play of "What you Will," written in 1607, we have a familiar and homely caution borrowed from the experience of the kitchen--"Faith, Doricus, thy braine boils; keele it, keele it, or all the fatts in the fire," a proverb employed when by some inadvertence a man brings against himself a sudden blaze of wrath. Proverb-hunting is a very pleasant recreation. We have left a vast field practically untrodden. We cannot do better than conclude in the quaint words of a little pamphlet that we once came across--"a collection of the Choycest Poems relating to the late Times" (1662). "Gentlemen, you are invited here to a feast, and if variety cloy you not, we are satisfied. It has been our care to please you. These are select things, a work of time, which for your sake we publish, assuring you that your welcome will crown the entertainment. Farewell." FOOTNOTES: [65:A] "Love me little, love me long" is found in the writings of Christopher Marlowe: "Pray, love me little, so you love me long," in Herrick. [66:A] "The Pleasant Historie of the two Angrie Women of Abington, with the humerous mirthe of Dick Coomes and Nicholas Prouerbes, two seruingmen. As it was lately played by the Right Honourable the Earl of Nottingham, Lord High Admirall, his Servants. By Henry Porter, gent. Imprinted at London for Joseph Hunt and William Farbrand, and are to be solde at the corner of Colman Street, neere Loathburie. 1599." [72:A]