Herein in great part the force of a proverb lies, namely, that it has already received the stamp of popular allowance. A man might produce, (for what another has done, he might do again,) something as witty, as forcible, as much to the point, of his own; which should be hammered at the instant on his own anvil. Yet still it is not “the wisdom of many;” it has not stood the test of experience; it wants that which the other already has, but which it only after a long period can acquire—the consenting voice of many and at different times to its wisdom and truth. A man employing a “proverb of the ancients,” (1 Sam. xxiv. 13,) is not speaking of his own, but uttering a faith and conviction very far wider than that of himself or of any single man; and it is because he is so doing that they, in Lord Bacon’s words, “serve not only for ornament and delight, but also for active and civil use; as being the edge tools of speech which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs.” The proverb has in fact the same advantage over the word now produced for the first time, which for present currency and value has the recognised coin of the realm over the rude unstamped ore newly washed from the stream, or dug up from the mine. This last _may_ possess an equal amount of fineness; but the other has been stamped long ago, has already passed often from man to man, and found free acceptance with all:[10] it inspires therefore a confidence which the ruder metal cannot at present challenge. And the same satisfaction which the educated man finds in referring the particular matter before him to the universal law which rules it, a plainer man finds in the appeal to a proverb. He is doing the same thing; taking refuge, that is, as each man so gladly does, from his mere self and single fallible judgment, in a larger experience and in a wider conviction.