This single fact, which it is impossible to question, that nations are thus continually borrowing proverbs from one another, is sufficient to show that, however the great body of those which are the portion of a nation may be, some almost as old as itself, and some far older, it would for all this be a serious mistake to regard the sum of them as a closed account, neither capable of, nor actually receiving, addition—a mistake of the same character as that sometimes made in regard to the _words_ of a language. So long as a language is living, it will be appropriating foreign words, putting forth new words of its own. Exactly in the same way, so long as a people have any vigorous energies at work in them, are acquiring any new experiences of life, are forming any new moral convictions, for the new experiences and convictions new utterances will be found; and some of the happiest of these will receive that stamp of general allowance which shall constitute them proverbs. And this fact makes it little likely that the collections which exist in print, and certainly not the earlier ones, will embrace all the proverbs in actual circulation. They preserve, indeed, many others; all those which have now become obsolete, and which would, but for them, have been forgotten; but there are not a few, as I imagine, which, living on the lips of men, have yet never found their way into books, however worthy to have done so; and this, either because the sphere in which they circulate has continued always a narrow one, or that the occasions which call them out are very rare, or that they, having only lately risen up, have not hitherto attracted the attention of any who cared to record them. It would be well, if such as take an interest in the subject, and are sufficiently well versed in the proverbial literature of their own country to recognise such unregistered proverbs when they meet them, would secure them from that perishing, which, so long as they remain merely oral, might easily overtake them; and would make them at the same time, what all _good_ proverbs ought certainly to be, the common heritage of all.[28]