And as new proverbs will be born from life and from life’s experience, so too there will be another fruitful source of their further increase, namely, the books which the people have made heartily their own. Portions of these they will continually detach, most often word for word; at other times wrought up into new shapes with that freedom which they claim to exercise in regard of whatever they thus appropriate to their own use. These, having detached, they will give and take as part of their current intellectual money. Thus “_Evil communications corrupt good manners_,”[29] (1 Cor. xv. 33,) is word for word a metrical line from a Greek comedy. It is not probable that St. Paul had ever read this comedy, but the words for their truth’s sake had been taken up into the common speech of men; and not as a citation, but as a proverb, he uses them. And if you will, from this point of view, glance over a few pages of one of Shakespeare’s more popular dramas,—Hamlet, for example,—you will be surprised, in case your attention has never been called to this before, to note how much has in this manner been separated from it, that it might pass into the every day use and service of man; and you will be prepared to estimate higher than ever what he has done for his fellow countrymen, the “possession for ever” which his writings have become for them. And much no doubt is passing even now from favourite authors into the flesh and blood of a nation’s moral and intellectual life; and as “household words,” as parts of its proverbial philosophy, for ever incorporating itself therewith. We have a fair measure of an author’s true popularity, I mean of the real and lasting hold which he has taken on his nation’s heart, in the extent to which it has been thus done with his writings. * * * * * There is another way in which additions are from time to time made to the proverbial wealth of a people. Some event has laid strong hold of their imagination, has stirred up the depths of their moral consciousness; and this they have gathered up for themselves, perhaps in some striking phrase which was uttered at the moment, or in some allusive words, understood by everybody, and which at once summon up the whole incident before their eyes. [Sidenote: Scriptural proverbs.]