But I am warned to draw my lecture to an end. I have adduced in the course of these lectures no inconsiderable number of proverbs, and have sought for the most part to deduce from them lessons, which were lessons in common for us all. There is one, however, which I must not pass over, for I feel that it contains an especial lesson for myself, and a lesson which I should do wisely and well at this present time to lay to heart. When the Spaniards would describe a tedious writer, one who possesses the art of exhausting the patience of his readers, they say of him: _He leaves nothing in his inkstand_. The phrase is a singularly happy one, for assuredly there is no such secret of tediousness, no such certain means of wearing out the attention of our readers or our hearers, as the attempt to say everything ourselves, instead of leaving something to be filled up by their intelligence; while the merits of a composition are often displayed as really, if not so prominently, in what is passed over as in what is set down; in nothing more than in the just measure of the confidence which it shows in the capacities and powers of those to whom it is addressed. I would not willingly come under the condemnation, which waits on them who thus _leave nothing in their inkstand_; and lest I should do so, I will bring now this my final lecture to its close, and ask you to draw out for yourselves those further lessons from proverbs, which I am sure they are abundantly capable of yielding. Footnotes [182] Perhaps the Spanish form of this proverb is still better: La mentira tiene _cortas_ las piernas; for the lie does go, though not far. Compare the French: La vérité, comme l’huile, vient au dessus. [183] La verdad es hija de Dios. [184] Vox populi, vox Dei. [185] Tant vaut l’homme, tant vaut sa terre. [186] Κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων. [187] Le bruit est si fort, qu’on n’entend pas Dieu tonner. [188] Εἷς ἀνὴρ, οὐδεὶς ἀνήρ. [189] Sensus est nihil egregium præstari posse ab uno homine, omni auxilio destituto. [190] Χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά.