I have not seen anywhere brought together a collection of these medieval proverbs cast into the form of a rhyming hexameter. Erasmus, though he often illustrates the proverbs of the ancient world by those of the new, does not quote, as far as I am aware, through the whole of his enormous collection, a single one of these which occupy a middle place between the two; a fact which in its way is curiously illustrative of the degree to which the attention of the great Humanists at the revival of learning was exclusively directed to the classical literature of Greece and Rome. Yet proverbs in this form exist in considerable number; being of very various degrees of merit, as will be seen from the following selection; in which some are keen and piquant enough, while others are of very subordinate value; those which seemed to me utterly valueless—and they were not few—I have excluded altogether. The reader familiar with proverbs will detect correspondents to very many of them, besides the few which I have quoted, in one modern language or another, often in many. Accipe, sume, cape, tria sunt gratissima Papæ. Let me observe here, once for all, that the lengthening of the final syllable in _capê_, is not to be set down to the ignorance or carelessness of the writer; but in the theory of the medieval hexameter, the unavoidable stress or pause on the first syllable of the third foot was counted sufficient to lengthen the shortest syllable in that position. Ad secreta poli curas extendere noli. Ægro sanato, frustra dices, Numerato. Amphora sub veste raro portatur honeste. Ante Dei vultum nihil unquam restat inultum. Ante molam primus qui venit, non molat imus. A rule of natural equity: Prior tempore, prior jure;—_First come, first serve_.—“Whoso first cometh to the mill, first grint.”—_Chaucer._ Arbor naturam dat fructibus atque figuram. Arbor ut ex fructu, sic nequam noscitur actu. Ars compensabit quod vis tibi magna negabit. Artem natura superat sine vi, sine curâ. Aspera vox, Ite, sed vox est blanda, Venite. An allusion to Matt. xxv. 34, 41. Cari rixantur, rixantes conciliantur. Carius est carum, si prægustatur amarum. Casus dementis correctio fit sapientis. Catus sæpe satur cum capto mure jocatur. Cautus homo cavit, si quem natura notavit. Conjugium sine prole, dies veluti sine sole. Contra vim mortis non herbula crescit in hortis. Cui puer assuescit, major dimittere nescit. The same appears also in a pentameter, and under an Horatian image: Quod nova testa capit, inveterata sapit. Cui sunt multa bona, huic dantur plurima dona. Cum jocus est verus, jocus est malus atque severus. So the Spanish: Malas son las burlas verdaderas. Curvum se præbet quod in uncum crescere debet. Curia Romana non quærit ovem sine lanâ. Dat bene, dat multum, qui dat cum munere vultum.