Let us take some examples. If we found in any other book such a saying as this, "Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor, so doth a little folly him that is in great reputation for wisdom and honor," should we not call it witty? Is it not witty as the Russian proverb "A spoonful of tar in a barrel of honey?" Or consider such sentences as the following: "All the labor of a man is for his mouth, and yet his appetite is not filled." "As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart." "Bread of deceit is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel." "He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him." "A man of great wrath shall suffer punishment; for if thou deliver him, yet must thou do it again." In other words, a man of violent temper is always getting into difficulties; you have no sooner helped him out of one than he madly plunges into another. Like the irascible person in the old nursery rhyme, who jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes, he is no sooner extricated, than "with all his might and main, he jumps into another bush and puts them out again." "Can a man take fire in his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Can he go upon hot coals and his feet not be burned?" "Wealth makes many friends, but the poor is separated from his neighbor." "He that passeth by and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears." If we came upon such sentences in Johnson or Goldsmith, we should say in a moment that they were instances of genuine wit. Let us not hesitate to carry the same frankness of literary judgment to the Bible. When Isaiah characterizes certain ones as "mighty to drink wine and men of strength to mingle strong drink," does he not use essentially the same reproach that Prince Hal fastened upon Falstaff, "Wherein is he good but to taste sack and drink it?" Who shall say that the earlier satire did not suggest the later? Much has been written about Shakespeare's indebtedness to the Bible.