PROVERBIAL E. MARLBOROUGH & CO., 4 AVE MARIA LANE AND 14 WARWICK LANE. EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW: JOHN MENZIES & CO 270 660 PREFACE. SIR WALTER SCOTT observed of Dryden that "it is im possible to read far without discovering some maxim for doing or forbearing, which every student of poetry will do well to engross upon the tablets of his memory." The particular value of maxims is that they are easily stored away in the mind. They are fixed in it by some happy twist or turn of words, as Some are wise, and some are otherwise;" by the startling statement of a fact, not to be gainsaid, as "Rome was not built in a day;" by a sharp appeal to the imagination, as "Patience and the mulberry leaf will become satin; " by the quaint juxtaxposition of two qualities or things, as "Oil and truth will get uppermost at last; " by the mere tripping of the words, as "Nae cows, nae care ;" or again, by surprising illustration, as "Money is ace of trumps." We remember them as we remember a striking scene, a diverting incident, a momentous event, a stroke of luck, or a stroke of misfortune. They are truths in masks, in holiday dress, in strange positions-contrived to arrest our attention and hold it. They are, again, bits of wisdom or shrewdness in humorous guises, as "A sillerless man gangs fast through the market;" "A man with his stomach full is no great eater ; "As irrecoverable as a lump of butter in a grey 66 |