And Authority, When It Does This Commonly Sets To Work
By One Of These Formulae:
As, in England north of Trent, by the
manifestly false and boastful phrase, 'A thing begun is half ended',
And in the south by 'The Beginning is half the Battle'; but in France
by the words I have attributed to the Proverb-Maker, _'Ce n'est que le
premier pas qui coute'._
By this you may perceive that the Proverb-Maker, like every other
Demagogue, Energumen, and Disturber, dealt largely in metaphor - but
this I need hardly insist upon, for in his vast collection of
published and unpublished works it is amply evident that he took the
silly pride of the half-educated in a constant abuse of metaphor.
There was a sturdy boy at my school who, when the master had carefully
explained to us the nature of metaphor, said that so far as he could
see a metaphor was nothing but a long Greek word for a lie. And
certainly men who know that the mere truth would be distasteful or
tedious commonly have recourse to metaphor, and so do those false men
who desire to acquire a subtle and unjust influence over their
fellows, and chief among them, the Proverb-Maker. For though his name
is lost in the great space of time that has passed since he
flourished, yet his character can be very clearly deduced from the
many literary fragments he has left, and that is found to be the
character of a pusillanimous and ill-bred usurer, wholly lacking in
foresight, in generous enterprise, and chivalrous enthusiasm - in
matters of the Faith a prig or a doubter, in matters of adventure a
poltroon, in matters of Science an ignorant Parrot, and in Letters a
wretchedly bad rhymester, with a vice for alliteration; a wilful liar
(as, for instance, '_The longest way round is the shortest way
home_'), a startling miser (as, _'A penny saved is a penny earned'_),
one ignorant of largesse and human charity (as, '_Waste not, want
not_'), and a shocking boor in the point of honour (as, _'Hard words
break no bones'_ - he never fought, I see, but with a cudgel).
But he had just that touch of slinking humour which the peasants have,
and there is in all he said that exasperating quality for which we
have no name, which certainly is not accuracy, and which is quite the
opposite of judgement, yet which catches the mind as brambles do our
clothes, causing us continually to pause and swear. For he mixes up
unanswerable things with false conclusions, he is perpetually letting
the cat out of the bag and exposing our tricks, putting a colour to
our actions, disturbing us with our own memory, indecently revealing
corners of the soul. He is like those men who say one unpleasant and
rude thing about a friend, and then take refuge from their disloyal
and false action by pleading that this single accusation is true; and
it is perhaps for this abominable logicality of his and for his
malicious cunning that I chiefly hate him:
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