"As love and I late laboured in one inn
With proverbs thus each other entertain:
In love there is no lack, thus I begin,
Fair words make fools, replieth he again;
Who spares to speak doth spare to speed (quoth I),
As well (saith he) too forward as too slow:
Fortune affects the boldest, I reply,
A hasty man (quoth he) ne'er wanted woe:
Labour is light where love (quoth I) doth pay,
(Saith he) Light burthens heavy if far borne:
(Quoth I) The main lost, cast the die away,
Y'have spun a fair thread, he replies in scorn.
And having thus awhile each other thwarted,
Fools as we met, so fools again we parted."
In Ideas, ii.[1] "Murder will out" appears:
"By this I see however things be past,
Yet Heav'n will still have murder out at last."
The poet confesses to his "noble friend" Brown[2] that the world is very evil; all is
"arsey-versey, nothing is its own.
But to our proverb, all turn'd upside down."
The common-sense remark,
"He's mad who takes the lion by the ears," [3]
has quite the air of being "the wit of one and the wisdom of many"; and the following are old friends:[4]
""Ill news hath wings and with the wind doth go,
Comforts a cripple and comes ever slow." (B. ii. v. 28 [i. 114]).
"Mishaps (that seldom come alone)." (B. iii. v. 4 [i. 127]).
"Some boughs grow crooked from the straightest tree." (B. v. v. 29 [i. 173]).
In the Miseries of Queen Margaret we find,
"But dev'lish folk have still their dev'lish ends."
"Ill's the procession and fore-runs much loss.
Wherein men say 'the Devil bears the cross.'"—[ii. 406.]
and
"None overcomes but may be overcome."—[ii. 422.]
