Transcriber’s Note
To view the transliteration of the Greek phrases, hover over a Greek passage. This feature may not workcorrectly in e-readers.
In the printed book, alternate pages have unique headers, represented here as sidenotes.
For list of the corrections made, please view the transcriber’s note at the end of the text.
The cover was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
PROVERBS AND THEIR LESSONS.
PROVERBS AND THEIR LESSONS:
BEING
THE SUBSTANCE OF LECTURES
DELIVERED TO YOUNG MEN’S SOCIETIES
AT PORTSMOUTH AND ELSEWHERE.
BY
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D.,
DEAN OF WESTMINSTER.
FIFTH EDITION.
LONDON:
JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND.
MDCCCLXI.
PREFACE.
It may be as well to state, that the lectureswhich are here published were never deliveredas a complete course, but only one here and twothere, as matter gradually grew under my hands;yet so that very much the greater part of what iscontained in this volume has been at one time oranother actually delivered. Although I have alwaystaken a lively interest in national proverbs, I hadno intention at the first of making a book aboutthem; but only selected the subject as one whichI thought, though I was not confident of this,might afford me sufficient material for a singlelecture, which I had undertaken some time ago todeliver. I confess that I was at the time almostentirely ignorant of the immense number andvariety of books bearing on the subject. Many ofthese I still know only by name. With some ofthe best, however, I have made myself acquainted,and by their aid, with the addition of such furthermaterial as I could myself furnish, these lectureshave assumed their present shape; and I publishthem, because none of the works on proverbs[iv]which I know are exactly that book for all readerswhich I could have wished to see. Either theyinclude matter which cannot be fitly placed beforeall—or they address themselves to the scholaralone, or if not so, are at any rate inaccessible tothe mere English reader—or they contain barelists of proverbs, with no endeavour to compare,illustrate, and explain them—or if they seek toexplain, yet they do it without attempting to soundthe depths, or measure the real significance, of thatwhich they undertake to unfold. From these orother causes it has come to pass, that with amultitude of books, many of them admirable, ona subject so popular, there is no single one whichis frequent in the hands of men. I will not denythat, with all the slightness and shortcomings ofmy own, I have still hoped to supply, at least forthe present, this deficiency.
Itchenstoke, December 13, 1852.
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