Note E52 — 10.
Reading edition
"The proverb says, and who'd a proverb cross? That stones, when rolling, gather little moss." —Vade Mecum for Malt Worms, 1720, p. 6 (part 2).
See also Ray's Proverbs. Cf.
"On the stone that styll doth turne about, There groweth no mosse." —Sir T. Wiat, "How to use the Court," l. 4.
A similar proverb occurs in Piers Plowman, A Text, Passus x. l. 101: "Selden moseth the marbelston that men ofte treden." Cf. also, "Syldon mossyth the stone þat oftyn ys tornyd and wende."—"How the good wife taught her daughter," pr. in Q. Elizabeth's Achademy, ed. Furnivall, p. 39. In the Verses on Lord Burghley's Crest (printed in Thynne's Animaduersions, Chaucer Soc. ed. Furnivall), stanza 32, we read:
"And prouerbe olde was not deuis'd in veyne, That 'roolinge stone doth neuer gather mosse'; Who lightly leaves in myddest of all his peine, His former labor frustrates with his losse; But who continues as he did begynne, Withe equall course the pointed goale doth wynne."
See also chapt. 77 st. 20, p. 170.