Volume 1 — SAYINGS IN EVERY-DAY USE.

Where They Come From, Who Said Them First, and How in Course of Time They Have Become Changed.

Many of our common sayings, so trite and pithy, are used without the least idea from whose mouth or pen they first originated. Probably the works of Shakespeare furnish us with more of these familiar maxims than any other writer, for to him we owe: "All is not gold that glitters"; "Make a virtue of necessity"; "Screw your courage to a sticking place" (not point); "They laugh that win"; "This is the long and short of it"; "Make assurance double sure" (not doubly); "As merry as the day is long"; "A Daniel come to judgment"; "Frailty, thy name is woman"; and a host of others.

Washington Irving gives us "The almighty dollar"; Thomas Norton queried long ago, "What will Mrs. Grundy say?" while Goldsmith answers, "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no fibs." Charles C. Pinckney: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute." "First in war, first in peace, and first in the heart of his fellow citizens" (not countrymen) appeared in the resolutions presented to the House of Representatives in December, 1790, prepared by General Henry Lee.

Thomas Tusser, a writer of the sixteenth century, gives us: "It's an ill wind turns none to good," "Better late than never," "Look ere thou leap," and "The stone that is rolling can gather no moss." "All cry and no wool" is found in Butler's "Hudibras."

Dryden says: "None but the brave deserve the fair," "Men are but children of a larger growth," and "Through thick and thin." "No pent-up Utica contracts your powers," declared Jonathan Sewall.

"When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war."—Nathaniel Lee (1655-1692).

"The end must justify the means" is from Matthew Prior. We are indebted to Colley Cibber for the agreeable intelligence that "Richard is himself again." Johnson tells us of "A good hater"; and Sir James Mackintosh, in 1791, used the phrase often attributed to John Randolph, "Wise and masterly inactivity."

"Variety's the very spice of life," and "Not much the worse for wear," Cowper; "Man proposes, but God disposes," Thomas à Kempis.

Christopher Marlowe gave forth the invitation so often repeated by his brothers in a less public way, "Love me little, love me long." Sir Edward Coke was of the opinion that "A man's house is his castle." To Milton we owe "The paradise of fools," "Fresh woods and pastures new," and "Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war."

Edward Young tells us "Death loves a shining mark," "A fool at forty is indeed a fool," but alas for his knowledge of human nature when he adds that "Man wants but little, nor that little long"!

From Bacon comes "Knowledge is power."

A good deal of so-called slang is classic. "Escape with the skin of my teeth" is from Job. "He is a brick" is from Plutarch. That historian tells of a king of Sparta who boasted that his army was the only wall of the city, "and every man is a brick." We call a fair and honest man "a square man," but the Greeks describe the same person as tetragonos—"a four-cornered man."

"Every dog has its day" is commonly attributed to Shakespeare, in Hamlet's speech, "The cat will mew and dog will have his day." But forty years before "Hamlet" Heywood wrote, "But, as every man saith, a dog hath his daie."