PROVERB LORE.
Proverb Lore. By F. Edward Hulme, F.S.A. Cheaper Edition. (Elliot Stock. 5s.)—We are glad to see a new and cheaper edition of this excellent book, in which the wisdom of the serious past is surveyed from the standpoint, sometimes humorous, sometimes pathetic, of the present. "By means of the study of proverbs," says the author, "our thoughts travel back to the childhood of the world, and we see at once bow amidst the surroundings that vary so greatly in every age and in every clime the common inherent oneness of humanity asserts itself." Occasionally Mr. Hulme puts a point too grandiloquently, as when he says :—" The necessity of curbing the hasty tongue, the dis- praise of folly, the value of true friendship, the watchfulness that enmity entails, the influence of womankind, the fabrication of excuses, the vainglory of boasting and pretension, the exposure of hypocrisy, the evil of ingratitude, the golden irradiation of the pathway of life by hope, the buoyant strength and confidence of youth, the sad decrepitude of old age, the retribution that awaits wrongdoers, were as keenly understood three thousand years ago as to-day, and the trite expression of these verities crystallised into warning, encouragement, or reproach is as much a part of the equipment of life to the date- seller of Damascus as to the ploughman in an English shire." Mr. Hulme's book has already been adequately dealt with. In a cheap edition the reader looks for treasures enjoyed at the first reading, and stumbles on treasures then missed, such as : "A schoolboy writing an essay on the cat put down that it was said to have nine lives; but he added that it did not now need them, because of Christianity. This, quaint as it is, has a great truth wrapped up in it,—the love of mercy, including kindness to animals. That is one of the points of the teaching of Christ."
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