other nations and languages. Obviously an appeal to this terse and easily-remembered and retained wisdom of the ancients is adapted to the needs of an early stage of literature; and its kinship, apparent or real, to the brief "dicta" of the oracles of antiquity, would constitute a part of its weight and popularity with an audience of wonder-stricken listeners. And so we come to see the fitness of such bards as Homer and Hesiod garnishing their poems with these gems of antique proverbial wisdom, each drawing from a store that was probably hereditary, and pointing a moral or establishing a truth by neat and timely introduction of saws that possessed a weight not unlike that of texts of Scripture to enforce a preacher's drift. It is, furthermore, a minor argument for the common date of these famous poets, that both Homer and Hesiod constantly recur to the use of adages. With the latter the vein is not a little curious. The honest thrift-loving poet of Ascra has evidently stored up maxims, on the one hand of homely morality and good sense, and on the other of shrewdness and self-interest. He draws upon a rare stock of proverbial authority for justice, honour, and good faith, but he also falls back upon a well-chosen supply of brief and telling saws to affirm the policy of "taking care of number one," and is provided with short rules of action and conduct, which do credit to his observation and study of the ways of the world. If, as we have seen in his autobiography (if we may so call the 'Works and Days'), his life was a series of chronic wrestlings with a worthless brother and unjust judges, it is all the more natu-
