OLD SAYINGS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1911, 6 July 1888, Page 31

OLD SAYINGS.

The English language is from time to time enriched by striking phrases and happy turns of expression, which take such deep and sympathetc root in a popular vocabulary, and enter into such common use that their authorship is almost invariably overlooked. Thus does the world rob and then forget its benefactor. Of these Samuel Butler is perhaps one of the most neglected. " True Blue," for instance, is so ordinary a phrase that we seldom stay to make inquiries about its origin; yet we might, if we looked, find that the author of "Hudibras" used it to characterise, not the Tory of the day, but the Presbyterian. He also it was who as far as we have been able to discover first introduced the expression, " the main chance," in its modern meaning.

And once more we echo him when we speak of " getting the wrong sow by the ear," for he wrote " you have a wrong sow by the ear," Alexander Pope gave us the expressions, "dirty work," and "poetic justice." The one occurs in the " Epistle to Arbuthnot," and the other in the " Dunciad." Dean Swift first alluded to bread as " the 3taff of life " ; Dryden first originated the idea, " a green old age," and Pope was the author of Damn with fainfc praise, as well as the still more hackneyed Who shall decide when doctors disagree. When we speak of a " feast of fat things," it may be that some of us rightly attribute the phrase to its author, the Prophet Isaiah ; but it does not appear to be as generally remembered that "death in the pot " comes to us from the Second Book of Kings, and that "darkness which may be felt" is the literary property of the Book of Exodus. Washington Irving, in " The | Creole Village," wrote of "the almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land."

Fine by degrees and beautifully leas is oommonly deformed and transformed, and Cowper's reference to

The cups that cheer bufc not inebriate is usually rendered as referring to one cup only.

The expression "a dim religious light" may be found in Milton's " Penaeroso," and the commonly repeated saw that "absence makes the heart grow fonder" is to be discovered in T. H. Bayley's song, "Isle of Beauty."

" Apt alliteration's artful aid " is by Churchill, the artist.

The phrase " comparisons are odious " is almost invariably written without quotation marks. It occurs in Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy," and Shakespeare, in " Much Ado About Nothing," says " comparisons are odious."

The origin of the terra " the midnight oil " occurred in Quarels. Of " Devil take the hindermost" Beaumont and Fletcher may claim the phrase. " Diamond cut diamond" is traceable to Ford's " Lover's Melancholy." The expression " Neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring " seems to belong ( to Sir H. Sheers. " Turn over a new leaf,' says Middleton in "Anything for a Quiet Life " ; and it was Mrs Malaprop, in Mr Sheridan's "The Rivals," who first owned " the soft impeachment." Oliver Goldsmith, in the "Good-Jnatured Man," wrote " measures, not men," To Milton we owe the saying that Peace hah her victories, No less renowned than war ; And it was Goldsmith who, in " She Stoops to Conquer," introduced us to "the very pink of perfection." It was Byron who wrote: Strange nil this difference should be 'Twlxt Tweedledum and Tfreedledee. It was Thompson who first spoke of teaching " the young idea how to shoot," and it was Bacon who enunciated the aphorism that " knowledge is power."