This proverb had been previously used by Amyot, and probably also by Jerome le (or de) Hangest, who was a Doctor of the Sorbonne, and adversary of Luther, and who died in 1538.—­Ibid. p. 136 (note 49.).

* * * * *

I know not how old may be “to put the cart before the horse.”  Rabelais (i. 227.) has—­

  “Il mettoyt la charrette devant les beufz.”

* * * * *

  “If the sky falls, we shall catch larks.”

Rabelais (i. 229, 230.):—­

  “Si les nues tomboyent, esperoyt prendre alouettes.”

* * * * *

  “Good nature and good sense must ever join;
  To err is human, to forgive divine.”

Pope’s Essay on Criticism, pp. 524, 525.

* * * * *

  “Nay, fly to altars, there they’ll talk you dead;
  For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Ib. pp. 624, 625.

* * * * *

The Emperor Alexander of Russia is said to have declared himself “un accident heureux.”  The expression occurs in Mad. de Stael’s Allemagne, Sec. xvi.:—­

    “Mais quand dans un etat social le bonbeur lui-meme n’est,
    pour ainsi dire, qu’un accident heureux ... le patriotisme a
    peu de perseverance.”

* * * * *

Gibbon, Decl. and Fall (Lond. 1838. 8vo.), i. 134.:—­

“His (T.  Antoninus Pius’) reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”

Gibbon’s first volume was published in 1776, and Voltaire’s Ingenii in 1767.  In the latter we find—­

  “En effet, l’historie n’est que le tableau des crimes
  et des malheurs.”—­Oeuvres de Voltaire (ed.  Beuchot. 
  Paris, 1884. 8vo.), tom. xxxiii. p. 427.

* * * * *

Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 94.:—­

    “In every deed of mischief, he (Andronicus Comnenus) had a
    heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.”

Cf.  Voltaire, “Siecle de Louis XV.” (Oeuvres, xxi. p. 67.):—­

    “Il (le Chevalier de Belle-Isle) etait capable de tout
    imaginer, de tout arranger, et de tout faire.”

* * * * *

  “Guerre aux chateaux, paix a la chaumiere,”

ascribed to Condorcet, in Edin.  Rev. April, 1800. p. 240. (note*)

By Thiers (Hist. de la Rev. Franc. Par. 1846. 8vo. ii. 283.), these words are attributed to Cambon; while, in Lamartine’s Hist. des Girondins (Par. 1847. 8vo.), Merlin is represented to have exclaimed in the Assembly, “Declarez la guerre aux rois et la paix aux nations.”