Page images
PDF
EPUB

TRANSLATIONS.

PILPAY (OR BIDPAI.)1

If

WE ought to do our neighbour all the good we can. you do good, good will be done to you; but if you do evil, the same will be measured back to you again.2

Dabschelim and Pilpay. Chap. i.

It has been the providence of Nature to give this crea ture [the cat] nine lives instead of one.

The Greedy and Ambitious Cat. Fable iii.

There is no gathering the rose without being pricked by the thorns. The Two Travellers. Chap. ii. Fable vi.

Wise men say that there are three sorts of persons who are wholly deprived of judgment, they who are ambitious of preferments in the courts of princes; they who make use of poison to show their skill in curing it; and they who intrust women with their secrets.

Men are used as they use others.

Ibid.

The King who became Just. Fable ix.

What is bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh.5 The Two Fishermen. Fable xiv.

6

Guilty consciences always make people cowards.
The Prince and his Minister. Chap. iii. Fable iii.

1 Pilpay is supposed to have been a Brahmin gymnosophist, and to have lived several centuries before Christ. The earliest form in which his Fables appear is in the Pancha-tantra and Hitopadesa of the Sanskrit. The first translation was into the Pehlvi language, and thence into the Arabic, about the seventh century. The first English translation appeared in 1570.

2 And with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Matthew vii. 2.

8 See Heywood page 16.

6 See Heywood, page 19.

4 See Herrick, page 203.
6 See Shakespeare, page 136.

Whoever... prefers the service of princes before his duty to his Creator, will be sure, early or late, to repent in vain. The Prince and his Minister. Chap. iii. Fable iii. There are some who bear a grudge even to those that do them good. A Religious Doctor. Fable ei. There was once, in a remote part of the East, a man who was altogether void of knowledge and experience, yet presumed to call himself a physician.

The Ignorant Physician. Fable viii. He that plants thorns must never expect to gather roses.1

Ibid.

Honest men esteem and value nothing so much in this world as a real friend. Such a one is as it were another self, to whom we impart our most secret thoughts, who partakes of our joy, and comforts us in our affliction; add to this, that his company is an everlasting pleasure to us. Choice of Friends. Chap. iv. That possession was the strongest tenure of the law." The Cat and the two Birds. Chap. v. Fable iv.

[blocks in formation]

(Translation by J. Banks, M. A., with a few alterations.8)

We know to tell many fictions like to truths, and we know, when we will, to speak what is true.

The Theogony. Line 27.

On the tongue of such an one they shed a honeyed

dew, and from his lips drop gentle words.

Line 82.

Night, having Sleep, the brother of Death."

I See Butler, page 214.
8 Bohn's Classical Library.

Line 754

2 See Cibber, page 296.
4 See Coleridge, page 500.

6 See Shelley, page 567.

From whose eyelids also as they gazed dropped love.1 The Theogony. Line 910.

Both potter is jealous of potter and craftsman of craftsman; and poor man has a grudge against poor man, and poet against poet.2 Works and Days. Line 25.

Fools! they know not how much half exceeds the whole.

Line 40.

For full indeed is earth of woes, and full the sea; and in the day as well as night diseases unbidden haunt mankind, silently bearing ills to men, for all-wise Zeus hath taken from them their voice. So utterly impossible is it to escape the will of Zeus.

They died, as if o'ercome by sleep.

Line 101.

Line 116.

Line 240.

Oft hath even a whole city reaped the evil fruit of a bad man.* For himself doth a man work evil in working evils for another.

Line 265.

Badness, look you, you may choose easily in a heap: level is the path, and right near it dwells. But before Virtue the immortal gods have put the sweat of man's brow; and long and steep is the way to it, and rugged at the first.

Line 287.

This man, I say, is most perfect who shall have understood everything for himself, after having devised what may be best afterward and unto the end.

Line 293.

Let it please thee to keep in order a moderate-sized farm, that so thy garners may be full of fruits in their

season.

1 See Milton, page 246.

2 See Gay, page 349.

Line 304.

3 Pittacus said that half was more than the whole.-DIOGENES LAER

TIUS: Pittacus, ii.

4 One man's wickedness may easily become all men's curse. SYRUS: Maxim 463.

[blocks in formation]

Invite the man that loves thee to a feast, but let alone thine enemy. Works and Days. Line 342.

A bad neighbour is as great a misfortune as a good one is a great blessing.

Line 346.

Gain not base gains; base gains are the same as losses.

Line 353.

If thou shouldst lay up even a little upon a little, and shouldst do this often, soon would even this become great.

Line 360.

At the beginning of the cask and at the end take thy fill, but be saving in the middle; for at the bottom saving comes too late. Let the price fixed with a friend be sufficient, and even dealing with a brother call in witnesses, but laughingly.

Line 366.

Diligence increaseth the fruit of toil. A dilatory man wrestles with losses.

Line 412.

The morn, look you, furthers a man on his road, and furthers him too in his work.

Observe moderation.

Line 579.

In all, the fitting season is best.

Line 694.

Neither make thy friend equal to a brother; but if thou shalt have made him so, be not the first to do him wrong.

Line 707

THEOGNIS. 570 (?)-490 (?) B. 0.

Wine is wont to show the mind of man.

Maxims. Line 500.

No one goes to Hades with all his immense wealth.1

Line 725.

1 For when he dieth he shall carry nothing away, his glory shall not de scend after him. - Psalm xlix. 17.

[These selections from the most famous gnomic sayings of the great tragic writers of Greece- Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides — are chiefly from the fragments and not from their complete plays. The numbers of the fragments refer to the edition of Nauck. They are selected and translated by M. H. Morgan, Ph. D., of Harvard University.]

ESCHYLUS. 525-456 B. C.

I would far rather be ignorant than wise in the foreboding of evil.1 Suppliants, 453. "Honour thy father and thy mother" stands written among the three laws of most revered righteousness.2

Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.

8

707.

Prometheus, 378.

981.

Time as he grows old teaches many lessons. God's mouth knows not to utter falsehood, but he will perform each word.

1032.

Learning is ever in the freshness of its youth, even for the old." Agamemnon, 584.

Few men have the natural strength to honour a friend's success without envy. . . . I well know that mirror of friendship, shadow of a shade.

Exiles feed on hope.

Success is man's god.

1 See Gray, page 382.

832.

1668.

Choephora, 59.

2 The three great laws ascribed to Triptolemus are referred to, namely, to honour parents; to worship the gods with the fruits of the earth; to hurt no living creature. The first two laws are also ascribed to the centaur Cheiron.

8 Apt words have power to suage
The tumours of a troubl'd mind.

MILTON: Samson Agonistes.

4 God is not a man that he should lie; . . . hath he said, and shall he

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »