It was no chylden's game.

Pilkington, Tournament of Tottenham, 1631.

Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee.

Eastward Hoe, 1605, by Chapman, Marston, and Jonson;
Franklin, Poor Richard.

Labour for his pains.

Edward Moore, The Boy and the Rainbow; Preface to Don
Quixote, Lockhart's edition.

Let the world slide.

Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Induction, Sc. 1;
John Heywood, Be merry, Friends; Beaumont and Fletcher,
Wit without Money.

Let us do or die.

Beaumont and Fletcher, The Island Princess, Act ii. Sc. 4; Burns, Bannockburn; Campbell, Gertrude of Wyoming, Part iii. St. 37.

Scott says, "This expression is a kind of common property, being the motto, we believe, of a Scottish family." - Review of Gertrude, Scott's Miscellanies, Vol. i. P. 153.

Look a gift horse in the mouth.

Rabelais, Book i. Ch. xi.; Vulgaria Stambrigi, circa 1510;
Butler, Hudibras, Part i. Canto i. Line 490; also quoted by
St. Jerome.

Look before you ere you leap.

Butler, Hudibras, Part ii. Canto ii. Line 502.

Look ere thou leap, see ere thou go.

Heywood's Proverbs, 1546; Tottel's Miscellany, 1557; Tusser,
Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, Ch. lvii.

Love me little, love me long.

Heywood's Proverbs, 1546; Marlowe, Jew of Malta, Act iv.;
Bacon's Formularies; Herrick, Song.

Love me, love my dog.

Heywood's Proverbs, 1546; Chapman, Widow's Tears.

This was a proverb in the time of Saint Bernard: "Dicitur certe vulgari quodam proverbio: Qui me amat, amet et canem meum." In Festo S. Michaelis, Sermo Primus.

Lucid interval.

Bacon, Henry VII.; Sidney, On Government, Vol. i. Ch. ii.
Sec. 24; Fuller, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, Book iv. Ch. ii.;
South, Sermon, Vol. viii. p. 403; Dryden, MacFlecknoe;
Matthew Henry, Commentaries, Psalm lxxxviii.; Johnson,
Life of Lyttelton; Burke, On the French Revolution.

Nisi suadeat intervallis.

Bracton, fol. 1243, and fol. 420 b; Register Original, 267 a,

1270.

Mad as a March hare.

Skelton, Replycation against certayne Young Scholers, 1520;
Heywood's Proverbs, 1546.

Made no more bones.

Du Bartas, The Maiden Blush.

Main chance.

Shakespeare, Henry VI., Part ii. Act i. Sc. 1; Butler, Hudibras, Part ii. Canto ii.; Dryden, Persius, Satire vi.

Many-headed monster.

Daniel, Civil Wars, Book ii.; Du Bartas, Paradox against
Libertie; Massinger, The Roman Actor, Act iii. Sc. 2; Vol-
taire, Merope, Act i. Sc. 4; Pope, Epistle i. Book ii. Line 305;
Scott, Lady of the Lake, Canto v. St. 30.

Midnight oil.

Gay, Shepherd and Philosopher; Shenstone, Elegy xi.; Cowper, Retirement; Lloyd, On Rhyme.

Mince the matter.

King, 1663-1712, Ulysses and Tiresias.

Mine ease in mine inn.

Heywood's Proverbs, 1546; Shakespeare, Henry IV., Part i.
Act iii. Sc. 3.

Moon is made of green

cheese.

Jack Jugler, p. 46; Rabelais, Book i. Ch. xi.; Blacklock's Hatchet of Heresies, 1565; Butler, Hudibras, Part ii. Canto iii. Line 263.

More goodness [wit] in his little finger than you have in your whole body.

Ray's Proverbs; Swift, Mary the Cookmaid's Letter.

More the merrier.

Heywood's Proverbs, 1546; Gascoigne's Posies, 1575; Title of a Book of Epigrams, 1608; Beaumont and Fletcher, The Scornful Lady, Act i. Sc. 1; The Sea Voyage, Act i. Sc. 2.

Much water goeth by the mill,

That the miller knoweth not of.

Heywood's Proverbs, 1546; Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus,
Act ii. Sc. 1.

Mother-wit.

Spenser, Faerie Queene, Book iv. Canto x. St. 21; Marlowe,
Prologue to Tamberlaine the Great, Part i.; Middleton,
Your Five Gallants, Act i. Sc. 1; Shakespeare, Taming of
the Shrew, Act ii. Sc. 1.

Music of the spheres.

Montaigne, Essays, Book i. Ch. xxii.; Shakespeare, Pericles, Act
v. Sc. 1; Middleton, The Roaring Girl, Act iv. Sc. 1; Antony
Brewer, Act iii. Sc. 7; Milton, Hymn on Christ's Nativity:
Donne's Devotions; Webster, Duchess of Malfi; Sir Thomas
Browne, Religio Medici, Part ii. Sec. 9; Pope, Essay on Man,
Epistle i. Line 202.

Necessity the mother of invention.

Franck's Northern Memoirs, Writ in the Year 1658, printed
1694; Wycherly, Love in a Wood, Act iii. Sc. 3, 1672; Far-
quhar, Twin Rivals, Act i., 1705.

Magister artis ingenîque largitor venter.
Persius, Prolog., Line 10.

Nine days' wonder.

Chaucer, Troilus and Creseide; Ascham's Schoolmaster; Heywood's Proverbs; Beaumont and Fletcher, The Noble Gentleman, Act iii. Sc. 4; Quarles, Emblems, Book i. viii.

No better than you should be.

Beaumont and Fletcher, The Coxcomb, Act iv. Sc. 3; Fielding,
The Temple Beau, Sc. 3.

No love lost between us.

Middleton, The Witch, Sc. 3; Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer, Act iv.; Garrick, Correspondence, 1759; Fielding, The Grub Street Opera, Act i. Sc. 4.

Of harmes two the lesse is for to cheese.

Chaucer, Troilus and Creseide, Book ii. Line 470. Of two evils the less is always to be chosen.

Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book ii. Ch. xii.; Hook-
er's Polity, Book v. Ch. lxxxi.

Of two evils I have chose the least.
Prior, Imitation of Horace.

E duobus malis minimum eligendum.
Erasmus, Adages; Cicero, De Officiis, iii. 1.

Out of the frying-pan into the fire.

Heywood's Proverbs, 1546; Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress; Don
Quixote, ed. Lockhart, Part i. Book iii. Ch. iv.

On his last legs.

Middleton, The Old Law, Act v. Sc. 1.

Outrun the constable.

Ray's Proverbs; Butler, Hudibras, Part i. Canto iii. Line 1145. Over the hills and far away.

D'Urfey, Pills to Purge Melancholy; Farquhar's Recruiting
Officer, Jockey's Lamentation, from Wit's Mirth, Vol. iv.;
Gay, Beggar's Opera, Act i. Sc. 1.

Paradise of fools. Fools' paradise.

William Bullein's Dialogue, p. 28, 1573; Handful of Pleasant
Delights, 1584, Arber's reprint, 1878; John Day, Humour out
of Breath, 1608; Middleton, The Family of Love, Act i. Sc. 1;
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc. 4; Milton, Paradise
Lost, Book iii. Line 496; Pope, Dunciad, Book iii.; Fielding,
The Modern Husband, Act i. Sc. 9; Crabbe, The Borough,
Letter xii.; Quevedo, Visions, iv., L'Estrange's Translation;
Murphy, All in the Wrong, Act i.

Picked up his crumbs.

Murphy, The Upholsterer, Act i.

Plain as a pike-staff.

Terence in English, 1641; Duke of Buckingham, Speech in the
House of Lords, 1675; Smollett, Translation of Gil Blas,
Book xii. Ch. viii.

Remedy worse than the disease.

Publius Syrus, Maxim 301; Bacon, Of Seditions and Troubles;
Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure, Act iii. Sc. 2; Quarles,
Judgment and Mercy; Suckling's Letters, A Dissuasion from
Love; Dryden's Juvenal, Satire xvi.

Rhyme nor reason.

Pierre Patelin, quoted by Tyndale, 1530; Farce du Vendeur des Lieures, sixteenth century; Spenser, On his Promised Pension; Peele, Edward I.; Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act iii. Sc. 2; Merry Wives of Windsor, Act v. Sc. 5; Comedy of Errors, Act ii. Sc. 2.

Sir Thomas More advised an author, who had sent him his manuscript to read, "to put it in rhyme." Which being done, Sir Thomas said, "Yea, marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before it was neither rhyme nor reason."

Rolling stone gathers no moss.

Publius Syrus, Maxim 524; Heywood's Proverbs, 1546; Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry; Gosson's Ephemerides of Phialo; Marston, The Fawn.

Rule the rost.

Skelton, Colyn Cloute, circa 1518; Heywood's Proverbs, 1546; Shakespeare, Henry IV., Part ii. Act i. Sc. 1; Thomas Heywood, History of Women.

Set my ten commandments in your face.

Shakespeare, Henry VI., Part ii. Act i. Sc. 3; Selimus, Emperor of the Turks, 1594; Westward Hoe, 1607; Erasmus, Apophthegms.

Silence gives consent.

Ray's Proverbs; Fuller, Wise Sentences; Goldsmith, The Good-
Natured Man, Act ii.

Sleveless errand.

Heywood's Proverbs, 1546; Addison, Spectator.

The origin of the word "sleveless," in the sense of unprofitable, has defied the most careful research. It is frequently found allied to other substantives. Bishop Hall speaks of the "sleveless tale of transubstantiation," and Milton writes of a "sleveless reason." Chaucer uses it in the Testament of Love. Sharman.