or a wisp
of hay, at a roadside inn, as a sign that drink may be had within. This
practice, "which still lingers in the cider-making counties of the west
of England, and prevails more generally in France, is derived from the
Romans, among whom a bunch of ivy was used as the sign of a wine-shop."
They were also in the habit of saying, "Vendible wine needs no ivy hung
up." The Spanish have a proverb, "Good wine needs no crier."[874]

[874] Ibid., 1870, pp. 175, 176.

"Greatest clerks not the wisest men." Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his
"Handbook Index to Shakespeare" (p. 391), quotes the following passage
in "Twelfth Night" (iv. 2), where Maria tells the clown to personate Sir
Topas, the curate: "I am not tall enough to become the function well,
nor lean enough to be thought a good student; but to be said an honest
man and a good housekeeper goes as fairly as to say a careful man and a
great scholar."

"Happy man be his dole" ("Taming of the Shrew," i. 1; "1 Henry IV.," ii.
2). Ray has it, "Happy man, happy dole;" or, "Happy man by his dole."

"Happy the bride on whom the sun shines." Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in
his "Handbook Index to Shakespeare" (p. 392), quotes, as an illustration
of this popular proverb, the following passage in "Twelfth Night" (iv.
3), where Olivia and Sebastian, having made "a contract of eternal bond
of love," the former says:

"and heavens so shine,
That they may fairly note this act of mine!"

"Happy the child whose father went to the devil."[875] So, in "3 Henry
VI." (ii. 2), King Henry asks, interrogatively:

"And happy always was it for that son,
Whose father, for his hoarding, went to hell?"

[875] See Bohn's "Handbook of Proverbs," p. 100; Kelly's
"Proverbs of All Nations," p. 187.

The Portuguese say, "Alas for the son whose father goes to heaven."

"Hares pull dead lions by the beard." In "King John" (ii. 1), the
Bastard says to Austria:

"You are the hare of whom the proverb goes,
Whose valour plucks dead lions by the beard."

"Have is have, however men do catch." Quoted by the Bastard in "King
John" (i. 1).

"Heaven's above all." In "Richard II." (iii. 3) York tells Bolingbroke:

"Take not, good cousin, further than you should,
Lest you mistake: the heavens are o'er our heads."

So, too, in "Othello" (ii. 3), Cassio says: "Heaven's above all."[876]

[876] Halliwell-Phillipps's "Handbook Index to Sha