[1] So have I seen some wild unsettled fool,
Who had her choice of this and that joint-stool,
To give the preference to either loth,
And fondly coveting to sit on both,
While the two stools her sitting-part confound,
Between 'em both fall squat upon the ground.

[Footnote 1: This beautiful simile is founded on a proverb which does
honour to the English language:

Between two stools the breech falls to the ground.

I am not so well pleased with any written remains of the ancients as
with those little aphorisms which verbal tradition hath delivered down
to us under the title of proverbs. It were to be wished that, instead
of filling their pages with the fabulous theology of the pagans, our
modern poets would think it worth their while to enrich their works
with the proverbial sayings of their ancestors. Mr Dryden hath
chronicled one in heroick;

Two ifs scarce make one possibility.
--_Conquest of Granada_.

My lord Bacon is of opinion that whatever is known of arts and
sciences might be proved to have lurked in the Proverbs of Solomon. I
am of the same opinion in relation to those above-mentioned; at least
I am confident that a more perfect system of ethicks, as well as
oeconomy, might be compiled out of them than is at present extant,
either in the works of the ancient philosophers, or those more
valuable, as more voluminous ones of the modern divines.