Meaning & Analysis
One who maintains a very large, open-handed household cannot count on having anything reserved for himself; his own provisions are uncertain because they are consumed by the demands of hospitality and display.
Insights
Cost of Magnificence
Grand, public-facing generosity erodes private security. What buys renown at the door—banquets, retinues, open tables—leaves the host unsure of his own share.
Obligation Overload
When a role is defined by continual provision for others, personal claims become precarious. Status duties crowd out self-care and prudent reserve.
Signal vs. Substance
Displaying abundance to signal honor can hollow out the estate. Showy hospitality substitutes appearance for solvency, so the master’s ‘sure portion’ disappears.
Governance Failure
Stewardship requires boundaries. A ‘great housekeeper’ who will not limit outlay or guests governs poorly, converting virtue (liberality) into vice (waste).
Hospitality Economy
Early modern ‘great housekeeping’ entailed continuous provisioning—meat, ale, alms, and ceremony—as a social duty. The proverb warns that unchecked largesse leaves the lord with nothing ‘sure’ for himself.
Cultural Backlash
Smyth’s complaint that the ‘durty proverbe’ banished hospitality shows its polemical edge: repeated as prudence, it could rationalize the retreat from communal generosity and gentry open tables.
Moral Accounting
By measuring a life by what remains ‘for his,’ the saying relocates virtue from performance (feasts) to remainder (what endures), casting sustainability as the truer index of good rule.
Psychology of Leakage
Open systems leak: when many hands dip into a common store, the host experiences scarcity despite apparent wealth. The proverb captures the felt uncertainty produced by many small, public claims.
Rhetorical Devices
Ellipsis
The sentence breaks off—‘for his…’—inviting the listener to supply ‘dinner,’ ‘use,’ or ‘self,’ and thereby universalizing the loss across needs.
Antithesis (implied)
‘Great housekeeper’ suggests abundance; ‘sure of nothing’ flips the expectation, sharpening the caution through ironic reversal.
Metonymy
‘Housekeeper’ stands for the whole spendthrift regime of a grand household; uncertainty about ‘his’ portion stands for the estate’s fragility.
Gnomical brevity
Compressed phrasing delivers a portable maxim with bite, easy to invoke against ostentation or imprudent giving.
Transcription
Quotations
*I wish this durty proverbe had never prevailed in this hundred, havinge from thence banished the greater halfe of our ancient hospitallity.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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