The English race is the best at weeping and the worst at laughing

The English race is the best at weeping and the worst at laughing. (The English take their pleasures sadly).
[Anglica gens est optima flens et pessima ridens.]
Thomas Hearne, Reliquiæ Hearnianæ (Ed. 1857), Volume I, p. 136. (Source referred to Chamberlayne, Anglicæ Notitia (1669). From old Latin saying quoted in Kornmannus, De Linea Amoris, Chapter II, p. 47. (Ed. 1610). Binder, Novus Thesaurus Adagiorum Latinorum. No. 2983. Neander’s Ethic Vetus et Sapiens (1590). (With “sed” not “et,” “Rustica” not “Anglica.”)Favorite0