The proverbs of Solomon— Here properly the book of Proverbs begins: What has gone before is a kind of preface or introduction to the work. Solomon has exhorted his disciple to the study of wisdom, by the most interesting motives; the beauty, the utility, the necessity of wisdom. He has shewn him the dangers which they run who neglect it: he has cautioned him against debauchery and libertinism. After this he comes to those moral sentences which were his principal design. See the introductory note to this book. There is a great variety in these sentences; which are generally delivered by way of antithesis; i.e. comparing opposites one with another. No great connexion is to be expected in them; their instruction is various and extensive, almost every verse being a lesson by itself. Bishop Hall has been at great pains to digest and methodize these proverbs, which he has done under the heads of ethics, politics, and economics. See the first volume of his works, p. 181.
A wise son maketh a glad father— This first sentence seems not to have been casually set forth in the front of the rest; because nothing contributes so much to the happiness of mankind, as a religious care about the education of children; which parents are here admonished to attend to, if they desire their children should not prove a grief and shame to them. Lord Bacon thinks that the gladness and heaviness which are in fathers and mothers, according as their children prove good or bad, are here so accurately distinguished by Solomon, that he would represent a wise and well-governed son, to be chiefly a comfort to the father, who knows the value of wisdom better perhaps than the mother (which account the Hebrews also give of this matter), and therefore rejoices more at the towardliness of his son; which he not only better understands, but has taken perhaps so much care about his education, that the good fruits of it give him a greater joy than they can do to the mother. She, on the other side, is more grieved and discomforted at the calamity of the son; both because the affection of a mother is more soft and tender, and perhaps because she may be conscious to herself that by too much indulgence she hath tainted and corrupted his tender years. See Advancement of Learning, book 8: cap. 2.