Cometh the hour, cometh the man

I have heard the saying - aka metaphor, aphorism, analogy, maxim, adage, axiom, proverb, figure of speech, or idiom - "cometh the hour, cometh the man" many times, and somehow always associated it with Sir Winston Churchill. Not because it was coined by him, but because I think it was famously SAID by someone about him, during or after WW2.

However, in searching online for anything along those lines, I came up empty. So I consulted Rees, which explained what is probably the origin of the phrasing "John 4:23 has ‘But the hour cometh, and now is’" (1994, p. 9). In addition, "there is an English proverb ‘Opportunity makes the man’ (though originally, in the fourteenth century, it was ‘makes the thief)" but history does not show us where the two sayings conflated (Rees, 1994, p. 9). However, by 1815, the character Meg Merrilies says, "Because the Hour’s come, and the Man" at the climax of the novel, Guy Mannering (Scott, 1815, p. 489). In the first and magnum opus editions, this phrase was emphasised in italics by the author (Rees, 1994, p. 9). Rees (1994) goes on to use what is nearly the modern saying in the negative:

"in 1818, Scott uses ‘The hour’s come, but not [sic] the man’ as the fourth chapter heading in The Heart of Midlothian, adding in a footnote: ‘There is a tradition, that while a little stream was swollen into a torrent by recent showers, the discontented voice of the Water Spirit [or Kelpie] was heard to pronounce these words" (p. 9)

Then in 1861, William Yancey made comment about Jefferson Davis (the President-elect of the US Confederacy): "The man and the hour have met" (Rees, 1994, p. 9). 

We are talking all around "cometh the hour, cometh the man", and not quite getting there. Rees seems of the opinion that all of these are "hinting at some earlier core saying which is still untraced" (1994, p. 9). 

Today people seem to think that this saying is a cricketing aphorism (Rees, 1994, p. 9): 

"F.H. Loxley of Bristol recalled (1993): ‘“Coometh the hour, coometh the man” was said by Cliff Gladwin, the Derbyshire fast bowler and England No. 10 as he went out to bat against South Africa on 20 December 1948".

However, never having been a cricketing fan myself, I think we may be missing a source somewhere between Yancey's comment in 1861 and Gladwin in 1948 that cements this saying in its modern form.

Perhaps someone can find me a Churchill commentator's quote!

Sam

References:

Rees, N. (1994). Brewer's Quotations: A Phrase and Fable Dictionary. Cassell & Co.

Scott, W. (1815). Guy Mannering or the Astrologer: The Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., Vol II (1905 reprinted ed.). Thomas Nelson and Sons.