Because proverbs are so much a part of the language and culture, authors have sometimes used proverbs in historical fiction effectively, but anachronistically, before the proverb was actually known. For example, the novel "Ramage and the Rebels", by Dudley Pope is set in approximately 1800. Captain Ramage reminds his adversary "You are supposed to know that it is dangerous to change horses in midstream" (p. 259), with another allusion to the same proverb three pages later. However, the proverb about changing horses in midstream is reliably dated to 1864, so the proverb could not have been known or used by a character from that period.