[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]

 

The phrase feet of clay (also, occasionally, legs of clay and limbs of clay) designates a fundamental weakness in someone supposedly of great merit.

In Allen’s Dictionary of English Phrases (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2008), the British lexicographer Robert Allen explains that the phrase feet of clay alludes to the biblical account, in the Book of Daniel, of a figure that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon saw in a dream, which had a head and body of precious metals but feet of iron and clay. When these subsequently collapsed, the whole figure was destroyed.

The relevant passage from the Book of Daniel, 2:31-35, is as follows in the King James Bible (1611):

2:31 Thou, O King, sawest, and behold a great image: this great image whose brightnesse was excelleut [sic], stood before thee, and the forme thereof was terrible.
2:32 This images head was of fine gold, his breast and his armes of siluer, his belly and his thighes of brasse:
2:33 His legs of yron, his feete part of yron, and part of clay.
2:34 Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image vpon his feete that were of yron and clay, and brake them to pieces.
2:35 Then was the yron, the clay, the brasse, the siluer, and the golde broken to pieces together, and became like the chaffe of the summer threshing floores, and the wind caried them away, that no place was found for them: & the stone that smote the image became a great mountaine, and filled the whole earth.

The earliest occurrences that I have found of the phrase feet of clay and variants—used without explicit reference to the biblical account—date from the French Revolution (1789-1799) and translate the French phrase pieds d’argile.

These early occurrences are as follows, in chronological order:

1-: From Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind: Being a Posthumous Work of the Late M. de Condorcet. Translated from the French (London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1795), by the French philosopher, and advocate of educational reform and women’s rights Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat (1743-1794), marquis de Condorcet [Sixth Epoch. Decline of Learning, to its Restoration about the Period of the Crusades – page 144]—“this ruling city” refers to Rome, and “its pontiffs” refers to the Popes:

We shall exhibit this ruling city trying the experiment upon the universe of a new species of chains; its pontiffs […] finding in heaven the point upon which to fix the lever for moving the world, but without discovering on earth the regulator that is to direct and continue its motion at their will; in short, erecting a Colossus, but with legs of clay ¹, that, after first oppressing Europe, is afterwards to weary it, for a long period, with the weight of its ruins and scattered fragments.

¹ English “legs of clay” is a mistranslation of French “pieds d’argile”, used by Condorcet.

The original text by Condorcet is as follows in Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain. Ouvrage posthume de Condorcet (Paris: Chez Agasse, an III de la République ²) [Sixième époque. Décadence des lumières, jusqu’à leur restauration vers le temps des croisades – page 152]:

Nous montrerons cette ville dominatrice essayant sur l’univers les chaînes d’une nouvelle tyrannie ; ses pontifes […] ayant bien trouvé dans le ciel le point d’appui du lévier [sic] qui devoit remuer le monde, mais n’ayant pas su trouver sur la terre de régulateur qui pût à leur gré en diriger et en conserver l’action ; élevant enfin, mais sur des pieds d’argile, un colosse qui, après avoir opprimé l’Europe, devoit encore la fatiguer longtemps du poids de ses débris.

² In the French Revolutionary Calendar, “an III de la République” (literally, year three of the Republic) designated the period from Monday 22^nd September 1794 to Tuesday 22^nd September 1795.

2-: From a translation of the speech that the French lawyer and politician François Antoine de Boissy d’Anglas (1756-1826) delivered to the National Convention on Wednesday 21^st January 1795 (2 Pluviôse III in the French Revolutionary Calendar)—translation published in the Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland) of Monday 16^th March 1795 [page 2, column 2]:

I know it may be said, with some foundation, that the Russian Empire is a Colossus with feet of clay; that in it corruption has preceded maturity, that the slavery which exists in it deprives its force of all solidity, and its resources of all energy; that its extent is immense but partly desert; that it is proud but poor; that it is already too vast to be governed; that by extending itself it accelerates its own dissolution; and that every conquest it makes is a step towards its ruin. I admit these truths; but this giant before he perishes will crush you; it is upon your ruins that he must fall; he will not dismember himself till after you are ravaged, dispersed, and annihilated.
Danes, Swedes, Germans, Prussians, Ottomans, think of this.

The relevant passage from the original speech by François Antoine de Boissy d’Anglas was transcribed as follows in Epitre du vieux cosmopolite Syrach à la Convention nationale de France. Contenant l’examen du discours prononcé à la séance du 2 pluviose III. par le citoyen Boissy-d’Anglas representant du peuple sur les véritables interêts de quelques unes des puissances coalisées et sur les bases d’une paix durable (Sarmatie [i.e., Paris]: [s.n.], 1795) [page 64]:

Je sais qu’on peut dire avec fondement que l’empire Russe est un Colosse aux pieds d’argille, que la corruption y a precedé la maturité, que l’esclavage qui y existe ôte toute solidité à sa force, toute énergie à ses ressorts ; qu’il est immense, mais en grande partie désert ; fastueux mais pauvre ; qu’il est déja trop vaste pour être gouverné ; qu’en s’étendant, il avance sa dissolution et que chaque conquête qu’il fait est un pas de plus vers sa ruine. Je conviens de ces verités : mais ce géant, avant de périr Vous écrasera, Danois, Suédois, Allemands, Prussiens, Ottomans, c’est sur vos ruines qu’il doit tomber, il ne se démembrera qu’après Vous avoir ravagés, dispersés, anéantis.

3– : From The Chester Chronicle (Chester, Cheshire, England) of Friday 26^th January 1798 [page 2, column 2]:

The French orators compare Great Britain to a huge colossus with feet of clay. The say nothing of the composition of the head, or any other part.

4-: From The Kentish Chronicle (Canterbury, Kent, England) of Friday 9^th February 1798 [page 3, column 3]:

BRITISH DIPLOMACY.

It is not a little singular, that the French Republicans, when they arraign “the Pride of England,” date the commencement of our hauteur from the period when England was a Republic.—“It was the Protector Cromwell,” they say in a late address to their Diplomatic Agents, “who first assumed this tone of insolence. He it was who called to his aid the vigorous and republican pen of Milton—first used that haughty language, which ever since that epoch the British Ministers have sustained. It was in its origin nothing more than the inflated pride of a successful usurper: it took, however, soon the appearance of the bold and energetic language of a people called themselves free. Engaged in those wars, the long series of which commenced and concluded the reign of Louis XIV. The Governments of Europe believed those nations to be powerful, who announced themselves to be such. They were astonished, and yielded without examination to the pretensions of those who accompanied them with menaces. Soon after France, delivered over by a phlegmatic Prince, to a corrupt Ministry—weakened by useless victorie[s], and by alliances contrary to her real interest—even France herself, reduced to a deplorable state of inactivity, saw herself degraded to the point of trembling before the pretended Genius of the Cabinet of London. Strong in this illusion rather than in real power, England, at the end of every great war, figured with eclat in the pacifications of Nimeguen, of Riswick, of Utrecht, of Aix la Chapelle, at the Treaty of Paris, at the conferences of Pilnitz, and in every subsequent crisis of our Revolution.
“It is this illusion, Citizens, which we are now to destroy. It is this Colossus, with feet of clay, which it is now necessary to overturn. It is your duty on this occasion to attack the federative force of England, whilst our armies, landing on her territory, shall unveil her intrinsic weakness to the Governments of Europe, who have been so long imposed upon by her boasted pretensions.”