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PREFACE LIFE OF AESOP AESOP’S FABLES The Lion And The Mouse The Wolf And The Lamb The Ass And The Grasshopper The Wolf and the Crane The Father And His Sons The Bat And The Weasels The Cock and the Jewel The Swallow and the Crow The Kingdom of the Lion The Traveler and His Dog The Ants and the Grasshopper The Hare and the Tortoise The Charcoal-Burner And The Fuller The Boy Hunting Locusts The Fisherman Piping The Dog and the Shadow Hercules and the Wagoner The Mole and His Mother The Herdsman and the Lost Bull The Fawn and His Mother The Ass, the Fox, and the Lion The Flies and the Honey-Pot The Lioness The Farmer and the Snake The Man and the Lion The Pomegranate, Apple-Tree, and Bramble The Farmer and the Stork The Mountain in Labor The Bear and the Fox The Tortoise and the Eagle The Fox and the Goat The Raven and the Swan The Thirsty Pigeon The Dog in the Manger The Oxen and the Axle-Trees The Farmer and the Cranes The Sick Lion The Bear and the Two Travelers The Fox Who Had Lost His Tail The Cat and the Cock The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing The Goat and the Goatherd The Boasting Traveler The Lion in Love The Miser The Porker, the Sheep, and the Goat The Boy and the Filberts The Frogs Asking for a King The Laborer and the Snake The Lion, the Mouse, and the Fox The Horse and Groom The Ass and the Mule The Ass and the Lapdog The Oxen and the Butchers The Shepherd’s Boy and the Wolf The Boys and the Frogs The Salt Merchant and His Ass The Mischievous Dog The Goatherd and the Wild Goats The Man and His Two Sweethearts The Sick Stag The Boy and the Nettles The Astronomer The Wolves and the Sheep The Cat and the Birds The Vain Jackdaw The Kid and the Wolf The Old Woman and the Physician The Ox and the Frog The Farmer and His Sons The Heifer and the Ox The Fighting Cocks and the Eagle The Charger and the Miller The Fox and the Monkey The Horse and His Rider The Belly and the Members The Widow and Her Little Maidens The Vine and the Goat Jupiter and the Monkey The Hawk, the Kite, and the Pigeons The Dolphins, the Whales, and the Sprat The Swallow, the Serpent, and the Court of Justice The Two Pots The Shepherd and the Wolf The Crab and Its Mother The Father and His Two Daughters The Thief and His Mother The Old Man and Death The Fir-Tree and the Bramble The Æthiop The Mouse, the Frog, and the Hawk The Fisherman and His Nets The Wolf and the Sheep The Old Woman and the Wine-Jar The Man Bitten by a Dog The Huntsman and the Fisherman The Fox and the Crow The Widow and the Sheep The Playful Ass The Stag in the Ox-Stall The Two Dogs The Wild Ass and the Lion The Lion and the Dolphin The Eagle and the Arrow The Sick Kite The Lion and the Boar The Mice in Council The One-Eyed Doe The Mice and the Weasels The Shepherd and the Sea The Ass, the Cock, and the Lion The Rivers and the Sea The Wild Boar and the Fox The Milk-Woman and Her Pail The Bee and Jupiter The Wolf and the Housedog The Three Tradesmen The Ass Carrying the Image The Master and His Dogs The Old Hound The Two Travelers and the Axe The Old Lion The Wolf and the Shepherds The Seaside Travelers The Ass and His Shadow The Ass and His Masters Mercury and the Sculptor The Fox and the Woodcutter The Oak and the Reeds The Lion in a Farmyard The Wolf and the Lion The Birdcatcher, the Partridge, and the Cock The Ant and the Dove The Hares and the Frogs The Monkey and the Fishermen The Swan and the Goose The Doe and the Lion The Fisherman and the Little Fish The Hunter and the Woodman The Swollen Fox The Two Frogs The Lamp The Camel and the Arab The Miller, His Son, and Their Ass The Cat and the Mice The Mouse and the Bull The Dog and the Cook The Thieves and the Cock The Dancing Monkeys The Farmer and the Fox The Traveler and Fortune The Seagull and the Kite The Lion, the Bear, and the Fox The Philosopher, the Ants, and Mercury The Peasant and the Eagle The Fox and the Leopard The Lion and the Hare The Image of Mercury and the Carpenter The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass The Bull and the Goat The Bald Knight The Oaks and Jupiter The Monkeys and Their Mother The Hare and the Hound The Shepherd and the Dog The Oak and the Woodcutters The Wasp and the Snake The Peacock and the Crane The Hen and the Golden Eggs The Ass and the Frogs The Crow and the Raven The Trees and the Axe The Wolves and the Sheepdogs The Bull, the Lioness, and the Wild-Boar Hunter The Bowman and Lion The Camel The Crab and the Fox The Ass and the Old Shepherd The Fox and the Hedgehog The Woman and Her Hen The Kites and the Swans The Dog and the Hare The Hares and the Foxes The Bull and the Calf The Stag, the Wolf, and the Sheep The Eagle, the Cat, and the Wild Sow The Wolf and the Fox The Mule The Prophet The Two Frogs The Serpent and the Eagle The Crow and the Pitcher The Thief and the Innkeeper The Hart and the Vine The Gnat and the Lion The Fox and the Grapes The Walnut-Tree The Kid and the Wolf The Monkey and the Dolphin The Horse and the Stag The Jackdaw and the Doves The Fox and the Monkey The Man and His Wife The Man, the Horse, the Ox, and the Dog The Thief and the Housedog The Apes and the Two Travelers The Fox and the Lion The Weasel and the Mice The Boy Bathing The Peacock and Juno The Wolf and the Shepherd The Hares and the Lions The Seller of Images The Hawk and the Nightingale The Lark and Her Young Ones The Dog, the Cock, and the Fox The Geese and the Cranes The Ass and the Wolf The Goat and the Ass The Lion and the Bull The Fox and the Mask The Grasshopper and the Owl The Fowler and the Viper The Horse and the Ass The Lion and the Three Bulls The Wolf and the Goat The Fly and the Draught-Mule The Fishermen The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse The Wolf, the Fox, and the Ape The Wasps, the Partridges, and the Farmer The Brother and the Sister The Dogs and the Fox The Blind Man and the Whelp The Cobbler Turned Doctor The Wolf and the Horse The Two Men Who Were Enemies The Gamecocks and the Partridge The Fox and the Lion The Quack Frog The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox The Dog’s House The North Wind and the Sun The Crow and Mercury The Fox and the Crane The Wolf and the Lion The Birds, the Beasts, and the Bat The Spendthrift and the Swallow The Trumpeter Taken Prisoner The Owl and the Birds The Goods and the Ills The Ass in the Lion’s Skin The Sparrow and the Hare The Flea and the Ox The Ass and His Purchaser The Dove and the Crow The Man and the Satyr Jupiter, Neptune, Minerva, and Momus The Eagle and the Jackdaw The Eagle and the Fox The Two Bags The Bitch and Her Whelps The Stag at the Pool The Lark Burying Her Father The Gnat and the Bull The Monkey and the Camel The Dogs and the Hides The Jackdaw and the Fox Mercury and the Workmen The Peasant and the Apple-Tree The Two Soldiers and the Robber The Shepherd and the Sheep The Trees Under the Protection of the Gods The Flea and the Wrestler The Lion and the Fox Truth and the Traveler The Manslayer The Lion and the Eagle The Ass and His Driver The Thrush and the Fowler The Mother and the Wolf The Hen and the Swallow The Rose and the Amaranth The Travelers and the Plane-Tree The Ass and the Horse The Crow and the Sheep The Fox and the Bramble The Ass and the Charger The Lion, Jupiter, and the Elephant The Dog and the Oyster The Mules and the Robbers The Lamb and the Wolf The Partridge and the Fowler The Flea and the Man The Rich Man and the Tanner The Viper and the File The Lion and the Shepherd The Camel and Jupiter The Panther and the Shepherds The Eagle and the Kite The Eagle and His Captor The King’s Son and the Painted Lion The Cat and Venus The Eagle and the Beetle The She-Goats and Their Beards The Bald Man and the Fly The Shipwrecked Man and the Sea The Buffoon and the Countryman The Crow and the Serpent The Hunter and the Horseman The Olive-Tree and the Fig-Tree The Frogs’ Complaint Against the Sun The Brazier and His Dog FOOTNOTES INDEX
The Tale, the Parable, and the Fable are all common and popular modes of conveying instruction. Each is distinguished by its own special characteristics. The Tale consists simply in the narration of a story either founded on facts, or created solely by the imagination, and not necessarily associated with the teaching of any moral lesson. The Parable is the designed use of language purposely intended to convey a hidden and secret meaning other than that contained in the words themselves; and which may or may not bear a special reference to the hearer, or reader. The Fable partly agrees with, and partly differs from both of these. It will contain, like the Tale, a short but real narrative; it will seek, like the Parable, to convey a hidden meaning, and that not so much by the use of language, as by the skilful introduction of fictitious characters; and yet, unlike to either Tale or Parable, it will ever keep in view, as its high prerogative, and inseparable attribute, the great purpose of instruction, and will necessarily seek to inculcate some moral maxim, social duty, or political truth. The true Fable, if it rise to its high requirements, ever aims at one great end and purpose—the representation of human motive, and the improvement of human conduct, and yet it so conceals its design under the disguise of fictitious characters, by clothing with speech the animals of the field, the birds of the air, the trees of the wood, or the beasts of the forest, that the reader shall receive advice without perceiving the presence of the adviser. Thus the superiority of the counsellor, which often renders counsel unpalatable, is kept out of view, and the lesson comes with the greater acceptance when the reader is led, unconsciously to himself, to have his sympathies enlisted in behalf of what is pure, honourable, and praiseworthy, and to have his indignation excited against what is low, ignoble, and unworthy. The true fabulist, therefore, discharges a most important function. He is neither a narrator, nor an allegorist. He is a great teacher, a corrector of morals, a censor of vice, and a commender of virtue. In this consists the superiority of the Fable over the Tale or the Parable. The fabulist is to create a laugh, but yet, under a merry guise, to convey instruction. Phædrus, the great imitator of Æsop, plainly indicates this double purpose to be the true office of the writer of fables.
Duplex libelli dos est: quod risum movet, Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet.
The continual observance of this twofold aim creates the charm, and accounts for the universal favour, of the fables of Æsop. “The fable,” says Professor K. O. Mueller, “originated in Greece in an intentional travestie of human affairs. The ‘ainos,’ as its name denotes, is an admonition, or rather a reproof, veiled, either from fear of an excess of frankness, or from a love of fun and jest, beneath the fiction of an occurrence happening among beasts; and wherever we have any ancient and authentic account of the Æsopian fables, we find it to be the same.
The construction of a fable involves a minute attention to (1), the narration itself; (2), the deduction of the moral; and (3), a careful maintenance of the individual characteristics of the fictitious personages introduced into it. The narration should relate to one simple action, consistent with itself, and neither be overladen with a multiplicity of details, nor distracted by a variety of circumstances. The moral or lesson should be so plain, and so intimately interwoven with, and so necessarily dependent on, the narration, that every reader should be compelled to give to it the same undeniable interpretation. The introduction of the animals or fictitious characters should be marked with an unexceptionable care and attention to their natural attributes, and to the qualities attributed to them by universal popular consent. The Fox should be always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient. Many of these fables are characterized by the strictest observance of these rules. They are occupied with one short narrative, from which the moral naturally flows, and with which it is intimately associated. “’Tis the simple manner,” says Dodsley,[2] “in which the morals of Æsop are interwoven with his fables that distinguishes him, and gives him the preference over all other mythologists. His ‘Mountain delivered of a Mouse,’ produces the moral of his fable in ridicule of pompous pretenders; and his Crow, when she drops her cheese, lets fall, as it were by accident, the strongest admonition against the power of flattery. There is no need of a separate sentence to explain it; no possibility of impressing it deeper, by that load we too often see of accumulated reflections. ”[3] An equal amount of praise is due for the consistency with which the characters of the animals, fictitiously introduced, are marked. While they are made to depict the motives and passions of men, they retain, in an eminent degree, their own special features of craft or counsel, of cowardice or courage, of generosity or rapacity.
These terms of praise, it must be confessed, cannot be bestowed on all the fables in this collection. Many of them lack that unity of design, that close connection of the moral with the narrative, that wise choice in the introduction of the animals, which constitute the charm and excellency of true Æsopian fable. This inferiority of some to others is sufficiently accounted for in the history of the origin and descent of these fables. The great bulk of them are not the immediate work of Æsop. Many are obtained from ancient authors prior to the time in which he lived. Thus, the fable of the “Hawk and the Nightingale” is related by Hesiod;[4] the “Eagle wounded by an Arrow, winged with its own feathers,” by Æschylus;[5] the “Fox avenging his wrongs on the Eagle,” by Archilochus. [6] Many of them again are of later origin, and are to be traced to the monks of the middle ages: and yet this collection, though thus made up of fables both earlier and later than the era of Æsop, rightfully bears his name, because he composed so large a number (all framed in the same mould, and conformed to the same fashion, and stamped with the same lineaments, image, and superscription) as to secure to himself the right to be considered the father of Greek fables, and the founder of this class of writing, which has ever since borne his name, and has secured for him, through all succeeding ages, the position of the first of moralists.
The fables were in the first instance only narrated by Æsop, and for a long time were handed down by the uncertain channel of oral tradition. Socrates is mentioned by Plato[8] as having employed his time while in prison, awaiting the return of the sacred ship from Delphos which was to be the signal of his death, in turning some of these fables into verse, but he thus versified only such as he remembered. Demetrius Phalereus, a philosopher at Athens about 300 B. C. , is said to have made the first collection of these fables. Phædrus, a slave by birth or by subsequent misfortunes, and admitted by Augustus to the honours of a freedman, imitated many of these fables in Latin iambics about the commencement of the Christian era. Aphthonius, a rhetorician of Antioch, A. D. 315, wrote a treatise on, and converted into Latin prose, some of these fables. This translation is the more worthy of notice, as it illustrates a custom of common use, both in these and in later times. The rhetoricians and philosophers were accustomed to give the Fables of Æsop as an exercise to their scholars, not only inviting them to discuss the moral of the tale, but also to practice and to perfect themselves thereby in style and rules of grammar, by making for themselves new and various versions of the fables. Ausonius,[9] the friend of the Emperor Valentinian, and the latest poet of eminence in the Western Empire, has handed down some of these fables in verse, which Julianus Titianus, a contemporary writer of no great name, translated into prose. Avienus, also a contemporary of Ausonius, put some of these fables into Latin elegiacs, which are given by Nevelet (in a book we shall refer to hereafter), and are occasionally incorporated with the editions of Phædrus.
Seven centuries elapsed before the next notice is found of the Fables of Æsop. During this long period these fables seem to have suffered an eclipse, to have disappeared and to have been forgotten; and it is at the commencement of the fourteenth century, when the Byzantine emperors were the great patrons of learning, and amidst the splendors of an Asiatic court, that we next find honours paid to the name and memory of Æsop. Maximus Planudes, a learned monk of Constantinople, made a collection of about a hundred and fifty of these fables. Little is known of his history. Planudes, however, was no mere recluse, shut up in his monastery. He took an active part in public affairs. In 1327 A. D. he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Venice by the Emperor Andronicus the Elder. This brought him into immediate contact with the Western Patriarch, whose interests he henceforth advocated with so much zeal as to bring on him suspicion and persecution from the rulers of the Eastern Church. Planudes has been exposed to a two-fold accusation. He is charged on the one hand with having had before him a copy of Babrias (to whom we shall have occasion to refer at greater length in the end of this Preface), and to have had the bad taste “to transpose,” or to turn his poetical version into prose: and he is asserted, on the other hand, never to have seen the Fables of Æsop at all, but to have himself invented and made the fables which he palmed off under the name of the famous Greek fabulist. The truth lies between these two extremes. Planudes may have invented some few fables, or have inserted some that were current in his day; but there is an abundance of unanswerable internal evidence to prove that he had an acquaintance with the veritable fables of Æsop, although the versions he had access to were probably corrupt, as contained in the various translations and disquisitional exercises of the rhetoricians and philosophers. His collection is interesting and important, not only as the parent source or foundation of the earlier printed versions of Æsop, but as the direct channel of attracting to these fables the attention of the learned.
The eventual re-introduction, however, of these Fables of Æsop to their high place in the general literature of Christendom, is to be looked for in the West rather than in the East. The calamities gradually thickening round the Eastern Empire, and the fall of Constantinople, 1453 A. D. combined with other events to promote the rapid restoration of learning in Italy; and with that recovery of learning the revival of an interest in the Fables of Æsop is closely identified. These fables, indeed, were among the first writings of an earlier antiquity that attracted attention. They took their place beside the Holy Scriptures and the ancient classic authors, in the minds of the great students of that day. Lorenzo Valla, one of the most famous promoters of Italian learning, not only translated into Latin the Iliad of Homer and the Histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, but also the Fables of Æsop.
These fables, again, were among the books brought into an extended circulation by the agency of the printing press. Bonus Accursius, as early as 1475–1480, printed the collection of these fables, made by Planudes, which, within five years afterwards, Caxton translated into English, and printed at his press in Westminster Abbey, 1485. [10] It must be mentioned also that the learning of this age has left permanent traces of its influence on these fables,[11] by causing the interpolation with them (as a κτῆμα εἰς ἰει) of some of those amusing stories which were so frequently introduced into the public discourses of the great preachers of those days, and of which specimens are yet to be found in the extant sermons of Jean Raulin, Meffreth, and Gabriel Barlette. [12] The publication of this era which most probably has influenced these fables, is the “Liber Facetiarum,”[13] a book consisting of a hundred jests and stories, by the celebrated Poggio Bracciolini, published A. D. 1471, from which the two fables of the “Miller, his Son, and the Ass,” and the “Fox and the Woodcutter,” are undoubtedly selected.
The knowledge of these fables rapidly spread from Italy into Germany, and their popularity was increased by the favour and sanction given to them by the great fathers of the Reformation, who frequently used them as vehicles for satire and protest against the tricks and abuses of the Romish ecclesiastics. The zealous and renowned Camerarius, who took an active part in the preparation of the Confession of Augsburgh, found time, amidst his numerous avocations, to prepare a version for the students in the University of Tübingen, in which he was a professor. Martin Luther translated twenty of these fables, and was urged by Melancthon to complete the whole; while Gottfried Arnold, the celebrated Lutheran theologian, and librarian to Frederick I. , king of Prussia, mentions that the great Reformer valued the Fables of Æsop next after the Holy Scriptures. In 1546 A. D. the second printed edition of the collection of the Fables made by Planudes, was issued from the printing-press of Robert Stephens, in which were inserted some additional fables from a MS. in the Bibliothêque du Roy at Paris.
The greatest advance, however, towards a re-introduction of the Fables of Æsop to a place in the literature of the world, was made in the early part of the seventeenth century. In the year 1610, a learned Swiss, Isaac Nicholas Nevelet, sent forth the third printed edition of these fables, in a work entitled “Mythologia Æsopica. ” This was a noble effort to do honour to the great fabulist, and was the most perfect collection of Æsopian fables ever yet published. It consisted, in addition to the collection of fables given by Planudes and reprinted in the various earlier editions, of one hundred and thirty-six new fables (never before published) from MSS. in the Library of the Vatican, of forty fables attributed to Aphthonius, and of forty-three from Babrias. It also contained the Latin versions of the same fables by Phædrus, Avienus, and other authors. This volume of Nevelet forms a complete “Corpus Fabularum Æsopicarum;” and to his labours Æsop owes his restoration to universal favour as one of the wise moralists and great teachers of mankind. During the interval of three centuries which has elapsed since the publication of this volume of Nevelet’s, no book, with the exception of the Holy Scriptures, has had a wider circulation than Æsop’s Fables. They have been translated into the greater number of the languages both of Europe and of the East, and have been read, and will be read, for generations, alike by Jew, Heathen, Mohammedan, and Christian. They are, at the present time, not only engrafted into the literature of the civilized world, but are familiar as household words in the common intercourse and daily conversation of the inhabitants of all countries.
This collection of Nevelet’s is the great culminating point in the history of the revival of the fame and reputation of Æsopian Fables. It is remarkable, also, as containing in its preface the germ of an idea, which has been since proved to have been correct by a strange chain of circumstances. Nevelet intimates an opinion, that a writer named Babrias would be found to be the veritable author of the existing form of Æsopian Fables. This intimation has since given rise to a series of inquiries, the knowledge of which is necessary, in the present day, to a full understanding of the true position of Æsop in connection with the writings that bear his name.
The history of Babrias is so strange and interesting, that it might not unfitly be enumerated among the curiosities of literature. He is generally supposed to have been a Greek of Asia Minor, of one of the Ionic Colonies, but the exact period in which he lived and wrote is yet unsettled. He is placed, by one critic,[14] as far back as the institution of the Achaian League, B. C. 250; by another as late as the Emperor Severus, who died A. D. 235; while others make him a contemporary with Phædrus in the time of Augustus. At whatever time he wrote his version of Æsop, by some strange accident it seems to have entirely disappeared, and to have been lost sight of. His name is mentioned by Avienus; by Suidas, a celebrated critic, at the close of the eleventh century, who gives in his lexicon several isolated verses of his version of the fables; and by John Tzetzes, a grammarian and poet of Constantinople, who lived during the latter half of the twelfth century. Nevelet, in the preface to the volume which we have described, points out that the Fables of Planudes could not be the work of Æsop, as they contain a reference in two places to “Holy monks,” and give a verse from the Epistle of St. James as an “Epimith” to one of the fables, and suggests Babrias as their author. Francis Vavassor,[15] a learned French jesuit, entered at greater length on this subject, and produced further proofs from internal evidence, from the use of the word Piræus in describing the harbour of Athens, a name which was not given till two hundred years after Æsop, and from the introduction of other modern words, that many of these fables must have been at least committed to writing posterior to the time of Æsop, and more boldly suggests Babrias as their author or collector. [16] These various references to Babrias induced Dr. Richard Bentley, at the close of the seventeenth century, to examine more minutely the existing versions of Æsop’s Fables, and he maintained that many of them could, with a slight change of words, be resolved into the Scazonic[17] iambics, in which Babrias is known to have written: and, with a greater freedom than the evidence then justified, he put forth, in behalf of Babrias, a claim to the exclusive authorship of these fables. Such a seemingly extravagant theory, thus roundly asserted, excited much opposition. Dr. Bentley[18] met with an able antagonist in a member of the University of Oxford, the Hon. Mr. Charles Boyle,[19] afterwards Earl of Orrery. Their letters and disputations on this subject, enlivened on both sides with much wit and learning, will ever bear a conspicuous place in the literary history of the seventeenth century. The arguments of Dr. Bentley were yet further defended a few years later by Mr. Thomas Tyrwhitt, a well-read scholar, who gave up high civil distinctions that he might devote himself the more unreservedly to literary pursuits. Mr. Tyrwhitt published, A. D. 1776, a Dissertation on Babrias, and a collection of his fables in choliambic metre found in a MS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Francesco de Furia, a learned Italian, contributed further testimony to the correctness of the supposition that Babrias had made a veritable collection of fables by printing from a MS. contained in the Vatican library several fables never before published. In the year 1844, however, new and unexpected light was thrown upon this subject. A veritable copy of Babrias was found in a manner as singular as were the MSS. of Quinctilian’s Institutes, and of Cicero’s Orations by Poggio in the monastery of St. Gall A. D. 1416. M. Menoides, at the suggestion of M. Villemain, Minister of Public Instruction to King Louis Philippe, had been entrusted with a commission to search for ancient MSS. , and in carrying out his instructions he found a MS. at the convent of St. Laura, on Mount Athos, which proved to be a copy of the long suspected and wished-for choliambic version of Babrias. This MS. was found to be divided into two books, the one containing a hundred and twenty-five, and the other ninety-five fables. This discovery attracted very general attention, not only as confirming, in a singular manner, the conjectures so boldly made by a long chain of critics, but as bringing to light valuable literary treasures tending to establish the reputation, and to confirm the antiquity and authenticity of the great mass of Æsopian Fable. The Fables thus recovered were soon published. They found a most worthy editor in the late distinguished Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and a translator equally qualified for his task, in the Reverend James Davies, M. A. , sometime a scholar of Lincoln College, Oxford, and himself a relation of their English editor. Thus, after an eclipse of many centuries, Babrias shines out as the earliest, and most reliable collector of veritable Æsopian Fables.
Having thus given a complete synopsis of the origin, descent, and history of these fables, it only remains to explain the reasons which have induced the Publishers to prepare a new edition of Æsop, and to state the grounds on which they hope to establish a claim for support and public approval in their undertaking. They boldly assert that the new light thrown upon these fables by the discovery of the metrical version by Babrias, renders a new translation an inevitable necessity. The two chief existing English versions of Æsop are those by Archdeacon Croxall, and by the late Rev. Thomas James, canon of Peterborough. The first of these deviates so very far from the text, that it degenerates into a parody. The fables are so padded, diluted, and altered, as to give very little idea to the reader either of the terseness or the meaning of the original. The second of these is an improvement on its predecessor, but Mr. James, either out of compliance with the wishes of the publishers, or in condescension to the taste prevalent some twenty years ago, has so freely introduced as the point of the fable conventional English sayings which are not sanctioned by the Greek, and which in many instances are scarcely equivalent to it, that his version frequently approaches a paraphrase rather than a translation.
The Publishers therefore ground their first claim for public approval on the necessity of a new translation. They trust further that their present work will have met that necessity in a satisfactory manner. They have sought to give as nearly a literal translation as possible of the Greek text; and they hope that if the reader should miss the smoothness and thoroughly English tone which characterized the previous version of these fables, he will be more than repaid by gaining a nearer approach to the spirit, thoughts, and (in some cases) to the epigrammatic terseness of the original. The Publishers trust to vindicate, on another ground, their claims to a share of public patronage. They have inserted a hundred new fables, and they have the satisfaction of knowing that this edition, on which they have spared no pains nor cost, will afford a larger choice, and greater variety, to the numerous and increasing circle of the admirers of Æsopian Fables. Whatever be the result of their labours, they will be content to have contributed towards promoting a wider acquaintance with fables, the wisdom, excellency, and wonderful suitableness of which to every condition of humanity has been attested and confirmed by the experience of so many generations; and which in all ages, amidst the ever changing fluctuations of human opinion, are adapted alike to amuse the young, and to instruct the thoughtful, and are well fitted to teach all who study them lessons useful for their guidance in every position of political, social, civil, or domestic life.
The Editor must claim the privilege of adding a few words on a matter personal to himself. He has already within the last few months been connected with one edition of Æsop, and it may seem strange that he should be willing to undertake the superintendence of another. His answer is, that the two works on which he has been engaged were totally distinct, and entirely independent of each other. The first was a request to furnish new morals and applications to a definite number of fables; Ihe other was a commission to add a large number of additional fables and to make a wholly new translation. The necessity of a new and improved translation the Editor then recognized, and would have willingly undertaken. It was a wish he had much at heart, and when the proposal was voluntarily made to him by the present Publishers, to undertake the task of a new translation of an enlarged number of Æsop’s Fables, he saw no reason for refusing the offer because of his prior discharge of a totally different design; and he resolved to comply with the request submitted to him, and to do his best towards the attainment of so desirable an object as a purer translation and more literal rendering of fables so justly celebrated.
The following are the sources from which the present translation has been prepared:—
Babrii Fabulæ Æsopeæ. George Cornewall Lewis. Oxford, 1846.