Bernard Mandeville

“ I have confin'd my self to strict Numbers, and endeavour'd to make 'em free and natural; if they prove otherwise, I'm sorry for it. Two of the Fables are of my own Invention; but I am so far from loving 'em the better, that I think they are the worst in the Pack: And therefore in good Manners to my self I conceal their Names. Find 'em out, and welcome. I could wish to have furnish'd you with something more worthy your precious time: But as you'll find nothing very Instructive, so there's little to puzzle your Brain. ”

“ Whatever the intentions of the poet, it seems to be the property of the Hudibrastic couplet inevitably to denigrate its subject. While it is probable that Dennis intended his fables to be clever and modish, and nothing more, they turn out to be travesties of La Fontaine. ”

“ Since Mandeville would give so much space in The Fable of the Bees to his analysis of pride, [20] it is appropriate that pride engaged his attention in this early book of fables. "The Frog" is notable chiefly because Mandeville lengthened La Fontaine's moral of four lines to fourteen in order to glance at the social and economic implications of pride:
So full of Pride is every Age! ”

“ Miscellanies in Verse and Prose (1693) was a curious volume of Pindaric odes, imitations of Horace, Juvenal, and Boileau, and letters that the young Dennis had written during his travels in France and Italy, including the well-known account of the "delightful horrour" and "terrible Joy" that he had experienced while crossing the Alps; there were, finally, ten fables in octosyllabic couplets—all of them translations from La Fontaine. ”

“ The characterizing details of some of the great fables, however, disappear in Mandeville's English. Although "The Plague among the Beasts" is faithful to the original, the tragic overtones of "Les Animaux malade de la Peste" are not recaptured; they are perhaps unrecapturable. The ironies of La Fontaine's characterization are ignored: the lion's "L'histoire nous apprend," for instance, by which the unscrupulous politician poses as a deep-browed savant; the description of the other beasts as "petits saints," and of the wolf who condemns the innocent ass as "quelque peu clerc"—these disappear. ”

“ With its jog-trot meter, insinuating swiftness, and jarring double and triple rhymes, the Hudibrastic couplet was ideally suited to the mockery performed by low burlesque. All burlesque works by an incongruity between subject and style; the particular function of low burlesque is to debase an elevated subject by treating it in an undignified manner. [4] So it was that Butler, with the assistance of a crazy style, had exploited the gap between the high pretensions and the ridiculous performances of a Puritan knight and his squire. ”

“ But of the hordes of scribblers that followed in the wake of Hudibras, scarcely any possessed Butler's sense of satiric propriety. Where his success had been founded on the discrepancy between subject and style that is essential to burlesque, they employed his style with no regard for its suitability to their subjects. Ordinary narrative poems with no satiric intent were decked in Hudibrastic couplets for the sake of a superficial cleverness. [5] Dennis followed the fashion. His ten verse-fables are filled with outrageous Butlerisms ”

“ A word about Dennis's fables may help to put Mandeville's into perspective.
Their resemblance to the French originals is slight. Not La Fontaine, but Samuel Butler, presides over Dennis's fables; indeed, when Dennis discusses them in the Preface to Miscellanies, he fails to mention La Fontaine, although he devotes a large proportion of his remarks to a defense of Butler's burlesque verse, which he acknowledges as his model. [2] Many people were writing Hudibrastics in the 1680's and 1690's: the propensity of Butler's couplet for arousing laughter had made it a fad. ”

“ A Merchant swell'd with haughtiness,
Looks ten times bigger than he is;
Buys all, and draws upon his Friend,
As if his Credit had no end; [Pg x]
At length he strains with so much Force,
Till, like the Frog, he bursts in course,
And, by his empty Skin you find,
That he was only fill'd with Wind. [21]
Two of the 39 fables in the collection are original productions: "The Carp" and "The Owl and the Nightingale." Both poems focus upon pride. "The Carp" tells the story of a young and inexperienced English carp who swims into foreign waters to learn "manners and arts." ”

“ Mandeville subjects the nightingale to a brief psychological analysis and looks on his failure with a blend of detached pity and satiric mordancy; he strips away the sophisticated defenses that hide the basic emotions, recommending honesty with oneself and with others; he identifies the personal interests of the members of society with the interests of the state. It remains to point out that neither here nor elsewhere in this collection does Mandeville assert that private vices are public benefits.
Washington University
[Pg xii]
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1. ”

“ Mandeville retains the outlines of the original but treats the details perfunctorily, as though he had given up trying to re-create the comic terror of La Fontaine's little masterpiece. "A drunkard" is not an adequate equivalent for "un suppôt de Bacchus"; "very drunk" is not the same as "plein du jus de la treille"; entire sentences are left out, such as "Là les vapeurs du vin nouveau / Cuvèrent à loisir"; and the ending of the poem suffers from the alteration of details and from an awkward inversion for the sake of a rhyme ”

“ To such a state, no Man can know it,
But a Musician or a Poet.... [12]
"The Lyon and the Gnat" is fairly close to its original in length (46 lines to La Fontaine's 39) and in spirit; but Mandeville does not improve his fable by supplying the adjective "silly" ("silly Spider") where La Fontaine had written "une araignée," or by inserting a line about the gnat's pride, "Puffed up and blinded with his glory," where La Fontaine expected his readers to discern the gnat's pride for themselves. ”

“ Dennis had inserted these lines in the pseudo-erudite Butlerian manner:
The two large Buckets which were there,
Like Pollux and like Castor were.
How so pray? For 'tis devilish odd,
To liken a Bucket to a God;
When one came up from towards the Center,
That in our upper world strait went there.
These drew up turns the liquid Element,
Into one got Renard, and towards Hell he went. [9]
Nearly all Mandeville's translations are, like "The Fox and Wolf," longer than their originals. ”

“ The other poem, "The Owl and the Nightingale" (the longest poem in the collection, at 181 lines) , also concerns pride. The Eagle, having looked unsuccessfully among the birds of his court for a singing night-watchman, sends out a general letter. The nightingale realizes with excitement that he will easily win the competition; but he coyly refuses to go to court until sent for, makes elaborate self-depreciations in the eagle's presence, and hold out, obviously, for more recognition and reward. While he delays, an owl has been persuaded by friends to try for the position and has a hearing. ”

“ The wolf attacks:
Grizz'l [the Ass] at a distance
Hears him, and asks the Dog's assistance;
But he don't budge, and serves him right;
Says he, I never us'd to fight
Without a cause for fighting's sake.... [14]
[Pg vii]
The italicized words, entirely added by Mandeville, apparently represent his conviction that the irony of La Fontaine's fable would be intensified by the dog's sardonic comment and the translator's "serves him right." Other examples might be cited of Mandeville's explicitness. ”

“ Mandeville's octosyllabic line is less capacious, as a rule, than La Fontaine's flexible one. Thus, even though "The Wolf and the Lamb" moves with a speed comparable to "Le Loup et l'Agneau," Mandeville takes 34 lines to La Fontaine's 29. [10] More often, Mandeville's translations are longer than their originals because Mandeville is not able to match La Fontaine's wit and point. "La Lice et sa Compagne," an exercise in light-footed elegance, begins this way ”

“ Another translation that sticks close to the French in its sense is "The Dog and the Ass," in which an ass refuses food to a hungry dog and is in turn abandoned by the dog and killed by a hungry wolf. Mandeville adds the judgment that La Fontaine excluded. ”

“ Perhaps it is Mandeville's plainspokenness, his determination to say all that must be said, which causes him to state explicitly things that La Fontaine left implicit. "La Cigale et la Fourmi," contrasting an irresponsible grasshopper and a provident ant, implies but subdues a contrast between art and life. ”

“ Nay, what is worse, every Body thinks a Man should be more lavish here of his Skill and Learning, than anywhere else: Here they would have him shew his Airs, and therefore most Authors adorn their Prefaces, as if they were triumphal Arches ”

“ Dennis translating La Fontaine resembles a bull in a china shop.
While Mandeville is no gazelle either, he has better manners than Dennis. The Butlerisms are still present, but they are not everywhere and they are not so grotesque. The difference between Dennis and Mandeville may be merely the interval of ten years, during which the influence of Butler had faded ”

“ William Andrews Clark Memorial Library: University of California, Los Angeles The Augustan Reprint Society General Editors: Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles; Maximillian E. Novak, University
of California, Los Angeles; Lawrence Clark Powell, Wm. Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Corresponding Secretary: Mrs. Edna C. Davis, Wm. Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The Society's purpose is to publish reprints (usually facsimile reproductions) of rare seventeenth and eighteenth century works. All income of the Society is devoted to defraying costs of publication and mailing. ”

“ De Satan, reprit-elle; et je porte à manger
A ceux qu'enclôt la tombe noire."
Le mari repart, sans songer:
"Tu ne leur portes point à boire?" [16]
[Pg viii]
Of the many differences between La Fontaine and Mandeville, those noticed up to this point may be blamed on the latter's incapacity. Some of the other changes may be partially justified on the grounds that through them Mandeville was deliberately trying to alter the tone of the poem, to give it an earthiness of spirit congruent with his temperament. ”

“ A more probable explanation for the difference is that, whereas Dennis was an avowed imitator of Butler who happened to be translating the Fables of La Fontaine, Mandeville seems to have been in this work chiefly a translator of La Fontaine who was, incidentally, writing at a time when the impulse to copy Butler's superficial qualities was almost irresistible. The total number of Hudibrastic couplets in Aesop Dress'd comes to only a handful:
They'll give you a hundred Niceties,
As Chicken Bones, boyl'd Loins of Mutton,
As good as ever Tooth was put in.... ”

“ The latter, being too expensive, are pretty well out of date, in an Age, where there are abundance of fine things to be bought besides Books. But the first by wicked Custom, are become so necessary, that a Volume would look as defective without one, as if it wanted the very Title Page. ”

“ The Preface to Miscellanies in Verse and Prose is reprinted in Edward Niles Hooker's edition of The Critical Works of John Dennis, I (Baltimore, 1939) , 6-10.
3. Richmond P. Bond, English Burlesque Poetry, 1700-1750 (Cambridge, Mass., 1932) , p. 147.
4. Bond, pp. 3-5.
5. Bond, p. 153, cites several narrative poems of this sort.
6. From these fables in the 1693 Miscellanies: "The Wolf and the Horse," pp. 72-83 (the first two excerpts) ; "The Lyon and the Ass a Hunting," pp. 92-95; "The Wolf and the Crane," pp. ”

“ British and European subscribers should address B. H. Blackwell, Broad Street, Oxford, England. Copies of back issues in print may be obtained from the Corresponding Secretary.
PUBLICATIONS FOR 1965-1966
Thomas Traherne, Meditations on the Six Days of the Creation (1717) . Introduction by George Robert Guffey.
Charles Macklin, The Covent Garden Theatre [manuscript] (1752) . Introduction by Jean B. Kern.
Roger L'Estrange, Citt and Bumpkin (1680) . Introduction by B. J. Rahn.
Daniel Defoe and Others, Accounts of the Apparition of Mrs. Veal (ca. 1705) . Introduction by Manuel Schonhorn. ”