Roger L'Estrange, Fables of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists… (1692)
“ For when they have no longer a Power to do Mischief, the Will yet Remains. Here’s a Forc’d Moral for a Forc'd Fable: For the Fancy of it is against Nature, and the Fiction does not consist with it self. Now to My Thinking This Application of it lyes the Fairer of the Two, i, e. That the Gratitude of the Eagle, in bringing the Hare to her Master, may serve to shew us, that the Wildest and Fiercest of Creatures may be Sweetn’d, and Reclaim’d by Benefits. ”
