attr. Æsop

“ 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 practise and to perfect themselves thereby in style and rules of grammar, by making for themselves new and various versions of the fables. ”

“ 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 splendours 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 connexion 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. ”

“ 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; the other was a commission to add a large number of additional fables and to make a wholly new translation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." [1]
The construction of a fable involves a minute attention to (1) , the narration itself; (2) , the deduction of the moral ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Paris, 1820) , gives additional arguments in confirmation of the opinions of his learned predecessors, Nevelet and Vavassor. ↑ Scazonic, or halting, iambics; a choliambic (a lame, halting iambic) differs from the iambic Senarius in always having a spondee or trochee for its last foot; the fifth foot, to avoid shortness of metre, being generally an iambic. See Fables of Babrias, translated by Rev. James Davies. Lockwood, 1860. Preface, p. 27. ↑ See Dr. Bentley's Dissertations upon the Epistles of Phalaris. ↑ Dr. Bentley's Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris, and Fables of Æsop examined. ”

“ 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. ”