Fables and Fabulists: Ancient and Modern

le that

on seems

ring Time A

civilization. In these later days fables are generally assumed to be more for the delectation of children than adults. This change of auditory need not be regretted; it has i

uality,' and reprobated their employment in the instruction of youth. 'Fables,' says Rousseau, 'may amuse men, but the truth must be told to children.' His animadversion had special reference to

uding the mythical stories of Hesiod and Homer from the curriculum of his 'Republic'-that perfect commonwealth, in depicting which he lavished all the resources

n the prologue to

play to fo

in the caus

also was just the very antipodes

he recommends this with a view to initiating them in the rudiments of the art of speaking; but he would not have inculcated the use

mistaken view that the influence of fables on the juvenile mind was objectionable. Cowper, who was no mean writer of fables himself, with his clear common sense, bro

ask Jean Ja

confabula

hat they wer

ourse, at le

child, who kn

terpret by

f a cock

most uncommo

nd pondered in all ages, and by thousands whom no other class of literature could attract. The story and its moral (in the ?sopian fable at least) are obv

is the schoolmaster. There is no class of the community that has not come under its sway. It has penetrated to the highest stratum of society equally w

details are not always easily grasped and remembered; but the true fable is a story in miniat

er the tendency of this is not rather to encourage dissimulation in certain ill-constituted minds, than

n from his auditors by his eloquence should be deemed the victor. At a certain appointed time a great assembly of animals attended the trial, and the elephant was allowed to speak first. He with eloquence spoke of the high importance of eve

nd hairbreadth escapes, the success of his cunning, and his adroit contrivances to extricate himself from harm-all which so delighted the assembly, that the elephant was soon left, in the midst of his

ather than good, inasmuch as it exhibits the triumph of duplicity and the defeat of wisdom. True, the author of

own opinion, and heard the admonition as an irksome duty, but still with little inclination to undergo the difficult task of amendment. But when the fox began, all was joy; the innocent felt all the gratification which proceeds from the consciousness of superiority, and the guilty to find their vices and follies treate

doubted whether our sympathies are not with the fox rather than with the elephant. We feel that the latter, with all his wisdom

eproof of the vain and silly bird, deceived by flattering words, till, in attempting to sing, she drops into the mouth of the fox the savoury morsel she

eech upon the latter in the fable. In the higher reason and its resultant effects they differ fundamentally; mere animals are wanting discourse of reason, but the purely animal passions of cunning, anger, hatred, and even revenge and

hadow; The Mountain in Labour; The Fox without a Tail; The Satyr and the Man, who blew hot and cold with the same breath, and others. It is safe to assert that nothing in literature has been more quoted than the fables named. We could not afford to lose them; their

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of Oratory,' bo

ing Time A