MODERN FABULISTS: DODSLEY, NORTHCOTE.
'A tale may find him who a sermon flies.'
GEORGE HERBERT.
Robert Dodsley, born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in 1703, died at
Durham, December 25, 1764, buried in the abbey churchyard there, author
of 'The Economy of Human Life' and other estimable works, compiled a
volume of fables (1761). This was the favourite collection in this
country at the end of last and the beginning of the present century.
The contents of the volume are in three parts, and comprise 'Ancient
Fables,' 'Modern Fables,' and 'Fables Newly Invented.' The first two
divisions of the volume are Æsopian in character. The fables contained
in the last were not all written by Dodsley, some of them being
contributed, as he states in his preface, 'by authors with whom it is
an honour to be connected, and who having condescended to favour him
with their assistance, have given him an opportunity of making some
atonement for his own defects.' It is to be regretted that he did not
give the names of the authors referred to. The work contains a life
of Æsop 'by a learned friend' (no name given),[60] and an excellent,
though somewhat pedantic, 'Essay on Fable.'
The following are three original fables from Dodsley's collection:
'_The Miser and the Magpie._--As a miser sat at his desk counting over
his heaps of gold, a magpie eloped from his cage, picked up a guinea,
and hopped away with it. The miser, who never failed to count his money
over a second time, immediately missed the piece, and rising up from
his seat in the utmost consternation, observed the felon hiding it
in a crevice of the floor. "And art thou," cried he, "that worst of
thieves, who hast robbed me of my gold without the plea of necessity,
and without regard to its proper use? But thy life shall atone for
so preposterous a villainy." "Soft words, good master!" quoth the
magpie. "Have I, then, injured you in any other sense than you defraud
the public? And am I not using your money in the same manner you do
yourself? If I must lose my life for hiding a single guinea, what do
you, I pray, deserve, who secrete so many thousands?"'
'_The Toad and the Ephemeron._--As some workmen were digging in a
mountain of Scythia, they discerned a toad of enormous size in the
midst of a solid rock. They were very much surprised at so uncommon an
appearance, and the more they considered the circumstances of it, the
more their wonder increased. It was hard to conceive by what means the
creature had preserved life and received nourishment in so narrow a
prison, and still more difficult to account for his birth and existence
in a place so totally inaccessible to all of his species. They could
conclude no other than that he was formed together with the rock in
which he had been bred, and was coeval with the mountain itself. While
they were pursuing these speculations, the toad sat swelling and
bloating till he was ready to burst with pride and self-importance,
to which at last he thus gave vent: "Yes," says he, "you behold in me
a specimen of the antediluvian race of animals. I was begotten before
the flood; and who is there among the present upstart race of mortals
that shall dare to contend with me in nobility of birth or dignity of
character?" An ephemeron, sprung that morning from the river Hypanis,
as he was flying about from place to place, chanced to be present, and
observed all that passed with great attention and curiosity. "Vain
boaster," says he, "what foundation hast thou for pride, either in thy
descent, merely because it is ancient, or thy life, because it hath
been long? What good qualities hast thou received from thy ancestors?
Insignificant even to thyself, as well as useless to others, thou
art almost as insensible as the block in which thou wast bred. Even
I, that had my birth only from the scum of the neighbouring river,
at the rising of this day's sun, and who shall die at its setting,
have more reason to applaud my condition than thou hast to be proud
of thine. I have enjoyed the warmth of the sun, the light of the day,
and the purity of the air; I have flown from stream to stream, from
tree to tree, and from the plain to the mountain; I have provided for
posterity, and shall leave behind me a numerous offspring to people
the next age of to-morrow; in short, I have fulfilled all the ends of
my being, and I have been happy. My whole life, 'tis true, is but of
twelve hours, but even one hour of it is to be preferred to a thousand
years of mere existence, which have been spent, like thine, in sloth,
ignorance and stupidity."'
'_The Bee and the Spider._--On the leaves and flowers of the same
shrub, a spider and a bee pursued their several occupations, the one
covering her thighs with honey, the other distending his bag with
poison. The spider, as he glanced his eye obliquely at the bee, was
ruminating with spleen on the superiority of her productions. "And how
happens it," said he, in a peevish tone, "that I am able to collect
nothing but poison from the selfsame plant that supplies thee with
honey? My pains and industry are not less than thine; in those respects
we are each indefatigable." "It proceeds only," replied the bee, "from
the different disposition of our nature; mine gives a pleasing flavour
to everything I touch, whereas thine converts to poison what by a
different process had been the purest honey."'
James Northcote, R.A., the indefatigable painter, who, when a youth,
enjoyed the friendship of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was occasionally one
of the company at his hospitable table, along with Johnson, Goldsmith,
Burke, Garrick and Boswell, published two volumes of original and
selected fables in 1828-33, when he was eighty-two years of age. When a
boy, living at Plymouth, where he was born on October 22, 1746, he took
pleasure in copying the pictures from an edition of Æsop's fables. The
memory of these clung to him through life, and, as occasion offered,
he occupied himself in composing apologues in imitation of those with
which he was familiar in his early years.
The diction of Northcote's fables is admirable. They are in the
choicest phraseology, both in their verse and prose, for he practised
both forms of composition, though chiefly the latter. Neither crisp nor
brilliant, they are now and again lighted up with scintillations of
humour. His applications are delivered with grave solemnity befitting a
judge or a philosopher--not to say a bore; and in many instances they
extend to three or four times the length of the fable itself.
Northcote died in London at the ripe age of eighty-five, and was buried
beneath the New Church of St. Marylebone.
Perhaps his best fables are _The Jay and the Owl_, _Echo and the
Parrot_, _Stone Broth_, and _The Trooper and his Armour_. None of
Northcote's fables have become popular with the multitude, though
many of them are good examples of this class of composition. We give
the last-named piece as a specimen of his work as a fabulist. The
application is well conceived, but it is scarcely indicated in the
fable:
'A trooper, in the time of battle, picked up the shoe of a horse that
lay in his way, and quickly by a cord suspended it from his neck. Soon
after, in a skirmish with the enemy, a shot struck exactly on the said
horseshoe and saved his life,[61] as it fell harmless to the ground.
"Well done," said the trooper, "I see that a very little armour is
sufficient when it is well placed."
'Application: Although the trooper's good luck with his bit of armour
may appear to be the effect of chance, yet certain it is that prudent
persons are always prepared to receive good fortune, or may be said to
meet it half-way, turning every accident if possible to good, which
gives an appearance as if they were the favourites of fortune; whilst
the thoughtless and improvident, on the contrary, often neglect to
embrace the very blessings which chance throws in their way, and then
survey with envy those who prosper by their careful and judicious
conduct, and blame their partial or hard fortune for all those
privations and sufferings which their mismanagement alone has brought
upon themselves.'
FOOTNOTES:
[60] It has been suggested, that Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith were the
'authors,' and Goldsmith the 'learned friend.' See the preface by Edwin
Pearson to the 1871 edition, of Bewick's 'Select Fables of Æsop.'
[61] Northcote's grammar is at fault here.