The Tale, the Parable, and the Fable are all common and popular modes
of conveying instruction. Each is distinguished by its own special
characteristics. The Tale consists simply in the narration of a story
either founded on facts, or created solely by the imagination, and not
necessarily associated with the teaching of any moral lesson. The
Parable is the designed use of language purposely intended to convey a
hidden and secret meaning other than that contained in the words
themselves; and which may or may not bear a special reference to the
hearer, or reader. The Fable partly agrees with, and partly differs
from both of these. It will contain, like the Tale, a short but real
narrative; it will seek, like the Parable, to convey a hidden meaning,
and that not so much by the use of language, as by the skilful
introduction of fictitious characters; and yet, unlike to either Tale
or Parable, it will ever keep in view, as its high prerogative, and
inseparable attribute, the great purpose of instruction, and will
necessarily seek to inculcate some moral maxim, social duty, or
political truth. The true Fable, if it rise to its high requirements,
ever aims at one great end and purpose—the representation of human
motive, and the improvement of human conduct, and yet it so conceals
its design under the disguise of fictitious characters, by clothing
with speech the animals of the field, the birds of the air, the trees
of the wood, or the beasts of the forest, that the reader shall receive
advice without perceiving the presence of the adviser. 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. The true fabulist, therefore, discharges a most
important function. He is neither a narrator, nor an allegorist. He is
a great teacher, a corrector of morals, a censor of vice, and a
commender of virtue. In this consists the superiority of the Fable over
the Tale or the Parable. The fabulist is to create a laugh, but yet,
under a merry guise, to convey instruction. Phædrus, the great imitator
of Æsop, plainly indicates this double purpose to be the true office of
the writer of fables.
Duplex libelli dos est: quod risum movet,
Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet.
The continual observance of this twofold aim creates the charm, and
accounts for the universal favour, of the fables of Æsop. “The fable,”
says Professor K. O. Mueller, “originated in Greece in an intentional
travestie of human affairs. 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; and (3), a careful
maintenance of the individual characteristics of the fictitious
personages introduced into it. The narration should relate to one
simple action, consistent with itself, and neither be overladen with a
multiplicity of details, nor distracted by a variety of circumstances.
The moral or lesson should be so plain, and so intimately interwoven
with, and so necessarily dependent on, the narration, that every reader
should be compelled to give to it the same undeniable interpretation.
The introduction of the animals or fictitious characters should be
marked with an unexceptionable care and attention to their natural
attributes, and to the qualities attributed to them by universal
popular consent. 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. His ‘Mountain
delivered of a Mouse,’ produces the moral of his fable in ridicule of
pompous pretenders; and his Crow, when she drops her cheese, lets fall,
as it were by accident, the strongest admonition against the power of
flattery. There is no need of a separate sentence to explain it; no
possibility of impressing it deeper, by that load we too often see of
accumulated reflections.”[3] 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.
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 connection 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. Thus, the fable of the “Hawk and the Nightingale” is related
by Hesiod;[4] the “Eagle wounded by an Arrow, winged with its own
feathers,” by Æschylus;[5] the “Fox avenging his wrongs on the Eagle,”
by Archilochus.[6] Many of them again are of later origin, and are to
be traced to the monks of the middle ages: and yet this collection,
though thus made up of fables both earlier and later than the era of
Æsop, rightfully bears his name, because he composed so large a number
(all framed in the same mould, and conformed to the same fashion, and
stamped with the same lineaments, image, and superscription) as to
secure to himself the right to be considered the father of Greek
fables, and the founder of this class of writing, which has ever since
borne his name, and has secured for him, through all succeeding ages,
the position of the first of moralists.[7]
The fables were in the first instance only narrated by Æsop, and for a
long time were handed down by the uncertain channel of oral tradition.
Socrates is mentioned by Plato[8] as having employed his time while in
prison, awaiting the return of the sacred ship from Delphos which was
to be the signal of his death, in turning some of these fables into
verse, but he thus versified only such as he remembered. Demetrius
Phalereus, a philosopher at Athens about 300 B.C., is said to have made
the first collection of these fables. Phædrus, a slave by birth or by
subsequent misfortunes, and admitted by Augustus to the honours of a
freedman, imitated many of these fables in Latin iambics about the
commencement of the Christian era. Aphthonius, a rhetorician of
Antioch, A.D. 315, wrote a treatise on, and converted into Latin prose,
some of these fables. This translation is the more worthy of notice, as
it illustrates a custom of common use, both in these and in later
times. 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 practice and to perfect
themselves thereby in style and rules of grammar, by making for
themselves new and various versions of the fables. Ausonius,[9] the
friend of the Emperor Valentinian, and the latest poet of eminence in
the Western Empire, has handed down some of these fables in verse,
which Julianus Titianus, a contemporary writer of no great name,
translated into prose. Avienus, also a contemporary of Ausonius, put
some of these fables into Latin elegiacs, which are given by Nevelet
(in a book we shall refer to hereafter), and are occasionally
incorporated with the editions of Phædrus.
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 splendors 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. Little is
known of his history. Planudes, however, was no mere recluse, shut up
in his monastery. He took an active part in public affairs. In 1327
A.D. he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Venice by the Emperor
Andronicus the Elder. This brought him into immediate contact with the
Western Patriarch, whose interests he henceforth advocated with so much
zeal as to bring on him suspicion and persecution from the rulers of
the Eastern Church. Planudes has been exposed to a two-fold accusation.
He is charged on the one hand with having had before him a copy of
Babrias (to whom we shall have occasion to refer at greater length in
the end of this Preface), and to have had the bad taste “to transpose,”
or to turn his poetical version into prose: and he is asserted, on the
other hand, never to have seen the Fables of Æsop at all, but to have
himself invented and made the fables which he palmed off under the name
of the famous Greek fabulist. The truth lies between these two
extremes. Planudes may have invented some few fables, or have inserted
some that were current in his day; but there is an abundance of
unanswerable internal evidence to prove that he had an acquaintance
with the veritable fables of Æsop, although the versions he had access
to were probably corrupt, as contained in the various translations and
disquisitional exercises of the rhetoricians and philosophers. His
collection is interesting and important, not only as the parent source
or foundation of the earlier printed versions of Æsop, but as the
direct channel of attracting to these fables the attention of the
learned.
The eventual re-introduction, however, of these Fables of Æsop to their
high place in the general literature of Christendom, is to be looked
for in the West rather than in the East. The calamities gradually
thickening round the Eastern Empire, and the fall of Constantinople,
1453 A.D. combined with other events to promote the rapid restoration
of learning in Italy; and with that recovery of learning the revival of
an interest in the Fables of Æsop is closely identified. These fables,
indeed, were among the first writings of an earlier antiquity that
attracted attention. They took their place beside the Holy Scriptures
and the ancient classic authors, in the minds of the great students of
that day. Lorenzo Valla, one of the most famous promoters of Italian
learning, not only translated into Latin the Iliad of Homer and the
Histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, but also the Fables of Æsop.
These fables, again, were among the books brought into an extended
circulation by the agency of the printing press. Bonus Accursius, as
early as 1475–1480, printed the collection of these fables, made by
Planudes, which, within five years afterwards, Caxton translated into
English, and printed at his press in Westminster Abbey, 1485.[10] It
must be mentioned also that the learning of this age has left permanent
traces of its influence on these fables,[11] by causing the
interpolation with them (as a κτῆμα εἰς ἰει) of some of those amusing
stories which were so frequently introduced into the public discourses
of the great preachers of those days, and of which specimens are yet to
be found in the extant sermons of Jean Raulin, Meffreth, and Gabriel
Barlette.[12] The publication of this era which most probably has
influenced these fables, is the “Liber Facetiarum,”[13] a book
consisting of a hundred jests and stories, by the celebrated Poggio
Bracciolini, published A.D. 1471, from which the two fables of the
“Miller, his Son, and the Ass,” and the “Fox and the Woodcutter,” are
undoubtedly selected.
The knowledge of these fables rapidly spread from Italy into Germany,
and their popularity was increased by the favour and sanction given to
them by the great fathers of the Reformation, who frequently used them
as vehicles for satire and protest against the tricks and abuses of the
Romish ecclesiastics. The zealous and renowned Camerarius, who took an
active part in the preparation of the Confession of Augsburgh, found
time, amidst his numerous avocations, to prepare a version for the
students in the University of Tübingen, in which he was a professor.
Martin Luther translated twenty of these fables, and was urged by
Melancthon to complete the whole; while Gottfried Arnold, the
celebrated Lutheran theologian, and librarian to Frederick I., king of
Prussia, mentions that the great Reformer valued the Fables of Æsop
next after the Holy Scriptures. In 1546 A.D. the second printed edition
of the collection of the Fables made by Planudes, was issued from the
printing-press of Robert Stephens, in which were inserted some
additional fables from a MS. in the Bibliothêque du Roy at Paris.
The greatest advance, however, towards a re-introduction of the Fables
of Æsop to a place in the literature of the world, was made in the
early part of the seventeenth century. In the year 1610, a learned
Swiss, Isaac Nicholas Nevelet, sent forth the third printed edition of
these fables, in a work entitled “Mythologia Æsopica.” This was a noble
effort to do honour to the great fabulist, and was the most perfect
collection of Æsopian fables ever yet published. It consisted, in
addition to the collection of fables given by Planudes and reprinted in
the various earlier editions, of one hundred and thirty-six new fables
(never before published) from MSS. in the Library of the Vatican, of
forty fables attributed to Aphthonius, and of forty-three from Babrias.
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. They have been translated into the greater number
of the languages both of Europe and of the East, and have been read,
and will be read, for generations, alike by Jew, Heathen, Mohammedan,
and Christian. 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.
This collection of Nevelet’s is the great culminating point in the
history of the revival of the fame and reputation of Æsopian Fables. It
is remarkable, also, as containing in its preface the germ of an idea,
which has been since proved to have been correct by a strange chain of
circumstances. Nevelet intimates an opinion, that a writer named
Babrias would be found to be the veritable author of the existing form
of Æsopian Fables. This intimation has since given rise to a series of
inquiries, the knowledge of which is necessary, in the present day, to
a full understanding of the true position of Æsop in connection with
the writings that bear his name.
The history of Babrias is so strange and interesting, that it might not
unfitly be enumerated among the curiosities of literature. He is
generally supposed to have been a Greek of Asia Minor, of one of the
Ionic Colonies, but the exact period in which he lived and wrote is yet
unsettled. He is placed, by one critic,[14] as far back as the
institution of the Achaian League, B.C. 250; by another as late as the
Emperor Severus, who died A.D. 235; while others make him a
contemporary with Phædrus in the time of Augustus. At whatever time he
wrote his version of Æsop, by some strange accident it seems to have
entirely disappeared, and to have been lost sight of. His name is
mentioned by Avienus; by Suidas, a celebrated critic, at the close of
the eleventh century, who gives in his lexicon several isolated verses
of his version of the fables; and by John Tzetzes, a grammarian and
poet of Constantinople, who lived during the latter half of the twelfth
century. Nevelet, in the preface to the volume which we have described,
points out that the Fables of Planudes could not be the work of Æsop,
as they contain a reference in two places to “Holy monks,” and give a
verse from the Epistle of St. James as an “Epimith” to one of the
fables, and suggests Babrias as their author. Francis Vavassor,[15] a
learned French jesuit, entered at greater length on this subject, and
produced further proofs from internal evidence, from the use of the
word Piræus in describing the harbour of Athens, a name which was not
given till two hundred years after Æsop, and from the introduction of
other modern words, that many of these fables must have been at least
committed to writing posterior to the time of Æsop, and more boldly
suggests Babrias as their author or collector.[16] These various
references to Babrias induced Dr. Richard Bentley, at the close of the
seventeenth century, to examine more minutely the existing versions of
Æsop’s Fables, and he maintained that many of them could, with a slight
change of words, be resolved into the Scazonic[17] iambics, in which
Babrias is known to have written: and, with a greater freedom than the
evidence then justified, he put forth, in behalf of Babrias, a claim to
the exclusive authorship of these fables. Such a seemingly extravagant
theory, thus roundly asserted, excited much opposition. Dr. Bentley[18]
met with an able antagonist in a member of the University of Oxford,
the Hon. Mr. Charles Boyle,[19] afterwards Earl of Orrery. 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.
Bentley were yet further defended a few years later by Mr. Thomas
Tyrwhitt, a well-read scholar, who gave up high civil distinctions that
he might devote himself the more unreservedly to literary pursuits. Mr.
Tyrwhitt published, A.D. 1776, a Dissertation on Babrias, and a
collection of his fables in choliambic metre found in a MS. in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford. Francesco de Furia, a learned Italian,
contributed further testimony to the correctness of the supposition
that Babrias had made a veritable collection of fables by printing from
a MS. contained in the Vatican library several fables never before
published. In the year 1844, however, new and unexpected light was
thrown upon this subject. A veritable copy of Babrias was found in a
manner as singular as were the MSS. of Quinctilian’s Institutes, and of
Cicero’s Orations by Poggio in the monastery of St. Gall A.D. 1416. M.
Menoides, at the suggestion of M. Villemain, Minister of Public
Instruction to King Louis Philippe, had been entrusted with a
commission to search for ancient MSS., and in carrying out his
instructions he found a MS. at the convent of St. Laura, on Mount
Athos, which proved to be a copy of the long suspected and wished-for
choliambic version of Babrias. This MS. was found to be divided into
two books, the one containing a hundred and twenty-five, and the other
ninety-five fables. This discovery attracted very general attention,
not only as confirming, in a singular manner, the conjectures so boldly
made by a long chain of critics, but as bringing to light valuable
literary treasures tending to establish the reputation, and to confirm
the antiquity and authenticity of the great mass of Æsopian Fable. The
Fables thus recovered were soon published. They found a most worthy
editor in the late distinguished Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and a
translator equally qualified for his task, in the Reverend James
Davies, M.A., sometime a scholar of Lincoln College, Oxford, and
himself a relation of their English editor. Thus, after an eclipse of
many centuries, Babrias shines out as the earliest, and most reliable
collector of veritable Æsopian Fables.
Having thus given a complete synopsis of the origin, descent, and
history of these fables, it only remains to explain the reasons which
have induced the Publishers to prepare a new edition of Æsop, and to
state the grounds on which they hope to establish a claim for support
and public approval in their undertaking. They boldly assert that the
new light thrown upon these fables by the discovery of the metrical
version by Babrias, renders a new translation an inevitable necessity.
The two chief existing English versions of Æsop are those by Archdeacon
Croxall, and by the late Rev. Thomas James, canon of Peterborough. The
first of these deviates so very far from the text, that it degenerates
into a parody. The fables are so padded, diluted, and altered, as to
give very little idea to the reader either of the terseness or the
meaning of the original. The second of these is an improvement on its
predecessor, but Mr. James, either out of compliance with the wishes of
the publishers, or in condescension to the taste prevalent some twenty
years ago, has so freely introduced as the point of the fable
conventional English sayings which are not sanctioned by the Greek, and
which in many instances are scarcely equivalent to it, that his version
frequently approaches a paraphrase rather than a translation.
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. The Publishers trust to
vindicate, on another ground, their claims to a share of public
patronage. They have inserted a hundred new fables, and they have the
satisfaction of knowing that this edition, on which they have spared no
pains nor cost, will afford a larger choice, and greater variety, to
the numerous and increasing circle of the admirers of Æsopian Fables.
Whatever be the result of their labours, they will be content to have
contributed towards promoting a wider acquaintance with fables, the
wisdom, excellency, and wonderful suitableness of which to every
condition of humanity has been attested and confirmed by the experience
of so many generations; and which in all ages, amidst the ever changing
fluctuations of human opinion, are adapted alike to amuse the young,
and to instruct the thoughtful, and are well fitted to teach all who
study them lessons useful for their guidance in every position of
political, social, civil, or domestic life.
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; Ihe other was a commission to add a large number of additional
fables and to make a wholly new translation. The necessity of a new and
improved translation the Editor then recognized, and would have
willingly undertaken. It was a wish he had much at heart, and when the
proposal was voluntarily made to him by the present Publishers, to
undertake the task of a new translation of an enlarged number of Æsop’s
Fables, he saw no reason for refusing the offer because of his prior
discharge of a totally different design; and he resolved to comply with
the request submitted to him, and to do his best towards the attainment
of so desirable an object as a purer translation and more literal
rendering of fables so justly celebrated.
The following are the sources from which the present translation has
been prepared:—
Babrii Fabulæ Æsopeæ. George Cornewall Lewis. Oxford, 1846.
Babrii Fabulæ Æsopeæ. E codice manuscripto partem secundam edidit.
George Cornewall Lewis. London: Parker, 1857.
Mythologica Æsopica. Opera et studia Isaaci Nicholai Neveleti.
Frankfort, 1610.
Fabulæ Æsopiacæ, quales ante Planudem ferebantur cura et studio
Francisci de Furia. Lipsiæ, 1810.