Fables and Fabulists: Ancient and Modern

A fable is generally a fiction, as has already been said. It is a singular paradox, however, that nothing is truer than a good fable. True to intuition, true to nature, true to fact. The great virtue of fables consists in this quality of truthfulness, and their enduring life and popularity are corroboration of

Pictures illustrating fables are a feature that tends to enhance their attractiveness and value, and the ablest artists have employed their pencils in the work. It is sufficient to mention Bewick and his pupils, whose illustrations are greatly prized. S. Howitt's etchings of animals in illustration of the fabulists (1811). Northcote's original volu

Humour in the fable is the gilding of the pill. It is like the effervescing quality in champagne, the subtle flavour in old port.

The 'Panca Tantra' is a collection of Hindoo fables, the supposed author of which was Vishnu Sarman, and this is believed to be the source of 'The Fables of Pilpay' or Bidpaī, which are undoubtedly of Indian origin. The transformation which these latter have experienced in their progress down the ages, chiefly by reason of their having been transla

It is a remarkable circumstance in connection with the literature of fable, that those who have excelled in it are comparatively few. The principal names that occur to us are Æsop, La Fontaine, Gay, Lessing, Krilof; 'the rest are all but leather or prunello,' if we except a few rare examples from Northcote and Cowper. The composition of fables seem

when free speech was a perilous exercise, and when to declaim against vice and folly was to court personal risk, the fable was invented, or resorted to, by the moralist as a circuitous method of achieving the end he desired to reach—the

The very indirectness of the fable had the effect of making the sinner his own accuser. Whom the cap fitted was at liberty to don it.

Immediately before his execution he delivered to his persecutors the fable of The Eagle and the Beetle,[21] by which he warned them that even the weak may procure vengeance against the strong for injuries inflicted. The warning was unheeded by his murderers. The shameful sentence was carried out, and so Æsop died, according to Eusebius, in the four

'The Shepherd and the Nightingale.—"Sing to me, dearest nightingale," said a shepherd to the silent songstress one beautiful spring evening. '"Alas!" said the nightingale, "the frogs make so much noise that I have no inclination to sing. Do you not hear them?" '"Undoubtedly I hear them," replied the shepherd,