Fables and Fabulists: Ancient and Modern

'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.'

CHAPTER XIV

MODERN FABULISTS: LESSING, YRIARTE, KRILOF

'Great thoughts, great feelings, come to themLike instincts, unawares.'R. M. Milnes.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, born January 22, 1729, at Kamenz, died February 15, 1781, aged fifty-two years, was a distinguished German scholar, poet and dramatist. As a fabulist, Lessing is noted for epigrammatic point rather than humour, though he is by no means lacking in the latter characteristic. He is perhaps the most original writer of fables amongst the moderns. Sagacious, wise, witty, his apologues (1759) have nothing superfluous about them. They are nearly all brief, pithy, and very much to the point. In these respects they follow the Æsopian model more than those of any other modern writer. The following are good examples of his style:

'Æsop and the Ass.– "The next time you write a fable about me," said the donkey to Æsop, "make me say something wise and sensible."

'"Something sensible from you!" exclaimed Æsop; "what would the world think? People would call you the sage, and me the donkey!"

'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, "but it is owing to your silence."

'Solomon's Ghost.– A venerable old man, despite his years and the heat of the day, was ploughing his field with his own hand, and sowing the grain in the willing earth, in anticipation of the harvest it would produce.

'Suddenly, beneath the deep shadow of a spreading oak, a divine apparition stood before him! The old man was seized with affright.

'"I am Solomon," said the phantom encouragingly, "what dost thou here, old friend?"

'"If thou art Solomon," said the owner of the field, "how canst thou ask? In my youth I learnt from the ant to be industrious and to accumulate wealth. That which I then learnt I now practise."

'"Thou hast learnt but half of thy lesson," pursued the spirit. "Go once more to the ant, and she will teach thee to rest in the winter of thy existence, and enjoy what thou hast earned."'

Don Tomas de Yriarte, or Iriarte, a Spanish fabulist of the eighteenth century, born at Teneriffe in 1750, is held in much esteem by cultured readers in Spain. His 'Fabulas Literarias,' or Literary Fables (1782), sixty-seven in all, and mostly original, were written with a view to inculcating literary truths. In other words, their object was to praise or censure literary work according to its supposed deserts. Their moral or application is therefore limited in scope; they do not touch human nature as a whole, and being thus restricted in their range, they are deficient in general interest and value. Obviously, however, it is possible to give a wider application to the truths enforced in the apologues, and this is sometimes done by omitting the special moral supplied by the writer. Yriarte's versification is graceful and sprightly, 'combining the exquisite simplicity of the old Spanish romances and songs with the true spirit of Æsopian fable;'62 some of them are composed in the redondilla measure much affected by the lyrical poets of Spain, and please by their style quite as much as by their intrinsic merits. Yriarte died in 1791. We select the piece which follows to illustrate his skill as a fabulist:

'The Two Thrushes'A sage old thrush was once disciplingHis grandson thrush, a hair-brained stripling,In the purveying art. He knew,He said, where vines in plenty grew,Whose fruit delicious when he'd comeHe might attack ad libitum."Ha!" said the young one, "where's this vine?Let's see this fruit you think so fine.""Come then, my child, your fortune's great; youCan't conceive what feasts await you!"He said, and gliding through the airThey reached a vine, and halted there.Soon as the grapes the youngster spied,"Is this the fruit you praise?" he cried;"Why, an old bird, sir, as you are,Should judge, I think, more wisely farThan to admire, or hold as good,Such half-grown, small, and worthless food.Come, see a fruit which I possessIn yonder garden; you'll confess,When you behold it, that it isBigger and better far than this.""I'll go," he said; "but ere I seeThis fruit of yours, whate'er it be,I'm sure it is not worth a stoneOr grape-skin from my vines alone."They reached the spot the thrushlet named,And he triumphantly exclaimed:"Show me the fruit to equal mine!A size so great, a shape so fine;What luxury, however rare,Can e'en your grapes with this compare?"The old bird stared, as well he might,For lo! a pumpkin met his sight.Now, that a thrush should take this fancyWithout much marvelling I can see;But it is truly monstrous whenMen, who are held as learned men,All books, whatever they be, despiseUnless of largest bulk and size.A book is great, if good at all;If bad, it cannot be too small.'

Ivan Andreivitch Krilof, or Krilov, the Russian, who was born in Moscow, February 2, 1768, O.S., and died in St. Petersburg on November 9, 1844, aged seventy-six years, was one of the greatest original fabulists of modern times. One writer (an Englishman) goes so far as to claim for him the position of 'the crowned King of the fabulists of all languages.' His published fables amount altogether to two hundred and two, of which thirty-five only are borrowed, the rest being original. They are in rhymed verse in the Russian, and an English translation, also in verse, and with a close adherence to the text in the original, has been made by Mr. J. Henry Harrison.63 An excellent prose translation, with a life of Krilof, by the late Mr. W. R. S. Ralston, M.A., was published in 1868.64

Krilof is characterized by rich common sense and sound judgment, a rare vein of satire and an excellent humour. He indeed brims over with sarcastic humour. A kind of rugged directness of language, well calculated to undermine the shams and abuses at which he aimed, also distinguishes his apologues. He deserves to be better known in this country.

Krilof was a journalist, and wrote a number of dramas, both in tragedy and comedy, before turning his attention to fables. It is on these latter that his claim to distinction rests. He rose to high eminence in his native country, where his name is a household word; he was patronized by royalty, and beloved by the common people, and at his death a monument to his memory was erected in the Summer Garden at St. Petersburg.

The following translation of Krilof's beautiful fable of The Leaves and the Roots is from a brilliant article in Fraser's Magazine for February, 1839:

''Twas on a sunny summer day,Exulting in the flickering shadeThey cast athwart the greensward glade,The leaves, a fluttering host,Thus 'gan their worth to boast,And to each other say:"Is it not weThat deck the tree —Its stem and branches all arrayIn verdant pomp and vigorous grace?Deprived of us, how altered were their case!Is it not we who form the grateful screenOf foliage and luxuriant green,Welcome to traveller and to swain?Yes! we may be deeméd vain,But we it is whose charms inviteYouths and maidens to the grove;And we it is, too, who at nightShelter in her retired alcoveThe songstress of the woods, whose strainWafts music over dale and plain!In us the zephyrs most rejoice:Our emerald beauty to caress,On silken wings they fondly press!""Most true; but yetYou ought not to forgetWe too exist," replied a voiceThat issued from the earth;"We sure possess some little worth.""And who are ye? where do ye grow?""Buried are we here below,Deep in the ground. 'Tis we who nourishThe stem and you, and make you flourish:For understand, we are the rootsFrom whom the tree itself upshoots:'Tis we by whom you thrive —From whom your beauty ye derive;Unlike to you, we are not fair,Nor dwell we in the upper air;Yet do we not, like you, decay —Winter tears us not away.Ye fall, yet still remains the tree;But should it chance that weOnce cease to live, adieuBoth to the tree, fair leaves, and you!"'

As an example of his ironical humour we give a prose translation, by Mr. Ralston, of his fable The Geese:

'A peasant, with a long rod in his hand, was driving some geese to a town where they were to be sold; and, to tell the truth, he did not treat them over-politely. In hopes of making a good bargain, he was hastening on so as not to lose the market-day (and when gain is concerned, geese and men alike are apt to suffer). I do not blame the peasant; but the geese talked about him in a different spirit, and, whenever they met any passers-by, abused him to them in such terms as these:

'"Is it possible to find any geese more unfortunate than we are? This moujik65 harasses us so terribly, and chases us about just as if we were common geese. The ignoramus does not know that he ought to pay us reverence, seeing that we are the noble descendants of those geese to whom Rome was once indebted for her salvation, and in whose honour even feast-days were specially appointed there."

'"And do you want to have honour paid you on that account?" a passer-by asked them.

'"Why, our ancestors – "

'"I know that – I have read all about it; but I want to know this: of what use have you been yourselves?"

'"Why, our ancestors saved Rome!"

'"Quite so; but what have you done?"

'"We? Nothing."

'"Then, what merit is there in you? Let your ancestors rest in peace – they justly received honourable reward; but you, my friends, are only fit to be roasted!"'

Krilof concludes: 'It would be easy to make this fable still more intelligible; but I am afraid of irritating the geese.'

A story, rather than a fable, is The Man with Three Wives, and the moral underlying it is in the author's peculiar vein. This is translated from the original by Mr. J. H. Harrison:

'A certain vanquisher of women's hearts,While still his first wife was alive and well,Married a second, and a third. They tellThe king the scandal of such shameless arts,And, as his majesty abhorred all vice,Given himself to self-denial,He gave the order in a triceTo bring the bigamist to trial,And such a punishment invent, that noneShould evermore dare do what he had done."And if the punishment to me should seem too small,Around their table will I hang the judges all."This to the judges seemed no joke:The cold sweat ran along each spine.Three days and nights they sit, but can't divineWhat punishment will best such lawless license choke.Thousands of punishments there are; but then,As all men of experience know,They cannot keep from evil evil men.This time kind Providence did help them though,And when the culprit came before the court,This was his sentence short:To give him back his three wives all together.The people wondered much at this decision,And thought the judges' lives hung by a feather;But three days had not passed beforeThe bigamist, behind his door,Himself hung to a peg with great precision:And then the sentence wrought on all great fear,And much the morals of the kingdom steadied,For from that time its annalists are clearThat no man in it more has three wives wedded.'

CHAPTER XV

OTHER AND OCCASIONAL FABULISTS

'With wisdom fraught,Not such as books, but such as Nature taught.'Waller.

Sir Roger L'Estrange (1616-1704) was a rabid Jacobite, journalist, and pamphleteer, and during a long life spent in fierce political conflict, in which, at times, he bore a far from estimable part, found time to translate various classical works, amongst these being Æsop's fables. L'Estrange's version (1692) of the sage is not in the best taste. It is disfigured by mannerisms and vulgarisms in language, and the applications which he appended to the fables are often a distortion of the true intent of the apologue, stated so as to support and enforce his own peculiar views in politics and religion.

Steele (1672-1729) was the author of at least one excellent fable,66 The Mastiff and his Puppy, not unworthy to take a place beside those of the Greek sage:

'It happened one day, as a stout and honest mastiff (that guarded the village where he lived against thieves and robbers) was very gravely walking with one of his puppies by his side, all the little dogs in the street gathered round him, and barked at him. The little puppy was so offended at this affront done to his sire, that he asked him why he would not fall upon them, and tear them to pieces. To which the sire answered with great composure of mind, "If there were no curs, I should be no mastiff."'

Of other fabulists, it will be sufficient, without going into lengthy particulars, to name Allan Ramsay (1686-1758), who attempted the writing of fables, though with but doubtful success; of the thirty he produced there is not one of striking merit. Edmund Arwaker, Rector of Donaghmore, who compiled a collection of two hundred and twenty-five select fables from Æsop and others, which he entitled, 'Truth in Fiction; or, Morality in Masquerade' (1708). John Hall-Stevenson, 1718-1785 (the original of Sterne's 'Eugenius'), wrote 'Fables for Grown Gentlemen.' Edward Moore composed a series of original 'Fables for the Fair Sex' (1756), pleasing in their versification, but otherwise of no striking merit. Moore, besides a number of poems, odes and songs, wrote two comedies ('The Foundling' and 'Gil Blas') and a tragedy ('The Gamester'), in which Garrick acted the leading characters. He was also editor of the World, a satirical journal of the period, which had a brief life of four years. He died in poverty in 1751. Francis Gentleman (actor and dramatist), whose collection of 'Royal Fables' (1766) was dedicated to George, Prince of Wales. William Wilkie, D.D., a Scotch fabulist of some note in his day, was Professor of Natural Philosophy in St. Andrews University. In 1768 he published a volume containing sixteen fables after the manner of Gay. One of these, The Boy and the Rainbow, a fable of considerable merit, has survived; the others are forgotten. Rev. Henry Rowe, whose fables tire without interesting. 'Fables for Mankind,' by Charles Westmacott. 'The Fables of Flora,' by Dr. Langhorne. Gaspey wrote a number of original fables, as did also Dr. Aitken and Walter Brown. Cowper, the poet, penned some elegant fables with which most readers are familiar. There are 'Fables for Children, Young and Old, in Humorous Verse,' by W. E. Staite (1830); Sheridan Wilson was the author of a volume entitled 'The Bath Fables' (1850); finally, there is Frere's Fables for 'Five Years Old.' Æsop's fables have been parodied and caricatured, with varying success, by different writers, notably by an American author, under the pseudonym of 'G. Washington Æsop.'

Of lady fabulists, the most notable is Maria de France, who lived in the first half of the thirteenth century, and made a collection of one hundred and six fables in French, which, she alleges, were translated from the English of King Alfred.67 There are several more modern collections by members of the fair sex. One is entitled 'The Enchanted Plants, Fables in Verse;' London, 1800. The name of the author is not given, but evidently a lady. Mrs. Trimmer has her version of Æsop. A volume of original fables was published by Mary Maria Colling, a writer of humble rank, under the patronage of the once celebrated Mrs. Bray (daughter of Thomas Stothard, R.A.), and Southey, the Poet Laureate. A volume of fables, also original, by Mrs. Prosser, and 'Æsop's Fables in Words of One Syllable,' by Mary Godolphin.

Besides the fabulists already named, there are, among the ancients, Avian, Ademar, Rufus, Romulus, Alfonso and Poggio. Among the French, Nivernois, and the Abbé Fénelon (1651-1715), author of 'Dialogues of the Dead' and 'Telemachus.' Notwithstanding his reputation in his own country as a fabulist, it must be allowed that his fables are much too lengthy and prolix. The characters he gives to his animals are unnatural, and their manners and speech pointless and tame. Florian, an imitator of Yriarte, and a friend of Voltaire, by whose advice he cultivated the literature of Spain; Boursalt, Boisard, Ginguene, Jauffret, Le Grand and Armoult. Amongst the Germans are, Gellert (1746), Nicolai, Hagedorn, Pfeffel and Lichtner. The Italian fabulists are numerous: Tommaso Crudeli (1703-1743), Gian-Carlo Passeroni (1713-1803), Giambattisti Roberti (1719-1786), Luigi Grillo (1725-1790), Lorenzo Pignotti (1739-1812), who with an elegant diction combines splendid descriptive powers; Clemente Bondi (1742-1821), Aurelio de Giorgi Bertola (1753-1798), Luigi Clasio (1754-1825), Giovanni Gherardo de Rossi (1754-1827), Gaetano Perego (1814-1868) and Gaetano Polidori. Among Spanish fabulists, besides Yriarte, there is Samaniego (1745-1801). Of Russian writers of fables we have already spoken of Krilof, and there are besides, Chemnitzer, Dmitriev, Glinka, Lomonosov (1711-1765), Goncharov and Alexander Sumarakov (1718-1777). Of English writers not already referred to, the following may be named as having tried their hand at the composition of fables: Addison, Sir John Vanbrugh,68 Prior, Goldsmith, Henryson, Coyne, Winter. Thomas Percival, M.D., President of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester about the end of last century, wrote a volume of moral tales, fables, and reflections. Bussey's collection is well known. The late W. J. Macquorn Rankine, Regius Professor of Civil Engineering in Glasgow University, wrote a number of 'Songs and Fables,' which were published posthumously in a small volume in 1874. The fables, twelve in all, are an ingenious attempt, not wanting in playful humour, to elucidate the origin and meaning of some of the old and well-known signboards, such as The Pig and Whistle, The Cat and Fiddle, The Goat and Compasses, and others. An interesting collection of one hundred and six 'Indian Fables,' in English, the materials for which were gathered from native sources and put into form by Mr. P. V. Ramaswami Raju, B.A., were originally contributed to the columns of the Leisure Hour, and afterwards published in a volume (1887).69

Specimens of the work of some of the writers named are given in the succeeding pages.

The Bee and the Coquette (Florian). – 'Chloe, young, handsome, and a decided coquette, laboured very hard every morning on rising; people say it was at her toilet; and there, smiling and smirking, she related to her dear confidant all her pains, her pleasures, and the projects of her soul.

'A thoughtless bee, entering her chamber, began buzzing about. "Help! help!" immediately shrieked the lady. "Lizzy! Mary! here, make haste! drive away this winged monster!"