xx ^SOP'S FABLES 



With the invention of printing the European book of 

 j^sop was compiled about 1480 by Heinrich Stainhowel, 

 who put together the Romulus with selections from Avian, 

 some of the Greek prose versions of Babrius from Ranuzio's 

 translation, and a few from Alfred's iEsop. To these he 

 added the legendary life of iEsop and a selection of somewhat 

 loose tales from Petrus Alphonsi and Poggio Bracciolini, 

 corresponding to the Milesian and Sybaritic tales which 

 were associated with the Fable in antiquity. Stainhowel 

 translated all this into German, and within twenty years his 

 collection had been turned into French, English (by 

 Caxton, in 1484), Italian, Dutch, and Spanish. Additions 

 were made to it by Brandt and Waldis in Germany, by 

 L'Estrange in England, and by La Fontaine in France ; 

 these were chiefly from the larger Greek collections published 

 after Stainhowel's day, and, in the case of La Fontaine, from 

 Bidpai and other Oriental sources. But these additions have 

 rarely taken hold, and the JEsop of modern Europe is in 

 large measure Stainhowel's, even to the present day. The 

 first three quarters of the present collection are Stainhowel 

 mainly in Stainhowel's order. Selections from it passed into 

 spelling and reading books, and made the Fables part of 

 modern European folk-lore. 1 



We may conclude this history of iEsop with a similar 



1 An episode in the history of the modern y£sop deserves record, if only to 

 illustrate the law that yEsop always begins his career as a political weapon in a 

 new home. When a selection of the Fables were translated into Chinese in 1840 

 they became favourite reading with the officials, till a high dignitary said, "This 

 is clearly directed against «i," and ordered -<^Esop to be included in the Chinese 

 Index Expurgatcrius (R. Morris, Cent. Rc*v. xxxix. p. 731). 



