SHORT HISTORY OF THE ^ESOPIC FABLE xxi 



account of the progress of ^Esopic investigation. First came 

 collection ; the Greek iEsop was brought together by 

 Neveletus in 1610, the Latin by Nilant in 1709. The 

 main truth about the former was laid down by the master- 

 hand of Bentley during a skirmish in the Battle of the 

 Books ; the equally great critic Lessing began to unravel the 

 many knotty points connected with the medieval Latin 

 iEsop. His investigations have been carried on and com- 

 pleted by three Frenchmen in the present century, Robert, 

 Du Meril, and Hervieux ; while three Germans, Crusius, 

 Benfey, and Mall, have thrown much needed light on 

 Babrius, on the Oriental ^sop, and on Marie de France. 

 Lastly, I have myself brought together these various lines of 

 inquirv, and by adding a few threads of my own, have been 

 able to weave them all for the first time into a consistent 

 pattern. 1 



So much for the past of the Fable. Has it a future as a 

 mode of literary expression ? Scarcely ; its method is at 

 once too simple and too roundabout. Too roundabout ; for 

 the truths we have to tell we prefer to speak out directly and 

 not by way of allegory. And the truths the Fable has to 

 teach are too simple to correspond to the facts of our complex 

 civilisation ; its rude graffiti of human nature cannot repro- 

 duce the subtle gradations of modern life. But as we all 

 pass through in our lives the various stages of ancestral 

 culture, there comes a time when these rough sketches of life 

 have their appeal to us as they had for our forefathers. The 



1 The Fables of JEsop, as first printed by William Caxton in 1484, r.civ again 

 edited and induced by Joseph Jacobs (London, 1889), 2 vols., the first containing a 

 History of the .^Esopic Fable. 



