BOOK II.

I. AGAINST THE HARD TO SUIT.

WERE I a pet of fair Calliope,

I would devote the gifts conferr'd on me
To dress in verse old Æsop's lies divine;
For verse, and they, and truth, do well combine;
But, not a favourite on the Muses' hill,

I dare not arrogate the magic skill,
To ornament these charming stories.
A bard might brighten up their glories,
No doubt.

I try,-what one more wise must do.
Thus much I have accomplish'd hitherto :-
By help of my translation,

The beasts hold conversation,

In French, as ne'er they did before.
Indeed, to claim a little more,

2

The plants and trees, with smiling features,
Are turn'd by me to talking creatures.

Who says that this is not enchanting?

'Ah,' says the critics, 'hear what vaunting!
From one whose work, all told, no more is
Than half-a-dozen baby stories."

1 Phædrus, Book IV. 7.

2 The plants and trees.-Aristotle's rule for pure fable is that its dramatis persone should be animals only-excluding man. Dr. Johnson (writing upon Gay's Fables) agrees in this dictum "generally." But hardly any of the fabulists, from Æsop downwards, seem to have bound themselves by the rule; and in this fable we have La Fontaine rather exulting in his assignment of speech, &c., not only to the lower animals but to "plants and trees," &c., as well as otherwise defying the "hard to suit," i.e., the critics.

Half-a-dozen baby stories.-Here La Fontaine exalts his muse as a fabulist. This is in reply to certain of his critics who pronounced

Would you a theme more credible, my censors,
In graver tone, and style which now and then soars ?
Then list! For ten long years the men of Troy,
By means that only heroes can employ,

Had held the allied hosts of Greece at bay,-
Their minings, batterings, stormings day by day,
Their hundred battles on the crimson plain,
Their blood of thousand heroes, all in vain,—
When, by Minerva's art, a horse of wood,
Of lofty size before their city stood,

Whose flanks immense the sage Ulysses hold,
Brave Diomed, and Ajax fierce and bold,

Whom, with their myrmidons, the huge machine
Would bear within the fated town unseen,
To wreak upon its very gods their rage—
Unheard-of stratagem, in any age.
Which well its crafty authors did repay
'Enough, enough,' our critic folks will say;
'Your period excites alarm,

Lest

you should do your lungs some harm ; And then your monstrous wooden horse, With squadrons in it at their ease,

Is even harder to endorse

Than Renard cheating Raven of his cheese.
And, more than that, it fits you ill

To wield the old heroic quill.'

Well, then, a humbler tone, if such your will is :

Long sigh'd and pined the jealous Amaryllis

For her Alcippus, in the sad belief,

None, save her sheep and dog, would know her grief. Thyrsis, who knows, among the willows slips,

And hears the gentle shepherdess's lips

Beseech the kind and gentle zephyr

To bear these accents to her lover

'Stop!' says my censor:

...

his work puerile, and pretended to wish him to adopt the higher forms of poetry. Some of the fables of the first six Books were originally published in a semi-private way before 1668. See the Translator's Preface. La Fontaine defends his art as a writer of fables also in Book III. (Fable I.); Book V. (Fable I.); Book VI. (Fable I.); Book VII. (Introduction); Book VIII. (Fable IV.), and Book IX. (Fable I).

To laws of rhyme quite irreducible,
That couplet needs again the crucible;
Poetic men, sir,

Must nicely shun the shocks
Of rhymes unorthodox.'

A curse on critics! hold your tongue!
Know I not how to end my song ?
Of time and strength what greater waste
Than my attempt to suit your taste?

Some men, more nice than wise,
There's nought that satisfies.

II. THE COUNCIL HELD BY THE RATS.'

OLD Rodilard,22 a certain cat,

Such havoc of the rats had made,

'Twas difficult to find a rat

With nature's debt unpaid.
The few that did remain,

To leave their holes afraid,
From usual food abstain,
Not eating half their fill.
And wonder no one will

That one who made of rats his revel,
With rats pass'd not for cat, but devil.
Now, on a day, this dread rat-eater,
Who had a wife, went out to meet her;
And while he held his caterwauling,
The unkill'd rats, their chapter calling,

1 Faerno and Abstemius both have fables upon this subject. Gabriel Faerno (1500-1561) was an Italian writer who published fables in Latin. Perrault translated these into French verse, and published them at Paris in 1699. Faerno was also a famous editor of Terence. Laurentius Abstemius, or Astemio, was an Italian fabulist of the fifteenth century. After their first publication his fables often appeared in editions of Æsop.

2 Rodilard.-The name no doubt taken from the famous cat Rodilardus (bacon-gnawer), in Rabelais, Pantagruel, IV., ch. LXVII.

Discuss'd the point, in grave debate,
How they might shun impending fate.
Their dean, a prudent rat,

Thought best, and better soon than late,
To bell the fatal cat;

That, when he took his hunting round,
The rats, well caution'd by the sound,
Might hide in safety under ground;
Indeed he knew no other means.
And all the rest

At once confess'd

Their minds were with the dean's.
No better plan, they all believed,
Could possibly have been conceived,
No doubt the thing would work right well,
If any one would hang the bell.

But, one by one, said every rat,
'I'm not so big a fool as that.'
The plan, knock'd up in this respect,
The council closed without effect.

And many a council I have seen,
Or reverend chapter with its dean,
That, thus resolving wisely,
Fell through like this precisely.

To argue or refute

Wise counsellors abound;

The man to execute

Is harder to be found.

III.-THE WOLF ACCUSING THE FOX BEFORE

THE MONKEY.'

A WOLF, affirming his belief
That he had suffer'd by a thief,
Brought up his neighbour fox-
Of whom it was by all confess'd,
1 Phædrus, I. 10.

His character was not the best-
To fill the prisoner's box.
As judge between these vermin,
A monkey graced the ermine;
And truly other gifts of Themis1
Did scarcely seem his;

For while each party plead his cause,
Appealing boldly to the laws,
And much the question vex'd,
Our monkey sat perplex'd.

Their words and wrath expended,
Their strife at length was ended;
When, by their malice taught,
The judge this judgment brought:

'Your characters, my friends, I long have known,
As on this trial clearly shown;

And hence I fine you both-the grounds at large
To state would little profit—

You wolf, in short, as bringing groundless charge,
You fox, as guilty of it."

Come at it right or wrong, the judge opined
No other than a villain could be fined.2

IV. THE TWO BULLS AND THE FROG.3

Two bulls engaged in shocking battle,
Both for a certain heifer's sake,
And lordship over certain cattle,
A frog began to groan and quake.
'But what is this to you?'
Inquired another of the croaking crew.
'Why, sister, don't you see,

The end of this will be,

That one of these big brutes will yield,
And then be exiled from the field?

Themis.-The goddess of Justice.

2 So Philip of Macedon is said to have decided a suit by condemning the defendant to banishment and the plaintiff to follow him. The wisdom of each decision lies in taking advantage of a doubtful case to convict two well-known rogues of previous bad character.

3 Phædrus, I. 30.