good but dangerous men who suffered in those days for a religion which it was impossible to tolerate. Is it by Robert Southwell, the Jesuit? a writer of no ordinary powers; yet he was too pure a writer to have made the miserable pun upon angels; there is a levity in that, and in the conceit about wanting a head to dine with, which, if the language were older, might lead one to attribute it to Sir Thomas More. One thing, and one only is in Ralegh's temper; the allusions to the king's attorney. It is likely that one of the last things which he remembered with indignation, wonld be the cruel and cowardly virulence of Coke. That it is catholic, however, I consider as beyond a doubt.

75. A Synod routed.

The following curious article of intelligence is given in the "Mercurius Politicus," under the date of Edinburgh, June 15th, 1652. "It is written hither of a late fearful conflict in the town of Dinning, in the county of Perth, upon the 9th instant. The day before, the ministers came to that little town, with an intent to proceed against some others, whom they had formerly deposed for dislike of their kirk-government, but who now took upon them to officiate again in their former livings by virtue of a call from their parishioners. For which cause, they took upon them to cite these deposed ministers to appear the next day, being the 9th, at ten o'clock in the morning, under pain of excommunication. And an officer of their's being sent to warn them, the men were absent, and therefore he presented his indictment to the wives, who promised to acquaint their husbands, and be with them on the morrow.

"The officer was no sooner gone, but that night these women consulted, and agreed upon the drawing of their forces together. And having met the next morning at 4 o'clock, they went to a wood hard by, being about 120 in number, where they each of them provided a strong club, and advancing with a loud bagpipe before them, they, after four miles march, surprised the town, and possessed themselves bf the churchyard. Hereupon, the synod being amazed at the appearance of these Amazons, sent one of their own number to parley with them, and know if his brethren might meet in the church as had formerly been appointed; which being denied, he threatens them with bell, book and candle; whereupon they cudgel him for his labour, and detain him prisoner. And at the same instant they dispatched away about 60 of their number to surprise the synod in the market-place and make an end of their work; which order was executed with so much life, that the jure divinos were soon confuted and routed. They lost all their baggage and 12 of their best horses in the conflict, yet they every one made good their escape, except the clerk of the synod, who was beaten to some tune, but upon a renouncing of his office, and assurance never to appear in their conclave any more, he was released. The rest being well routed, about 12 or 13 of them rallied again about four miles from the place, where they were shel tered under the protection of the laird of Fredland."

CLASSICAL DISQUISITIONS.

ESOP AND OTHER GREEK FABULISTS.

THE pleasing method of conveying moral instruction by parables and apologues, is probably coeval with the origin of literary composition, and is, it seems, particularly congenial to the character of the Eastern nations, is, perhaps, to be deduced from an Oriental source. In Europe, the name of Esop is so inseparably connected with this species of fiction, that, with a few exceptions, he passes as the original author of every ancient specimen of it which has been transmitted to us, and has with some propriety been described as the Homer of fabulists. That he was not the inventor of fabulous composition, is, however, as certain, as that poetry did not take its first form in the hands of Homer. We have undisputed specimens of higher antiquity in the scriptures, in Hesiod, and in the fragments of Archilochus.

The period in which Esop flourished is fixed by chronologers in the fifty-second Olympiad, about 570 B. C. His death is placed in the fifty-fourth Olympiad. He is said to have been a native of Phrygia, probably of Cotiæum, a city of that province. Of his parentage we have no information. He is, however, uniformly represented by ancient writers as a slave, and was in that state subject to a succession of masters-Demarchus an Athenian, Xanthus, and Iadmon a Samian. With the latter he was the fellow-slave of the celebrated Rhodopis, and at length obtained his liberty from the indulgence of his master. The circumstances which are selected of his subsequent life are few, and those few, perhaps, in some instances, of somewhat dubious credit. He is said to have resided in the court of Cræsus, king of Lydia, at Sardis, and to have there met Solon, the legislator. (Plut. vii. Sol.) The Athenian philosopher was received by the monarch with studied pomp, and an ambitious display of his treasures. Græsus then enquired of his guest, whom he thought the happiest of men; Solon named Tellus, his countryman, who had passed honourably through life, and died fighting for his country, and Cleobis and Biton, the sons of the priestess of Juno, who received death as a reward from the gods for an action of filial piety. The king was disappointed and mortified by the answer. Æsop is said to have remonstrated with Solon, for his uncourtly want of complaisance. "O, Solon, we must converse with kings, either so as to please them or not at all." Solon replied, " either not at all, or for their profit."

The circumstances of Esop's death are thus related by Plutarch.* He was sent by Cræsus with a sum of money to Delphi, for the purpose of offering a magnificent sacrifice to the god of the place, and distributing four minæ to each of the inhabitants. Being offended by the people,

U

people, he offered his sacrifices, but sent the rest of the money with which he was entrusted to Sardis, representing the Delphians as unworthy objects of his master's bounty. In revenge, they brought against him a charge of sacrilege, and put him to death by throwing him headlong from a rock named Hyampia. The divine vengeance, we are told, was signally displayed in the punishment of this enormity. The land of the Delphians became barren, and they were visited by every species of strange disease. Their deputies appeared in the public assemblies of Greece, and made repeated proclamation that they were desirous of offering atonement for the death of Esop to any person who should be entitled to receive it. At length, in the third generation, Idmon, a Samian, appeared, not related to Esop, but a descendant of the master who had purchased him in Samos. This circumstance, if divested of its superstitious garb, derives some credibility from being mentioned by Herodotus.* Æsop is one of the characters in Plutarch's "banquet of the seven wise men;" but in this fictitious piece little occurs which can be received as genuine history.

A few of the apothegms attributed to Esop are preserved. When Chilo asked him " in what God was employed," he answered, " In depressing the proud, and exalting the humble."

Phædrus speaks of him as addressing one of his fables to the Athenians for the purpose of reconciling them to the domination of Pisis

tratus.

Cum tristem servitutem flerent Attici,
Non quia crudelis ille, sed quoniam grave
Omne insuetis onus, et cæpissent queri,
Æsopus talem tum fabellam retulit.

If, however, the time of Esop's death be rightly fixed, which may be doubted, this account is scarcely consistent with chronology. The Athenians erected a statue in honour of Esop.

Æsopo ingentem statuam posuere Attici,
Servumque collocarunt æterna in basi.

The artist was the celebrated Lysippus.

The monk Planudes, who flourished in the fourteenth century, has left a life of Æsop, which is full of distorted and absurd circumstances, and is justly rejected as a childish fiction. He is the author of the common report, which represents Esop as a monster of deformity. Not the slightest traces of this representation are to be found in the ancient writers, whose testimonies, so far as they are in any respect applicable to the subject, seem rather to lead to an opposite conclusion.

Some writers, from the obscurity of the circumstances which are told respecting the life of Esop, have been disposed to call his existence

* II. 134. It is likewise alluded to by Aristophanes, Vespæ, 1446.

existence into question. Reiske* thinks that the name is Oriental, and is the same with Isup, or Joseph. Heuman identifies it with Asaph, which he supposes to have been the common designation of a wise man; and a third German, we are told, of the name of Laurenberg, undertook to prove that the fables are the work of king Solomon, by whom they were dictated during supper, and committed to writing by his scribe Asaph. Such suppositions need no refutation. It may, however, be mentioned, that the authority of Herodotus, Aristophanes, Plato, and Aristotle, seems to be of sufficient weight to rescue the accounts of Esop from the imputation of being entirely fabulous.

That Esop existed, and was an author of fables, cannot be reasonably doubted. That the fables which we possess under his name cannot, in their present form, be his genuine productions, is sufficiently testified by their internal evidence. Their style is often that of the lowest ages of Greek literature, and they contain allusions to events and institutions long subsequent to the age of Esop. It may even be doubted whether Æsop committed his fables to writing. The ancients commonly speak of him as relating them, or addressing them to an audience, for some moral or political purpose. Of this we have a remarkable instance in the fable of the fox and the hedgehog, told by Aristotle (Rhet. II. 20.) There is not a fragment of prose or verse extant which can with the slightest probability be ascribed to Esop, a circumstance which seems scarcely possible, if he had left behind him any written works. An old man is described in Aristophanes as having learnt the fables of Esop in conversation at banquets. In another passage of the same poet, a want of learning and curiosity, and ignorance of Esop, are connected, which might seem to imply, that his works were then extant; it follows, however, not "who says," but "who said, that the lark was the first of things," &c.

Socrates, during his confinement in prison, is said by Plato to have versified some of the fables of Esop with which he was acquainted, in obedience to a command given him in a dream. Diogenes Laertius speaks of his attempt as not attended with much success, and quotes the beginning of it.

Αίσωπος ποτ' ελεξέ Κορινθιον αστυ νεμουσι,
Μη κρίνειν αρετην λαοδικῳ σοφιῃ.

Laertius enumerates a book of Esopic fables among the works of Demetrius Phalereus, which Bentley suspects to have been the first written collection.

A subsequent collector and versifier of Esop's fables was Babrias or Babrius, of whom little is known, but who appears from his remaining fragments to have been an elegant writer. He is mentioned by Avienus, Julian the etymologist, Suidas, and Tzetzes. He adopted the Scazon or Choliambic verse. His work is said by Avienus to have

* Ap. Fabric. Harles.

have consisted of two books, by Suidas of ten. Various fragments are preserved by Suidas, and others have been skilfully detected by Bentley and Tyrwhitt in the present collections, which are with reason supposed to be the poetry of Babrius degraded into mean and miserable prose. These fragments are so elegant, that Bentley says, "were his book now extant, it might justly be opposed, if not preferred, to the Latin of Phædrus."

1

The time when this author flourished is uncertain. His style belongs to the age of good authors, and Avienus* mentions him before Phædrus. It is probable, therefore, that he lived before the reign of Augustus. This is confirmed by Tyrwhitt, from a passage occurring in Apollonius the lexicographer, which may easily be reduced into Choliambics, and from its subject and measure seems to be a fragment of Babrius.

A very learned dissertation on this writer was published in 1776 by Mr. Tyrwhitt, with the following title: "Dissertatio de Babrio, fabularum Æsopearum scriptore. Inseruntur fabulæ quædam Æsopeæ, nunquam antehac editæ, ex cod. MS. Bodleiano. Accedunt Babrii fragmenta." In a Bodleian manuscript he discovered several inedited prose fables, which, by the frequent occurrence of poetical expressions, and the remains of Choliambic measure, evidently appeared to be mutilations of the verse of Babrius. These he has printed, distinguishing as far as possible the "disjecti membra poetæ," and has added from various other sources the remaining fragments of his author. The metaphrasis of the Bodleian manuscript he supposes to have been made in the twelfth century, when probably the entire collection of Babrius was extant.

There are fifty-four fables extant in Iambic tetrastichs under the name of Gabrias, of which forty-three were published by Aldus, and the remainder added by Nevelet. Gabrias is probably only a corrup. tion of Babrius, from whom these fables were borrowed. The real author was Ignatius Magister or Diaconus, whose name occurs in various manuscripts. At the end of Gabrias, as published by Aldus, is printed a fable of the genuine Babrius, in Choliambics. The fables of Babrius are supposed to have been translated into Latin prose by Julius Titianus, whose work has perished.

A writer, whose name and age are unknown, formed a collection of fables in Greek elegiac verse, which are frequently cited by Suidas. He is placed by Bentley before Babrius. Tyrwhitt supposes him to have been subsequent.

Forty fables from Esop, written in Greek prose by Aphthonius, a rhetorician of Antioch, are extant. His age is uncertain, but he is conjectured to have lived in the third or fourth century after Christ. The fables which are printed under the name of Esop, of which many editions have appeared, are all reducible to three classes.

The first collection of Greek fables was published under the name of Esop, at Milan, without a date, but probably about the year 1480.

* Avieni. præf. fab.

The