OF ESOP AND OTHERS TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH: WITH INSTRUCTIVE APPLICATIONS, AND ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAMUEL CROXALL, D. D., LATE ARCHDEACON OF HEREFORD. PHILADELPHIA: THOMAS COWPERTHWAIT & CO. PREFACE. So much has been already said concerning Æsop and his writings, both by ancient and modern authors, that the subject seems to be quite exhausted. The different conjectures, opinions, traditions and forgeries, which from time to time we have had given us of him, would fill a large volume; but they are, for the most part, so absurd and inconsistent, that it would be but a dull amusement for the reader, to be led into such a maze of uncertainty: since Herodotus, the most ancient Greek historian did not flourish till near a hundred years after Æsop. As for his life, with which we are entertained in so complete a manner, before most of the editions of his Fables, it was invented by one Maximus Planudes, a Greek monk; and, if we may judge of him from that composition, just as judicious and learned a person as the rest of his fraternity are at this day observed to be. Sure there never were so many blunders and childish dreams mixt up together, as are to be met with in the short compass of that piece. For a monk, he might be very good and wise; but in point of history and chronology, he shows himself to be very ignorant. He brings Æsop to Babylon, in the reign of king Lycerus, a king of his own making; for his name is not to be |