been affable, unassuming, and modest, without any pretensions to an intellectual physiognomy. Fontenelle, who was slightly acquainted with him, has thus described him: "A man as simple as he came from the hands of nature. In his intercourse with others, he had scarcely acquired any novel or foreign impression; and to this may be attributed his inimitable and charming naïveté." His character was as simple as his appearance and manners. He had none of those dazzling qualities which frequently lead to personal rivalry; but his conduct was upright, his heart beneficent, warm, and sincere. He died at Paris, on the 15th of March, 1695, and was buried in that city, in the cemetery of St. Joseph, beside the remains of his friend Molière, who had been interred twenty-two years before him. The chief characteristic of La Fontaine's Fables is their exquisite humour and graceful familiarity. Few of them are original in their subject, being mostly paraphrases of Æsop and Phædrus; but their treatment is so admirable, and they contain so much simple and delicate satire, applicable to every class and variety of human life, that, since their first appearance, they have always occupied a distinguished place in the estimation of all readers, learned and unlearned, old and young. Next in repute to La Fontaine, among Frenchmen, is Francis de Salignac de la Motte Fenelon, Archbishop and Duke of Cambray. He was born on the 6th of August, 1651, at the Castle of Fenelon, in the district of Perigord. His father was the Marquis de Fenelon; his mother, the sister of the Marquis de St. Abre. His paternal uncle, under whose care and inspection the young Francis was placed at the age of twelve, in order to finish his education at the University of Paris, was a general in the French army, "as remarkable a man for his exemplary piety and profound learning, as for his courage and conduct in the field of battle." Under this excellent man the nephew made such progress in his clerical studies, that at the age of nineteen he preached in public with such applause, that his uncle was afraid he would grow vain and ambitious, and, therefore, forbade him to resume his discourses, till he should attain greater judgment and more mature years. At twenty-four he entered holy orders, and is said to have discharged the parochial duties which devolved upon him, with the utmost zeal and piety. At twenty-seven, the Archbishop of Paris, M. de Harley, appointed him superior of a convent of women, newly converted to the Catholic faith; an office in which he acquitted himself so well, that in the year 1686 the king nominated him chief missionary on the coast of Saintonge, and in the county of Aunis, for the conversion of the Protestants there. In this it must be mentioned, to his honour, that he entirely put a stop to the system of persecution and coercion which had previously been resorted to, in order to prevent diversity of opinion. The milder mode of Fenelon, it need scarcely be added, had a wonderful effect in preventing the growth of heresy and dissent, which previously had been spreading with considerable rapidity.

The reputation which Fenelon had obtained by his conduct, his sermons, and a "Treatise on Education,' which he had written at the request of the Duke of Beauvilliers, for the use of the preceptors of that nobleman's daughter, induced the king in 1689, to nominate him tutor to his son, the duke of Burgundy. This was an important era in the life of the Abbé, and to it the public are indebted for his three most celebrated works, The Dialogues of the Dead,' 'The Adventures of Telemachus,' and his Tales and Fables;' all of which were written for the instruction and amusement of the young prince, his pupil. His successful diligence and care in this situation, procured for him the archbishopric of Cambray. Soon afterwards he became acquainted with the celebrated Madame Guyon, a lady who had originated a mystical sect called Quietists, and whose heterodox theological tenets, supported as they were with much talent and enthusiasm by the lady and her friends, gave considerable disturbance to the church. Fenelon

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defended her treatises, and openly avowed his conviction of the truth of her principles and precepts, which drew upon him, not merely the censures of the church, but banishment from the court, and the secular deprivation of his friends.

As a proof of the estimation in which the archbishop was held, however, and the extent of his reputation, it may be mentioned that, during the campaigns of the great duke of Marlborough, that general as well as prince Eugene and the duke of Ormond, gave special directions to their foraging parties to spare the fields and meadows of the author of Telemachus; and on more than one occasion, when he desired to visit a portion of his diocese in the occupation of the English, Marlborough supplied him with a princely escort from the ranks of his own army. The cause of this universal esteem is to be found in the principles which governed his thoughts and actions. "I love my family," he would say, "better than myself, my country better than my family, and mankind still better than my country: words which with him were not idle boasts, nor uttered as such words frequently are, merely to be talked about.

Notwithstanding his banishment from Paris, the good archbishop continued to correspond with his former pupil, and to afford him the benefit of his advice and direction. In 1712 the duke died, and Fenelon, weeping like a child, at once expressed his resignation and his intention to withdraw from active life. "If the motion of a straw would restore the prince," he exclaimed, "I would not touch it contrary to the Divine pleasure. My bonds are broken!" From this time he devoted himself to a life of religious seclusion till his death, which happened in 1715. The character of the Fables of Fenelon may be gathered from the character of their author. They are imaginative, reflective, persuasive; but without any of that caustic severity which distinguishes the Fables of La Fontaine. They breathe a spirit of universal philanthrophy; and are not aimed at the crafty and designing, so much as at the wanton and boldly bad. They seem indeed to be addressed to the heart and understanding, rather than to the head.

John Gay, the best writer of English Fables, was born in the year 1688. He was intimate with Pope, Swift, Bolingbroke, Arbuthnot and all the most celebrated wits of the reign of Queen Anne. He is best known as an author by his ' Fables,' the Beggar's Opera,' and two or three ballads, among others, that of ' Black-eyed Susan.' His life was one of dependence on Court favour-one of the most unhappy and precarious that can well be imagined; but one necessarily too much identified with the history of the Court to which he was attached, to afford much interest to the reader. The extent of his preferments appears to have been the appointment at one period of Secretary to the Duchess of Monmouth, and afterwards to the Earl of Clarendon, whom he accompanied in an embassy to Holland during the reign of Anne, and with whom he returned, on the death of that princess, in the train of King George the First. His "Hare and many Friends is said to have pourtrayed the hopes and vexatious disappointments to which he was subjected. His Fables are full of wit and satire, but are somewhat too long and complicated in their details to come up to our notions of perfection. The value of an apologue is its capacity of application to the affairs of daily life; giving us in a single sentence, an universal and healthful maxim for the conduct and guidance of all ranks and degrees. Mr. Gay seldom furnishes us with this bright and pointed weapon of attack and defence. His Fables, nevertheless, have great merit, both for their design and execution, and will never cease to be read and relished, while polished verse and sterling genius can be appreciated. Gay died in November, 1732, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The following epitaph, written by himself, is engraved on his monument in Poet's corner.

"Life's a jest, and all things shew it :
I thought so once, but now I know it."

Pope seems from his letters, to have loved John Gay more than most men of his acquaintance.

In our estimation, Robert Dodsley stands next as a Fabulist to Gay. By force of natural talent, by honest industry, and a kindly disposition. he made his way to a literary reputation of considerable eminence, and performed much good service to the cause of letters. Dodsley was born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in 1703. His parents were of humble life; his own first setting out, after a free-school education, was as footman to the Honourable Mrs. Lowther; a service which he retained till 1732, when having written a little dramatic piece of considerable talent, called The Toy-shop,' he was induced to leave it with Mr. Pope for his opinion, and thus acquired notice and patronage. Pope, who has generally been considered one of the most ill-natured of our wits, not only expressed his own approval of young Dodsley's performance, but recommended it to Rich, then manager of one of the Patent Theatres, procured it to be produced upon the stage, and lent his powerful aid to secure the author a good benefit, the mode by which dramatists at that time, were remunerated for their writings. Nor did Pope then desert his protegé; but continued to afford him his countenance and advice, till, having brought out a second piece, 'The King and the Miller of Mansfield,' the author was enabled with the profits to commence business as a bookseller -the profession which of all others, as being connected with literature, and placing him in constant intercourse with men of learning and talent, was most congenial to Dodsley's taste and wishes. There is no doubt that the friendship and counsel of his patron materially contributed to his success as a publisher; and eventually placed him at the head of his profession in England. Besides the excellent collection of ancient and modern Fables, edited and published by Mr. Dodsley, he was the author of several poems, dramatic pieces, and prose works, all of a strictly moral tendency, and distinguished for extensive knowledge and close observation of mankind. One of his works, which has been universally admired and translated into almost all the languages of Europe, is the well known Economy of Human Life. He died on the 25th of September, 1764.

The Fables of Dodsley's collection, first published in the same year that their editor died, are chiefly translations, the language of which is greatly superior to any that had preceded them, from Esop, Phædrus, La Fontaine and Fenelon. The work, however, comprises many excellent originals of his own composition, the chief feature of which is elegant simplicity of diction, gentleness of reproof, and fertility of imagination.

Besides the Fabulists we have enumerated, the Spanish Poet Yriarte, the French Florian, De la Motte, and Nivernois, the German Gellert and Lessing, and the English Addison, Moore and Cowper, to whom might be added a long list of translators and imitators, deserve honourable mention. Numerous specimens of the style of each will be found embodied in this collection, from which the reader will be enabled to deduce a comparison of their several peculiarities, with less labour and greater satisfaction than from the most elaborate analysis. We must be permitted, however, to indulge in a few words concerning the delightful Fables of Lessing, who may be not inappropriately termed the Milton of Fabulists, seeking, as he does, his illustrations of life and morality from the highest sources, with a stretch of imagination and a compressed power of thought and language, which give dignity and grace to all that he utters. The majesty and daring of an extraordinary, yet perfectly subdued, mind and understanding, are visible in every sentence he has written. It is not the grandeur and beauty of words, but something beneath the surface which makes us ponder over his laconic and often quaint conceptions, from which we never turn dissatisfied away. He has all the depth, without the mysticism, of the metaphysical philosophers; and his strength is that

of the sweetest and simplest kind of olden poetry, in which mind and passion were blended, to form strains, which our hearts tell us will live as long as humanity.

On the nature and objects of Fable generally, a few words will suffice. They were originally intended, and have always been used to enforce the precepts of virtue and morality, not merely upon children, to whose perusal some persons at the present time would limit them, but upon mankind at large. Mr. Addison in the Spectator has made some observations on the subject that bear directly upon this point. "Fables," he says, "were the first pieces of wit that made their appearance in the world, and have been still highly valued, not only in times of the greatest simplicity, but in the most polite ages In the very beginning of the Commonwealth of Rome, we see a mutiny among the common people appeased by the Fable of The Belly and Limbs,' which was indeed very proper to gain the attention of an incensed rabble at a time when, perhaps, they would have torn to pieces any man who had preached the same doctrine to them in an open and direct manner. As Fables had their birth in the very infancy of learning, they never flourished more than when learning was at it greatest height." We are at all times too apt, in the assumed self-sufficiency of our mature wisdom, to quarrel with what we learned when children, from a fear of being ridiculed concerning some supposed predeliction for nursery knowledge. This is assuredly unworthy of our sober reason; and arises from our neglecting to test our own feelings and thoughts by the remembrances which dwell within us of the years of our childhood, on which the greater number of us have not only formed our prejudices and likings, but from which we have derived even the bases of our boasted philosophy. It may be doubted whether, in reality, we ever acquire a distaste for the simple stories, jests and maxims, which delighted us in the dawn of our career. We may, from artificial habit, reject, but we cannot despise the tales and songs of our childhood; and it may be remarked that, with regard to new books or the works of our best authors, those are invariably the most popular with all classes, which afford most gratification to the young.

With Fables it is more especially true, that what has pleased the child will lose none of its attractions for the man. There is, in this species of entertainment, more than a mere flight of imagination to impress the memory. We learn something of human nature, and are let into the secrets of our own minds in a manner that is rather calculated to please than offend. We see nothing of the satirist, who probes only to heal us; and who does not exhibit any of the personal spleen and ill-humour, which meet and put us out of countenance with ourselves and each other in the invectives of those who sometimes set up for moralists without the essential qualification of good-nature. The Fable gives an agreeable hint of the duties and relations of life, not an harangue on our want of sense or decorum. We feel none of the superiority of the Fabulist, who indeed generally leaves us to make the application of his instructive story in our own way; and if we do sometimes prefer to apply it to our neighbour's case instead of our own, we are still informed and amended, inasmuch as we have learned to despise some vice or folly which our unassisted judgment might have regarded more leniently.

The ancients divided Fables into three classess, Rational, Emblematical, and Mixed; for each of which they named a presiding genius, in the same way as Music and the Arts had each a separate guardian spirit to attend and direct their votaries. Rational Fables are those in which the incidents occur in their natural order, and men are the only speakers. This is the most comprehensive class of apologues, and perhaps the most popular. "The Old Man and his Ass," "The Acorn and the Gourd," "The Countryman and the Snake," and "The Shepherd's Boy," are beautiful examples of this kind. Emblematical Fables are those in which beasts and birds, or even trees and inanimate substances, are