Fables and Fabulists: Ancient and Modern

    James Clerk Maxwell.
The 'Panca Tantra' is a collection of Hindoo fables, the supposed author of which was Vishnu Sarman, and this is believed to be the source of 'The Fables of Pilpay' or Bidpaī, which are undoubtedly of Indian origin. The transformation which these latter have experienced in their progress down the ages, chiefly by reason of their having been translated into the Arabic in the sixth century under the name of the 'Book of Kalilah and Dimnah,' and afterwards into other Eastern languages, has altered their Indian character, and caused them to assume a Persian vesture and significance. They are rich in ripe wisdom, and prove the insight of their author or authors into human nature, which in those early days, and in those far countries, was much as it is in more westerly communities and in our own times.

Taking the Æsopian fable as our model, the bulk of Pilpay's stories are not fables par excellence. They are more of the nature of rencontres of adventures, fabulous, it is true, and containing generally an excellent moral, but elaborated and complex for the most part; they are wanting in the terseness, the crispness, and concentration, as well as in the simplicity and spontaneity, of the Greek. At the same time there is a freshness and vigour in these old fables that is not sacrificed by translation, and they are sufficiently striking and admirable as moral stories to justify the repute in which they have always been held. The Greedy and Ambitious Cat is one of the stories in the Bidpaī collection.

'There was formerly an old woman in a village, extremely thin, half starved, and meagre. She lived in a little cottage as dark and gloomy as a fool's heart, and withal as close shut up as a miser's hand.[50 - In the whole range of literature there are no apter similes than these: the darkness and gloom of the fool's heart and the closeness of the miser's fist.] This miserable creature had for the companion of her wretched retirement a cat, meagre and lean as herself; the poor creature never saw bread nor beheld the face of a stranger, and was forced to be contented with only smelling the mice in their holes, or seeing the prints of their feet in the dust. If by some extraordinary lucky chance this miserable animal happened to catch a mouse, she was like a beggar that discovers a treasure: her visage and her eyes were inflamed with joy, and that booty served her for a whole week; and out of the excess of her admiration, and distrust of her own happiness, she would cry out to herself, "Heavens! is this a dream, or is it real?" One day, however, ready to die for hunger, she got upon the ridge of her enchanted castle, which had long been the mansion of famine for cats, and spied from thence another cat, that was stalking upon a neighbour's wall like a lion, walking along as if she were counting her steps, and so fat that she could hardly go. The old woman's cat, astonished to see a creature of her own species so plump and so large, with a loud voice cries out to her pursy neighbour: "In the name of pity speak to me, thou happiest of the cat kind! Why, you look as if you came from one of the Khan of Kathais'[51 - A nobleman of the East, famous for his hospitality.] feasts; I conjure ye to tell me how or in what region it is that you get your skin so well stuffed."

'"Where?" replied the fat one. "Why, where should one feed well but at a king's table? I go to the house," continued she, "every day about dinner-time, and there I lay my paws upon some delicious morsel or other, which serves me till the next, and then leave enough for an army of mice, which under me live in peace and tranquillity; for why should I commit murder for a piece of tough and skinny mouse-flesh, when I can live on venison at a much easier rate?"

'The lean cat, on this, eagerly inquired the way to this house of plenty, and entreated her plump neighbour to carry her one day along with her.

'"Most willingly," said the fat puss; "for thou seest I am naturally charitable, and thou art so lean that I heartily pity thy condition."

'On this promise they parted, and the lean cat returned to the old woman's chamber, where she told her dame the story of what had befallen her.

'The old woman prudently endeavoured to dissuade her cat from prosecuting her design, admonishing her withal to have a care of being deceived.

'"For, believe me," said she, "the desires of the ambitious are never to be satiated but when their mouths are stuffed with the dirt of their graves. Sobriety and temperance are the only things that truly enrich people. I must tell thee, poor silly cat, that they who travel to satisfy their ambition have no knowledge of the good things they possess, nor are they truly thankful to Heaven for what they enjoy, who are not contented with their fortune."

'The poor starved cat, however, had conceived so fair an idea of the king's table, that the old woman's good morals and judicious remonstrances entered in at one ear and went out at the other; in short, she departed the next day with the fat puss to go to the king's house; but, alas! before she got thither her destiny had laid a snare for her. For, being a house of good cheer, it was so haunted with cats that the servants had, just at this time, orders to kill all the cats that came near it, by reason of a great robbery committed the night before in the king's larder by several grimalkins. The old woman's cat, however, pushed on by hunger, entered the house, and no sooner saw a dish of meat unobserved by the cooks, but she made a seizure of it, and was doing what for many years she had not done before, that is, heartily filling her belly; but as she was enjoying herself under the dresser-board, and feeding heartily upon her stolen morsels, one of the testy officers of the kitchen, missing his breakfast, and seeing where the poor cat was solacing herself with it, threw his knife at her with such an unlucky hand that it struck her full in the breast. However, as it has been the providence of Nature to give this creature nine lives instead of one, poor puss made a shift to crawl away, after she had for some time shammed dead; but in her flight, observing the blood come streaming from her wound – "Well," said she, "let me but escape this accident, and if ever I quit my old home and my own mice for all the rarities in the king's kitchen, may I lose all my nine lives at once!"'

The moral of the story is, that it is better to be contented with what one has than to travel in search of what ambition prompts us to seek for.

In the Escurial, near Madrid, the library of which is rich in ancient literary treasures, is a work by Ebn Arabscah, a collection of Arabian fables. Arabia may with truth be designated the very fountain-head of fabulous story. It was in that country that the venerable Locman flourished, during, it is believed, the reigns of the Jewish kings David and Solomon. Berington, in his essay on 'The Arabian or Saracenic Learning,' remarks that Locman is said to have been an Ethiopian or Nubian, extremely deformed in his person, but so famed for wisdom as to have acquired the appellation of the Sage. His fables and moral maxims, written for the instruction of mankind, were in the estimation of the Eastern people a gift from heaven, and they received them as its inspired dictates. 'Heretofore,' says the Divine being in the Koran, 'we gave wisdom to Locman.' The same writer suggests whether Locman and Æsop may not be the same person. 'The history of the two sages is so perfectly similar in their characters and the incidents of their lives, that one must have been borrowed from the other. But the chronological difficulties,' he adds, 'are sufficiently perplexing.'

We have already seen that the alleged similarity in character and bodily appearance was due to the invention or misconception of Planudes, whose story of Æsop was written in the fourteenth century, and therefore the seeming identity of the sages falls to the ground. Moreover, the fables of Æsop have a mobility about them which we do not find in those of other fabulists; they are essentially Attic in their diction, exhibiting all the marks of that compressed wit and wisdom for which the ancient Greek mind was distinguished. Eastern fable, on the other hand, is ornate and florid, and wanting in the Grecian clear-cut directness and point. It is idle to assume that the ideas, if not the diction, may have been borrowed and clothed in a new dress, unless it can be shown that the substance or subject-matter of the fables of the two sages is alike or similar in character. Granted that a few – about a dozen in number[52 - 'About a dozen instances or so must stand for the present as representing the contribution of the Jātakas to the question of the origin of Æsop's fables.' – Jacobs: 'History of Fable.']– of the Æsopian fables find their counterpart in the fables of a more remote antiquity and in more Eastern countries, this circumstance might be expected; ideas dating from the very advent of the human race are current amongst us in this day, but surely even we of the nineteenth century have a sufficient stock of original conceptions to justify our claims to be considered inventors, and so with Æsop and the race of fabulists in all ages.

Mrs. Jameson says,[53 - In her 'Commonplace Book,' Longmans, 1854, pp. 142, 143.] with great force and truth, that 'the fables which appeal to our higher moral sympathies may sometimes do as much for us as the truths of science,' and she paraphrases from Sir William Jones's Persian Grammar a fable embodying one of those traditions of our Lord which are preserved in the East.

'Jesus,' says the story, 'arrived one evening at the gates of a certain city, and He sent His disciples forward to prepare supper, while He Himself, intent on doing good, walked through the streets into the market place.

'And He saw at the corner of the market some people gathered together looking at an object on the ground; and He drew near to see what it might be. It was a dead dog with a halter round his neck, by which he appeared to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, more abject, a more unclean thing never met the eyes of man.

'And those who stood by looked on with abhorrence.

'"Faugh!" said one, stopping his nose, "it pollutes the air." "How long," said another, "shall this foul beast offend our sight?" "Look at his torn hide," said a third; "one could not even cut a shoe out of it." "And his ears," said a fourth, "all draggled and bleeding!" "No doubt," said a fifth, "he hath been hanged for thieving!"

'And Jesus heard them, and looking down compassionately on the dead creature, He said, "Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth!"

'Then the people turned towards Him with amazement, and said among themselves, "Who is this? this must be Jesus of Nazareth, for only He could find something to pity and approve even in a dead dog!" And being ashamed, they bowed their heads before Him, and went each on his way.'

'I can recall,' continues Mrs. Jameson, 'at this hour, the vivid, yet softening and pathetic, impression left on my fancy by this old Eastern story. It struck me as exquisitely humorous, as well as exquisitely beautiful. It gave me a pain in my conscience, for it seemed thenceforward so easy and so vulgar to say satirical things, and so much nobler to be benign and merciful; and I took the lesson so home that I was in great danger of falling into the opposite extreme; of seeking the beautiful even in the midst of the corrupt and the repulsive. Pity, a large element in my composition, might have easily degenerated into weakness, threatening to subvert hatred of evil in trying to find excuses for it; and whether my mind has ever completely righted itself, I am not sure.'

Our remarks on the fables of Pilpay are equally applicable to the 'Gesta Romanorum' or 'Entertaining Moral Stories' invented by the monks as a fireside recreation in the Middle Ages. Most of them are recitals of adventures rather than fables. They are believed to be of English origin, though a similar 'Gesta,' composed of stories in imitation of them, appeared in Germany about the same time. The taste displayed in many of them is of a questionable kind, and an outrageous twist is often given to their application; though doubtless they are a truthful reflex of the ideas and manners of the age in which they were composed and rehearsed, and in that respect they are of the utmost interest and value. Most of the fables or tales in the 'Gesta' begin well, and with a promise of interest. This interest, it must be said, is rarely maintained, for, as a rule, their conclusion is insipid, and sometimes inane. This notwithstanding, they are valuable by reason of their suggestiveness. The two examples we quote, translated from the Latin by the Rev. Charles Swan, are not faultless, but they are coherent throughout, and have a rounded literary finish in which many of the others are wanting. The first is entitled Of Perfect Life:

'When Titus was Emperor of Rome, he made a decree that the natal day of his first-born son should be held sacred, and that whosoever violated it by any kind of labour should be put to death. This edict being promulgated, he called Virgil, the learned man, to him, and said, "Good friend, I have established a certain law, but as offences may frequently be committed without being discovered by the ministers of justice, I desire you to frame some curious piece of art which may reveal to me every transgressor of the law." Virgil replied, "Sire, your will shall be accomplished." He straightway constructed a magic statue, and caused it to be erected in the midst of the city. By virtue of the secret powers with which it was invested, it communicated to the Emperor whatever offences were committed in secret on that day. And thus, by the accusation of the statue, an infinite number of persons were convicted.

'Now, there was a certain carpenter, called Focus, who pursued his occupation every day alike. Once, as he lay in his bed, his thoughts turned upon the accusations of the statue, and the multitudes which it had caused to perish. In the morning he clothed himself, and proceeded to the statue, which he addressed in the following manner: "O statue! statue! because of thy informations, many of our citizens have been apprehended and slain. I vow to my God that, if thou accusest me, I will break thy head." Having so said, he returned home. About the first hour, the Emperor, as he was wont, despatched sundry messengers to the statue to inquire if the edict had been strictly complied with. After they had arrived and delivered the Emperor's pleasure, the statue exclaimed, "Friends, look up: what see ye written upon my forehead?" They looked, and beheld three sentences, which ran thus: "Times are altered. Men grow worse. He who speaks truth will have his head broken." "Go," said the statue; "declare to his majesty what you have seen and read." The messengers obeyed, and detailed the circumstances as they had happened.

'The Emperor thereupon commanded his guard to arm, and march to the place on which the statue was erected; and he further ordered that, if any one presumed to molest it, they should bind him hand and foot and drag him into his presence. The soldiers approached the statue, and said: "Our Emperor wills you to declare who have broken the law, and who they are that threatened you." The statue made answer, "Seize Focus, the carpenter! Every day he violates the law, and, moreover, menaces me." Immediately Focus was apprehended and conducted to the Emperor, who said, "Friend, what do I hear of thee? Why dost thou break my law?" "My lord," answered Focus, "I cannot keep it; for I am obliged to obtain every day eight pennies, which, without incessant labour, I have not the means of acquiring." "And why eight pennies?" said the Emperor. "Every day through the year," returned the carpenter, "I am bound to repay two pennies which I borrowed in my youth; two I lend; two I lose; and two I spend." "You must make this more clear," said the Emperor. "My lord," he replied, "listen to me. I am bound each day to repay two pennies to my father; for when I was a boy my father expended upon me daily the like sum. Now he is poor, and needs my assistance, and therefore I return what I borrowed formerly. Two other pennies I lend to my son, who is pursuing his studies, in order that, if by any chance I should fall into poverty, he may restore the loan, just as I have done to his grandfather. Again, I lose two pennies every day on my wife; for she is contradictious, wilful, and passionate. Now, because of this disposition, I account whatsoever is given to her entirely lost. Lastly, two other pennies I expend upon myself in meat and drink, I cannot do with less; nor can I obtain them without unremitting labour. You now know the truth, and I pray you give a righteous judgment." "Friend," said the Emperor, "thou hast answered well. Go, and labour earnestly in thy calling." Soon after this the Emperor died, and Focus the carpenter, on account of his singular wisdom, was elected in his stead, by the unanimous choice of the whole nation. He governed as wisely as he had lived; and at his death his picture, bearing on the head eight pennies, was reposited among the effigies of the deceased Emperors.

'Application: My beloved, the Emperor is God, who appointed Sunday as a day of rest. By Virgil is typified the Holy Spirit, which ordains a preacher to declare men's virtues and vices. Focus is any good Christian who labours diligently in his vocation, and performs faithfully every relative duty.'

The story has point and humour, but in the latter quality it is surpassed by the next one, entitled Confession.

'A certain Emperor, named Asmodeus, established an ordinance, by which every malefactor taken and brought before the judge should, if he distinctly declared three truths, against which no exception could be taken, obtain his life and property. It chanced that a certain soldier transgressed the law and fled. He hid himself in a forest, and there committed many atrocities, despoiling and slaying whomsoever he could lay his hands upon. When the judge of the district ascertained his haunt, he ordered the forest to be surrounded, and the soldier to be seized and brought bound to the seat of judgment. "You know the law," said the judge. "I do," returned the other: "If I declare three unquestionable truths, I shall be free; but if not, I must die." "True," replied the judge; "take, then, advantage of the law's clemency, or this very day you shall not taste food until you are hanged." "Cause silence to be kept," said the soldier. His wish being complied with, he proceeded in the following manner. "The first truth is this: I protest before ye all, that from my youth up I have been a bad man." The judge, hearing this, said to the bystanders: "He says true, else he had not now been in this situation. Go on, then," continued the judge; "what is the second truth?" "I like not," exclaimed he, "the dangerous situation in which I stand." "Certainly," said the judge, "we may credit thee. Now then for the third truth, and thou hast saved thy life." "Why," he replied, "if I once get out of this confounded place, I will never willingly re-enter it." "Amen," said the judge, "thy wit hath preserved thee; go in peace." And thus he was saved.

'Application: My beloved, the emperor is Christ. The soldier is any sinner; the judge is a wise confessor. If the sinner confess the truth in such a manner as not even demons can object, he shall be saved; that is, if he confess and repent.'

The 'Gesta' is a rich storehouse from which many poets, including Gower, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Parnell, and others, have borrowed. Shakespeare's 'Pericles' has its source in the 'Gesta'; so also Parnell's delightful poem, 'The Hermit,' and Dr. John Byrom's 'Three Black Crows' are from the same prolific treasure-house.

CHAPTER XII

MODERN FABULISTS: LA FONTAINE, GAY

'Lie gently on their ashes, gentle earth.'

    Beaumont and Fletcher.
It is a remarkable circumstance in connection with the literature of fable, that those who have excelled in it are comparatively few. The principal names that occur to us are Æsop, La Fontaine, Gay, Lessing, Krilof; 'the rest are all but leather or prunello,' if we except a few rare examples from Northcote and Cowper. The composition of fables seems to call for the exercise of a talent which is peculiar and rare. La Fontaine says[54 - In his dedication to Madame de Montespan.] that the writing of apologues is a gift sent down from the immortals. Not even those who have practised the art have always succeeded in it to perfection. Gay, who is esteemed the best of the English fabulists, is often prolix and lacking in point. La Fontaine, sprightly as are his renderings of the ancient fables which he found ready to his hand, is weak and commonplace in his attempts at originality. Dodsley is too didactic and goody-goody; Northcote is stilted, and often unnatural. Even Krilof, admirable as he generally is, is sometimes darkly obscure, and his moral difficult to find. Lessing comes nearest to the terseness and concentration of the Æsopian model, but many of his so-called fables are better described as epigrams and witticisms. True, all these writers have sometimes, like the Phrygian, 'hit the mark,' but oftener they have missed not only the bull's-eye, but the target itself; and the arrows of their satire are frequently lost in the mazes of verbiage. Æsop alone is in the fable what Shakespeare is in the drama, a paragon without a peer, and all competitors with either of these master minds must be content to take a lower place – to stand on a lower plane.

Excellent as many modern fables fare, full of instruction and entertainment, it is but few of them that spontaneously recur to us in connection with the affairs of daily life.

Amongst modern fabulists, La Fontaine stands in the front rank. Jean de la Fontaine was born at Chateau-Thierry on July 8, 1621; died in Paris, March 15, 1695,[55 - Geruzez gives February 13 as the date of La Fontaine's death.] in his seventy-fourth year; and was buried in the cemetery of St. Joseph, near the remains of his friend Molière. He was one of the galaxy of great men and writers that adorned the age of Louis XIV. His fables, as is well known, are in verse, and include the best of those from ancient sources, with others of his own invention. He may be said to have turned Æsop into rhyme. The happy spirit of the genial Frenchman inspires them all. They are written with a vivacity and sprightliness all his own, and these qualities, with the humour which he infuses into them, make their perusal exhilarating and health-giving.

'I have considered,' says he, 'that as these fables are already known to all the world, I should have done nothing if I had not rendered them in some degree new, by clothing them with certain fresh characteristics. I have endeavoured to meet the wants of the day, which are novelty and gaiety; and by gaiety I do not mean merely that which excites laughter, but a certain charm, an agreeable air, which may be given to every species of subject, even the most serious.'[56 - Preface, 'Fables,' 1668.] He had attained to middle age before he found his true vocation in literature, his first collection of fables in six books being published in 1668, when he was forty-seven years of age.

La Fontaine is well known in this country by the English translations of his work. A version containing some of his best fables was published anonymously in 1820, but is known to be from the pen of John Matthews of Herefordshire. In his preface, Matthews states that the fables are not altogether a translation or an imitation of La Fontaine, because in most of them are allusions to public characters and the events of the times, where they are suggested by the subject. These allusions are largely political. The fables, apart from these ephemeral references to personages and events, are written with great cleverness and vivacity, full of humour, and in many instances are well suited for recitation.

The Fox and the Stork is a good example of his style:

'For sport once Renard, sly old sinner,
Press'd gossip Stork to share his dinner.
"Neighbour, I must entreat you'll stay
And take your soup with me to-day.
My praise shall not my fare enhance,
But let me beg you'll take your chance;
You're kindly welcome were it better."
She yielded as he thus beset her,
And soon arrived the pottage smoking
In plates of shallow depth provoking.
'Twas vain the guest essay'd to fill
With unsubstantial fare her bill.
'Twas vain she fish'd to find a collop,
The host soon lapp'd the liquor all up.
Dame Stork conceal'd her deep displeasure,
But thought to find revenge at leisure;
And said, "Ere long, my friend, you'll try
My humble hospitality.
I know your taste, and we'll contrive —