tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">214

91 The Eagle and the Crow 216 92 The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox 218 93 The Fox and the Grapes 220 94 The Horse and the Stag 222 95 The Young Man and the Swallow 224 96 The Man and his Goose 227 97 The Dog and the Wolf 229 98 The Wood and the Clown 232 99 The Old Lion 234 100 The Horse and the Loaded Ass 236 101 The Old Man and Death 238 102 The Boar and the Ass 240 103 The Tunny and the Dolphin 242 104 The Peacock and the Magpie 244 105 The Forester and the Lion 246 106 The Stag looking into the Water 248 107 The Stag in the Ox-Stall 251 108 The Dove and the Ant 254 109 The Lion in Love 256 110 The Tortoise and the Eagle 259

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PREFACE,

BY S. CROXALL.

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 to us of him, would fill a large volume: but they are, for the most part, so inconsistent and absurd, 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 an 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 mixed 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 found in any catalogue, from Nabonassar to Alexander the Great; Nabonadius, most probably, reigning in Babylon about that time. He sends him into Egypt in the days of Nectanebo, who was not in being till two hundred years afterwards; with some other gross mistakes of that kind, which sufficiently show us that this Life was a work of invention, and that the inventor was a bungling poor creature. He never mentions Æsop's being at Athens; though Phædrus speaks of him as one that lived the greatest part of his time there; and it appears that he had a statue erected in that city to his memory, done by the hand of the famed Lysippus. He writes of him as living at Samos, and interesting himself in a public capacity in the administration of the affairs of that place; yet, takes not the least notice of the Fable which Aristotle[1] tells us he spoke in behalf of a famous Demagogue there, when he was impeached for embezzling the public money; nor does he indeed give us the least hint of such a circumstance. An ingenious man might have laid together all the materials of this kind that are to be found in good old authors, and, by the help of a bright invention, connected and worked them up with success; we might have swallowed such an imposition well enough, because we should not have known how