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But in the two pieces, Aesop in the City, and Aesop at Court, the fables which are tacked to every important scene are drowned in diffuse morals; besides, they are quite distinct from the dialogue, instead of being interwoven with it, like the fable of Menenius Agrippa in Shakespeare; and modern manners do not suit with this childish mode of instruction.
I am not contending for the morality of Homer; on the contrary, I think it a book of false glory, and tending to inspire immoral and mischievous notions of honour; and with respect to AEsop, though the moral is in general just, the fable is often cruel; and the cruelty of the fable does more injury to the heart, especially in a child, than the moral does good to the judgment.
Emerson said of him: "I am sure if this man had ruled in a period of less facility of printing, he would have become mythological in a very few years, like Aesop or Pilpay, or one of the Seven Wise Masters, by his fables and proverbs."
Look! look at that great cloth spread out in the air, pictured all over with wild beasts, as if they had met together to choose a king, according to their custom in the days of AEsop. But they are choosing neither a king nor a president; else we should hear a most horrible snarling!
"In what?" asked the neighbors. "Why, in crowing so well and scratching so poorly," rejoined Aesop. Fables, you know, are short stories, usually about animals and things, which are made to talk like human beings. Fables are so bright and interesting in themselves that both children and grown-ups like to read them.
The jays with peacocks' feathers are the Snobs of this world: and never, since the days of Aesop, were they more numerous in any land than they are at present in this free country. How does this most ancient apologue apply to the subject in hand? the Dinner-giving Snob.
For the death of happy men is not, as Aesop observes, most grievous, but most blessed, since it secures their felicity, and puts it out of fortune's power. And that Spartan advised well, who, embracing Diagoras, that had himself been crowned in the Olympic Games, and saw his sons and grandchildren victors, said, "Die, Diagoras, for thou canst not be a god."
And I told her that I wanted her and her only of all women. "Why oh, why, did you do such a foolish thing?" I asked. "I did it for your good." "My dear, have you ever heard the story of the tender-hearted elephant? No? It was told in a wonderful book published years ago and called 'The Fables of George Washington AEsop. This is it.
The latter had, however, also its particular school, in which each of the Greek and Roman poets found his imitator. Voss, for instance, took Homer for his model, Ramler, Horace, Gleim, Anacreon, Gessner, Theocritus, Cramer, Pindar, Lichtwer, AEsop, etc. The Germans, in the ridiculous attempt to set themselves up as Greeks, were, in truth, barbarians.
He compared them to the hen in AEsop, fed too fat to lay eggs, and to dogs in the manger, who would neither preach nor let others preach. He charged them with checking instruction in order to introduce that religion which accounts ignorance the mother of devotion.
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