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So old an authority as Aesop taught us that in his fable of 'The Buried Treasure, but it was a terribly expensive sort of fertilizer in my day when it had to come out of the muscles of men and beasts. One plowing a year was all our farmers could manage, and that nearly broke their backs." "Yes," she said, "I have read of those poor men. Now you see it is different.
God saw that these regulations would ultimately remove the evils in the Greek and Roman systems, and do it away entirely from the fitness of things, as there existing; for Greek and Roman slaves, for the most part, were the equals in all respects of their masters. AEsop was a slave; Terence was a slave.
How superior are the authors who are called profane, such as Xenophon, Plato, Cicero, the Emperor Antoninus, the Emperor Julian, Virgil, etc., to the books which we are told are inspired of God. I can truly say that the fables of Aesop, for example, are certainly more ingenious and more instructive than all these rough and poor parables which are related in the Gospels.
This is exceeding judiciously and prudently deciphered by Aesop in his Apologues, who there affirmeth that every man in the world carrieth about his neck a wallet, in the fore-bag whereof were contained the faults and mischances of others always exposed to his view and knowledge; and in the other scrip thereof, which hangs behind, are kept the bearer's proper transgressions and inauspicious adventures, at no time seen by him, nor thought upon, unless he be a person that hath a favourable aspect from the heavens.
'I see, he sneered, 'you prevail like the false pig in Aesop. 'And you fail, I answered, smiling, 'like the hedgehog in Montaigne. Need I say that there is no hedgehog in Montaigne? 'Your claptrap comes off, he said; 'so would your beard. I had no intelligent answer to this, which was quite true and rather witty.
I wish she would have me; and I have written to Miss W. to tell her so. Verily, it is a delightful thing to live here at home, at full liberty to do just what one pleases. But I recollect some scrubby old fable about grasshoppers and ants, by a scrubby old knave yclept AEsop; the grasshoppers sang all the summer, and starved all the winter.
In the course of the evening Oliver undertook a hornpipe. His short and clumsy figure, and his face pitted and discolored with the small-pox, rendered him a ludicrous figure in the eyes of the musician, who made merry at his expense, dubbing him his little Aesop.
Goldsmith was nettled by the jest, and, stopping short in the hornpipe, exclaimed: "Our herald hath proclaimed this saying, See Aesop dancing, and his monkey playing." The repartee was thought wonderful for a boy of nine years old, and Oliver became forthwith the wit and the bright genius of the family.
But this cup, quoth Aesop, is no public cup, it hath stood so long by Solon's trenchard. Then Pittacus called to Mnesiphilus: Why, saith he, does not Solon drink, but act in contradiction to his own verses? I love that ruby god, whose blessings flow In tides, to recreate my thirsty maw; Venus I court, the Muses I adore, Who give us wine and pleasures evermore.
He made men unjust, ignorant, and cruel, and caused evil to reign in the earth. He persecuted Cain and his sons because they were skilful workmen; he exterminated the Philistines because they composed Orphic poems, and fables like those of AEsop. He was the implacable enemy of science and beauty, and for long ages the human race expiated, in blood and tears, the defeat of the winged serpent.
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