of one of the Campbells when the government threatened to visit his valley, and punish him for some "Easier said than transgression. done" would be our English form of the same, or, "Catch, if you can." There is another proverb in the North, which immortalises the uncharitableness of a certain personage of the name of Blind John, but is used to tell you that something will never occur. "Wait till I see, as Blind John said to the beggars," implying that, as the said John was not in a capacity to fulfil his part of the compact, as he is clearly declared to be blind, the beggars will have to be expectant all their lives. These common sayings, to which a particular interest is attached by the mentioning of a particular man's name, must have sprung up in some narrow circle, and, gradually spreading and spreading as the truth became apparent, retained the individual appellation long after his real peculiarities were forgotten.

Hobson's choice is immortalised by Milton, but owes nothing more to the great author than the mere fact that the worthy stable-keeper gave his customers only the very unsatisfactory choice of having the particular horse whose turn it was to go outor none. The application was immediately made by every Cambridge man who was offered the option between a small preferment or none at all, or a glass of small beer in the utter unattainability of XX. So that, at last, the insufficient stud of the university carrier was a standing text in favour of accepting what one could get, and of being content therewith.

These, however, are not specimens of the original proverb, pure and simple. Of these we have spoken already as being facts of the most appalling barrenness, and deriving their importance from the very circumstance of their being utterly undeniable by the most contradictory of men. But they have another characteristic which we have not touched on yet. If a room were hung round with the most common of those familiar sayings, they would be perpetual incitements to good conduct; for we must say in behalf of proverbs

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that we never met with one which encouraged the slightest impropriety of behaviour. They inculcate uniformly the virtues of gratitude, "Don't look a given horse in the mouth"- of economy, "A penny saved 's a penny got "-of a judicious choice of our companions, "A black sheep spoils the flock"-of self-command, "You can't eat your cake and have it"-of contentment, "Half a loaf is better than no bread;" and rushing into poetry, you are encouraged to good hours, with a promise attached

"Early to bed, early to rise,

Makes a man healthy, and wealthy,
and wise.'

People, indeed, have found fault with the very sagacious and common-sense precepts contained in the majority of these popular sayings. Some have traced the love of the dollar, manifested so powerfully by our big brothers across the Atlantic, to the little manual which might be called the Money-getter's Handbook, furnished to them by the great Benjamin Franklin under the name of

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Poor Richard." In this he strings up an amazing roll of proverbs, all urging the strictest attention to the main chance; and perhaps, in his anxiety to put down extravagance and thoughtlessness and ostentation, he fell into the opposite extreme, and praised the acquisitive faculties too highly. Only once or twice we get out of the sound of the money-bags. One of these is where he offers a general inducement to carefulness of small matters. "A little neglect," he says, "may breed great mischief. For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy." And this, which feebly attempts to improve the unadorned baldness of the proverb's downright language, will form a favourable stage to us in our journey to the next style of sententious philosophy known as the fable. And here we get upon higher ground. A kind of interest is added to the mere statement, by the introduction of a new machinery; for we find that generally a fable is a proverb put into action

a dramatic exposition of the same innate fact. so that it is easy, in most instances, to sum up the whole result of pages of fable in a single line of a well-known adage. But first the origin of the fabular form will account for the apparently roundabout way in which the same end is attained. The Fable took its rise in the East, where despotic government seems inseparable from the heat of climate and fertility of soil. When a dreadful, cruelhearted king is seated on his throne, and twenty or thirty armed attendants are in the hall of audience, ready to cut an unlucky courtier's head off if he says a word to offend the tyrant, you may be sure that there is not quite so much plain speaking as in our more fortunate clime. How is it possible to give a remote hint of disapproval of the actions of a very magnificent three-tailed bashaw, who may resent your impertinence with a bastinado, or a twist or two of the bowstring? Wisdom was forced to cover its nauseous taste, as pills are wrapped up in silver; and a faint presentiment was given of his own conduct in a description of a sore-headed bear or sick lion. In this particular, then, the Fable differs from the Proverb, that it is not founded on a self-evident truth, but, on the contrary, derives its value from the impossibility of its actual occurrence. Horses, dogs, tigers, and foxes, all talk and argue-a thing in itself inadmissible in any natural history book, but quite appropriate in a book of fables-for it gives such an excellent means of escape to the speaker, if perchance the despot does not understand the allusion. How can the most truculent of tyrants put a man to death for merely relating a conversation between a wolf and a lamb, or an owl and its children? Once on a time a Shah of Persia was riding out with one of his courtiers: the king was greatly devoted to war and hunting, and impoverished his country by the expenses he incurred in these two ways. The courtier was a good patriot, and very anxious to re-establish peace over all the realm; but if he had ventured to say, "I advise your majesty to attend to the prosperity of your kingdom, and leave off wasting whole territories to be coverts for your game," the

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answer would probably have been, "Allah Inshallah! I defile your mother's grave, and spit on your father's beard. Cast the insulter from the tower of our highest castle." So he went in a quieter way to work. As they passed some ruins he pretended to listen, and every now and then broke into a laugh, and cried, Capital! excellent! bravo!" "What amuses you?" said the king. "The owls," he said, "the sagacious, steady old owls." "What are they doing?" inquired the Shah. "They are rejoicing greatly, and congratulating themselves on the virtues of so great a king. I understand their language, and it is really curious to see how wise they are." "They must be very sensible birds," replied the monarch, "and have a good judg ment in the qualities of crowned heads. I am glad they approve of my conduct; but what do they actually say?"

One said to the other," replied the courtier, "what a good sovereign our lord the Shah is; for he is not like his foolish predecessor, perpetually clearing the country and building fresh houses, so that there would soon be no place for us in the whole land; but see how he allows whole towns to fall into ruins, and farms to go to decay, and barns to get covered with ivy. Oh! he is a true friend of the owls; and, ti whit! ti whoo! long live the king!" The histories tell us that the courtier's object was gained, and that the owls were very soon the only discontented race in the Shah's dominions. There is therefore something of a slavish quality in the fable- an indirect method of enunciating a truth; and if we trace any circumstance you like, which is the subject both of a fable and a proverb, you will see what new disguises the Oriental version has to assume in comparison with the European-how plain John Bull has to sport a long beard in the character of a goat, or a hump on his back in the character of a dromedary, to prevent his nationality from being recognised. Our earliest fabulist Esop, is perhaps a fable himself, for nobody can tell anything about him; we only know that his name is given to the oldest collection, and that he wrote in Greek. The fables, how

ever, still extant under his name, are acknowledged by the greatest scholars not to be of his composition, and we must go to his Latin imitator Phædrus, who lived in the reign of Augustus and his tyrannical successors, before we come in contact with anything more substantial than a name and a myth. This elegant versifier was contented to make his countrymen acquainted with the aphoristic treasures which had been accumulating for many ages in Greece under the name of Esop; and it is perhaps characteristic of the essentially subservient nature of these compositions, that their introduction at Rome is coincident with the loss of Roman liberty, and that when life, property, and fame became dependent on the breath of one man, the fabular form of illustration came into play. But even this disguise, we are told, was not sufficient, and that the consciousness of Tiberius and his infamous minister Sejanus, enabled them to decipher the hidden meaning of some of these innocent little tales.

Many of these have been translated, adapted, and modernised, so that when we hear a fable in German, French, or English, its fount and origin are very often traceable to the Roman. Even when you think a perfect novelty is presented to you, you must not be too sure that it is not an old friend with a new face. Every means is used to deceive you in this respect-the personages are changed, the scene is different and yet there is no denying, when all the outside coverings are stripped off, that the identity is clear. The dog that dropped the meat from his mouth to grasp at the shadow of it in the water, the wolf in sheep's clothing, the ass with the lion's skin, and many others, have gone the round of all European languages, and have so long been established, that each nation finds it difficult to believe them of so distant an origin. The best way really to constitute these strangers denizens and fellow-citizens, is that pursued by the Germans. We find, in several instances, that they add to them and improve them, and by novelty of treatment, and turning them to a far higher moral, make them really their

own. See, in the instance of the daw with the borrowed plumage, how exquisitely Lessing comes to the rescue of the injured bird, and gives quite a new turn to the story. Instead of being merely a warning to people not to adorn themselves with ornaments they are not entitled to, he stretches the lesson a step farther, and lectures the peacocks for their illiberality in denying even the ornament the unfortunate animal can honestly claim. It is too much the way with all of us, if we find a person assuming too much in one direction, to consider him to have no merit at all. If a man, pretending to be able to sing, breaks down in the "Bay of Biscay," we feel persuaded he can't say the multiplication table; if we find him failing in French or Ítalian, we set him down as an ass, who knows nothing about English; and yet he may be a very good arithmetician though a wretched songster, and a perfect master of his native tongue though ignorant of French and Italian. Here is Lessing's fable:-"A foolish daw tricked herself out in the fallen feathers of some beautiful peacocks, and when she thought she was completely dressed, mixed, in an audacious manner, among the birds of Juno. She was detected at a glance, and the peacocks fell upon her with all their bills to tear off her borrowed ornaments. 'Have done,' she cried at last, 'you have got all that was yours back again.' But the peacocks, who had noticed the brilliant wing feathers of the daw, answered, 'Silence, fool! these can't be yours;' and pecked on."

In the same way we have all heard of a cloud coming before the sun, as a lesson that happiness cannot last, and that even the brightest of fortunes is never safe from obscuration. A German, of the name of Faldè, gives this old story so perfectly new a turn that it seems like a precept of the Old Testament translated into the New-a mere moral lesson elevated into a Christian command. "A thick rain-cloud passed in front of the great light of the world. The sun was covered for some time; but scarcely had the cloud passed on when he illuminated its edges with a

beautiful light. A man deserves to be called a light of the world, who does good to an enemy when the hour of suffering is past."

These are made true German fables though founded on old Esop; and as we observed that all proverbs had a useful tendency as regards our worldly wisdom, we may go farther with these improved fables, and consider them incitements to virtue and goodness. If any one, for instance, is inclined to boast of having with stood temptation-of having resisted a good opportunity of enriching himself by wrongful act, or advanced his position by unjustifiable behaviour, let us take the circumstances of the case into consideration-let us see whether the merit is so very great, or whether the thing on which he plumes himself was not forced upon him by his situation at the time. We remember, in Esop, how a certain wolf had a bone sticking in its throat, and persuaded the longnecked crane to pull it out. Now Lessing founds a great moral lesson on this incident, and relates it in the following way:

A wolf lay at the point of death, and reviewed his past life :-" Well, I am a sinner," he said, "but after all, not a very great one. I have done evil, no doubt, but I have done a great deal of good. Once, I remember, there came to me a bleating lamb that had wandered from the flock. It was so near that I could have strangled it at once, but I did nothing to it. At the same moment I heard the baaing and bleating of a sheep with perfect indifference, though I knew there was no dog near to guard it." Ah, I remember the occurrence perfectly," said the reverend Fox, who was come to hear his confession. "It was at the very time when you were choking with that horrid bone which the crane afterwards pulled out of your throat."

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This lesson against the pretence to goodness advanced by the vainglorious wolf, may be fitly followed by a warning against believing his boastful statements when addressed to simpler listeners than the fox. The great and good Archbishop Fénélon is the author of it. "A number of sheep were securely placed within

VOL. LXXXVIII.—NO, DXL.

their fence, the dogs were sound asleep, and Alexis, seated beneath a spreading beech-tree, played on his pipe with the neighbouring shepherds. A famished wolf came, and through the bars of the fence examined the flock. A young and inexperienced sheep, who had seen nothing of the world, entered into conversation with him. What are you come in search of here?' he said to the glutton. The grass, my dear; the soft and tender grass,' replied the wolf. 'You know there is nothing so sweet as the pasture on the green meadow, enamelled with flowers, and to quench the thirst at a clear and crystal stream. I have found them both in this place. What more can be required? I love philosophy, which teaches one to be contented with little.' 'Is it really true,' returned the young sheep,

that you don't live upon flesh, and that you are satisfied with a little grass? If so, let us live as brothers, and feed together.' The moment the sheep went out of the fence into the meadow, the amiable philosopher tore him to pieces, and swallowed him every morsel."

And now we will pass to a higher style of fable still, for these things go on improving as we advance. The proverb is a short sentence, grammatically saying one thing and essentially meaning another. A fable, in its origin, is an amplification of this; for it is a statement of one thing regarding a horse or cow, while it is an illustration of something else regarding ourselves. The next step in the fable is that in which we find that men are the actors as well as the scholars-that it is a story in which men are introduced as warnings or lessons to other men ; and, so far, at once proves its superiority by the fact that the variety of incident may be infinitely enlarged, since there is no limit to the positions in which men may be placed. For, after all, the amount of human feeling which can be expressed by any action of a sheep or lion is very small. The interest, such as it is, is centred upon the ingenuity with which such an apparently dissimilar circle of thoughts and propensities can be made to embrace the feelings and

aspirations of the human heart. We care nothing for the fox or the bear, the wolf or the camel,-their whole hold upon us is as representatives of the cunning or ill-natured, the cruel or the submissive. But in the fable we have now got to there is a double life. There is an interest thrown round the personages of the tale, and the moral is drawn home to us at last by the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. Some of these, independent of the deductions to be drawn from them, would be delightful as mere tales. But when the reader, in addition to the interest of the incidents, finds they have an intimate relation to the conduct of life, and are lessons as well as stories, he perceives that Esop has risen into a higher order, and that the fable has become a parable. A very old one, which originally appeared in prose, in Addison's Spectator, as a translation from a Persian author, retains its place in our old collections in the admirable version of Parnell. Its object is to tell us that we are no judges of the ways of Providence; that what may appear for our good is mercifully taken away; that what we fear and grieve for is, in fact, an interposition in our favour. The chief personage of the story is an aged hermit, who became dissatisfied with the arrangement of sublunary things, and was perplexed by the spectacle of triumphant vice and suffering virtue. To inquire into these things "he left his cell, the pilgrim staff he bore, and fixed the scallop in his hat before," and commenced his journey. He is soon joined by a young man, who proves so agreeable a companion that they resolve to continue together; and as night came on, they drew near to a stately castle. Here the master, with ostentatious civility, presses his kindness upon them. He forces them to taste his richest dishes, and boasts of his invaluable plate. The younger guest rewards his hospitality by stealing a golden cup. Horrorstruck at the sight, the hermit is too much overcome to be able to speak, and, being overtaken by a sudden storm, they with difficulty find admittance into the house of a miserly churl, who grudges them the poorest food, and is glad to get quit of them the moment

the sky clears up. The youth at parting presents him with the valuable goblet he had stolen from the hospitable lord, and the hermit is as thunderstruck as before. They then get to the mansion of an excellent man, neither mean nor ostentatious, who treats them kindly, amuses them with instructive conversation, concludes the day with prayer, and conducts them to their beds. In the morning the stranger steps noiselessly up to the cradle where the child of his entertainer is asleep, and wrings its neck. Shocked, terrified, blinded with his agitation, the hermit flies; he loses his way, and is overtaken by his companion and a servant who had been sent to point out their path over a bridge. When they reach the arch, the stranger goes up to the servant and pushes him over into the stream. He is drowned before their eyes. The wrathful hermit turns on the murderer, but is silenced by his sudden transformation into an angelic shape; and the heavenly messenger reveals the causes of these strange events:

"The great vain, man who fared on