the earliest human history whatever is authentic is universal: and
whatever is universal is anonymous. In such cases there is always
some central man who had first the trouble of collecting them, and
afterwards the fame of creating them. He had the fame; and, on the
whole, he earned the fame. There must have been something great and
human, something of the human future and the human past, in such a
man: even if he only used it to rob the past or deceive the future.
The story of Arthur may have been really connected with the most
fighting Christianity of falling Rome or with the most heathen
traditions hidden in the hills of Wales. But the word "Mappe" or
"Malory" will always mean King Arthur; even though we find older and
better origins than the Mabinogian; or write later and worse versions
than the "Idylls of the King." The nursery fairy tales may have come
out of Asia with the Indo-European race, now fortunately extinct; they
may have been invented by some fine French lady or gentleman like
Perrault: they may possibly even be what they profess to be. But we
shall always call the best selection of such tales "Grimm's Tales":
simply because it is the best collection.

The historical Æsop, in so far as he was historical, would seem to
have been a Phrygian slave, or at least one not to be specially and
symbolically adorned with the Phrygian cap of liberty. He lived, if he
did live, about the sixth century before Christ, in the time of that
Croesus whose story we love and suspect like everything else in
Herodotus. There are also stories of deformity of feature and a ready
ribaldry of tongue: stories which (as the celebrated Cardinal said)
explain, though they do not excuse, his having been hurled over a high
precipice at Delphi. It is for those who read the Fables to judge
whether he was really thrown over the cliff for being ugly and
offensive, or rather for being highly moral and correct. But there is