[135] Mr. Jacobs was obliged to omit the Life of Esop in his
reprint of Caxton's text of the Fables, as it would have
unduly increased the bulk of his second volume. But
those interested in the genealogy of popular tales and
fables will be glad to have Mr. Jacobs' all but
exhaustive account of the so-called Esopic fables,
together with his excellent synopsis of parallels, in
preference to the monkish collection of spurious
anecdotes of the fabulist, of which the most noteworthy
are given in the present paper.

[136] Robert Henryson was a schoolmaster in Dunfermline in the
latter part of the 15th century. His _Moral Fables_,
edited by Dr. David Irving, were printed for the
Maitland Club in 1832, and his complete works (Poems and
Fables) were edited by Dr. David Laing, and published in
1865. His _Testament of Cresseid_, usually considered as
his best performance, is a continuation of Chaucer's
_Troilus and Cresseide_, which was derived from the
Latin of an unknown author named Lollius. Henryson was
the author of the first pastoral poem composed in the
English (or Scottish) language--that of _Robin and
Makyn_. "To his power of poetical conception," Dr. Laing
justly remarks, "he unites no inconsiderable skill in
versification: his lines, if divested of their uncouth
orthography, might be mistaken for those of a more
modern poet."

[137] _Schaw_, a wood, a covert.