invention. At this time, the vulgar languages had undergone so great
changes, that works in them of two or three centuries old could not be
understood, and, consequently, the Latin became the favourite language of
authors. Many collections of fables were written in it, both in prose and
verse. By the art of printing these works were greatly multiplied; and
again the poets undertook the task of translating them into the language
of the people. The French led the way in this species of literature,
their language seeming to present some great advantages for it. One
hundred years before La Fontaine, Corrozet, Guillaume Gueroult, and
Philibert Hegemon, had written beautiful fables in verse, which it is
supposed La Fontaine must have read and profited by, although they had
become nearly obsolete in his time. It is a remarkable fact, that these
poetical fables should so soon have been forgotten. It was soon after
their appearance that the languages of Europe attained their full
development; and, at this epoch, prose seems to have been universally
preferred to poetry. So strong was this preference, that Ogilby, the
Scotch fabulist, who had written a collection of fables in English verse,
reduced them to prose on the occasion of publishing a more splendid
edition in 1668. It seems to have been the settled opinion of the critics
of that age, as it has, indeed, been stoutly maintained since, that the
ornaments of poetry only impair the force of the fable--that the Muses,
by becoming the handmaids of old Aesop, part with their own dignity
without conferring any on him. La Fontaine has made such an opinion
almost heretical. In his manner there is a perfect originality, and an
immortality every way equal to that of the matter which he gathered up
from all parts of the great storehouse of human experience. His fables
are like pure gold enveloped in solid rock-crystal. In English, a few of
the fables of Gay, of Moore, and of Cowper, may be compared with them in
some respects, but we have nothing resembling them as a whole. Gay, who
has done more than any other, though he has displayed great power of