^{page 641 note 1} In the course of these studies opportunity was afforded not merely to consider the fable in its isolated occurrences or in groups or collections, but further to observe the persistence of the fable in the minds of the people as revealed by its use in the form of literary allusions. Indeed, owing to its place in the regular school curriculum, its quaint and picturesque allegory, and its epigrammatic appositeness to human affairs, the fable once held a unique position among sources of allusion, and today there are many whose only knowledge of Æsop consists in allusions which still survive in current speech.

^{page 225 note 1} JEGPh. xiv, 519–529; Mod. Phil. xv, 93–105; MLN xxxi, 206–216, xxxii, 466–470.

^{page 225 note 2} Ph. 1. 3; Romulus Vulgaris ii, 16 (Hervieux. Les Fabulistes Latins ii, 246 ff). Hor. Epist. 1.3, 18–20.

^{page 225 note 3} For history and variants of this fable see “The Upstart Crow,” Helen P. South, Mod. Phil. xxv—83–86.

^{page 225 note 4} Av. 33. (Herv. op. cit., iii, 265 ff).

^{page 225 note 5} Pantscha-tantra. Ed. Benfey Leipzig, 1859. i, 605; Odo LIV a, Herv. iv., 225; Piers Plowman, B-text, Prol. 146 ff; L'Estrange 391.

^{page 225 note 6} More direct from Matthew 7, 15, but see L'Estrange, 328.

^{page 225 note 7} L'Estrange 94. Faerni 73. LaFon. ii. 13.

^{page 225 note 8} L'Estrange, 246, Nov. Av. 32 (Herv. op. cit., iii, 445).

^{page 225 note 9} The life existed in MS. before Planudes but has gone by his name because he gave it currency.

^{page 225 note 10} Poems of Robert Henryson, ed. G. Gregory Smith (Scottish Text Soc.), II (1906) 101–103.

^{page 225 note 11} Plessow, Gesch. der Fabeldichtung in Engl. bis zu John Gay, Berlin 1906, pp. xlii–xliii, and Sauerstein's ed., Anglia ix. Also his dissertation.

^{page 225 note 12} “The Life of Æsop” in The Fables of Æsop, L'Estrange. Ch. 1.

^{page 225 note 13} Ed. 1652, 11, 3, 2, p. 308.

^{page 225 note 14} ibid., 3, 1, 1, 3. p. 418.

^{page 225 note 15} London, 1680, Part i, p. 240.

^{page 225 note 16} The Original Works in Verse and Prose of Dr. Wm. King, ed. John Nichols. Lond., 1776, Vol. III.

^{page 225 note 17} A Poem in a Dialogue, Lond., 1701, p. 17.

^{page 225 note 18} Fuller Worthies' Library, ed. Grosart, 1868, iv, 329–330; cf. “Life” in L'Estrange, Ch. 4.

^{page 225 note 19} Brydge's Archaica ii, 45.

^{page 225 note 20} Ed. 1905, p. 33.

^{page 225 note 21} “Life,” op. cit., Ch. 8–9.

^{page 225 note 22} Works of Gabriel Earvey, Huth Library, 1884, iii, 47.

^{page 225 note 23} P. 127. Also cf. “Life,” op. cit., Ch. 19.

^{page 225 note 24} The Poetical Essays of Alexander Craige, London, 1604; cf. “Life,” op. cit., Ch. 19.

^{page 225 note 25} The Tipling Philosophers, A Lyric Poem, 1710, p. 35; cf. “Life,” op. cit., Ch. 12.

^{page 225 note 26} Dialogues of the Dead, In Imitation of Lucian. (Works of Mr. Tho. Brown, 4th ed., Lond., 1715, iv, 254).

^{page 225 note 27} Earlier in “Hell beyond Hell,” (Tales Tragical and Comical, Lond., 1704, p. 103) D'Urfey had written, “So Æsop back return'd with Shame,” where Æsop is a nickname for a wise, or cunning man.

^{page 225 note 28} New Operas with Comical Stories and Poems, etc., never before printed. London, 1721, p. 172.

^{page 225 note 29} “Of Humility,” p. 36 (Essays upon Several Subjects, in Prose and Verse, 1710).

^{page 225 note 30} “Letters from the Dead to the Living,” op. cit., ii, Pt. 1, p. 13.

^{page 225 note 31} A copy of the edition published at Frankfort in 1623 by C. Barthius; now in the British Museum.

^{page 225 note 32} Back of this play both as to name and suggestion lies the famous old Æsopic fable of The Fox, the Crow, and the Cheese. (Rom. 1. 14). The key note is struck in the opening scene when Voltore the advocate is about to present a piece of plate:

The last line was probably suggested rather by Horace's “Plerumque recoctus Scriba ex quinqueviro corvum deludet hiantem” (Sat. 11. 5, 55–56) than the fable directly, but the fable was in Jonson's mind, and just as we have it in the opening scene, we find it again in Act V, Scene 5:

Both at the beginning and the end, tying the play together, are these references to the old fable, and the names of the principal characters also derive from fable tradition. On the one hand is Volpone, the fox; on the other, Voltore, the Vulture, Corbaccio, Old Raven, and Corvino, the Crow. Mosca is the old Plautian parasite, and the plot of the trickster tricked is quite Plautian, but that does not preclude the obvious fact that here we have, as it were a fable back translated,—a fable, which translated human types into symbolic terms, turned back again into the actions of human types. As a matter of fact, there is a close parallelism between the fable in its treatment of type figures and the Jonsonese comedy, the fable of course doing in brief compass and under the veil of allegory what the comedy does directly and at length.

Of course, as Holthausen (Anglia xii, 519–525) has pointed out, Jonson is elaborating with considerable closeness from Petronius; but the title and the names of the characters derive not directly from the word “Corvi” in Petronius as Holthausen suggests, but only possibly through that word as it may have served to recall to Jonson's mind the old fable of “The Fox, the Crow, and the Cheese.”

^{page 232 note 33} Reprinted by J. O. Halliwell-Phillips from the edition of 1570 in 1854. Early editions in 1551, 1570, 1584; E. K. Chambers (Medieval Stage, ii, 205), gives the date as 1553.

^{page 232 note 34} First of “Foure Monarthicke Tragedies” in Recreation of the Muses by William Alexander, Earl of Sterling.

^{page 232 note 35} Act. IV.

^{page 233 note 36} Vanbrugh's play was less successful than its French original, lasting only nine performances. Cibber, in speaking on its lack of success, says, “the character that delivers Precepts of Wisdom is in some sort severe upon the Auditors, for shewing him one wiser than himself; but when Folly is his Object, he applauds himself for being wiser than the Coxcomb he laughed at; and who is not more pleased with an Occasion to commend, than to excuse himself.” (Plays written by Sir John Vanbrugh, 2 volumes, London, 1759, pp. 6–7) Boursault's play, however, seems to have been eminently successful.

^{page 233 note 37} Dissertations upon the Epistles of Phalaris, Themistocles, Socrates, Euripides, and the Fables of Æsop, ed. Wilhelm Wagner, Bohn Library, Lond. 1883, p. 568.

^{page 232 note 38} The epithet reminds one of the title of an 18th century political tract: “The Life of Æsop of Tunbridge, written by the Ass.”

^{page 232 note 39} Ibid., 578 ff.

^{page 232 note 40} The Works of Mr. Tho. Brown, 4th ed., Lond., 1715, ii. Letters from the Dead to the Living. Part I. “A letter of News from Mr. Joseph Haines, of Merry Memory, to his Friends at Will's Coffee-House in Court-Garden,” First letter.

^{page 232 note 41} Third ed. Lond., 1731, p. 77–78.

^{page 232 note 42} The Fables of Æsop Paraphras'd in Verse and Adorn'd with Sculpture, by John Ogilby, London, 1651.

^{page 232 note 43} The conceptions of Æsop before and after Bentley may be sharply contrasted by quoting from the “Life” in L'Estrange's collection of 1692 and then a corresponding passage from the “Life of Æsop” prefixed to Dodsley's edition of the Fables in 1764.

Sir Roger L'Estrange, Fables of Æsop and other Eminent Mythologists, etc., (2nd. ed. Lond. 1694, p. 1): “Æsop (according to Planudes, Camerarius and Others) was by birth, of Ammorius, a Town in the Greater Phrygia; (though some will have him to be a Thracian, others a Samian) of a mean Condition, and in his person deformed, to the highest degree: Flat-Nos'd, Hunch-Back'd, Blobber-Lipp'd; a Long Mishapen Head; His Body Crooked all over, Big-Belly'd, Baker-Legg'd, and his Complexion so swarthy, that he took his very Name from't; for Æsop is the same with Aethiop. And he was not only Unhappy in the most scandalous Figure of a Man, that was ever heard of; but he was in a manner Tongue-Ty'd too, by such an Impediment in his speech, that People could very hardly understand what he said. This Imperfection is said, to have been the most sensible part of his Misfortune; for the Excellency of his Mind might otherwise have Atton'd in some Measure, for the Uncouth Appearance of his Person (at least if That Part of his History may pass for Current.)”

R. Dodsley, Select Fables of Esop and Other Fabulists, in Three Books (new ed. Lond. 1764, pp. xxiv–xxv): “If we were to follow probability rather than the assertions of some writers in the lower ages, I should be more apt to think that Esop was of a handsome countenance and shape, than ugly and deformed; notwithstanding the general prepossession to the contrary, which has prevailed for the three or four last centuries. There is no author quoted as saying any thing to the disadvantage of Esop's person, till after the fall of all the arts and sciences, and almost a thousand years after his death. The first writer quoted in support of this groundless opinion is Stobaeus, who has it from I don't known whom; and what is said by this unknown person, relates only to the air of Esop's countenance; for there is not a word intimated of his resembling an Ethiop, or of his being deformed in any part of his body. Planudes was the first who propagated any fancies of the latter kind; and that probably from his taking another person for Esop; and not till about two thousand years after the death of this celebrated mythologist. There is no occasion to oppose this notion of Planudes by searching for any express authorities against him; it having been so fully proved before, that he has totally destroyed all his own credit himself.”