The Talking Beasts | Page 3

are simple; because they are trenchant and witty; because they are fresh and captivating and have a bite to them like the tang of salt water; because they are strong and vital, and what is thoroughly alive in the beginning always lives longest.
And, now we come to La Fontaine the French fabulist, who in 1668 published the first six books of his fables. "Bonhomme La Fontaine," as he was called, chose his subjects from Aesop and Phaedrus and Horace, and, in the later volumes, from such Oriental sources as may have been within his reach. He rendered the old tales in easy-flowing verse, full of elegance and charm, and he composed many original ones besides. La Bruyere says of him: "Unique in his way of writing, always original whether he invents or translates, he surpasses his models and is himself a model difficult to imitate. . . . He instructs while he sports, persuades men to virtue by means of beasts, and exalts trifling subjects to the sublime."
Voltaire asserts: "I believe that of all authors La Fontaine is the most universally read. He is for all minds and all ages."
Later, by a hundred years, than La Fontaine, comes Krilof, the Russian fable-maker, who was born in 1768. After failing in many kinds of literary work the young poet became intimate with a certain Prince Sergius Galitsin; lived in his house at Moscow, and accompanied him to his country place in Lithuania, where he taught the children of his host and devised entertainments for the elders. He used often to spend hours in the bazaars and streets and among the common people, and it was in this way probably that he became so familiar with the peasant life of the country. When he came back from his wanderings on the banks of the Volga he used to mount to the village belfry, where he could write undisturbed by the gnats and flies, and the children found him there one day fast asleep among the bells. A failure at forty, with the publication of his first fables in verse he became famous, and for many years he was the most popular writer in Russia. He died in 1844 at the age of seventy-six, his funeral attended by such crowds that the great church of St. Isaac could not hold those who wished to attend the service. Soon after, a public subscription was raised among all the children of Russia, who erected a monument in the Summer Garden at Moscow.
There the old man sits in bronze, as he used to sit at his window, clad in his beloved dressing gown, an open book in his hand.
Around the monument (says his biographer) a number of children are always at play, and the poet seems to smile benignly on them from his bronze easy chair. Perhaps the Grecian children of long ago played about Aesop's statue in Athens, for Lysippus the celebrated sculptor designed and erected a monument in his memory.
Read Krilof's "Education of a Lion" and "The Lion and the Mosquitoes" while his life is fresh in your mind. Then turn to "What Employment our Lord Gave to Insects" and "How Sense was Distributed," in the quaint African fables. Glance at "The Long-tailed Spectacled Monkey" and "The Tune that Made the Tiger Drowsy," so full of the very atmosphere of India. Then re-read some old favourite of Aesop and imagine you are hearing his voice, or that of some Greek story-teller of his day, ringing down through more than two thousand years of time.
There is a deal of preaching in all these fables,--that cannot be denied,--but it is concealed as well as possible. It is so disagreeable for people to listen while their faults and follies, their foibles and failings, are enumerated, that the fable-maker told his truths in story form and thereby increased his audience. Preaching from the mouths of animals is not nearly so trying as when it comes from the pulpit, or from the lips of your own family and friends!
Whether or not our Grecian and Indian, African and Russian fable-makers have not saddled the animals with a few more faults than they possess--just to bolster up our pride in human nature--I sometimes wonder; but the result has been beneficial. The human rascals and rogues see themselves clearly reflected in the doings of the jackals, foxes, and wolves and may get some little distaste for lying, deceit and trickery.
We make few fables now-a-days. We might say that it is a lost art, but perhaps the world is too old to be taught in that precise way, and though the story writers are as busy as ever, the story-tellers (alas!) are growing fewer and fewer.
If your ear has been opened by faery tales you will have learned already to listen to and