and therefore we have decided on omitting them from our edition.  In the “Fables,” Gay is happy in proportion to the innocence and simplicity of his nature.  He understands animals, because he has more than an ordinary share of the animal in his own constitution.  AEsop, so far as we know, though an astute, was an uneducated and simple-minded man.  Phaedrus was a myth, and we cannot, therefore, adduce him in point.  But Fontaine was called the “Fable-tree,” and Gay is just the Fable-tree transplanted from France to England.  In so doing we do not question our poet’s originality, but merely indicate a certain resemblance in spirit between two originals.  An original in Fable-writing Gay certainly was.  He has copied, neither in story, spirit, nor moral, any previous writer.  His “Fables” are always graceful in literary execution, often interesting in story; their versification is ever smooth and flowing; and sometimes, as in the “Court of Death,” their moral darkens into sublimity.  On the whole, these “Fables,” along with the “Beggars’ Opera,” and the delectable songs of “’Twas when the Seas were Roaring,” and “Black-eyed Susan,” shall long preserve the memory of their author.  We have appended these two songs because of their rare excellence.

John Gay had his faults as a man and as a poet, and it were easy finding fault with him in both capacities.  But

  “Poor were the triumph o’er the timid hare;”

and he was, by his own shewing, as well as Queen Caroline’s, “the Hare with many friends.”  Let us, instead, drop a “tear over his fate,” and pay a tribute, short, but sincere, to his true, though limited genius.

GAY’S FABLES.

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION.

PART I.

THE SHEPHERD AND THE PHILOSOPHER.

  Remote from cities lived a swain,
  Unvexed with all the cares of gain;
  His head was silvered o’er with age,
  And long experience made him sage;
  In summer’s heat, and winter’s cold,
  He fed his flock and penned the fold;
  His hours in cheerful labour flew,
  Nor envy nor ambition knew: 
  His wisdom and his honest fame
  Through all the country raised his name.
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     A deep philosopher (whose rules
  Of moral life were drawn from schools)
  The shepherd’s homely cottage sought
  And thus explored his reach of thought: 
     ’Whence is thy learning?  Hath thy toil
  O’er books consumed the midnight oil? 
  Hast thou old Greece and Rome surveyed,
  And the vast sense of Plato weighed? 
  Hath Socrates thy soul refined,
  And hast thou fathomed Tully’s mind?
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  Or like the wise Ulysses, thrown
  By various fates, on realms unknown,
  Hast thou through many cities strayed,
  Their customs, laws, and manners weighed?’