the beast, studied his ways, copied him, and went to school to him.  The man, then, was not in those days the lord of creation, and the beast was not his servant; but they were almost brothers in the subtle sympathy between them, like that which united Mowgli, the wolf-nursed shikarri, and his hairy brethren, in that most weirdly wonderful of all Mr. Kipling’s inventions—­the one that carries us back, not as his other stories do, to the India of the cities and the bazaars, of the supercilious tourist and the sleek Babu, but to the older India of unbroken jungle, darkling at noonday through its green mist of tangled leaves, and haunted by memories of the world’s long infancy when man and brute crouched close together on the earthy breast of the great mother.

The Aesopic Fables, then, are the oldest representative that we have of the literary art of primitive man.  The charm that they have always possessed springs in part from their utter simplicity, their naivete, and their directness; and in part from the fact that their teachings are the teachings of universal experience, and therefore appeal irresistibly to the consciousness of every one who hears them, whether he be savage or scholar, child or sage.  They are the literary antipodes of the last great effort of genius and art working upon the same material, and found in Mr. Kipling’s Jungle Books.  The Fables show only the first stirrings of the literary instinct, the Jungle Stories bring to bear the full development of the fictive art,—­creative imagination, psychological insight, brilliantly picturesque description, and the touch of one who is a daring master of vivid language; so that no better theme can be given to a student of literary history than the critical comparison of these two allied forms of composition, representing as they do the two extremes of actual development.

The best general account in English of the origin of the Greek Fable is that of Rutherford in the introduction to his ‘Babrius’ (London, 1883).  An excellent special study of the history of the Aesopic Fables is that by Joseph Jacobs in the first volume of his ‘Aesop’ (London, 1889).  The various ancient accounts of Aesop’s life are collected by Simrock in ‘Aesops Leben’ (1864).  The best scientific edition of the two hundred and ten fables is that of Halm (Leipzig, 1887).  Good disquisitions on their history during the Middle Ages are those of Du Meril in French (Paris, 1854) and Bruno in German (Bamberg, 1892).  See also the articles in the present work under the titles ‘Babrius,’ ‘Bidpai,’ ‘John Gay,’ ‘Lafontaine,’ ‘Lokman,’ ‘Panchatantra,’ ‘Phaedrus,’ ‘Reynard the Fox.’

H.J.  Peck

THE FOX AND THE LION

The first time the Fox saw the Lion, he fell down at his feet, and was ready to die of fear.  The second time, he took courage and could even bear to look upon him.  The third time, he had the impudence to come up to him, to salute him, and to enter into familiar conversation with him.