Section iii. 
The matter and the manner of the nights.

A.—­The Matter.

Returning to my threefold distribution of this Prose Poem (Section Section I) into Fable, Fairy Tale and historical Anecdote[FN#229], let me proceed to consider these sections more carefully.

The Apologue or Beast-fable, which apparently antedates all other subjects in The Nights, has been called “One of the earliest creations of the awakening consciousness of mankind.”  I should regard it, despite a monumental antiquity, as the offspring of a comparatively civilised age, when a jealous despotism or a powerful oligarchy threw difficulties and dangers in the way of speaking “plain truths.”  A hint can be given and a friend or foe can be lauded or abused as Belins the sheep or Isengrim the wolf when the Author is debarred the higher enjoyment of praising them or dispraising them by name.  And, as the purposes of fables are twofold—­

          Duplex libelli dos est:  quod risum movet,
          Et quod prudenti vitam consilio monet—­

The speaking of brute beasts would give a piquancy and a pleasantry to moral design as well as to social and political satire.

The literary origin of the fable is not Buddhistic:  we must especially shun that “Indo-Germanic” school which goes to India for its origins, when Pythagoras, Solon, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle and possibly Homer sat for instruction at the feet of the Hir-seshtha, the learned grammarians of the pharaohnic court.  Nor was it AEsopic, evidently AEsop inherited the hoarded wealth of ages.  As Professor Lepsius taught us, “In the olden times within the memory of man, we know only of one advanced culture; of only one mode of writing, and of only one literary development, viz. those of Egypt.”  The invention of an alphabet, as opposed to a syllabary, unknown to Babylonia, to Assyria and to that extreme bourne of their civilising influence, China, would for ever fix their literature—­poetry, history and criticism,[FN#230] the apologue and the anecdote.  To mention no others The Lion and the Mouse appears in a Leyden papyrus dating from B.C 1200-1166 the days of Rameses iii. (Rhampsinitus) or Hak On, not as a rude and early attempt, but in a finished form, postulating an ancient origin and illustrious ancestry.  The dialogue also is brought to perfection in the discourse between the Jackal Koufi and the Ethiopian Cat (Revue Egyptologique ivme. annee Part i.).  Africa therefore was the home of the Beast-fable not as Professor Mahaffy thinks, because it was the chosen land of animal worship, where

Oppida tote canem venerantur nemo Dianam;[FN#231]

but simply because the Nile-land originated every form of literature between Fabliau and Epos.