Preface

Summary

When there are so many Editions of Æsop's Fables, it will be expected, that some Reasons should be given for the Appearance of a new one; and we shall be as brief on this Head, as the Nature of the Thing will admit.Of all the English Editions, we shall consider only two, as worthy of Notice; to wit, That of the celebrated Sir Roger Lestrange, and that which appears under the Name of S. Croxal, subscribed to the Dedication. And when we have given an Account of what each says for his own Performance, it will be our Turn to offer some things to the Reader with regard to our present Undertaking.

‘When first I put Pen to Paper upon this Design, says Sir Roger, I had in my Eye only the common School Book, as it stands in the Cambridge and Oxford Editions of it, under the Title of Æsopi Phrygis Fabulæ; una cum nonnullis variorum Auctorum Fabulis adjectis: Propounding to myself at that Time, to follow the very Course and Series of that Collection; and in one Word, to try what might be done by making the best of the Whole, and adapting proper and useful Doctrines to the several Parts of it, toward the turning of an excellent Latin Manual of Morals and good Counsels, into a tolerable English one. But upon jumbling Matters and Thoughts together, and laying one Thing by another, the very State and Condition of the Case before me, together with the Nature and the Reason of the Thing, gave me to understand, that this Way of proceeding would never answer my End: Insomuch that, upon this Consideration, I consulted other Versions of the same Fables, and made my best of the Choice. Some that were twice or thrice over, and only the self-same Thing in other Words; these I struck out, and made one Specimen serve for the rest. To say nothing of here and there a trivial, or a loose Conceit in the Medly, more than this; that such as they are, I was under some sort of Obligation to take them in for Company; and in short, good, bad, and indifferent, one with another, to the Number, in the Total, of 383 Fables.