Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/67

Rh succeeding in this kind of apologue. Both require that penetrating glance which can distinguish the different passions of mankind; can seize upon the varied forms which they assume, and, marking the objects of their attention, discover at the same moment the means they employ to attain them. This faculty Mary had developed in her first work, and it was therefore to be supposed that no diminution of it would appear in her second. For this reason her fables are written with all that acuteness of mind that penetrates the very inmost recesses of the human heart; and at the same time with that beautiful simplicity so peculiar to the ancient romance language, and which causes me to doubt whether La Fontaine has not rather imitated our author than the fabulists either of Rome or of Athens. It must, at all events, be admitted that he could not find in the two latter the advantages which the former offered him. Mary wrote in French, and at a time when that language, yet in its infancy, could boast of nothing but simple expressions, artless and agreeable turns, and on all occasions a natural and unpremeditated phraseology. On the contrary, Æsop and Phædrus, writing in Latin, could not supply the French fabulist with any thing more than the subject matter and ideas, whilst Mary, at the same time that she furnished him with both, might besides have hinted expression, manner, and even rhyme. Let me add, that through the works of La Fontaine will be found scattered an infinite number of words in our ancient language, which are at this day unintelligible without a commentary.

There are in the British Museum three MS. copies of Mary's Fables. The first is in the Cotton library, Vesp. B. XIV; the second in the Harleian, No 4333; and the third in the same collection, No 978.

In the first, part of Mary's prologue is wanting, and the tran- scriber