Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/69

Rh amongst the fables of Mary, and particularly the Lay of the Bird, the Fabliaux of the mowed meadow, of the woman who drowned herself, &c. To prove his point he should have informed us who were the real authors of these stories, and, not having done this, his mere assertion is not entitled to much attention. As they are found, however, in the English MSS. before cited, it must be argued against every appearance of probability, that the French and English transcribers have entered into a combination to alter, or rather increase the number of the fables; but as we find a perfect correspondence in this respect in the copies of both nations, we are bound to regard the arguments of Monsieur le Grand as absolutely chimerical. Let me be permitted to ask, since when has the insertion of fabliaux, or little stories in a collection of fables, amounted to a proof of interpolation in the MS? We must, in this case, consider all the fables of Æsop and of Phædrus as having been altered, and throw aside, as foreign to these authors, every piece of the kind which at present contributes to the pleasure of their readers, with which they have themselves embellished their works, and which no one has hitherto imagined to have been falsely ascribed to them. Let us reject such a rule of criticism, as false as it is novel, and let us believe that Mary translated the fabliaux which we find amongst her fables, as well as the fables themselves. She had found both in her English model; and equally decorated them with the charms of the poetry of the time me lived in.

But Monsieur le Grand does not believe in the collection of English fables; he affirms positively, that this was no more than a sort of literary quackery, very much practised at that time, of announcing a work as translated from the Latin or the English.

With respect to the first of these languages, I must admit that XIII.