Page:Fables of Aesop and other eminent mythologists.djvu/14

The PREFACE. , or Peronal Meanings; but Thoe Capricious Fault-Finders, may as well pick a Quarrel with the Decalogue it elf, upon the ame Pretence; if they hall come once to Apply to This or That Particular Wicked Man, the General Rules that are Deliver'd for the Government of Mankind, under uch and uch Prohibitions; as if the Commandments that Require Obedience and Forbid Murder, Uncleannes, Theft, Calumny, and the like, were to be Struck out of the Office, and Indicted, for a Libellous Innuendo upon All the Great Men that may come to be Concern'd in the Pains and Forfeitures therein Contain'd. In fine, 'tis the Concience of the Guilty, in All Thee Caes, that makes the Satyr. Here is enough aid, as to the Dignity, and Uefulnes of This way of Informing the Undertanding what we Ought to do, and of Dipoing the Will to Act in a Conformity to That Perception of Things; having o Clear an Evidence of Divine Authority, as well as the Practice of the Bet of Men, and of Times, together with the Current of Common Conent, ''Agreeing all in favour of it. I hall now Wind up what I have to ay, as to the Fables Themelves, the Choice, the Intent, and the Order of them, in a very Few Words.''

When I firt put Pen to Paper upon This Deign, I had in my Eye only the Common School-Book, as it tands in the Cambridge and Oxford Editions of it, under the Title of [Æopi Phrygis Fabulæ; unà cum Nonnullis Variorum Autorum Fabulis Adjectis:] Propounding to my elf, at that Time, to follow the "very Coure and Series of that Collection; and in One Word, to Try what might be done, by making the Bet of the Whole, and Adapting Proper and Ueful Doctrines to the everal parts of it, toward the turning of a Excellent Latin Manual of Morals and Good Councels, into a Tolerable Englih One. ''But upon Jumbling Matters and Thoughts together and laying One thing by Another; the very State and Condition of the Ca{{ls}e before me, together with the Nature and the Reaon of the Thing, gave me to Undertand, that This way of Proceeding would never Anwer my End. Inomuch, that upon this Conideration, I Conulted other Verions of the ame Fables, and made my Bet of the Choice. Some that were Twice or Thrice over, and only the elf-ame Thing in other Words; Thee I truck out, and made One Specimen erve for the ret. To ay Nothing of here and there a Trivial, or a Looe Conceit in the Medley, more than This; that uch as they are, I was under ome ort of Obligation to take them in for Company; and in hort, Good, Bad and Indifferent, One with Another, Po the Number in the Total, of'' 383. ''Fables. To thee, I have likewie ubjoyn'd a Coniderable Addition of other Select Apologues, out of the mot Celebrated Authors that are Extant upon that Subject, toward the Finihing of the Work. As Phædrus, Camerarius, Avienus, Neveletus, Apththonius, Gabrias, or Babrias, Baudoin, La Fontaine, Æope en Belle Humeur, Audin, &c.''