Page:Fables of Aesop and other eminent mythologists.djvu/32

6 took him aide and told him, S$r$ I Laugh at your Mater, that Taught You no better: for what ignifies a Gen'ral Anwer to a Particular Quetion? And 'tis no News Neither that Providence orders All Things: But if you'l turn him over to me, You hall see I'le give him another ort of Reolve. Xanthus told the Gard'ner, that it was below a Philoopher to Buy his head about uch Trifles; but ays he, If you have a Curioity to be better Inform'd, you hould do well to ask my Slave here, and ee what hele ay to you. Upon This, the Gard'ner put the Quetion to Æop, Who gave him this Anwer. The Earth is in the Nature of a Mother to what She brings forth of her Self out of her own Bowels; Whereas She is only a kind of a Step-Dame, in The Production of Plants that are Cultivated and Aited by The Help and Indutry of Another: o that it's Natural for her, to Withdraw her Nourihment from the One, towards The Reliefe of the Other. The Gard'ner, upon this, was o well atified, That he would take no Mony for his Herbs, and deired Æop to make Ue of his Garden for the future, as if it were his own.

There are everal Stories in Planudes, that I hall pas over in this Place (ays Camerarius) as not worth the while: Particularly The Fables of the Lentills, the Bath, the Sows Feet, and everal Little Tales and Jests that I take to be neither well Lay'd, nor well put together; Neither is it any matter, in Relations of this Nature, Whether they be True or Fale, but if they be Proper and Ingenious; and o contriv'd, that the Reader or the Hearer may be the better for them, That's as much as is required: Wherefore I hall now Commit to Writing Two Fables or Stories, One about the bringing his Mitres home again, when he had left her Husband; Which is drawn from the Modell of a Greek Hitory et out by Pauanias in his Decription of Beotia; The Other, upon the Subject of a Treat of Neates Tongues, which was taken from Bias, as we have it from Plutarch in his Convivium Septem Sapientum. Rh