Page:Fables of Aesop and other eminent mythologists.djvu/55

Rh

S a Cock was turning up a Dunghill, he py'd a Diamond. Well (ays he to himelf) this parkling Foolery now to a Lapidary in my place, would have been the Making of him; but as to any Ue or Purpoe of mine, a Barley Corn had been worth Forty on't.

Moralits will have Widom and Virtue to be meant by the Diamond; the World and the Pleaures of it, by the Dunghill; and by the Cock, a Voluptuous Man, that Abandons himelf to his Luts, without any regard, either to the Study, the Practice, or the Excellency of Better Things.

Now, with favour of the Ancients, this Fable eems to me, rather to hold forth an Emblem of Indutry and Moderation. The Cock lives by his honet Labor, and maintains his Family out of it; His Scraping upon the Dunghill, is but Working in his Calling: The precious Stone is only a gawdy Temptation that Fortune throws in his way to divert him from his Buines and his Duty. He would have been glad, he ays, of a Barley-Corn intead on't; and o cats it aide as a thing not worth heeding. What is all this now, but the paing of a true Etimate upon the matter in quetion, in preferring that which Providence has made and pronounc'd to be the Staff of Life, before a glittering Gew-Gaw, that has no other Value, then what Vanity, Pride, and Luxury, have et upon't? The Price of the Market to a Jeweller in his Trade, is one thing, but the intrinick Worth of a thing, to a Man of Sene, and Judgment, is another. Nay, that very Lapidary himelf, with a coming Stomach, and in the Cocks place, would have made the Cocks Choice. The Doctrin, in hort, may be this; That we are to prefer things neceary, before things uperfluous; the Comforts and the Rh