Page:Fables of Aesop and other eminent mythologists.djvu/9

 THE

E have had the Hitory of Æop o many times over and over, and dret-up o many everal Ways; ''that it would be but Labour Lot to Multiply Unprofitable Conjectures upon a Tradition of o Great Uncertainty. Writers are divided about him, almot to all manner of purpoes: And particularly concerning the Authority, even of the greater part of Thoe Compoitions that pas the World in his Name: For, the Story is come down to us o Dark and Doubtful, that it is Impoible to Ditinguih the Original from the Copy: And to ay, which of the fables are Æops, and which not; which are Genuine, and which Spurious: Beide, that there are divers Inconitencies upon the Point of Chronology, in the Account of his Life, (as Maximus Planudes, and others have Deliver'd it) which the whole Earth can never Reconcile. Vavaor the Jeuite, in a Tract of his, de Ludicra Dictione, takes Notice of ome four of five Gross Mitakes of This Kind. [Planudes (ays he) brings Æop to Babylon, in the Reign of Lyceus; where there was never uch a Prince heard of, from Nabonaar (the first King of Babylon) to Alexander the Great''. He tells alo of his going into Ægypt in the Days of King Nectenabo; which Nectenabo came not into the World till well nigh Two Hundred Years after him. And o he makes him Greet his Mitres upon his firt Entrance into his Master's House, with a Bitter Sentence againt Women out of Eruipides; (as he pretends) when yet Æop had been Dead, a matter of Fourcore Years, before T'other was Born. And once again, He brings him in, Talking of the Pyrœan port, in his Fable of the Ape and the Dolphin: A Port, that the very Name on't was never thought of, till about the Seventy Sixt Olypiad: And Æop was Murder'd, in the Four and Fifti'th.] This is enough in All Concience, to Excue any Man from laying over-much Stres upon the Hitorical Credit of a Relation, that comes o Blindly, and o Variouly Tranmitted to us: Over and above, that is not one jot to our Bus'nes (further than to Gratify an Idle Curioity) whether the Fact be True or Fale; whether the Man was Streight, or Crooked; and his Name, Æop, or (as some will have it) Lochman'': In All which Caes, the Reader is left at Liberty to Believe his Pleaure. We are not here upon the Name, the Peron, or the''

Rh