Page:The Fables of Æsop (Jacobs).djvu/227

 NOTES

HE European Æsop is derived from the Latin and German Æsop compiled by Heinrich Stainhöwel about 1480 A.D. This consists of the following six parts (see Pedigree opposite).

(1) Medieval life of Æsop, attributed to Planudes. (I. in Pedigree.)

(2) Four books of fables, connected with the name of Romulus, but really, as modern research has shown, all derived from Phædrus, though in a fuller form than the extant remains of that poet. (II.-V. in Pedigree.)

(3) Fabulae Extravagantes: a series of beast stories of the Reynard the Fox type, and probably connected with the new fables introduced by Marie de France. (VI. in Pedigree.)

(4) A few fables from the Greek prose Æsop, really prosings of Babrius. (VII. in Pedigree.)

(5) Selection from the fables of Avian. (VIII. in Pedigree.)

(6) Facetiae from Poggio and Petrus Alfonsi.

All the vernacular versions of Europe were derived in the first instance from this omnium gatherum. Thus in England Caxton introduced the Stainhöwel through the medium of the French. Later collections omitted much of the Stainhöwel, especially the Fabulae Extravagantes and the Facetiae. and added somewhat from the later editions of the Greek prose Æsop, which up to the time of Bentley were supposed to be derived from the Samian slave himself. La Fontaine