Page:The Fables of Bidpai (Panchatantra).djvu/61

Rh things, and remembering that Bidpai is only a lay figure who takes the place of Buddha in "moralising" the stories, may we not sum up our conclusions as to their origin and influence by roundly stating that the Tables of Bidpai are the Fables of Buddha?

As the experienced reader might suspect from all this insistence on the extrinsic interest of the book before us that intrinsically it is as dull as most books of Oriental apologues are, I hasten to reassure him on the point. And in order to do so, I must remind the reader of the man to whom we owe it, and of his position in our literature. Of the external events of Sir Thomas North's life little definite is known, and that little has been put together with his customary diligence and accuracy by the late Mr. Cooper in his Athenæ Cantabrigienses (ii. p. 350-1). That Thomas,