Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/264

136 (however in its nature frivolous, or ridiculous) raised, by having the most shining words and deeds of gods and heroes accommodated to it: and while other poems often compare the illustrious exploits of great men to those of brutes, this always heightens the subject by comparisons drawn from things above it. We have a great character given it with respect to the fable in Gaddius de Script, non Eccles. It appears, says he, nearer perfection than the Iliad, or Odysses, and excels both in judgment, wit, and exquisite texture, since it is a poem perfect in its own kind. Nor does Crusius speak less to its honour, with respect to the moral, when he cries out in an apostrophe to the reader; "Whoever you are, mind not the names of these little animals, but look into the things they mean; call them men, call them kings, or counsellors, or human polity itself, you have here doctrines of every sort." And indeed, when I hear the frog talk concerning the mouse's family, I learn, equality should be observed in making friendships; when I hear the mouse answer the frog, I remember, that a similitude of manners should be regarded in them; when I see their councils assembling, I think of the bustles of human prudence; and when I see the battle grow warm and glorious, our struggles for honour and empire appear before me.

This piece had many imitations of it in antiquity, as the fight of the cats, the cranes, the starlings, the spiders, &c. That of the cats is in the Bodleian Library, but I was not so lucky as to