Page:Three hundred Aesop's fables (Townshend).djvu/27

 Rh M.A., sometime a scholar of Lincoln College, Oxford, and himself a relation of their English editor. Thus, after an eclipse of many centuries, Babrias shines out as the earliest and most veritable collector of veritable Æsopian Fables.

Having thus given a complete synopsis of the origin, descent, and history of these fables, it only remains to explain the reasons which have induced the Publishers to prepare a new edition of Æsop, and to state the grounds on which they hope to establish a claim for support and public approval in their undertaking. They boldly assert that the new light thrown upon these fables by the discovery of the metrical version by Babrias, renders a new translation an inevitable necessity. The two chief existing English versions of Æsop are those by Archdeacon Croxall, and by the late Rev. Thomas James, canon of Peterborough. The first of these deviates so very far from the text, that it degenerates into a parody. The fables are so padded, diluted, and altered, as to give very little idea to the reader either of the terseness or the meaning of the original. The second of these is an improvement on its predecessor, but Mr. James, either out of compliance with the wishes of the publishers, or in condescension to the taste prevalent some twenty years ago, has so freely introduced as the point of the fable conventional English sayings which are not sanctioned by the Greek, and which in many instances are scarcely equivalent to it, that his version frequently approaches a paraphrase rather than a translation.