never become acquainted with these Fables, which are perhaps the earliest, and are certainly among the best of the attempts that have been made by British writers to give a poetical dress to this favourite class of fictions. It is a matter of interest to inquire from what sources Henryson must have derived his sets of the stories which he has here converted into poems. In looking into this question, we must keep in view that, according to Mr. Laing's conjecture, which we are quite disposed to adopt, these Fables must have been composed about the year 1480, or at least before 1488, as they seem to refer frequently to the disorders of the country which prevailed in the later years of James III., and to make no allusion to the accession of his illustrious successor. We are thus led to examine the state of the literary resources which were accessible in this department in the last half of the fifteenth century. The middle-age bibliography of the Esopean Fables is somewhat complicated and obscure; but a few points are well fixed : 1. Esop, if he ever existed, seems to have left no written compositions of his own; but the fictions that were orally current under his name were from time to time reduced to writing, and in some cases embodied in verse. The most distinguished of these versifiers was Babrius, a Greek poet, whose age has been variously placed by the critics at different periods between the time of Julius Cæsar and of Alexander Severus. These Fables of Babrius seem in process of time to have been transposed, as Mr. Bayes would have called it, by the Eastern monks and rhetoricians, who supplied the popular literature of the middle ages, and other fables were, no doubt, added by them from traditional sources. The Greek Esop, thus miscellaneously compiled, made its way into Western Europe, and besides being frequently translated, came ultimately to be printed in Greek from various manuscripts. Bentley, with his usual sagacity, was the first to discover among these prosaic pro ductions the disjecti membra poeta, and to point at Babrius as the probable source from which they were derived; and this conjecture was ultimately confirmed, upon the discovery, in 1842, of a manuscript of Babrius 'in the monastery of St. Laura on Mount Athos, the result of a mission sent out by the French Minister of Instruction for the discovery of similar remains. This elegant and pleasing poet is now accessible in various forms, and in particular in the delightful edition published by the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis. 2. The Greek fables thus collected or concocted in the East, came soon, as we have said, to be translated into Latin, and among their translators we find the name of Romulus, who, in some editions of his fables, is represented as an emperor who had prepared the book for the instruction of his son Tiberinus. This, of course, is itself a fable; and it is not improbable that Romulus, whose age is quite unknown, except that it must have preceded the eleventh century, was a myth or pseudonyme. But it is here remarkable that, while Romulus professes to have made his translation from the Greek, it is almost certain that the author, whoever he was, had before him a manuscript of Pha drus, though no such manuscript was published or known to learned men till the end of the sixteenth century, when the Latin classic was for the first time edited by Pittheus in 1596. A comparison of the two books shows numerous passages in Romulus's prose which are manifestly borrowed either directly or at second-hand from Phædrus's verse. We have thus the singular coincidence, as to these Fables, that the current prose editions, Greek and Latin, were made up of materials taken from the lost poets Babrius and Phædrus, whose original productions were afterwards, and one of them at so late a period, recovered and made public. 3. Romulus, the prose fabulist, who thus became current in Western Europe, was himself translated or 66 transversed by various hands. One of the earliest of those who thus dealt with him goes sometimes by the name of Nevelet's Anonymus, being so cited in Nevelet's edition of Esop of 1610; but he is supposed by M. Robert, and J. Grimm after him, to have rejoiced in the name of Galfredus or Geoffrey. This poet, who must have lived not later than the eleventh century, turned a great part of Romulus's prose into Latin elegiacs. Galfredus, or the Anonymus of Nevelet, must be distinguished from another writer, who is sometimes spoken of as the Anonymus of Nilant, and who wrote fables in prose, which seem to be a mere corruption of Romulus's Latin. * 4. There seems reason to think that Romulus's fables had at an early period been translated into English. Some of his commentators say that "Rex Angliæ Afferus" ordered Æsop to be translated from Latin into English, and it has been supposed, on the strength of such statements, that King Alfred had done so. But there is no good evidence of that fact, and the French poetess Marie, who flourished in the thirteenth century, while she says that she translated her fables out of English, gives the name of her English author as King Henry; nor is it indeed very likely that she could have understood the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, which was materially different from the English of Marie's time. Marie's words are as follows: "Pur amur le cumte Willaume, Le plus vaillant de cest royaume, 5. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, being not long after the times of the German Minnesingers, the fables of Esop, as Latinized by Romulus and others, were translated into some of the other vernacular languages of the West. In particular, Marie of France, already mentioned, versified upwards of a hundred of those fables in the language of Northern France. Bonerius also, a Swiss monk, translated about the same number into High German, either in the end of the thirteenth or early part of the fourteenth century. Both of these translations, that of Marie and that of Bonerius, have been published or re-published in our own time, and can be read with pleasure, and with considerable interest. 6. Maximus Planudes, a name often connected with the Esopean Fables, was a Constantinopolitan monk, whose era may be fixed about the year 1350. He was long supposed not only to be a collector or redacteur of the Greek fables of Æsop, which seems to be the fact, but also to be the author of a very silly and offensive life of the fabulist, full of absurdities for which there is no authority in ancient writers, but which La Fontaine was ignorant enough to consider as entitled to weight from the short interval that he supposed to have elapsed between the era of Æsop and that of Planudes, the truth being that the one is assignable to the sixth century B.C,, while the other belongs to the fourteenth century after Christ, making a space of about two thousand years. The opinion which ascribed * "Comme Planude vivoit dans un siècle où la mémoire des choses, arrivés à Esope ne devoit pas the Life of Esop to Planudes was a very gross libel on that worthy man, who deserves some credit for his exertions in the cause of learning, and against whom the only serious charge that can be made is, that in preserving and collecting the delightful poems which compose the Greek Anthology, he retrenched too unsparingly some of the improprieties with which he thought them disfigured. It was afterwards found that Planudes could not be the author of this obnoxious Life of Esop, as it is contained in at least one Ms. of an earlier date than Planudes's time. 7. In the fifteenth century, and upon the invention of printing, the Fables of Esop or of Romulus were favourite subjects for the operations of the early printers, and as these printed collections began to be made a little before the probable date of Henryson's compositions, it may be worth while to mention some of them. One of the very earliest productions of the press is a book of fables printed at Bamberg, by Albert Pfister, in 1461, of which a copy is mentioned by Lessing as belonging to the Wolfenbuttel Library. This is the only copy known, and was taken away by the French, on their subjugation of Germany in the late war, and placed in the National Library at Paris, but on the surrender of Paris in 1815 it was restored. It is said to be the earliest of the books printed with movable types which are il lustrated with woodcuts containing figures. When examined by Lessing, it turned out to consist of the Fables of Bonerius already mentioned, though it contains only eightyfive out of the hundred which Bonerius wrote. Between 1473 and 1484 there was printed at Ulm, by John Zeiner, a fable-book in Latin and German, containing the Fables of Esop, Romulus, and others, the German translation being supplied by Dr. Henry Steinhöwel. Nevelet seems to have seen this curious book, but being a Frenchman, ignorant of German, he could not derive much benefit from it, except in reference to the Latin text. About the year 1480 there appeared at Milan the earliest printed edition of Esop in the Greek language, accompanied with a Latin translation; and during the remaining years of the fifteenth century various other fable-books, containing, or founded on Æsop, appeared in different languages. At Deventer, in 1490, there appeared a book under être éteinte, j'ai cru qu'il savoit par tradition ce qu'il a laissé. Dans cette croyance je l'ai suivi," etc. the title Esopus Moralisatus cum bono Commento; and if this book, as we suppose, agrees with the Italian collections, of which we have seen one printed in 1517 under the title, Esopus Constructus Moralisatus et Hystoriatus ultimo Impressus, it contained the elegiac verses of Nevelet's Anonymus or Galfredus, to which we have already alluded. The earliest French Æsop is said to have been printed soon after 1480, and in the same or the preceding year Caxton printed his sop in England. Caxton's book is said in the title to have been translated from the French; but it is not known from what exact source it was derived, though it is by some believed that it was taken from a French translation of the Ulm fable-book. A fable-book of sop and others, in Latin, Cum Optimo Commento, was printed at Antwerp in 1486, and four books of Æsop, with other fables, translated into Spanish, were printed at Saragossa in 1489. We have referred to these printed fablebooks, not because there is any evidence or strong probability that Henryson had seen any of them before composing his Fables, but because they show the wide popularity which must then have attended that species of composition, and imply that manuscripts of Latin fables must have been in much request, when we find the first printers so ready to embark their labour and capital in this form of literature. The Fables of Henryson are in all thirteen in number, with two prologues; but though they are designated generally as the Fables of sop, there are only seven of them of the proper sopean character. These are-(1.) The Cock and the Jasp (or Jewel); (2.) The "Uplandis" Mouse and the Burgess Mouse; (3.) The Dog, the Sheep, and the Wolf; (4.) The Lion and the Mouse; (5.) The Preaching of the Swallow; (6.) The Wolf and the Lamb; (7.) The Paddock and the Mouse. Another of them, The Wolf and the Wedder, is of a doubtful description. If we now come more particularly to inquire from what special source or sources Henryson derived his fables, we may, in the first place, lay aside Phædrus and Babrius, of whom he could know nothing; and we may also dismiss the Greek Esop, which it is not likely that he ever saw, and not very likely that he could have read. Looking to the other collections we have mentioned, it is worth noticing that the seven fables of Henryson which we have called Esopean, are all to be found in Romulus, in Galfredus, in Marie, in Bonerius, and in Caxton. It is scarcely to be supposed that Henryson saw Pfister's book, which must have been rare and valuable, and, being written in High German, would be a sealed fountain to most Scotchmen; and Caxton's Esop, as well as the other printed collections, came probably too late to be of use to him. He may possibly have been able to read Marie of France, if he had met with her, though her Norman French would then be nearly as antiquated as it seems now; but as he says that he translated out of Latin, we may limit ourselves to the available sources in that language. Some manuscript copy or imitation of Romulus would be common enough in the English monasteries, and doubtless not unknown in Scotland. know also of a collection of stories, including fables, by Odo of Cerinton, an English Cistercian monk of the end of the twelfth century, from which Mr. Wright, in his selection for the Percy Society, has given several extracts; and among them we may notice the story or fable, "De Consilio Murium," which is not in Romulus, though it is in some French collections and in Bonerius; and we may remember that this was the fable which in Henryson's time is said to have gained for Archibald Earl of Angus the name of Bell-the-Cat. We Where there is so much room for conjeeture, and so little aid to guide us, it is hazardous to venture an opinion; but we are disposed to think that Henryson, in writing his Fables, must have had before him, among other books, the Elegiacs of Galfredus, to which we have before alluded. We do so mainly upon two pieces of evidence-(1.) Henryson, as Mr. Laing ob serves, embodies, in the verses of his first Prologue, a pentameter line which belongs to the first couplet of Galfredus's Præfatio. Henryson says: "With sad materis some merryness to ming, Accordis weill, thus Esop said, I wis, Dulcius arrident seria picta jocis." We find this word in none of the other collections. Romulus, after Phædrus, uses Some of the later Latin "Margarita." translators, "UNIO." Marie says "Jame": "Edelstein," gemma. Bonerius says, and gives his whole book that title, as being a precious possession to those who can use. it. A rythmical Latin fable in Wright's collection has "preciosus lapis," and Caxton has "precious stone." That Henryson should follow Galfredus in this peculiar word, and at the same time quote a pentameter that is found in his Elegiacs, seems pretty conclusive proof that this book was at least one of his sources. "O Maister Esope, poet laureate, God wait ye are full dear welcome to me; The Fables of Henryson, like most others of the later period of the middle ages, are always wound up with moralities, by which the story is pointed and improved for the benefit of such readers as might not have the wit to understand or apply it themselves. The Greek fabulists have short expositions of this kind, which are called, éπuvia, and some genuine examples of this are found in Babrius. The corresponding Latin word is It is remarkable in Henryson's Fables that he utterly ignores the deformity of person which is ascribed to Æsop in the monk-adfabulatio, and this sort of short moral is ish life of him. Whether he was not acquainted with that book, or had the good sense to reject it as untrustworthy, cannot well be ascertained; but he seems not even to have known or believed that Esop was a Greek or Asiatic. He thus describes him, with somewhat of the admiration and reverence with which Dante regards Virgil, though with a more satisfactory account of his state in the other world : - "Ane roll of paper in his hand he bare, Ane swaunis pen stikkand under his ear, Of that couth word, and of his company. 'Welcome, father,' and he sat doun me by. Demand your birth, your faculty, and name, hame?' "My son,' said he, 'I am of gentill blude, My native land is Rome, (withouten nay;) In civil law studyit full mony ane day, *rable. generally found in Phædrus, either as a preface or as a postscript to each fable. But the middle-age moralities are of a different kind, and seem to have originated in a somewhat singular cause. The monkish preachers, whether in this respect instructed by Aristotle, or enlightened by a natural instinct, seem to have enlivened their sermons with a liberal admixture of fables or stories, with the view of better securing the attention, or the attendance, of their audience. Some of these were legends from the lives of saints, but sometimes they seem to have taken a wider range, and to have made an excursion into the region of Pagan or profane fiction. In this case, however, it would scarcely have answered to allow these embellishments to retain their secular character, and the expedient was therefore resorted to of moralizing such stories into religious allegories. This process seems specially to have been employed by Petrus Berchorius of Poitou, a Benedictine prior at Paris, who lived about 1362, and wrote moralities on the Bible, and who is said to have added to the Gesta Romanorum, the moralizations which we now find appended to that collection of narratives. We suspect it will be found that, prior to his time, the morals of fables are more shortly and generally expressed; while after that date they are expanded into the sort of sermonizings in which Henryson among others is found to indulge. Wolf," is one of the most curious of HenryThe tale of "The Dog, the Sheep, and the son's collection, and is carefully worked out. This fable, we think, is not in any Greek collection, but it occurs in Romulus, in Geoffrey, in Marie, and in Bonerius; and it is found in Phædrus. In all of these it is simply and shortly told, with no detail of judicial procedure; but Henryson has amplified it in a way quite peculiar and characteristic. Lord Hailes has said of it in this 44.* shape: "The fable of 'The Dog, the Wolf, officio."-Petri Blessensis Epistola, xxv. p. and the Scheip,' contains the form of process before the Ecclesiastical Court. It is a singular performance, will be entertaining to lawyers, and may, perhaps, suggest some observations not to be found in books."Concurring as we do in this view, we think we may be allowed to offer some little commentary on the text. According to Henryson, the Dog, wishing to make a groundless or calumnious claim against the Sheep, convenes him, not before any of the Civil tribunals, but before the Consistory or Ecclesiastical Court where he expects more easily to accomplish his object. In this selection the poet seems to show that he was of the same mind as Dr. Johnson, who, when asked by his friend Walmsley of Doctors' Commons how he could possibly involve his heroine, Irene, in greater distress than he had done in the early part of his play, replied that he could throw her into the Spiritual Court. There is little doubt that in the middle ages-and perhaps the tendency continued down to a later periodthe Episcopal judicatories, in their exercise of consistorial jurisdiction, were instruments of considerable oppression. The peculiarity of the questions with which they were chiefly conversant, the vague nature of the principles involved in them, as designed pro salute anime, and not directed to ordinary matters of patrimonial interest, and the exemption of the judges from the usual means of control and remedies of review were all calculated to render their procedure vexatious and their decisions arbitrary. Their general character is given by one who must have known them well-Peter of Blois, who, in the latter part of the twelfth century, was settled in England, and was successively Chancellor to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Archdeacon of Bath and London. In a letter to the Official of the Bishop of Chartres in France, he exorts him to retire from his office, on the ground of the iniquitous doings which it involved : "Tota officialis intentio est ut ad opus Episcopi sue jurisdictioni commissas miserrimas oues quasi vice illius tondeat, emungat, excoriet. ... Cause et judicia, quibus te imprudenter, Cause et judicia, quibus te imprudenter, ne dicam impudenter, immisces, potius consuetudinario et seculari jure deciduntur. Officium officialium hodie est jura confundere, suscitare lites, transactiones rescindere, innectere delationes, supprimere veritatem, fovere mendacium questum sequi, equitatem vendere, inhiare exactionibus, versutias concinnare. Si mihi credis, imo si credis in Deum, relinque maturius officium, ministerium damnationis, rotam malorum, et spiritum vertiginis qui te ad inania circumvolvit. Miserere anime tue placens Deo, cui placere non potes cum isto perditionis Another glimpse behind the scenes is given us in the following story, told by Mr. Innes in his Sketches, and taken from the Chronicle of Lanercost, anno 1277 :- "A certain knight of Robertson had an estate in Annandale, the tenants of which, running riot from too much prosperity-præ opibus lascivientes-committed all sorts of offences, which brought them to the Official's Court, and filled the purse of the Archdeacon with their fines. At length the landlord declared that for any such offences the tenants should reformation, and a diminution of the Archdeacons be ejected from his land, which produced a great profits. The Archdeacon met the knight, and accosting him, superbo supercilio, asked him who had constituted him judge for the reforming of such matters. The knight replied that he had made the rule for the sake of his property, and not as interfering with the Churchman's jurisdiction, but added, I see if you can fill your their souls.' Ad hæc conticuit exactor crimbag with their fines, you have no care who takes inum et amator transgressionum."-Chron. Laner. 1277. Lord Medwyn, or whoever else wrote the Preface to the Official's Book of St. Andrews, was of opinion, and probably with reason, that the Episcopal Courts in Scotland were latterly, through the learning and virtue of men like Bishop Elphinstone, rescued from the odium and corruption that had before attached to them; but it may be doubted how far this improvement was general; and the satire of Henryson would not probably have been directed against them without good grounds. We may observe that the ecclesiastical officials always contrived to make a rich harvest out of the cases before them, and in particular, out of the fines and penalties inflicted. In the administration, also, of intestate successions, they claimed a handsome quot, or percentage, out of the free executry; and it deserves notice that this exaction,which was continued by the lay commissaries established at the Reformation, was only finally abolished in the present century. The subject of the Dog's action against the Sheep is a loaf of bread alleged to have been lent, and for which he demands payment.— This dispute is not in its own nature of an ecclesiastical character; but the Bishops' Courts early encroached upon the secular jurisdiction in every possible way, and on every possible pretence. As Mr. Erskine tells lish in themselves a proper jurisdiction, not us," ," the clergy had the address to estab * Quoted from the Liber Officialis Sancti Andrea (Abbotsford Club). |