passed down the stream of time, and the fables known as Aesop's made their
way among all races of people in the same marvellous way. No one knows
whether Aesop—through the Assyrians with whom the Phrygians had
commercial relations—borrowed his stories from the Orientals or whether they
borrowed from him. One thing is certain, nothing persists so strongly and lives
so long as a fable or folk tale. They migrate like the birds and make their way
into every corner of the world where there are lips to speak and ears to hear. The
reasons are, perhaps, because they are generally brief; because they are simple;
because they are trenchant and witty; because they are fresh and captivating and
have a bite to them like the tang of salt water; because they are strong and vital,
and what is thoroughly alive in the beginning always lives longest.
And, now we come to La Fontaine the French fabulist, who in 1668 published
the first six books of his fables. "Bonhomme La Fontaine," as he was called,
chose his subjects from Aesop and Phaedrus and Horace, and, in the later
volumes, from such Oriental sources as may have been within his reach. He
rendered the old tales in easy-flowing verse, full of elegance and charm, and he
composed many original ones besides. La Bruyere says of him: "Unique in his
way of writing, always original whether he invents or translates, he surpasses his
models and is himself a model difficult to imitate. . . . He instructs while he
sports, persuades men to virtue by means of beasts, and exalts trifling subjects to
the sublime."
Voltaire asserts: "I believe that of all authors La Fontaine is the most universally
read. He is for all minds and all ages."
Later, by a hundred years, than La Fontaine, comes Krilof, the Russian fable-
maker, who was born in 1768. After failing in many kinds of literary work the
young poet became intimate with a certain Prince Sergius Galitsin; lived in his
house at Moscow, and accompanied him to his country place in Lithuania, where
he taught the children of his host and devised entertainments for the elders. He
used often to spend hours in the bazaars and streets and among the common
people, and it was in this way probably that he became so familiar with the
peasant life of the country. When he came back from his wanderings on the
banks of the Volga he used to mount to the village belfry, where he could write
undisturbed by the gnats and flies, and the children found him there one day fast
asleep among the bells. A failure at forty, with the publication of his first fables
in verse he became famous, and for many years he was the most popular writer
in Russia. He died in 1844 at the age of seventy-six, his funeral attended by such