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'To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature.'

Shakespeare: Hamlet.

There is an archness about the best fables that creates interest and awakens curiosity; and it is the quality of such that, whilst simple enough as stories to be understood and enjoyed by the young, they are at the same time calculated to interest, amuse, instruct and admonish those more advanced in years.

A fable should carry its moral without the telling; nevertheless the application is often worth supplying, because it puts, or should put, the lesson taught by the fable in a terse and impressive form. Above and beyond all, a fable should possess the quality of simplicity, and whilst easy to be understood, it should have force and appropriateness.

Fables treat of the follies and weaknesses, and also of the nobler qualities, of humankind, generally through the medium of the lower animals and the members of the vegetable and natural kingdom. These are made to represent the characters we find in human life. Curious, that although it is chiefly the lower animals and inanimate things that are made the vehicle of the instruction or reproof contained in the story, we do not feel that there is any incongruity in these having the power of speech. We willingly accept the circumstance of their faculty of speech and reasoning as Gospel truth for the time being. It is natural that they in the fable should speak as the heroes or actors, and we listen to their words, whether wise or foolish, with deference or contempt as the case may be.

It is a question in casuistry how far justice and injustice are done to the inferior animals and the members of the vegetable kingdom by this liberty that is taken with them in the fable. If they had the knowledge of the fact, and the power of remonstrance, it may be conceived that some of them, at least, would repudiate the characters and propensities which we in our superior conceit so glibly ascribe to them in the fable. And, indeed, there is doubtless a good deal of unfairness in our habit of stigmatizing this one with cunning, that one with cowardice, and the other with cruelty, or stupidity, or dishonesty, as suits our purpose. Possibly if some of the humbler creatures thus branded were gifted with the power of writing fables for the benefit of their fellow creatures and associates, they might be able to point to characteristics in the higher order of beings which it is desirable to hold in reprobation, and this, too, with as much or more reason and justice on their side than we have on ours. But, in truth, the fabulists themselves tacitly admit the force of this argument, inasmuch as the failings and defects and general qualities which they ascribe to the characters in the fable are, of course, those of the human species. A fable of Æsop, The Man and the Lion,[9] is very much to the point here:

'Once upon a time a man and a lion were journeying together, and came at length to high words which was the braver and stronger of the two. As the dispute waxed warmer they happened to pass by, on the road-side, a statue of a man strangling a lion. "See there," said the man; "what more undeniable proof can you have of our superiority than that?" "That," said the lion, "is your version of the story; let us be the sculptors, and for one lion under the feet of a man, you shall have twenty men under the paw of a lion!" Men are but sorry witnesses in their own cause.'

A fable is generally a fiction, as has already been said. It is a singular paradox, however, that nothing is truer than a good fable. True to intuition, true to nature, true to fact. The great virtue of fables consists in this quality of truthfulness, and their enduring life and popularity are corroboration of it. If not true in the sense of being reasonable, they are nothing, or foolish, and therefore intolerable. We instinctively feel their truth, and are encouraged, or amused, or conscience-smitten by the narration, for they deal with principles which lie at the very root of our human nature.

It is a remarkable feature of this species of composition that a departure from the natural order of things loses its incongruity in the fable; and although this view has been controverted, the argument against it fails to carry conviction in face of the excellent examples that can be adduced. By way of illustration, take the fable of the man and his goose that laid the golden eggs. We don't remember ever meeting with a goose of this particular breed out of the fable. There are numberless geese in the world—human and other. But the goose that lays a golden egg every morning is a rara avis. Nevertheless, she has a veritable existence in the fable, and we would as soon think of casting a doubt on our own identity as on that of the fabled bird. The story has always been, and will continue to be, Gospel truth to us, and we never recall it without commiserating the untimely end of the poor obliging goose, and thinking, at the same time, what a goose its owner must have been to kill it and cut it up, in expectation of finding in its inside the inexhaustible treasure his impatient greed had pictured as existing there. Semper avarus eget. Had we been the fortunate owner of such an uncommon fowl, one golden egg each day would have contented us!

Certain early authors, with the formalism which characterizes their writings, have attempted an arrangement of fables under three distinct heads or classes, designating them, respectively, Rational, Emblematical, and Mixed. The Rational fable is held to be that in which the actors are either human beings or the gods of mythology; or, if beasts, birds, trees, and inanimate objects are introduced, the former only are the speakers. The Emblematical fable has animals, members of the vegetable kingdom, and even inanimate things for its heroes, and these are accordingly gifted with the power of speech. The Mixed fable, as the name implies, is that in which an association of the two former kinds is to be found. The distinction, though perfectly accurate, serves no useful purpose and need not be observed. As a matter of fact, all fables are rational or reasonable from the fabulist's stand-point; and all are emblematical or typical of moods, conditions, and possible or actual occurrences in daily life, whoever and whatever be the actors and speakers introduced.