Pictures illustrating fables are a feature that tends to enhance their attractiveness and value, and the ablest artists have employed their pencils in the work. It is sufficient to mention Bewick and his pupils, whose illustrations are greatly prized. S. Howitt's etchings of animals in illustration of the fabulists (1811). Northcote's original volumes (1828-33) are illustrated with 560 charming engravings from the author's designs. Robert Cruikshank illustrated the 'Fables for Mankind,' by Charles Westmacott (1823). Blake, Stothard, Harvey, and Sir John Tenniel, the distinguished Punch artist, have gained applause in the same field. The latter illustrated a small volume of Æsop published by Murray in 1848. This is 'A New Version of the Old Fables, chiefly from Original Sources,' by the Rev. Thomas James, M.A., and contains an introduction which is worthy of perusal by those interested in the subject. The first edition of the work is a rarity sought for by collectors. Randolph Caldecott illustrated some of Æsop's fables in his own inimitable style. Walter Crane[72] and Harrison Weir[73] have exercised their talents in the same direction, and Mrs. Hugh Blackburn has supplied clever illustrations to Rankine's fables. The pictures in the collection of fables made by G. Moir Bussey (1842) are from designs by J. J. Grandville, and are full of originality and humour. The same volume also contains an excellent 'Dissertation on the History of Fable.' The spirited and masterly designs of Oudry in illustration of La Fontaine are justly prized and highly valued. Gustave DorÉ also employed his facile pencil in illustrating the same author.

There are books bearing the title of 'Fables' the contents of which are not fables in the restricted sense. Of these are Dryden's so-called fables, which are really metrical romances. A competent critic has pronounced them to be the 'noblest specimens of versification to be found in any modern language,' but we need not speak further of them in this connection. Again, there is Bernard Mandeville's eccentric work, entitled 'The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices Public Benefits.' This is an apologue in rhyme, with a moral in addition, and followed by a voluminous prose disquisition on questions of morality, partaking of all the audacious paradoxical elements which characterized its ingenious author. Thomas Moore, the distinguished Irish poet, wrote a series of eight political fables, which were originally published by him under the pseudonym of 'Thomas Brown.' Neither these nor that of Mandeville, however, are fables from our point of view. The same remark applies to Lowell's well-known 'Fable for Critics,' and Lord Lytton's 'Fables in Song,' on which it is unnecessary to dwell.

And so, having taken our survey of the fabulist and his work, we conclude, as we rightly may, that he is both philosopher and poet, but more poet than philosopher, inasmuch as the imaginative faculty is greatly at his command. Further, as saith Sir Philip Sidney,[74] 'The philosopher teacheth, but he teacheth obscurely, so as the learned only can understand him; that is to say, he teacheth them that are already taught. But the poet is the food for the tenderest stomachs; the poet is, indeed, the right popular philosopher. Whereof Æsop's tales give good proof; whose pretty allegories, stealing under the formal tales of beasts, make many, more beastly than beasts, begin to hear the sound of virtue from these dumb speakers.'