Aesop and Hyssop
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Authors
Leonard, William Ellery
Issue Date
1912
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Type
Book, Whole
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Abstract
Here is the paperbound version of this delightful book! This book has more than a bit of whimsy in it, composed as it is (in verse) by its author in grief over having lost his wife or best friend. Besides some 175 Aesopic fables, there are some twenty-seven originals composed by Leonard. The versifying is part of the fun. Two sections of the Dedication help give perspective on this work. Speaking of Phaedrus, LaFontaine, and Gay, Leonard writes on iv:/But I've done wiselier than they did:/their aim finesse and delicacy./Mine is the mischievous and racy./and/(The mock address to babes and sucklings/should aid the older reader's chucklings.)/He has this to say about Socrates in the preface on v:/I too, a lesser man than he, in pain/and, as it were, in prison, try again/His remedy for sorrow (for of late/I lost forevermore my friend and mate,/And need a little smiling)./I find his fables often ingenious and wonderfully pithy. FG moral (20) is still a classic. Among my favorites in this careful '97 reading: #1, 12, 13, 46, 54, 56, 90 (a gem for pithiness!), 136, 140, 145, 147, 149, 152, and 184 (his original on the adoring squirrels). Some of Leonard's gift verges on trivializing or at least matter of facting what he reports. He tends to offer a kind of signature at the end of the narrative, marked by concrete details, a touch of the macabre, and a strong rhyme. #130 (The Snapping Dog) offers a good example of Leonard's work, which will include a strong finish in the narrative bolstered by a good rhyme, with a moral that is often pithier than those in prose editions. I object to his frequent double subjects (e.g. in OF The dame she swelled with furious puff, #139) but to little else here. Different: the heron wipes out the whole race of frogs (#16)!
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Publisher
Open Court
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DOI
Identifier
257 (Access ID)