Select Tales and Fables with Prudential Maxims and other Little Lessons of Morality in Prose and Verse Equally Instructive & Entertaining for the Use of Both Sexes, Vols. I-II
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Authors
Cole, B. (engraver)
Nourse, J. (bookseller)
Osborne, Thomas (bookseller)
Issue Date
1746
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Book, Whole
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Abstract
This fine little book has one of those titles that goes on forever. It continues: Wherein Their Foibles as well as Beauties are presented to their View in the fairest & most inoffensive point of Light...The whole embellished with threescore original designs, expressive of each subject, neatly engraved on copper plates. The pattern in this children's fable book is for sets of four pages. First there are two pleasing almost square illustrations on the first left page, followed by two texts on the first right page. Then follow two adaptations on the second left page, with the second right page conveniently left blank as the verso of the next set of illustrations. The illustration pages and their blank versos are not counted in the page numbers. The prolog is adapted from Phoedrus. Each volume has 80 pages. After the thirty fables in the first volume, there are three sets each of prudential maxims, first in prose and then in verse, arranged alphabetically for easier memorizing. Art polishes and improves Nature. Beauty is a fair, but fading Flower. Next come Fifty Select Counsels or Rules of Life Without Regard to Alphabetical Order. Young readers of this book certainly got enough admonitions! Next come The Precepts of Pythagoras and The Golden Verses of Pythagoras. Finally there are fifty-one Select Historical Reflections on Various Subjects, Equally Instructive and Entertaining. Volume II follows a similar pattern. Good sample illustrations are those facing 15 in Volume I, FG and The Farmer and His Sons, and facing 9 in Volume II, The Fox and the Eagle and WC. They add J. Wale Delin. to B. Cole Sculp. My best find comes from the second book: The Apple and the Horse-Turd (23). The two lie on a road when a rainstorm sweeps them away. The horse-turd says to the other See how we apples swim! Fable XXVIII in Volume II is a poor man's version of Lessing's great fable about the scholar asked if he does not feel alone who answers that he has never felt so alone as in this conversation. Here the student answers the clown Thy company is worse than none (27). The date for the book is given on the second volume's title-page. A possible pre-title-page for the first volume may be missing. Pages 3-10 of the first volume are missing. Not in Bodemann.
Description
Citation
Publisher
For T. Osborn and J. Nourse
Printed for T. Osborn Grays-Inn and J. Nourse at the Lamb, over against Catherine-Street, in the Strand.,
Printed for T. Osborn Grays-Inn and J. Nourse at the Lamb, over against Catherine-Street, in the Strand.,
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Identifier
8858 (Access ID)