Fables in Verse: A Book for the Young

Abstract

This 4" x 6" book contains sixteen verse fables, almost all with small black-and-white illustrations, on 32 pages. I find two surprises in the book, which one might want to compare with Nelson's "Famous Fables in Modern Verse," published about fifty years later. A first surprise is "The Conceited Butterfly" (19), which follows the same theme as the more traditional "The Gnat and the Bull." The other surprise is "The Lion, the Tiger, and the Traveller" (31). A tiger is attacking a human when a lion comes along and kills the tiger. The lion grants the man's life, whereupon the man gives the lion a little lecture on how to be a good king. The lion says that he is giving up his pursuit of false glory that has -- up until now? -- misled his youth. Might "teaching" be torturing this fable a bit? Perhaps most impressive of the illustrations is "Hercules and the Carter" as frontispiece.