Chapter 13 MODERN FABULISTS LA FONTAINE, GAY.

'Lie gently on their ashes, gentle earth.'

Beaumont and Fletcher.

It is a remarkable circumstance in connection with the literature of fable, that those who have excelled in it are comparatively few. The principal names that occur to us are ?sop, La Fontaine, Gay, Lessing, Krilof; 'the rest are all but leather or prunello,' if we except a few