PINDAR.

All, whose steadfast virtue thrice

Each side the grave unchanged has stood, Still unseduced, unstained with vice,

They, by Jove's mysterious road,

Pass to Saturn's realm of rest,

Happy isle, that holds the Blest;
Where sea-born breezes gently blow

O'er blooms of gold that round them glow,
Which nature boon from stream or strand
Or goodly tree profusely showers;
Whence pluck they many a fragrant band,

And braid their locks with never-fading flowers."
-A. Moore.

FROM THE THIRD NEMEAN.-INNATE WORTH.

"Great is the power of inbred nobleness;
But he that all he has to schooling owes,

A shallow wight obscure,

Plants not his step secure;

Feeding vain thoughts on phantoms numberless,
Of genuine excellence mere outward shows.
In Phillyra's house, a flaxen boy,
Achilles oft in rapturous joy

His feats of strength essayed.

Aloof, like wind, his little javelin flew;
The lion and the brindled boar he slew,
Then homeward to old Chiron drew

Their panting carcasses.

This, when six years had fled.

And all the aftertime

Of his rejoicing prime

It was to Dian and the blue-eyed maid
A wonder how he brought to ground
The stag without or toils or hound:
So fleet of foot was he."

-Cary.

81

With Pindar the lyric poetry of Greece culminated. It had reached its utmost height of fervor and polish, and seemed to suddenly become extinguished in the death of this poet.

A few bards followed him. Onomac' ritus, the first plagiarist on record, published certain poems which he ascribed to Orpheus and Musæ'us. He professed to have discovered them in the secret archives of the city, and they are written with such artless simplicity that it is still a question if part of these hymns do not belong to the genuine Orphic era.

Bacchyl'ides, a nephew of Simonides, wrote with great polish, delicacy and ornament, but with none of the fire of his great predecessors. He had the excellence which education gives, not that of poetic inspiration. With his death the first age of lyric poetry died. More than fifty years passed before Greece produced another lyric poet of any eminence.

E'SOP.

BORN ABOUT 620 B.C.

Famous and popular as the name and works of Esop have become, we have so little authentic knowledge of his history that some critics have even denied his existence. The fables which are ascribed to him are certainly not entirely of his production, as some were known in Greece anterior to his date, while others are evidently of later origin; but many of them possess internal evidence of being the work of one hand, and since the discovery of the copy of Babrias, in 1842, it is known that they are of ancient Greek origin.

The somewhat doubtful knowledge we possess of the life of Æsop rests on the authority of Herod'otus, Dio'genes Laer'tius, and Plu'tarch, and is as follows: As Homer was claimed as a native of seven cities, Æsop is claimed by four localities, namely: Sar'dis, the capital of Lyd'ia; Sa'mos, a Greek island; Mesem'bria, a Thracian colony, and Cotiæ'um, a city of Phry'gia. He is said to have been born a slave, and to have belonged in succession to two inhabitants of Samos, Xanthus and Jadmon, the latter of whom gave him his liberty as a reward for his wit and learning.

With a desire for instruction he is said to have traveled through many countries, visiting Pisis'tratus at Athens, and Croe'sus at Sardis. At this city he is reputed to have met and conversed with Solon, Thales, and other sages, so pleasing Croesus by the part which he took in these conferences that the monarch applied to him an expression which has become a proverb: "The Phrygian has spoken better than all." Fixing his residence in Sardis, he was employed by Croesus in delicate state embassies, some of which took him to the republics of Greece. In this manner he reached Corinth and Athens, where he endeavored, by the recital of applicable fables, to reconcile the inhabitants to the rule of their respective monarchs, Perian'der and Pisis'tratus.

One of these missions was the occasion of his death. Having been sent by Croesus to Delphi with a large sum of money, to be distributed among the citizens, they so provoked him by their covetousness that he refused to divide the money, and sent it back to his master. This enraged the Delphians to such an extent that he was thrown over a precipice by the infuriated mob.

Whether this person was the author of the Æsopian fables or not, we know, from Aristophanes and other authorities, that fables bearing his name were popular in the brilliant period of Athenian literature. These were probably handed down by oral tradition. Socrates turned such of them as he could remember into verse, and the same was done by Demetrius Phale'reus, the Alexandrian critic. The only Greek version, however, of which any entire fables remain, is that of Babrias, already mentioned. The collection of this writer, who probably lived in the age before Augustus, was found in 1842, in an Eastern convent, the manuscript containing in all two hundred and twenty fables, of which one hundred and twenty-three were previously unknown.

The resemblance between some of their fables and the personal peculiarities attributed in common to Æsop and

the Arabian fabulist Lokman, have led some persons to conclude that the two men were identical, or that the fables common to both belong to the same Eastern source. It is very possible, indeed, that many of those attributed to Æsop obeyed the inevitable tendency of oral literature to accumulate about one name; but that Æsop lived and composed many of the fables ascribed to him, there is no sufficient reason to deny.

The universal favor with which the fables of Æsop have been received, is to be accounted for by their close observance of the twofold aim which the true fable should possess. The object of the fabulist is to create a laugh, but yet, under a merry guise, to convey a moral, and impart an instructive lesson. "The fable," says Professor Müller, "originated in Greece in an intentional travesty of human affairs. The 'ainos,' as its name denotes, is an admonition, or rather a reproof, veiled, either from fear of an excess of frankness or from a love of fun and jest, beneath the fiction of an occurrence happening among beasts; and wherever we have any ancient and authentic account of the Æsopian fables, we find it to be the same."

The true fable should involve three requisites; the narration itself; the moral to be deduced; and the preservation of individual characters in the animals introduced. The narrative should relate to one simple action, and not be overlaid with extraneous circumstances; the moral should be so plain, and so interwoven with the story, as to force itself on the attention of the reader; and the animals should preserve their natural attributes, or such as are given to them by popular consent, the fox being always cunning, the lion bold, the wolf cruel, etc. Many of the fables in the Æsopian collection closely observe these rules, and those that do not are probably interpolations in the true Æsopian work.

""Tis the simple manner," says Dodsley, "in which the

morals of Æsop are interwoven with his fables that distinguishes him, and gives him the preference over all other mythologists. His 'Mountain delivered of a Mouse' produces the moral of his fable in ridicule of pompous pretenders; and his crow, when she drops her cheese, lets fall, as it were by accident, the strongest admonition against the power of flattery. There is no need of a separate sentence to explain it; no possibility of impressing it deeper, by that load we too often see of accumulated reflections."

When the fables of Æsop became known in Europe, in the fifteenth century, after an eclipse of many centuries, they became immensely popular, spreading rapidly through Italy and Germany. Luther translated a number of them, and is said to have valued them next to the Holy Scriptures. Their popularity has continued to the present day. We give a few of the most noted.

THE LION, THE FOX, AND THE ASS.

The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass entered into an agreement to assist each other in the chase. Having secured a large booty, the Lion, on their return from the forest, asked the Ass to allot his due portion to each of the three partners in the treaty. The Ass carefully divided the spoil into three equal shares, and modestly requested the two others to make the first choice. The Lion, bursting out into a great rage, devoured the Ass. Then he requested the Fox to do him the favor to make a division. The Fox accumulated all they had killed into one large heap, and left to himself the smallest possible morsel. The Lion said: "Who has taught you, my very excellent fellow, the art of division? You are perfect to a fraction." He replied: "I learned it from the Ass, by witnessing his fate."

THE FROGS ASKING FOR A KING.

The Frogs, grieved at having no ruler, sent ambassadors to Jupiter petitioning for a King. He, perceiving their simplicity, cast down a huge log into the lake. The Frogs, terrified at the splash made by its fall, hid themselves in the depths of the pool. But no sooner did they see that the log continued motionless, than they swam again to the top of the water, and came so to despise it