Aesop Dress'd; Or, A Collection of Fables Writ in Familiar Verse

Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles Lawrence Clark Powell, Wm. Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan John Butt, University of Edinburgh James L. Clifford, Columbia University Ralph Cohen, University of California, Los Angeles Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago Louis A. Landa, Princeton University Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles James Sutherland, University College, London H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Edna C. Davis, Wm. Andrews Clark Memorial Library
The only previous translations from Fables into English verse appear to have been those made ten years earlier by John Dennis. Miscellanies in Verse and Prose (1693) was a curious volume of Pindaric odes, imitations of Horace, Juvenal, and Boileau, and letters that the young Dennis had written during his travels in France and Italy, including the well-known account of the delightful horrour and terrible Joy that he had experienced while crossing the Alps; there were, finally, ten fables in octosyllabic couplets—all of them translations from La Fontaine. A word about Dennis's fables may help to put Mandeville's into perspective.
Isgrim had all the Winter far'd So very ill, his looks Men scar'd. He had (poor Dog!) got an evil habit, Of going to Bed with the Devil a bit, So that he had contracted a meen, Which truly represented Famine.
At sight of Steed that's one huge bit of Fat, Hight Isgrim's heart for joy went pit a pat.
Had I not known thy Self and Kindred, Ev'n I my self should have been in dread.
Whatever the intentions of the poet, it seems to be the property of the Hudibrastic couplet inevitably to denigrate its subject. While it is probable that Dennis intended his fables to be clever and modish, and nothing more, they turn out to be travesties of La Fontaine.