While Mandeville is no gazelle either, he has better manners than Dennis. The Butlerisms are still present, but they are not everywhere and they are not so grotesque. The difference between Dennis and Mandeville may be merely the interval of ten years, during which the influence of Butler had faded; but this seems unlikely, since Bond cites many examples of the continuing vogue of Hudibras, even well into the 1730's.[7] A more probable explanation for the difference is that, whereas Dennis was an avowed imitator of Butler who happened to be translating the Fables of La Fontaine, Mandeville seems to have been in this work chiefly a translator of La Fontaine who was, incidentally, writing at a time when the impulse to copy Butler's superficial qualities was almost irresistible. The total number of Hudibrastic couplets in Aesop Dress'd comes to only a handful:
They'll give you a hundred Niceties,
As Chicken Bones, boyl'd Loins of Mutton,
As good as ever Tooth was put in....
And therefore let my Lord Abdomen
Say what he will, we'll work for no Man.
A Cat, whose Sirname pretty hard was,
One Captain Felis Rodilardus....
Before the Reign of Buxom Dido,
When Beasts could Speak as well as I do....
The Truth is, it would be a hard Case,
If all this should not mend one's Carcass.[8]