Mandeville's translation begins:
The king of Brutes sent all about,
He was afflicted with the gout....[17]
The gout is a standard comic disease which Mandeville gives to his lion to make him comically undignified. La Fontaine's lion remains dignified and restrained throughout. (The two versions of this fable are also instances of the relative capabilities of the French and the English four-stress lines.) In another fable, a tonal difference appears in some lines describing the meeting of a haggard wolf and a well-fed dog:
Le Loup donc l'aborde humblement,
Entre en propos, et lui fait compliment
Sur son embonpoint, qu'il admire.
And therefore in a humble way
He gives the Dog the time o' th' Day;
Talks mighty complaisant, and vents
A Waggon Load of Compliments
Upon his being in such a Case,
His brawny Flank and jolly Face.[18]
The tone of polite gravity is gone; what remains is less succinct, but more specific, and in its way effective. When Mandeville's invention is working well, as it does in "The Wolf and Dog," it provides, in its colloquial heartiness, an adequate substitute for La Fontaine's refinement of tone and subtlety of detail. On the whole, his fables are close to their originals, especially when compared to those of Dennis, even though "the easie and familiar method of Monsieur de La Fontaine" is something that, despite his professions, Mandeville fails to reproduce.
Only two years intervened between Mandeville's translations from La Fontaine (1703) and The Grumbling Hive (1705), the 433-line fable that, through the years, would grow into that great repository of social, political, and economic nonconformity, The Fable of the Bees. It is not surprising that many of the fables which Mandeville chose to translate anticipate the themes of his great work. Among these are "The Milk Woman," on the self-flatery of the egoistic dream; "The Frogs asking for a King," on the instability of human desires; "The Wolves and the Sheep," on political self-deception; "Hands, Feet, and Belly," on social interdependence; and "The Lyon grown Old," on the ultimate blow to pride.[19]
Since Mandeville would give so much space in The Fable of the Bees to his analysis of pride,[20] it is appropriate that pride engaged his attention in this early book of fables. "The Frog" is notable chiefly because Mandeville lengthened La Fontaine's moral of four lines to fourteen in order to glance at the social and economic implications of pride:
So full of Pride is every Age!
A Citizen must have a Page,
A Petty Prince Ambassadors,
And Tradesmens Children Governours;
A Fellow, that i'n't worth a Louse,
Still keeps his Coach and Country-house;
A Merchant swell'd with haughtiness,
Looks ten times bigger than he is;
Buys all, and draws upon his Friend,
As if his Credit had no end;
At length he strains with so much Force,
Till, like the Frog, he bursts in course,
And, by his empty Skin you find,
That he was only fill'd with Wind.[21]
Two of the 39 fables in the collection are original productions: "The Carp" and "The Owl and the Nightingale." Both poems focus upon pride. "The Carp" tells the story of a young and inexperienced English carp who swims into foreign waters to learn "manners and arts." Warned by a herring to go home and learn first about his own country, the carp rebuffs this honest advice, takes up with fops, and is drawn into ruin before he finally returns home "as vain and ignorant, / As e'er he was before he went." The subject of the moral reflections at the end is self-delusion in the particular form of sophisticated vanity.[22] The other poem, "The Owl and the Nightingale" (the longest poem in the collection, at 181 lines), also concerns pride. The Eagle, having looked unsuccessfully among the birds of his court for a singing night-watchman, sends out a general letter. The nightingale realizes with excitement that he will easily win the competition; but he coyly refuses to go to court until sent for, makes elaborate self-depreciations in the eagle's presence, and hold out, obviously, for more recognition and reward. While he delays, an owl has been persuaded by friends to try for the position and has a hearing. Although he sings unskillfully, he manages to stay awake. When the nightingale returns to court the next day, he is infuriated to learn that an owl is competing against him and that the eagle has ordered the two birds to perform against one another that night. The nightingale protests so loudly and treasonably that he is kicked out of court, and the owl, dull but faithful, is declared the winner. The moral follows: