On asking why she was so base,

Was told, “’Tis others to dissuade

From giving wickedness their aid.”

[XV.] THE FOX AND THE DRAGON.

A Fox was throwing up the soil,

And while with his assiduous toil

He burrow’d deep into the ground,

A Dragon in his den he found,

A-watching hidden treasure there,

Whom seeing, Renard speaks him fair: