'The Miser and the Magpie.—As a miser sat at his desk counting over his heaps of gold, a magpie eloped from his cage, picked up a guinea, and hopped away with it. The miser, who never failed to count his money over a second time, immediately missed the piece, and rising up from his seat in the utmost consternation, observed the felon hiding it in a crevice of the floor. "And art thou," cried he, "that worst of thieves, who hast robbed me of my gold without the plea of necessity, and without regard to its proper use? But thy life shall atone for so preposterous a villainy." "Soft words, good master!" quoth the magpie. "Have I, then, injured you in any other sense than you defraud the public? And am I not using your money in the same manner you do yourself? If I must lose my life for hiding a single guinea, what do you, I pray, deserve, who secrete so many thousands?"'
'The Toad and the Ephemeron.—As some workmen were digging in a mountain of Scythia, they discerned a toad of enormous size in the midst of a solid rock. They were very much surprised at so uncommon an appearance, and the more they considered the circumstances of it, the more their wonder increased. It was hard to conceive by what means the creature had preserved life and received nourishment in so narrow a prison, and still more difficult to account for his birth and existence in a place so totally inaccessible to all of his species. They could conclude no other than that he was formed together with the rock in which he had been bred, and was coeval with the mountain itself. While they were pursuing these speculations, the toad sat swelling and bloating till he was ready to burst with pride and self-importance, to which at last he thus gave vent: "Yes," says he, "you behold in me a specimen of the antediluvian race of animals. I was begotten before the flood; and who is there among the present upstart race of mortals that shall dare to contend with me in nobility of birth or dignity of character?" An ephemeron, sprung that morning from the river Hypanis, as he was flying about from place to place, chanced to be present, and observed all that passed with great attention and curiosity. "Vain boaster," says he, "what foundation hast thou for pride, either in thy descent, merely because it is ancient, or thy life, because it hath been long? What good qualities hast thou received from thy ancestors? Insignificant even to thyself, as well as useless to others, thou art almost as insensible as the block in which thou wast bred. Even I, that had my birth only from the scum of the neighbouring river, at the rising of this day's sun, and who shall die at its setting, have more reason to applaud my condition than thou hast to be proud of thine. I have enjoyed the warmth of the sun, the light of the day, and the purity of the air; I have flown from stream to stream, from tree to tree, and from the plain to the mountain; I have provided for posterity, and shall leave behind me a numerous offspring to people the next age of to-morrow; in short, I have fulfilled all the ends of my being, and I have been happy. My whole life, 'tis true, is but of twelve hours, but even one hour of it is to be preferred to a thousand years of mere existence, which have been spent, like thine, in sloth, ignorance and stupidity."'
'The Bee and the Spider.—On the leaves and flowers of the same shrub, a spider and a bee pursued their several occupations, the one covering her thighs with honey, the other distending his bag with poison. The spider, as he glanced his eye obliquely at the bee, was ruminating with spleen on the superiority of her productions. "And how happens it," said he, in a peevish tone, "that I am able to collect nothing but poison from the selfsame plant that supplies thee with honey? My pains and industry are not less than thine; in those respects we are each indefatigable." "It proceeds only," replied the bee, "from the different disposition of our nature; mine gives a pleasing flavour to everything I touch, whereas thine converts to poison what by a different process had been the purest honey."'
James Northcote, R.A., the indefatigable painter, who, when a youth, enjoyed the friendship of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was occasionally one of the company at his hospitable table, along with Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, Garrick and Boswell, published two volumes of original and selected fables in 1828-33, when he was eighty-two years of age. When a boy, living at Plymouth, where he was born on October 22, 1746, he took pleasure in copying the pictures from an edition of Æsop's fables. The memory of these clung to him through life, and, as occasion offered, he occupied himself in composing apologues in imitation of those with which he was familiar in his early years.
The diction of Northcote's fables is admirable. They are in the choicest phraseology, both in their verse and prose, for he practised both forms of composition, though chiefly the latter. Neither crisp nor brilliant, they are now and again lighted up with scintillations of humour. His applications are delivered with grave solemnity befitting a judge or a philosopher—not to say a bore; and in many instances they extend to three or four times the length of the fable itself.
Northcote died in London at the ripe age of eighty-five, and was buried beneath the New Church of St. Marylebone.
Perhaps his best fables are The Jay and the Owl, Echo and the Parrot, Stone Broth, and The Trooper and his Armour. None of Northcote's fables have become popular with the multitude, though many of them are good examples of this class of composition. We give the last-named piece as a specimen of his work as a fabulist. The application is well conceived, but it is scarcely indicated in the fable:
'A trooper, in the time of battle, picked up the shoe of a horse that lay in his way, and quickly by a cord suspended it from his neck. Soon after, in a skirmish with the enemy, a shot struck exactly on the said horseshoe and saved his life,[61] as it fell harmless to the ground. "Well done," said the trooper, "I see that a very little armour is sufficient when it is well placed."
'Application: Although the trooper's good luck with his bit of armour may appear to be the effect of chance, yet certain it is that prudent persons are always prepared to receive good fortune, or may be said to meet it half-way, turning every accident if possible to good, which gives an appearance as if they were the favourites of fortune; whilst the thoughtless and improvident, on the contrary, often neglect to embrace the very blessings which chance throws in their way, and then survey with envy those who prosper by their careful and judicious conduct, and blame their partial or hard fortune for all those privations and sufferings which their mismanagement alone has brought upon themselves.'
