Aesop Dress'd; Or a collection of Fables Part 1

Aesop Dress'd.

by Bernard Mandeville.

INTRODUCTION

Bernard Mandeville's first extant book in English, _Some Fables after the Easie and Familiar Method of Monsieur de la Fontaine_, was published in 1703; it reappeared with additional fables in 1704 as _Aesop Dress'd_.[1] Neither t.i.tle reveals that, except for two original fables by Mandeville, the book consists entirely of verse translations from the twelve books of La Fontaine's _Fables_ (1668-1694). It is the first book-length translation from these poems into English.

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.

Their resemblance to the French originals is slight. Not La Fontaine, but Samuel Butler, presides over Dennis's fables; indeed, when Dennis discusses them in the Preface to _Miscellanies_, he fails to mention La Fontaine, although he devotes a large proportion of his remarks to a defense of Butler's burlesque verse, which he acknowledges as his model.[2] Many people were writing Hudibrastics in the 1680's and 1690's: the propensity of Butler's couplet for arousing laughter had made it a fad.[3] With its jog-trot meter, insinuating swiftness, and jarring double and triple rhymes, the Hudibrastic couplet was ideally suited to the mockery performed by low burlesque. All burlesque works by an incongruity between subject and style; the particular function of low burlesque is to debase an elevated subject by treating it in an undignified manner.[4] So it was that Butler, with the a.s.sistance of a crazy style, had exploited the gap between the high pretensions and the ridiculous performances of a Puritan knight and his squire.

But of the hordes of scribblers that followed in the wake of _Hudibras_, scarcely any possessed Butler's sense of satiric propriety. Where his success had been founded on the discrepancy between subject and style that is essential to burlesque, they employed his style with no regard for its suitability to their subjects. Ordinary narrative poems with no satiric intent were decked in Hudibrastic couplets for the sake of a superficial cleverness.[5] Dennis followed the fashion. His ten verse-fables are filled with outrageous Butlerisms:

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.

The _Crane's_ arrival was opportune, Order'd for _Isgrim's_ good by fortune.[6]

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.

Dennis was attempting to impose on the animal fable an alien style. From Aesop to Thurber, the chief strength of the fabulist has been his humility: by selecting animal stories as the guise for his moral lessons, he has hoped to disarm his readers into accepting the truth.

This strategy would seem to rule out the style of low burlesque, for the impulse to this style--a dignified subject to be mocked out of its dignity--does not exist in the animal fable. In particular the _Fables_ of La Fontaine, perhaps the most graceful, concise, and witty ever written, do not respond well to the ferocious manner of Dennis. Dennis translating La Fontaine resembles a bull in a china shop.

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 Carca.s.s.[8]

Even these few unmistakable instances are less distracting than the ones in Dennis. Mandeville's verse is much like his prose: straightforward, downright, even in tone. Here are the first ten lines of Mandeville's "The Fox and Wolf":

The Fox went on the search one Night, The Moon had hung out all her light; He sees her image in a Well; But what it was he could not tell; Gets on the Bricks to look at ease: At last concludes it is a Cheese: One Bucket's down, the other up, He jumps in that which was a-top, And coming to the Water, sees How little Skill he had in Cheese.

La Fontaine has this:

... Un soir il [le loup] apercut La lune au fond d'un puits: l'orbiculaire image Lui parut un ample fromage.

Deux seaux alternativement Puisoient le liquide element: Notre Renard, presse par une faim canine, S'accommode en celui qu'au haut de la machine L'autre seau tenoit suspendu.

Voila l'animal descendu, Tire d'erreur, mais fort en peine, Et voyant sa perte prochaine....

Dennis had inserted these lines in the pseudo-erudite Butlerian manner:

The two large Buckets which were there, Like _Pollux_ and like _Castor_ were.

How so pray? For 'tis devilish odd, To liken a Bucket to a G.o.d; When one came up from towards the Center, That in our upper world strait went there.

These drew up turns the liquid Element, Into one got _Renard_, and towards h.e.l.l he went.[9]

Nearly all Mandeville's translations are, like "The Fox and Wolf,"

longer than their originals. The added length is partly explained by meter: Mandeville's octosyllabic line is less capacious, as a rule, than La Fontaine's flexible one. Thus, even though "The Wolf and the Lamb"

moves with a speed comparable to "Le Loup et l'Agneau," Mandeville takes 34 lines to La Fontaine's 29.[10] More often, Mandeville's translations are longer than their originals because Mandeville is not able to match La Fontaine's wit and point. "La Lice et sa Compagne," an exercise in light-footed elegance, begins this way:

Une Lice etant sur son terme, Et ne sachant ou mettre un fardeau si pressant, Fait si bien qu'a la fin sa Compagne consent De lui preter sa hutte, ou la Lice s'enferme.

In translating, Mandeville expands these four lines to ten without special gain:

A b.i.t.c.h, who hardly had a day To reckon, knew not where to lay Her Burthen down: She had no Bed; Nor any Roof to hide her Head; Desires a b.i.t.c.h of the same Pack, To let her have, For Heaven's sake, Her House against her Lying-in.

Th' other, who thought it was a Sin, To baulk a Wretch so near her Labour Says, Yes, 'tis at your Service, Neighbor.[11]

Perhaps it is Mandeville's plainspokenness, his determination to say all that must be said, which causes him to state explicitly things that La Fontaine left implicit. "La Cigale et la Fourmi," contrasting an irresponsible gra.s.shopper and a provident ant, implies but subdues a contrast between art and life. Mandeville makes the contrast explicit:

And now the hungry Songster's driv'n To such a state, no Man can know it, But a Musician or a Poet....[12]

"The Lyon and the Gnat" is fairly close to its original in length (46 lines to La Fontaine's 39) and in spirit; but Mandeville does not improve his fable by supplying the adjective "silly" ("silly Spider") where La Fontaine had written "une araignee," or by inserting a line about the gnat's pride, "Puffed up and blinded with his glory," where La Fontaine expected his readers to discern the gnat's pride for themselves.[13] Another translation that sticks close to the French in its sense is "The Dog and the a.s.s," in which an a.s.s refuses food to a hungry dog and is in turn abandoned by the dog and killed by a hungry wolf. Mandeville adds the judgment that La Fontaine excluded. The wolf attacks:

Grizz'l [the a.s.s] at a distance Hears him, and asks the Dog's a.s.sistance; But he don't budge, _and serves him right; Says he, I never us'd to fight Without a cause for fighting's sake_....[14]

The italicized words, entirely added by Mandeville, apparently represent his conviction that the irony of La Fontaine's fable would be intensified by the dog's sardonic comment and the translator's "serves him right." Other examples might be cited of Mandeville's explicitness.

The characterizing details of some of the great fables, however, disappear in Mandeville's English. Although "The Plague among the Beasts" is faithful to the original, the tragic overtones of "Les Animaux malade de la Peste" are not recaptured; they are perhaps unrecapturable. The ironies of La Fontaine's characterization are ignored: the lion's "L'histoire nous apprend," for instance, by which the unscrupulous politician poses as a deep-browed savant; the description of the other beasts as "pet.i.ts saints," and of the wolf who condemns the innocent a.s.s as "quelque peu clerc"--these disappear.[15]

"L'Ivrogne et sa Femme" meets the same fate. Mandeville retains the outlines of the original but treats the details perfunctorily, as though he had given up trying to re-create the comic terror of La Fontaine's little masterpiece. "A drunkard" is not an adequate equivalent for "un suppot de Bacchus"; "very drunk" is not the same as "plein du jus de la treille"; entire sentences are left out, such as "La les vapeurs du vin nouveau / Cuverent a loisir"; and the ending of the poem suffers from the alteration of details and from an awkward inversion for the sake of a rhyme:

He says to his dissembling Spirit, Who are you in the Name of Evil?

She answers hoa.r.s.ely I'm a Devil, That carries Victuals to the d.a.m.n'd By me they are with Brimstone cramm'd.

What, says the Husband, do you think Never to bring them any Drink?