Chapter 20

The text is printed in theDenkmäler deutscher Poesie und Prosa aus dem 8-12. Jahrhundert(Berlin, 1892) of C.V. Müllenhoff and W. Scherer.

FThis is the sixth letter of the English alphabet as it was of the Latin. In the ordinary Greek alphabet the symbol has disappeared, although it survived far into historical times in many Greek dialects as, the digamma, the use of which in early times was inductively proved by Bentley, when comparatively little was known of the local alphabets and dialects of Greece. The so-calledstigmaς, which serves for the numeral 6, is all that remains to represent it. This symbol derives its name from its resemblance in medieval MSS. to the abbreviation forστ. The symbol occupying the same position in the Phoenician alphabet was Vau (), which seems to be represented by the Greek Υ, the Latin, at the end of the early alphabet. Many authorities therefore contend thatis only a modification of the preceding symbol E and has nothing to do with the symbol Vau. In some early Latin inscriptionsis represented by ||, as E is by ||. It must be admitted that the resemblance between the sixth symbol of the Phoenician alphabet and the corresponding symbol of the European alphabet is not striking. But the position of the limbs of symbols in early alphabets often varies surprisingly. In Greek, besideswe find forfin Pamphylia (the only Greek district in Asia which possesses the symbol), and in Boeotia, Thessaly, Tarentum, Cumae and on Chalcidian vases of Italy the form, though except at Cumae and on the vases the formexists contemporaneously withor even earlier. At the little town of Falerii (Civita Castellana), whose alphabet is undoubtedly of the same origin as the Latin,takes the form. Though uncertain, therefore, it seems not impossible that the original symbol of the Phoenician alphabet, which was a consonant like the Englishw, may have been differentiated in Greek into two symbols, one indicating the consonant valuewand retaining the position of the Phoenician consonant Vau, the other having the vowel valueu, which ultimately most dialects changed to a modified sound like Frenchuor Germanü. Be this as it may, the value of the symbolin Greek wasw, a bilabial voiced sound, not the labio-dental unvoiced sound which we callf. When the Romans adopted the Greek alphabet they took over the symbols with their Greek values. But Greek had no sound corresponding to the Latinf, for φ was pronouncedp-h, like the final sound oflipin ordinary English or the initial sound ofpigin Irish English. Consequently in the very old inscription on a gold fibula found at Praeneste and published in 1887 (seeAlphabet) the Latinfis represented by. Later, as Latin did not usefor the consonant written asvinvis, &c. ,was dropped andreceived a new special value in Latin as representative of the unvoiced labio-dental spirant. In the Oscan and Umbrian dialects, whose alphabet was borrowed from Etruscan, a special form appears forf, viz., the old formbeing kept for the other consonantv(i.e.Englishw). Thehas generally been asserted to be developed out of the second element in the combination, its upper and lower halves being first converted into lozenges,, which naturally changed towhen inscribed without lifting the writing or incising implement. Recent discoveries, however, make this doubtful (seeAlphabet).

(P. Gi.)

FABBRONI, ANGELO(1732-1803), Italian biographer, was born at Marradi in Tuscany on the 25th of September 1732. After studying at Faenza he entered the Roman college founded for the education of young Tuscans. On the conclusion of his studies he continued his stay in Rome, and having been introduced to the celebrated Jansenist Bottari, received from him the canonry of Santa Teresa in Trastevere. Some time after this he was chosen to preach a discourse in the pontifical chapel before Benedict XIV. and made such a favourable impression that the pontiff settled on him an annuity, with the possession of which Fabbroni was able to devote his whole time to study. He was intimate with Leopold I., grand-duke of Tuscany, but the Jesuits disliked him on account of his Jansenist views. Besides his other literary labours he began at Pisa in 1771 a literary journal, which he continued till 1796. About 1772 he made a journey to Paris, where he formed the acquaintance of Condorcet, Diderot, d’Alembert, Rousseau and most of the other eminent Frenchmen of the day. He also spent four months in London. He died at Pisa on the 22nd of September 1803.

The following are his principal works:—Vitae Italorum doctrina excellentium qui saeculis XVII. et XVIII. floruerunt(20 vols., Pisa, 1778-1799, 1804-1805), the last two vols., published posthumously, contain a life of the author;Laurentii Medicei Magnifici Vita(2 vols., Pisa, 1784), a work which served as a basis for H. Roscoe’sLife of Lorenzo dei Medici;Leonis X. pontificis maximi Vita(Pisa, 1797); andElogi di Dante Alighieri, di Angelo Poliziano, di Lodovico Ariosto, e di Torq. Tasso(Parma, 1800).

FABER,the name of a family of German lead-pencil manufacturers. Their business was founded in 1760 at Stein, near Nuremberg, by Kaspar Faber (d. 1784). It was then inherited by his son Anton Wilhelm (d. 1819). Georg Leonhard Faber succeeded in 1810 (d. 1839), and the business passed to Johann Lothar von Faber (1817-1896), the great-grandson of the founder. At the time of his assuming control about twenty hands were employed, under old-fashioned conditions, and owing to the invention of the Frenchcrayons Contésof Nicolas Jacques Conté (q.v.) competition had reduced the entire Nuremberg industry to a low ebb (seePencil). Johann introduced improvements in machinery and methods, brought his factory to the highest state of efficiency, and it became a model for all the other German and Austrian manufacturers. He established branches in New York, Paris, London and Berlin, and agencies in Vienna, St Petersburg and Hamburg, and made his greatestcoupin 1856, when he contracted for the exclusive control of the graphite obtained from the East Siberian mines. Faber had also branched out into the manufacture of water-colour and oil paints, inks, slates and slate-pencils, and engineers’ and architects’ drawing instruments, and built additional factories to house his various industries at New York and at Noisy-le-Sec, near Paris, and had his own cedar mills in Florida. For his services to German industry he received a patent of nobility and an appointment as councillor of state. After the death of his widow (1903) the business was inherited by his grand-daughter Countess Otilie von Faber-Castell and her husband, Count Alexander.

FABER, BASIL(1520—c.1576), Lutheran schoolmaster and theologian, was born at Sorau, in lower Lusatia, in 1520. In 1538 he entered the university of Wittenberg, studying aspauper gratisunder Melanchthon. Choosing the schoolmaster’s profession, he became successively rector of the schools at Nordhausen, Tennstadt (1555), Magdeburg (1557) and Quedlinburg (1560). From this last post he was removed in December 1570 as a Crypto-Calvinist. In 1571 he was appointed to the Raths-gymnasium at Erfurt, not as rector, but as director (Vorsteher). In this situation he remained till his death in 1575 or 1576. His translation of the first twenty-five chapters of Luther’s commentary on Genesis was published in 1557; in other ways he promoted the spread of Lutheran views. He was a contributor to the first four of theMagdeburg Centuries. He is best known by hisThesaurus eruditionis scholasticae(1571; last edition, improved by J.H. Leich, 1749, folio, 2 vols.); this was followed by hisLibellus de disciplina scholastica(1572).

See Wagenmann and G. Müller in Herzog-Hauck’sRealencyklopädie(1898).

(A. Go.*)

FABER, FREDERICK WILLIAM(1814-1863), British hymn writer and theologian, was born on the 28th of June 1814 at Calverley, Yorkshire, of which place his grandfather, Thomas Faber, was vicar. He attended the grammar school of Bishop Auckland for a short time, but a large portion of his boyhood was spent in Westmorland. He afterwards went to Harrowand to Balliol College, Oxford. In 1835 he obtained a scholarship at University College; and in 1836 he gained the Newdigate prize for a poem on “The Knights of St John,” which elicited special praise from Keble. Among his college friends were Dean Stanley and Roundell Palmer, 1st earl of Selborne. In January 1837 he was elected fellow of University College. Meanwhile he had given up the Calvinistic views of his youth, and had become an enthusiastic follower of John Henry Newman. In 1841 a travelling tutorship took him to the continent; and on his return a book appeared calledSights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches and among Foreign Peoples(London, 1842), with a dedication to his friend the poet Wordsworth. He accepted the rectory of Elton in Huntingdonshire, but soon after went again to the continent, in order to study the methods of the Roman Catholic Church; and after a prolonged mental struggle he joined the Roman Catholic communion in November 1845. He founded a religious community at Birmingham, called Wilfridians, which was ultimately merged in the oratory of St Philip Neri, with John Henry Newman as Superior. In 1849 a branch of the oratory—subsequently independent—was established in London, first in King William Street, and afterwards at Brompton, over which Faber presided till his death on the 26th of September 1863. In spite of his weak health, an almost incredible amount of work was crowded into those years. He published a number of theological works, and edited theOratorian Lives of the Saints. He was an eloquent preacher, and a man of great charm of character. It is mainly as a hymn-writer, however, that Faber is remembered. Among his best-known hymns are:—“The Greatness of God,” “The Will of God,” “The Eternal Father,” “The God of my Childhood,” “Jesus is God,” “The Pilgrims of the Night,” “The Land beyond the Sea,” “Sweet Saviour, bless us ere we go,” “I was wandering and weary,” and “The Shadow of the Rock.” The hymns are largely used in Protestant collections. In addition to many pamphlets and translations, Faber published the following works:All for Jesus;The Precious Blood;Bethlehem;The Blessed Sacrament;The Creator and the Creature;Growth of Holiness; Spiritual Conferences;The Foot of the Cross(8 vols., London, 1853-1860).

See hisLife and Letters, by Father J.E. Bowden (London, 1869), andA Brief Sketch of the Early Life of the late F.W. Faber, D.D., by his brother the Rev. F.A. Faber (London, 1869).

FABER,Fabri or Fabry (surnamedStapulensis),JACOBUS[Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples] (c.1455—c.1536), a pioneer of the Protestant movement in France, was born of humble parents at Étaples, in Pas de Calais, Picardy, about 1455. He appears to have been possessed of considerable means. He had already been ordained priest when he entered the university of Paris for higher education. Hermonymus of Sparta was his master in Greek. He visited Italy before 1486, for he heard the lectures of Argyropulus, who died in that year; he formed a friendship with Paulus Aemilius of Verona. In 1492 he again travelled in Italy, studying in Florence, Rome and Venice, making himself familiar with the writings of Aristotle, though greatly influenced by the Platonic philosophy. Returning to Paris, he became professor in the college of Cardinal Lemoine. Among his famous pupils were F.W. Vatable and Farel; his connexion with the latter drew him to the Calvinistic side of the movement of reform. At this time he began the publication, with critical apparatus, of Boëtius (De Arithmetica), and Aristotle’sPhysics(1492),Ethics(1497),Metaphysics(1501) andPolitics(1506). In 1507 he took up his residence in the Benedictine Abbey of St Germain des Prés, near Paris; this was due to his connexion with the family of Briçonnet (one of whom was the superior), especially with William Briçonnet, cardinal bishop of St Malo (Meaux). He now began to give himself to Biblical studies, the first-fruit of which was hisQuintuplex Psalterium: Gallicum, Romanum, Hebraicum, Vetus, Conciliatum(1509); theConciliatumwas his own version. This was followed byS. Pauli Epistolae xiv. ex vulgata editione, adjecta intelligentia ex Graeco cum commentariis(1512), a work of great independence and judgment. HisDe Maria Magdalena et triduo Christi disceptatio(1517) provoked violent controversy and was condemned by the Sorbonne (1521). He had left Paris during the whole of 1520, and, removing to Meaux, was appointed (May 1, 1523) vicar-general to Bishop Briçonnet, and published his French version of the New Testament (1523). This (contemporary with Luther’s German version) has been the basis of all subsequent translations into French. From this, in the same year, he extracted the versions of the Gospels and Epistles “à l’usage du diocèse de Meaux.” The prefaces and notes to both these expressed the view that Holy Scripture is the only rule of doctrine, and that justification is by faith alone. He incurred much hostility, but was protected by Francis I. and the princess Margaret. Francis being in captivity after the battle of Pavia (February 25, 1525), Faber was condemned and his works suppressed by commission of the parlement; these measures were quashed on the return of Francis some months later. He issuedLe Psautier de David(1525), and was appointed royal librarian at Blois (1526); his version of the Pentateuch appeared two years later. His complete version of the Bible (1530), on the basis of Jerome, took the same place as his version of the New Testament. Margaret (now queen of Navarre) led him to take refuge (1531) at Nérac from persecution. He is said to have been visited (1533) by Calvin on his flight from France. He died in 1536 or 1537.

See C.H. Graf,Essai sur la vie et les écrits(1842); G. Bonet-Maury, in A. Herzog-Hauck’sRealencyklopädie(1898).

(A. Go.*)

FABER(orLefèvre),JOHANN(1478-1541), German theologian, styled from the title of one of his works “Malleus Haereticorum,” son of one Heigerlin, a smith (faber), was born at Leutkirch, in Swabia, in 1478. His early life is obscure; the tradition that he joined the Dominicans is untenable. He studied theology and canon law at Tübingen and at Freiburg im Breisgau, where he matriculated on the 26th of July 1509, and graduated M.A. and doctor of canon law. He was soon appointed vicar of Lindau and Leutkirch, and shortly afterwards canon of Basel. In 1518 Hugo von Landenberg, bishop of Constance, made him one of his vicars-general, and Pope Leo X. appointed him papal protonotary. He was an advocate of reforms, in sympathy with Erasmus, and corresponded (1519-1520) with Zwingli. While he defended Luther against Eck, he was as little inclined to adopt the position of Luther as of Carlstadt. His journey to Rome in the autumn of 1521 had the result of estranging him from the views of the Protestant leaders. He publishedOpus adversus nova quaedam dogmata Lutheri(1522), and appeared as a disputant against Zwingli at Zürich (1523). Then followed hisMalleus in haeresin Lutheranam(1524). Among his efforts to stem the tide of Protestant innovation was the establishment of a training-house for the maintenance and instruction of popular preachers, drawn from the lower ranks, to compete with the orators of reform. In 1526 he became court preacher to the emperor Ferdinand, and in 1527 and 1528 was sent by him as envoy to Spain and England. He approved the death by burning of Balthasar Hubmeier, the Baptist, at Vienna on the 10th of March 1528. In 1531 he was consecrated bishop of Vienna, and combined with this (till 1538) the administration of the diocese of Neustadt. He died at Vienna on the 21st of May 1541. His works were collected in three volumes, 1537, 1539 and 1541.

See C.E. Kettner,Diss. de J. Fabri Vita Scriptisque(1737); Wagenmann and Egli in Herzog-Hauck’sRealencyklopädie(1898).

(A. Go.*)

FABERT, ABRAHAM DE(1599-1660), marshal of France, was the son of Abraham Fabert, seigneur de Moulins (d. 1638), a famous printer who rendered great services, civil and military, to Henry IV. At the age of fourteen he entered theGardes françaises, and in 1618 received a commission in the Piedmont regiment, becoming major in 1627. He distinguished himself repeatedly in the constant wars of the period, notably in La Rochelle and at the siege of Exilles in 1630. His bravery and engineering skill were again displayed in the sieges of Avesnes and Maubeuge in 1637, and in 1642 Louis XIII. made him governor of the recently-acquired fortress of Sedan. In 1651 he became lieutenant-general, and in 1654 at the siege of Stenay he introduced new methods of siegecraft which anticipated in a measure the great improvements of Vauban. In 1658 Fabert was made a marshal of France, being the first commoner to attain that rank. He died at Sedan on the 17th of May 1660.

SeeHistoire du maréchal de Fabert(Amsterdam, 1697); P. Barre,Vie de Fabert(Paris, 1752); A. Feillet,Le Premier Maréchal de France plébéien(Paris, 1869); Bourelly,Le Maréchal Fabert(Paris, 1880).

FABIAN[Fabianus],SAINT(d. 250), pope and martyr, was chosen pope, or bishop of Rome, in January 236 in succession to Anteros. Eusebius (Hist. Eccl.vi. 29) relates how the Christians, having assembled in Rome to elect a new bishop, saw a dove alight upon the head of Fabian, a stranger to the city, who was thus marked out for this dignity, and was at once proclaimed bishop, although there were several famous men among the candidates for the vacant position. Fabian was martyred during the persecution under the emperor Decius, his death taking place on the 20th of January 250, and was buried in the catacomb of Calixtus, where a memorial has been found. He is said to have baptized the emperor Philip and his son, to have done some building in the catacombs, to have improved the organization of the church in Rome, to have appointed officials to register the deeds of the martyrs, and to have founded several churches in France. His deeds are thus described in theLiber Pontificalis: “Hic regiones dividit diaconibus et fecit vii subdiacones, qui vii notariis imminerent, ut gestas martyrum integro fideliter colligerent, et multas fabricas per cymiteria fieri praecepit.” Although there is very little authentic information about Fabian, there is evidence that his episcopate was one of great importance in the history of the early church. He was highly esteemed by Cyprian, bishop of Carthage; Novatian refers to hisnobilissimae memoriae, and he corresponded with Origen. One authority refers to him as Flavian.

See the article on “Fabian” by A. Harnack in Herzog-Hauck’sRealencyklopädie, Band v. (Leipzig, 1898).

FABIUS,the name of a number of Roman soldiers and statesmen. The Fabian gens was one of the oldest and most distinguished patrician families of Rome. Its members claimed descent from Hercules and a daughter of the Arcadian Evander. From the earliest times it played a prominent part in Roman history, and was one of the two gentes exclusively charged with the management of the most ancient festival in Rome—the Lupercalia (Ovid,Fasti, ii. 375). The chief family names of the Fabian gens or clan, in republican times, were Vibulanus, Ambustus, Maximus, Buteo, Pictor, Dorso, Labeo; with surnames Verrucosus, Rullianus, Gurges, Aemilianus, Allobrogicus (all of the Maximus branch). The most important members of the family are the following:—

1.Marcus Fabius Ambustus, pontifex maximus in the year of the capture of Rome by the Gauls (390). His three sons, Quintus, Numerius and Caeso, although they had been sent as ambassadors to the Gauls when they were besieging Clusium, subsequently took part in hostilities (Livy v. 35). The Gauls thereupon demanded their surrender, on the ground that they had violated the law of nations; the Romans, by way of reply, elected them consular tribunes in the following year. The result was the march of the Gauls upon Rome, the battle of the Allia, and the capture of the city (Livy vi. 1).

2.Q. Fabius Maximus, surnamedRullianusorRullus, master of the horse in the second Samnite War to L. Papirius Cursor, by whom he was degraded for having fought the Samnites contrary to orders (Livy viii. 30), in spite of the fact that he gained a victory. In 315, when dictator, he was defeated by the Samnites at Lautulae (Livy ix. 23). In 310 he defeated the Etruscans at the Vadimonian Lake. In 295, consul for the fifth time, he defeated, at the great battle of Sentinum, the combined forces of the Etrurians, Umbrians, Samnites and Gauls (seeRome:History, II. “The Republic”). As censor (304) he altered the arrangement of Appius Claudius Caecus, whereby the freedmen were taken into all the tribes, and limited them to the four city tribes. For this he is said to have received the title ofMaximus, as the deliverer of the comitia from the rule of the mob (Livy ix. 46), but there is reason to think that this title was first conferred on his grandson. It is probable that his achievements are greatly exaggerated by historians favourable to the Fabian house.

3.Quintus Fabius Maximus, surnamedVerrucosus(from a wart on his lip),Ovicula(“the lamb,” from his mild disposition), andCunctator(“the delayer,” from his cautious tactics in the war against Hannibal), grandson of the preceding. He served his first consulship in Liguria (233B.C.), was censor (230) and consul for the second time (228). In 218 he was sent to Carthage to demand satisfaction for the attack on Saguntum (Livy xxi. 18). According to the well-known story, he held up a fold of his toga and offered the Carthaginians the choice between peace and war. When they declared themselves indifferent, he let fall his toga with the words, “Then take war.” After the disastrous campaign on the Trebia, and the defeat on the banks of the Trasimene Lake, Fabius was named dictator (Livy calls him pro-dictator, since he was nominated, not by the consul, but by the people) in 217, and began his tactics of “masterly inactivity.” Manœuvring among the hills, where Hannibal’s cavalry were useless, he cut off his supplies, harassed him incessantly, and did everything except fight. His steady adherence to his plan caused dissatisfaction at Rome and in his own camp, and aroused the suspicion that he was merely endeavouring to prolong his command. Minucius Rufus, his master of the horse, seized the opportunity, during the absence of Fabius at Rome, to make an attack upon the enemy which proved successful. The people, more than ever convinced that a forward movement was necessary, divided the command between Minucius and Fabius (Livy xxii. 15. 24; Polybius iii. 88). Minucius was led into an ambuscade by Hannibal, and his army was only saved by the opportune arrival of Fabius. Minucius confessed his mistake and henceforth submitted to the orders of Fabius (Livy xxiii. 32). At the end of the legal time of six months Fabius resigned the dictatorship and the war was carried on by the consuls. The result of the abandonment of Fabian tactics was the disaster of Cannae (216). In 215 and 214 (as consul for the third and fourth times) he was in charge of the operations against Hannibal together with Claudius Marcellus (Livy xxiii. 39). He laid siege to Capua, which had gone over to Hannibal after Cannae, and captured the important position of Casilinum; in his fifth consulship (209) he retook Tarentum, which had been occupied by Hannibal for three years (Livy xxvii. 15; Polybius xiii. 4; Plutarch,Fabius). He died in 203. Fabius was a strenuous opponent of the new aggressive policy, and did all he could to prevent the invasion of Africa by Scipio. He was distinguished for calmness and prudence, while by no means lacking in courage when it was required. In his later years, however, he became morose, and showed jealousy of rising young men, especially Scipio (Lifeby Plutarch; Livy xx.-xxx.; Polybius iii. 87-106).

4.Q. Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, eldest son of L. Aemilius Paullus, adopted by Fabius Cunctator. He served in the last Macedonian War (168), and, as consul, defeated Viriathus in Spain (Livy,Epit. 52). He was the pupil and patron of Polybius (Polybius xviii., xxix. 6, xxxii. 8-10; Livy xliv. 35).

5.Q. Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus, son of the above, consul 121 in Gaul. He obtained his surname from his victory over the Allobroges and Arverni in that year (Vell. Pat. ii. 10; Eutropius iv. 22). As censor (108) he erected the first triumphal arch.

6.Q. Fabius Vibulanus, with his brothers Caeso and Marcus, filled the consulship for seven years in succession (485-479B.C.). In the last year there was a reaction against the family, in consequence of Caeso espousing the cause of the plebeians. Thereupon the Fabii—to the number, it is said, of 306 patricians, with some 5000 dependents—emigrated from Rome under the leadership of Caeso, and settled on the banks of the Cremera, a few miles above Rome. For two years the exiles continued to be the city’s chief defence against the Veientes, until at last they were surprised and cut off. The only survivor of the gens was Quintus, the sen of Marcus, who apparently took no part in the battle. The story that he had been left behind at Rome on account of his youth cannot be true, as he was consul ten years afterwards. This Quintus was consul in 467, 465 and 459, and a member of the second decemvirate in 450, on the fall of which he went into voluntary exile (Livy ii. 42, 48-50, iii. 1, 9, 41, 58, vi. 1; Dion. Halic. viii. 82-86, ix. 14-22: Ovid,Fasti, ii. 195).

The Fabian name is met with as late as the 2nd centuryA.D.A complete list of the Fabii will be found in de Vit’sOnomasticon; see also W.N. du Rieu,Disputatio de Gente Fabia(1856), containing an account of 57 members of the family.

FABIUS PICTOR, QUINTUS,the father of Roman history, was born about 254B.C.He was the grandson of Gaius Fabius, who received the surnamePictorfor his painting of the temple of Salus (302). He took an active part in the subjugation of the Gauls in the north of Italy (225), and after the battle of Cannae (216) was employed by the Romans to proceed to Delphi in order to consult the oracle of Apollo. He was the earliest prose writer of Roman history. His materials consisted of theAnnales Maximi,Commentarii Consulares, and similar records; the chronicles of the great Roman families; and his own experiences in the Second Punic War. He is also said to have made much use of the Greek historian Diodes of Peparethus. His work, which was written in Greek, began with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy, and ended with the Hannibalic war. Although Polybius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus frequently find fault with him, the first uses him as his chief authority for the Second Punic War. A Latin version of the work was in existence in the time of Cicero, but it is doubtful whether it was by Fabius Pictor or by a later writer with whom he was confused—Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus (consul 142); or there may have been two annalists of the name of Fabius Pictor.

Fragments in H. Peter,Historicorum Romanorum Fragmenta(1883); see alsoAnnalistsandLivy, and Teuffel-Schwabe,History of Roman Literature, § 116.

FABLE(Fr.fable, Lat.fabula). With certain restrictions, the necessity of which will be shown in the course of the article, we may accept the definition of “fable” which Dr Johnson proposes in hisLife of Gay: “Afableorapologueseems to be, in its genuine state, a narrative in which beings irrational, and sometimes inanimate (arbores loquuntur, non tantum ferae), are, for the purpose of moral instruction, feigned to act and speak with human interests and passions.” The description of La Fontaine, the greatest of fabulists, is a poetic rendering of Johnson’s definition:

“Fables in sooth are not what they appear;Our moralists are mice, and such small deer.We yawn at sermons, but we gladly turnTo moral tales, and so amused we learn.”

“Fables in sooth are not what they appear;

Our moralists are mice, and such small deer.

We yawn at sermons, but we gladly turn

To moral tales, and so amused we learn.”

The fable is distinguished from the myth, which grows and is not made, the spontaneous and unconscious product of primitive fancy as it plays round some phenomenon of natural or historical fact. The literary myth, such as, for instance, the legend of Pandora in Hesiod or the tale of Er in theRepublicof Plato, is really an allegory, and differs from the fable in so far as it is self-interpreting; the story and the moral are intermingled throughout. Between the parable and the fable there is no clear line of demarcation, and theologians like Trench have unwarrantably narrowed their definition of a parable to fit those of the New Testament. The soundest distinction is drawn by Neander. In the fable human passions and actions are attributed to beasts; in the parable the lower creation is employed only to illustrate the higher life and never transgresses the laws of its kind. But whether Jotham’s apologue of the trees choosing a king, perhaps the first recorded in literature, should be classed as a fable or a parable is hardly worth disputing. Lastly, we may point out the close affinity between the fable and the proverb. A proverb is often a condensed or fossilized fable, and not a few fables are amplified or elaborated proverbs.

The history of the fable goes back to the remotest antiquity, and Aesop has even less claim to be reckoned the father of the fable than has Homer to be entitled the father of poetry. The fable has its origin in the universal impulse of men to express their thoughts in concrete images, and is strictly parallel to the use of metaphor in language. It is the most widely diffused if not the most primitive form of literature. Though it has fallen from its high place it still survives, as in J. Chandler Harris’sUncle Remusand Rudyard Kipling’sJungle Book. The Arab of to-day will invent a fable at every turn of the conversation as the readiest form of argument, and in theLifeof Coventry Patmore it is told how an impromptu fable of his about the pious dormouse found its way into Catholic books of devotion.

With the fable, as we know it, the moral is indispensable. As La Fontaine puts it, an apologue is composed of two parts, body and soul. The body is the story, the soul the morality. But if we revert to the earliest type we shall find that this is no longer the case. In the primitive beast-fable, which is the direct progenitor of the Aesopian fable, the story is told simply for its own sake, and is as innocent of any moral as the fairy tales of Little Red Riding-Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk. Thus, in a legend of the Flathead Indians, the Little Wolf found in cloud-land his grandsires the Spiders with their grizzled hair and long crooked nails, and they spun balls of thread to let him down to earth; when he came down and found his wife the Speckled Duck, whom the Old Wolf had taken from him, she fled in confusion, and this is why she lives and dives alone to this very day. Such animal myths are as common in the New World as in the Old, and abound from Finland and Kamtchatka to the Hottentots and Australasians. From the story invented, as the one above quoted, to account for some peculiarity of the animal world, or told as a pure exercise of the imagination, just as a sailor spins a yarn about the sea-serpent, to the moral apologue the transition is easy; and that it has been effected by savages unaided by the example of higher races seems sufficiently proved by the tales quoted by E.B. Tylor (Primitive Culture, vol. i. p. 411). From the beast-fables of savages we come next to the Oriental apologues, which we still possess in their original form. The East, the land of myth and legend, is the natural home of the fable, and Hindustan was the birthplace, if not of the original of these tales, at least of the oldest shape in which they still exist. ThePancha Tantra(2nd centuryB.C.), or fables of the Brahma Vishnu Sarman, have been translated from Sanskrit into almost every language and adapted by most modern fabulists. TheKalilahandDimna(names of two jackals), or fables of Bidpai (or Pilpai), passed from India to western Europe through the successive stages of Pahlavi (ancient Persian), Arabic, Greek, Latin. By the end of the 16th century there were Italian, French and English versions. There is an excellent Arabic edition (Paris, 1816) with an introduction by Sylvestre de Sacy. TheHitopadesa, or “friendly instruction,” is a modernized form of the same work, and of it there are three translations into English by Dr Charles Wilkins, Sir William Jones and Professor F. Johnson. TheHitopadesais a complete chaplet of fables loosely strung together, but connected so as to form something of a continuous story, with moral reflections freely interspersed, purporting to be written for the instruction of some dissolute young princes. Thus, in the first fable a flock of pigeons see the grains of rice which a fowler has scattered, and are about to descend on them, when the king of the pigeons warns them by telling the fable of a traveller who being greedy of a bracelet was devoured by a tiger. They neglect his warning and are caught in the net, but are afterwards delivered by the king of the mice, who tells the story of the Deer, the Jackal and the Crow, to show that no real friendship can exist between the strong and the weak, the beast of prey and his quarry, and so on to the end of the volume. Another book of Eastern fables is well worthy of notice,Buddhaghosha’s Parables, a commentary on theDhammapadaorBuddha’s Paths of Virtue. The original is in Pali, but an English translation of the Burmese version was made by Captain T. Rogers, R.E.

From Hindustan the Sanskrit fables passed to China, Tibet and Persia; and they must have reached Greece at an early age, for many of the fables which passed under the name of Aesop are identical with those of the East. Aesop to us is little more than a name, though, if we may trust a passing notice in Herodotus (ii. 134), he must have lived in the 6th centuryB.C.Probably his fables were never written down, though several are ascribed to him by Xenophon, Aristotle, Plutarch and other Greek writers, and Plato represents Socrates as beguiling his last days by versifying such as he remembered. Aristophanes alludes to them as merry tales, and Plato, while excluding the poets from his ideal republic, admits Aesop as a moral teacher. Of the various versions ofAesop’s Fables, by far the most trustworthy is that of Babrius or Babrias, a Greek probably of the 3rd centuryA.D., who rendered them in choliambic verse. These,which were long known in fragments only, were recovered in a MS. found by M. Minas in a monastery on Mount Athos in 1842, now in the British Museum.1An inferior version of the same in Latin iambics was made by Phaedrus, a slave of Thracian origin, brought to Rome in the time of Augustus and manumitted by him. Phaedrus professes to polish in senarian verse the rough-hewn blocks from Aesop’s quarry; but the numerous allusions to contemporary events, as, for example, his hit at Sejanus in the Frogs and the Sun, which brought upon the author disgrace and imprisonment, show that many of them are original or free adaptations. For some time scholars doubted as to the genuineness of Phaedrus’s fables, but their doubts have been lately dispelled by a closer examination of the MSS. and by the discovery of two verses of a fable on a tomb at Apulum in Dacia. Phaedrus’s style is simple, clear and brief, but dry and unpoetical; and, as Lessing has pointed out, he often falls into absurdities when he deserts his original. For instance, in Aesop the dog with the meat in his mouth sees his reflection in the water as he passes over a bridge; Phaedrus makes him see it as he swims across the river.

To sum up the characteristics of the Aesopian fable, it is artless, simple and transparent. It affects no graces of style, and we hardly need the text with which each concludes,ὁ μῦθος δηλοῖ ὅτι, κ.τ.λ.The moral inculcated is that ofProverbial PhilosophyandPoor Richard’s Almanacks. Aesop is no maker of phrases, but an orator who wishes to gain some point or induce some course of action. It is the Aesopian type that Aristotle has in view when he treats of the fable as a branch of rhetoric, not of poetry.

The Latin race was given to moralizing, and the language lent itself to crisp and pointed narrative, but they lacked the free play of fancy, the childlike “make-believe,” to produce a national body of fables. With the doubtful exception of Phaedrus, we possess nothing but solitary examples, such as the famous apologue of Menenius Agrippa to the Plebs and the exquisite Town Mouse and Country Mouse of Horace’sSatires.

The fables of the rhetorician Aphthonius aboutA.D.400 in Greek prose, and those in Latin elegiac verse by Avianus, used for centuries as a text-book in schools, form in the history of the apologue a link between classical and medieval times. In a Latin dress, sometimes in prose, sometimes in regular verse, and sometimes in rhymed stanzas, the fable contributed, with other kinds of narratives, to make up the huge mass of stories which has been bequeathed to us by the monastic libraries. These served more uses than one. They were at once easier and safer reading than the classics. To the lazy monk they stood in place of novels; to the more industrious and gifted they furnished an exercise on a par with Latin verse composition in our public schools; the more original transformed them intofabliaux, or embodied them in edifying stories, as in theGesta Romanorum. It is not in theSpeculum Doctrinaleof Vincent de Beauvais, a Dominican of the 12th century, nor in the collection of his contemporary Odo de Cerinton, an English Cistercian, nor in Planudes of the 14th century, whose one distinction is to have added to the fables a life of Aesop, that the direct lineage of La Fontaine must be traced. It is thefabliauxthat inspired some of his best fables—the Lion’s Court, the Young Widow, the Coach and the Fly.

As the supremacy of Latin declined and modern languages began to be turned to literary uses, the fable took a new life. Not only were there numerous adaptations of Aesop, known as Ysopets, but Marie de France in the 13th century composed many original fables, some rivalling La Fontaine’s in simplicity and gracefulness. Later, also, fables were not wanting, though not numerous, in the English tongue. Chaucer has given us one, in his Nonne Preste’s Tale, which is an expansion of the fableDon Coc et don Werpilof Marie de France; another is Lydgate’s tale of The Churl and the Bird.

Several of Odo’s tales, like Chaucer’s story, can be ultimately traced to the History of Reynard the Fox. This great beast-epic has been referred by Grimm as far back as the 10th century, and is known to us in three forms, each with independent episodes, but all woven upon a common basis. The Latin form is probably the earliest, and the poemsReinardusandYsengrinusdate from the 10th or 11th century. Next come the German versions. The most ancient, that of a minnesinger Heinrich der Glichesaere (probably a Swabian), was analysed and edited by Grimm in 1840. The French poem of more than 30,000 lines, theRoman du Rénard, belongs probably to the 13th century. In 1498 appearedReynke de Voss, almost a literal version in Low Saxon of the Flemish poem of the 12th century,Reinaert de Vos. Hence the well-known version of Goethe into modern German hexameters was taken. The poem has been well named “an unholy world Bible.” In it the Aesopian fable received a development which was in several respects quite original. We have here no short and unconnected stories. Materials, partly borrowed from older apologues, but in a much greater proportion new, are worked up into one long and systematic tale. The moral, so prominent in the fable proper, shrinks so far into the background, that the epic might be considered a work of pure fiction, an animal romance. The attempts to discover in it personal satire have signally failed; some critics deny even the design to represent human conduct at all; and we can scarcely get nearer to its signification than by regarding it as being, in a general way, what Carlyle has called “a parody of human life.” It represents a contest maintained successfully, by selfish craft and audacity, against enemies of all sorts, in a half-barbarous and ill-organized society. With his weakest foes, like Chaunteclere the Cock, Reynard uses brute-force; over the weak who are protected, like Kiward the Hare and Belin the Ram, he is victorious by uniting violence with cunning; Bruin, the dull, strong, formidable Bear, is humbled by having greater power than his own enlisted against him; and the most dangerous of all the fox’s enemies, Isengrim, the obstinate, greedy and implacable Wolf, after being baffled by repeated strokes of malicious ingenuity, forces Reynard to a single combat, but even thus is not a match for his dexterous adversary. The knavish fox has allies worthy of him in Grimbart the watchful badger, and in his own aunt Dame Rukenawe, the learned She-ape; and he plays at his pleasure on the simple credulity of the Lion-King, the image of an impotent feudal sovereign. The characters of these and other brutes are kept up with a rude kind of consistency, which gives them great liveliness; many of the incidents are devised with much force of humour; and the sly hits at the weak points of medieval polity and manners and religion are incessant and palpable.

It is needless to trace the fable, or illustrations borrowed from fables, that so frequently occur as incidental ornaments in the older literature of England and other countries. It has appeared in every modern nation of Europe, but has nowhere become very important, and has hardly ever exhibited much originality either of spirit or of manner. In English, Prior transplanted from France some of La Fontaine’s ease of narration and artful artlessness, while Gay took as his model theContesrather than theFables. Gay’s fables are often political satires, but some, like the Fox on his Deathbed, have the true ring, and in the Hare with many Friends there is genuine pathos. To Dryden’s spirited remodellings of old poems, romances andfabliaux, the name of fables, which he was pleased to give them, is quite inapplicable. In German, Hagedorn and Gellert, both famous in their day and the latter extolled by Goethe, are quite forgotten; and even Lessing’s fables are read by few but schoolboys. In Spanish, Yriarte’s fables on literary subjects are sprightly and graceful, but the critic is more than the fabulist. A spirited version of the best appeared inBlackwood’s Magazine, 1839. Among Italians Pignotti is famous for versatility and command of rhythm, as amongst Russians is Kriloff for his keen satire on Russian society. He has been translated into English by Ralston.

France alone in modern times has attained any pre-eminence in the fable, and this distinction is almost entirely owing to one author. Marie de France in the 13th century, Gilles Corrozet, Guillaume Haudent and Guillaume Gueroult in the 16th, are nowstudied mainly as the precursors of La Fontaine, from whom he may have borrowed a stray hint or the outline of a story. The unique character of his work has given a new word to the French language: other writers of fables are calledfabulistes, La Fontaine is namedle fablier. He is a true poet; his verse is exquisitely modulated; his love of nature often reminds us of Virgil, as do his tenderness and pathos (see, for instance, The Two Pigeons and Death and the Woodcutter). He is full of sly fun and delicate humour; like Horace he satirizes without wounding, and “plays around the heart.” Lastly, he is a keen observer of men. The whole society of the 17th century, its greatness and its foibles, its luxury and its squalor, fromLe grand monarqueto the poormanant, from his majesty the lion to the courtier of an ape, is painted to the life. To borrow his own phrase, La Fontaine’s fables are “une ample comédie à cent actes divers.” Rousseau did his best to discredit theFablesas immoral and corruptors of youth, but in spite ofÉmilethey are studied in every French school and are more familiar to most Frenchmen than their breviary. Among the successors of La Fontaine the most distinguished is Florian. He justly estimates his own merits in the pretty apologue that he prefixed to hisFables. He asks a sage whether a fabulist writing after La Fontaine would not be wise to consign his work to the flames. The sage replies by a question: “What would you say did some sweet, ingenuous Maid of Athens refuse to let herself be seen because there was once a Helen of Troy?”

The fables of Lessing represent the reaction against the French school of fabulists. “With La Fontaine himself,” says Lessing, “I have no quarrel, but against the imitators of La Fontaine I enter my protest.” His attention was first called to the fable by Gellert’s popular work published in 1746. Gellert’s fables were closely modelled after La Fontaine’s, and were a vehicle for lively railings against the fair sex, and hits at contemporary follies. Lessing’s early essays were in the same style, but his subsequent study of the history and theory of the fable led him to discard his former model as a perversion of later times, and the “Fabeln,” published in 1759, are the outcome of his riper views. Lessing’s fables, like all that he wrote, display his vigorous common sense. He has, it is true, little of La Fontaine’scuriosa felicitas, his sly humour and lightness of touch; and Frenchmen would say that his criticism of La Fontaine is an illustration of the fable of the sour grapes. On the other hand, he has the rare power of looking at both sides of a moral problem; he holds a brief for the stupid and the feeble, the ass and the lamb; and in spite of his formal protest against poetical ornament, there is in not a few of his fables a vein of true poetry, as in the Sheep (ii. 13) and Jupiter and the Sheep (ii. 18). But the monograph which introduced theFabelnis of more inportance than the fables themselves. According to Lessing the ideal fable is that of Aesop. All the elaborations and refinements of later authors, from Phaedrus to La Fontaine, are perversions of this original. The fable is essentially a moral precept illustrated by a single example, and it is the lesson thus enforced which gives to the fable its unity and makes it a work of art. The illustration must be either an actual occurrence or represented as such, because a fictitious case inventedad hoccan appeal but feebly to the reader’s judgment. Lastly, the fable requires a story or connected chain of events. A single fact will not make a fable, but is only an emblem. We thus arrive at the following definition:—“A fable is a relation of a series of changes which together form a whole. The unity of the fable consists herein, that all the parts lead up to an end, the end for which the fable was invented being the moral precept.”

We may notice in passing a problem in connexion with the fable which had long been debated, but never satisfactorily resolved till Lessing took it in hand—Why should animals have been almost universally chosen as the chiefdramatis personae? The reason, according to Lessing, is that animals have distinct characters which are known and recognized by all. The fabulist who writes of Britannicus and Nero appeals to the few who know Roman history. The Wolf and the Lamb comes home to every one whether learned or simple. But, besides this, human sympathies obscure the moral judgment; hence it follows that the fable, unlike the drama and the epos, should abstain from all that is likely to arouse our prejudices or our passions. In this respect the Wolf and the Lamb of Aesop is a more perfect fable than the Rich Man and the Poor Man’s Ewe Lamb of Nathan.

Lessing’s analysis and definition of the fable, though he seems himself unconscious of the scope of his argument, is in truth its death-warrant. The beast-fable arose in a primitive age when men firmly believed that beasts could talk and reason, that any wolf they met might be a were-wolf, that a peacock might be a Pythagoras in disguise, and an ox or even a cat a being worthy of their worship. To this succeeded the second age of the fable, which belongs to the same stage of culture as the Hebrew proverbs and the gnomic poets of Greece. That honesty is the best policy, that death is common to all, seemed to the men of that day profound truths worthy to be embalmed in verse or set off by the aid of story or anecdote. Last comes an age of high literary culture which tolerates the trite morals and hackneyed tales for the sake of the exquisite setting, and is amused at the wit which introduces topics and characters of the day under the transparent veil of animal life. Such an artificial product can be nothing more than the fashion of a day, and must, like pastoral poetry, die a natural death. A serious moralist would hardly choose that form to inculcate, like Mandeville in hisFable of the Bees, a new doctrine in morals, for the moral of the fable must be such that he who runs may read. A true poet will not care to masquerade as a moral teacher, or show his wit by refurbishing some old-world maxim. Yet Taine in France, Lowell in America, and J.A. Froude in England have proved that the fable as one form of literature is not yet extinct, and is capable of new and unexpected developments.

Back to Index Next