The fable, we are told, was “an invention of ancient Assyrian men in the days of Ninus and Belus,” and in confirmation of its Eastern origin, we may observe that the apologues of Lokman are of Indian derivation.  He is supposed, by Arabian writers, to have been either a nephew of Abraham or Job, or a counsellor of David or Solomon.

The first specimen we have of an ordinary fable, i.e., of one in which the interlocutors are lower animals, is found in Hesiod, who is placed about a century after Homer.  It runs thus:—­

“Now I will tell the kings a fable, which they will understand of themselves.  Thus spake the hawk to the nightingale, whom he was carrying in his talons high in air, ’Foolish creature! why dost thou cry out?  One much stronger than thou hath seized thee, though thou art a songster.  I can tear thee to pieces, or let thee go at my pleasure.’”

But fables do not come fully under our view until they are connected with the name of AEsop, who is said to have introduced them into Greece.  In general his fables pretend to nothing more than an illustration of proverbial wisdom, but in some cases they proceed a step farther, and show the losses and disappointments which result from a neglect of prudent considerations.  It cannot be denied that there is something fanciful and amusing in these fables, still there is not much in them to excite laughter—­they are not sufficiently direct or pungent for that.  The losses or disappointments mentioned, or implied, give a certain exercise to the feelings of opposition in the human breast, and if they are supposed to be such as could not easily have been foreseen, we should regard the narratives as humorous.  But this is scarcely the case; the mishaps arise simply and directly from the situations, and are related with a view to the inculcation of truth, rather than the exhibition of error.  Hence the basis is different from that in genuine humour, and the complication is small.  Still the object evidently was to allure men into the paths of wisdom through the pleasure grounds of imagination.

Addison has justly observed that fables were the first kind of humour.  As the days of Athenian civilization advanced, their light chaff was thought more of than their solid matter.  Two hundred years of progress in man caused the animals to be truly considered “lower,” natural distinctions were better appreciated, and there seemed to be something absurd in the idea of their thinking or talking.  Hence AEsop’s fables are spoken of by Aristophanes as something laughable, and the fabulist came to be regarded as a humorist.  This feeling gained ground so much afterwards that Lucian makes AEsop act the part of a buffoon in “The Isles of the Blessed.”  Such views no doubt influenced the traditions with regard to the condition and characteristics of their composer.  There was the more field for this, inasmuch as even the fables were only handed down orally.  Some biographer, formerly supposed to