I do not flatter myself that it will make any conspicuousaddition to the worthy achievements that have already gracedour roll with names that rank high in the lists of Science,Philosophy and Literature. But it is pleasant to me toconnect this translation of a college text-book—used by usall, long ago, within the walls of old Harvard—with thememory of youthful pursuits that have never lost their charmfor the mind, and early associations that retain, with alltheir original freshness and geniality, their hold upon theheart.
The Fable has always been a popular mode of conveyingcertain kinds of instruction. The brief and simpleillustrations it affords give additional weight and point tomoral apothegms or sententious criticisms. Like the featheron the shaft, they serve to increase the force and directthe aim more certainly to the mark. A pertinent fact or anapt fiction breathes, even into a dry and curt axiom, aliving and practical interest which opens to it hearts andheads that would otherwise pass it by with indifference, orrevolt from it with impatience. Many of these unpretendingallegories have been familiar to us all, in childhood, in agreat variety of dresses, and have long formed a standardpart of our literature —congenial alike to nursery days andto mature age.
The fables contained in the little collection heretranslated are not, with one or two exceptions, found amongthe widely popular and familiar fables to which we havealluded. They were written in a foreign tongue, lessgenerally understood, among us, than some other of theEuropean languages; and they are designed for a special andsomewhat abstruse purpose. Both these circumstances tend tonarrow their sphere of circulation; and we presume thatthey form a book little known to most English readers.
If we do not err in our estimate of them, the LiteraryFables of Don Thomas De Yriarte are well worthy of perusal.They are aptly and ingeniously adapted to the truths theyseek to inculcate; and they are remarkable for a tersesimplicity of form and style, well suited to the objects andcharacter of such productions. The maxims and criticismsthey enforce must approve themselves to the mind, both ofthe professed scholar and the general reader.
The author was born in Teneriffe, A.D. 1750, but waseducated and resided at Madrid, where he died in 1791, atthe early age, of course, of forty-one years. His uncle, DonJuan De Yriarte, was the chief superintendent of the royallibrary; and the nephew was educated under his auspices. Inhis eighteenth year, he commenced his literary career by thewriting of dramas, and the translation of plays from theFrench for the Spanish stage. He spent his life in theduties of sundry offices under the government; yet he verysoon assumed and maintained a high consideration as ascholar and writer. His works, however, were of a characterto command but little interest from posterity, with theexception of the fables translated in this little volume.
Of them, Professor Ticknor, from whose learned work onSpanish literature we have collected these details, speaksas follows:—
"Here, he, in some degree, struck out a new path; for he notonly invented all his fictions, which no other fabulist, inmodern times, had done, but restricted them all, in theirmoral purpose, to the correction of the faults and folliesof men of learning—an application which had not