3
]
Half-a-dozen baby stories
.--Here La Fontaine exalts his muse as a fabulist. This is in reply to certain of his critics who pronounced his work puerile, and pretended to wish him to adopt the higher forms of poetry. Some of the fables of the first six Books were originally published in a semi-private way before 1668. See the Translators Preface. La Fontaine defends his art as a writer of fables also in Book III. (
Fable I.
); Book V. (
Fable I.
); Book VI. (
Fable I.
); Book VII. (
Introduction
); Book VIII. (
Fable IV.
), and Book IX. (
Fable I
).
[
4
] Faerno and Abstemius both have fables upon this subject. Gabriel Faerno (1500-1561) was an Italian writer who published fables in Latin. Perrault translated these into French verse, and published them at Paris in 1699. Faerno was also a famous editor of Terence. Laurentius Abstemius, or Astemio, was an Italian fabulist of the fifteenth century. After their first publication his fables often appeared in editions of Aesop.
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