and accounts for the universal favor, of the fables of Aesop.
"The fable," says Professor K. O. Mueller, "originated in Greece
in an intentional travestie of human affairs. The 'ainos,' as
its name denotes, is an admonition, or rather a reproof veiled,
either from fear of an excess of frankness, or from a love of fun
and jest, beneath the fiction of an occurrence happening among
beasts; and wherever we have any ancient and authentic account of
the Aesopian fables, we find it to be the same."[1]

The construction of a fable involves a minute attention to (1)
the narration itself; (2) the deduction of the moral; and (3) a
careful maintenance of the individual characteristics of the
fictitious personages introduced into it. The narration should
relate to one simple action, consistent with itself, and neither
be overladen with a multiplicity of details, nor distracted by a
variety of circumstances. The moral or lesson should be so
plain, and so intimately interwoven with, and so necessarily
dependent on, the narration, that every reader should be
compelled to give to it the same undeniable interpretation. The
introduction of the animals or fictitious characters should be
marked with an unexceptionable care and attention to their
natural attributes, and to the qualities attributed to them by
universal popular consent. The Fox should be always cunning, the
Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf cruel, the Bull strong, the
Horse proud, and the Ass patient. Many of these fables are
characterized by the strictest observance of these rules. They
are occupied with one short narrative, from which the moral
naturally flows, and with which it is intimately associated.
"'Tis the simple manner," says Dodsley,[2] "in which the morals of
Aesop are interwoven with his fables that distinguishes him, and