king of Prussia, mentions that the great Reformer valued the
Fables of Aesop next after the Holy Scriptures. In 1546 A.D.
the second printed edition of the collection of the Fables made
by Planudes, was issued from the printing-press of Robert
Stephens, in which were inserted some additional fables from a
MS. in the Bibliotheque du Roy at Paris.

The greatest advance, however, towards a re-introduction of the
Fables of Aesop to a place in the literature of the world, was
made in the early part of the seventeenth century. In the year
1610, a learned Swiss, Isaac Nicholas Nevelet, sent forth the
third printed edition of these fables, in a work entitled
"Mythologia Aesopica." This was a noble effort to do honor to
the great fabulist, and was the most perfect collection of
Aesopian fables ever yet published. It consisted, in addition to
the collection of fables given by Planudes and reprinted in the
various earlier editions, of one hundred and thirty-six new
fables (never before published) from MSS. in the Library of the
Vatican, of forty fables attributed to Aphthonius, and of
forty-three from Babrias. It also contained the Latin versions
of the same fables by Phaedrus, Avienus, and other authors. This
volume of Nevelet forms a complete "Corpus Fabularum
Aesopicarum;" and to his labors Aesop owes his restoration to
universal favor as one of the wise moralists and great teachers
of mankind. During the interval of three centuries which has
elapsed since the publication of this volume of Nevelet's, no
book, with the exception of the Holy Scriptures, has had a wider
circulation than Aesop's Fables. They have been translated into
the greater number of the languages both of Europe and of the
East, and have been read, and will be read, for generations,