books, in Broadway, New York, and there, for the first time, saw La
Fontaine's Fables. It was a cheap copy, adorned with some two hundred
woodcuts, which, by their worn appearance, betokened an extensive
manufacture. I became a purchaser, and gave the book to my little boy,
then just beginning to feel the intellectual magnetism of pictures. In
the course of the next year, he frequently tasked my imperfect knowledge
of French for the story which belonged to some favourite vignette. This
led me to inquire whether any English version existed; and, not finding
any, I resolved, though quite unused to literary exercises of the sort,
to cheat sleep of an hour every morning till there should be one. The
result is before you. If in this I have wronged La Fontaine, I hope the
best-natured of poets, as well as yourselves, will forgive me, and lay
the blame on the better qualified, who have so long neglected the task.
Cowper should have done it. The author of "John Gilpin," and the "Retired
Cat," would have put La Fontaine into every chimney-corner which resounds
with the Anglo-Saxon tongue.... To you who have so generously enabled me
to publish this work with so great advantages, and without selling the
copyright for the _promise_ of a song, I return my heartfelt thanks.
A hatchet-faced, spectacled, threadbare stranger knocked at your doors,
with a prospectus, unbacked by "the trade," soliciting your subscription
to a costly edition of a mere translation. It is a most inglorious,
unsatisfactory species of literature. The slightest preponderance of that
worldly wisdom which never buys a pig-in-a-poke would have sent him and
his translation packing. But a kind faith in your species got the better
in your case. You not only gave the hungry-looking stranger your good
wishes, but your good names. A list of those names it would delight me to
insert; and I should certainly do it if I felt authorized. As it is, I
hope to be pardoned for mentioning some of the individuals, who have not
only given their names, but expressed an interest in my enterprise which
has assisted me in its accomplishment. Rev. John Pierpont, Prof. George