_ "Is there any power, any force, that could tear thee from me.
You might sooner tear a pension out of the hands of a courtier, a
fee from a lawyer, a pretty woman from a looking-glass, or any
woman from quadrille."[5]
Gay may have taken his idea of writing fables from Dryden whose
classical reading tempted him in two or three instances to indulge in
such fancies. They were clever and in childhood appeared humorous to us,
but we have long ceased to be amused by them, owing to their excessive
improbability. Such ingenuity seems misplaced, we see more absurdity
than talent in representing a sheep as talking to a wolf. To us fables
now present, not what is strange and difficult of comprehension, but
mentally fanciful folly. In some few instances in La Fontaine and Gay,
the wisdom of the lessons atones for the strangeness of their garb, and
the peculiarity of the dramatis personae may tend to rivet them in our
minds. There is something also fresh and pleasant in the scenes of
country life which they bring before us. But the taste for such conceits
is irrevocably gone, and every attempt to revive it, even when
recommended by such ingenuity and talent as that of Owen Meredith, only
tends to prove the fact more incontestably. In Russia, a younger nation
than ours, the fables of Kriloff had a considerable sale at the
beginning of this century, but they had a political meaning.
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