The Newcomes | Page 3

now the wolf's eyes began to glare, and his sharp white
teeth to show, and he rose up with a growl, and began to think he
should like lamb for supper.
"What large eyes you have got!" bleated out the lamb, with rather a
timid look.
"The better to see you with, my dear."
"What large teeth you have got!"
"The better to----"
At this moment such a terrific yell filled the field, that all its inhabitants
started with terror. It was from a donkey, who had somehow got a lion's
skin, and now came in at the hedge, pursued by some men and boys
with sticks and guns.
When the wolf in sheep's clothing heard the bellow of the ass in the
lion's skin, fancying that the monarch of the forest was near, he ran
away as fast as his disguise would let him. When the ox heard the noise
he dashed round the meadow-ditch, and with one trample of his hoof

squashed the frog who had been abusing him. When the crow saw the
people with guns coming, he instantly dropped the cheese out of his
mouth, and took to wing. When the fox saw the cheese drop, he
immediately made a jump at it (for he knew the donkey's voice, and
that his asinine bray was not a bit like his royal master's roar), and
making for the cheese, fell into a steel trap, which snapped off his tail;
without which he was obliged to go into the world, pretending, forsooth,
that it was the fashion not to wear tails any more; and that the fox-party
were better without 'em.
Meanwhile, a boy with a stick came up, and belaboured Master Donkey
until he roared louder than ever. The wolf, with the sheep's clothing
draggling about his legs, could not run fast, and was detected and shot
by one of the men. The blind old owl, whirring out of the hollow tree,
quite amazed at the disturbance, flounced into the face of a ploughboy,
who knocked her down with a pitchfork. The butcher came and quietly
led off the ox and the lamb; and the farmer, finding the fox's brush in
the trap, hung it up over his mantelpiece, and always bragged that he
had been in at his death.
"What a farrago of old fables is this! What a dressing up in old
clothes!" says the critic. (I think I see such a one--a Solomon that sits in
judgment over us authors and chops up our children.) "As sure as I am
just and wise, modest, learned, and religious, so surely I have read
something very like this stuff and nonsense about jackasses and foxes
before. That wolf in sheep's clothing?--do I not know him? That fox
discoursing with the crow?--have I not previously heard of him? Yes,
in Lafontaine's fables: let us get the Dictionary and the Fable and the
Biographie Universelle, article Lafontaine, and confound the impostor."
"Then in what a contemptuous way," may Solomon go on to remark,
"does this author speak of human nature! There is scarce one of these
characters he represents but is a villain. The fox is a flatterer; the frog is
an emblem of impotence and envy; the wolf in sheep's clothing a
bloodthirsty hypocrite, wearing the garb of innocence; the ass in the
lion's skin a quack trying to terrify, by assuming the appearance of a
forest monarch (does the writer, writhing under merited castigation,

mean to sneer at critics in this character? We laugh at the impertinent
comparison); the ox, a stupid commonplace; the only innocent being in
the writer's (stolen) apologue is a fool--the idiotic lamb, who does not
know his own mother!" And then the critic, if in a virtuous mood, may
indulge in some fine writing regarding the holy beauteousness of
maternal affection.
Why not? If authors sneer, it is the critic's business to sneer at them for
sneering. He must pretend to be their superior, or who would care about
his opinion? And his livelihood is to find fault. Besides, he is right
sometimes; and the stories he reads, and the characters drawn in them,
are old, sure enough. What stories are new? All types of all characters
march through all fables: tremblers and boasters; victims and bullies;
dupes and knaves; long-eared Neddies, giving themselves leonine airs;
Tartuffes wearing virtuous clothing; lovers and their trials, their
blindness, their folly and constancy. With the very first page of the
human story do not love and lies too begin? So the tales were told ages
before Aesop; and asses under lions' manes roared in Hebrew; and sly
foxes flattered in Etruscan; and wolves in sheep's clothing gnashed
their teeth in Sanskrit, no doubt. The sun shines to-day as he did when
he first began shining; and