x
and the Woodcutter," are undoubtedly selected.

The knowledge of these fables rapidly spread from Italy into Germany,
and their popularity was increased by the favor and sanction given to
them by the great fathers of the Reformation, who frequently used them
as vehicles for satire and protest against the tricks and abuses of the
Romish ecclesiastics. The zealous and renowned Camerarius, who took an
active part in the preparation of the Confession of Augsburgh, found
time, amidst his numerous avocations, to prepare a version for the
students in the university of Tubingen, in which he was a professor.
Martin Luther translated twenty of these fables, and was urged by
Melancthon to complete the whole; while Gottfried Arnold, the celebrated
Lutheran theologian, and librarian to Frederick I, 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 n