among the "Fables in Song."

For the term Fable is not very easy to define rigorously. In the most
typical form some moral precept is set forth by means of a conception
purely fantastic, and usually somewhat trivial into the bargain; there
is something playful about it, that will not support a very exacting
criticism, and the lesson must be apprehended by the fancy at half a
hint. Such is the great mass of the old stories of wise animals or
foolish men that have amused our childhood. But we should expect the
fable, in company with other and more important literary forms, to be
more and more loosely, or at least largely, comprehended as time went
on, and so to degenerate in conception from this original type. That
depended for much of its piquancy on the very fact that it was
fantastic: the point of the thing lay in a sort of humorous
inappropriateness; and it is natural enough that pleasantry of this
description should become less common, as men learn to suspect some
serious analogy underneath. Thus a comical story of an ape touches us
quite differently after the proposition of Mr. Darwin's theory.
Moreover, there lay, perhaps, at the bottom of this primitive sort of
fable, a humanity, a tenderness of rough truths; so that at the end of
some story, in which vice or folly had met with its destined punishment,
the fabulist might be able to assure his auditors, as we have often to
assure tearful children on the like occasions, that they may dry their
eyes, for none of it was true.

But this benefit of fiction becomes lost with more sophisticated hearers
and authors: a man is no longer the dupe of his own artifice, and cannot
deal playfully with truths that are a matter of bitter concern to him in
his life. And hence, in the progressive centralisation of modern
thought, we should expect the old form of fable to fall gradually into
desuetude, and be gradually succeeded by another, which is a fable in
all points except that it is not altogether fabulous. And this new form,
such as we should expect, and such as we do indeed find, still presents
the essential character of brevity; as in any other fable also, there
is, underlying and animating the brief action, a moral idea; and as in
any other fable, the object is to bring this home to the reader through
the intellect rather than through the feelings; so that, without being
very deeply moved or interested by the characters of the piece, we
should recognise vividly the hinges