h, rightly or
wrongly, we come to attribute to the ideal fabulist, there is ever a
sense as of something a little out of place. A form of literature so
very innocent and primitive looks a little over-written in Lord Lytton's
conscious and highly-coloured style. It may be bad taste, but sometimes
we should prefer a few sentences of plain prose narration, and a little
Bewick by way of tail-piece. So that it is not among those fables that
conform most nearly to the old model, but one had nearly said among
those that most widely differ from it, that we find the most
satisfactory examples of the author's manner.

In the mere matter of ingenuity, the metaphysical fables are the most
remarkable; such as that of the windmill who imagined that it was he who
raised the wind; or that of the grocer's balance ("Cogito ergo sum") who
considered himself endowed with free-will, reason, and an infallible
practical judgment; until, one fine day, the police made a descent upon
the shop, and find the weights false and the scales unequal; and the
whole thing is broken up for old iron. Capital fables, also, in the same
ironical spirit, are "Prometheus Unbound," the tale of the vainglorying
of a champagne-cork, and "Teleology," where a nettle justifies the ways
of God to nettles while all goes well with it, and, upon a change of
luck, promptly changes its divinity.

In all these there is still plenty of the fabulous if you will,
although, even here, there may be two opinions possible; but there is
another group, of an order of merit perhaps still higher, where we look
in vain for any such playful liberties with Nature. Thus we have
"Conservation of Force"; where a musician, thinking of a certain
picture, improvises in the twilight; a poet, hearing the music, goes
home inspired, and writes a poem; and then a painter, under the
influence of this poem, paints another picture, thus lineally descended
from the first. This is fiction, but not what we have been used to call
fable. We miss the incredible element, the point of audacity with which
the fabulist was wont to mock at his readers. And still more so is this
the case with others. "The Horse and the Fly" states one of the
unanswerable problems of life in quite a realistic and straightforward
way. A fly startles a cab-horse, the coach is overset; a newly-married
pair within and the driver, a man with a wife and family, are all
killed. The horse continues to gallop off in the loose traces, and