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  • To Instruct and To Amuse:Some Victorian Views of Aesop's Fables
  • Anita C. Wilson (bio)

During the Christmas season of 1847, the Spectator featured a notice of a new book entitled A Selection of Aesop's Fables, versified and set to Music, "with Symphonies and Accompaniments for the Pianoforte" (11 December 1847). The appearance of such a work testifies to the popularity of Aesop's Fables during the Victorian era. Among numerous editions were the translations by Thomas James (1948; illustrated by Tenniel) and George Fyler Townsend (1867), and the illustrated editions by Charles Bennett (1857), who also wrote his own text; by Harrison Weir (1860); by Thomas Dalziel and others (1867); by Ernest Griset (1869); by Randolph Caldecott (1883); and by Walter Crane, whose version for the youngest children, The Baby's Own Aesop, appeared in 1887. The fable is, by definition, didactic. But the degree to which the lesson is thrust upon the reader may vary, and for that reason, Victorian attitudes to Aesop are particularly interesting. While the generalization that the Victorian period was a time of transition from instruction to amusement in children's books is over-simplified, questions about the balancing of didacticism and entertainment were certainly of great significance.

In the preface to his edition of Aesop's Fables, Thomas James set forth his intention to eliminate the sometimes elaborate morals which had been attached to the stories by previous translators: "an essential departure has been made from the common plan of the English Fabulists, who have generally smothered the original Fable under an overpowering weight of their own commentary." James did not reject the fables' didactic function; he merely wished to reinstate the use of brief and proverbial morals, instead of the lengthy ones in editions like Samuel Croxall's (1722), some of which are longer than the fables they accompany. In some cases, James incorporated the morals into the fables, and on occasion, "where the story seems to speak for itself, [the morals are] omitted altogether."

Some years earlier, Richard Scrafton Sharpe had taken a similar approach in his Old Friends in a New Dress; or Familiar Fables in Verse. In his preface to the fifth edition (1837), Sharpe observed that "children, whose minds are alive to the entertainment of an amusing story, too often turn from one fable to another, rather than peruse those less interesting lines that come under the term, 'application.' To remedy this situation, Sharpe attempted to integrate the morals with the fables in a more cohesive fashion, "that the story shall not be obtained without the benefit arising from it; and that amusement and instruction may go hand in hand." Sharpe's endeavor was not entirely successful; in most cases he summed up the moral at the end of the fable, so that it could still easily be skipped. His version of "The Lion and the Mouse," for example, concludes:

Two lessons we from hence may learn,    "The lowly not to disregard;"And that "A kind and friendly turn    Will almost always meet reward."

Sharpe did not object to the idea of attaching separate morals to fables, but regretfully acknowledged that children would probably ignore them. Integrating story and message was as a practical [End Page 66] concession motivated by anxiety that children might otherwise seize amusement without instruction; as a review of Sharpe's book in the Monthly Mirror warned, "the cake is eaten, and the task left undone" (August, 1807).

Forty years later, the Examiner's highly favorable review of James' edition, which it declared "must hereafter be the version of Aesop," displayed more faith in the intrinsic morality of the fable and was sharply critical of overly didactic versions:

The present Edition is remarkable for the clearness and conciseness with which each tale is narrated; and the reader will not be slow to acknowledge his gratitude to Mr. James for having relieved the book from these tedious and unprofitable appendages called 'morals,' which used to obscure and disfigure the ancient editions of the work. A fable, if it be good, will inculcate its moral clearly; and it may safely be asserted that in all cases where it is necessary to extract the moral...

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