EYE-FABLE.

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{ 474 /. It is eighty-nine miles N. N. E. of London,,nd twenty N. of Ipswich.

£yjr, A river in the north-eastern part of Ber-wickshire. Its source is situated amongst the hillsnear Cockbumspath, and flows in a south-easterlydirection till it arrives at Ayton, when it turns to thenorth, and falls into the sea at Eyemouth.

Eyemouth. A small seaport town, in the countyof Berwick, Scotland. It is situated at the mouth of1 the river Eye, from which it no doubt received itsname. The early importance of this place seems tohe connected with a fort which was erected by theProtector Somerset, in the war which he carried onwith Scotland, for the purpose of forcing a marriagebetween Edward VI. and the infant Mary of Scotland.At the conclusion of the war this fort was destroyed,but was rebuilt by the queen regent, Mary of Guise.The immense grass-covered mounds which still remainserve to give some idea of the amazing strength of itsfortifications. Eyemouth was at one period the resi-dence and haunt of a great number of smugglers, butthe energy and‘perseverance of the preventive servicehave long since destroyed its illicit commerce. Theharbour is good, and it derives much profit from thedrying and curing of herrings, with which it suppliesnearly all the neighbouring towns, besides exportingavast quantity. This town has a population of 1181persons, and the annual value of the real propertyamounts to 3734/. It is fifty-three miles E. of Edin-burgh, and five N. W. of Berwick.

Eze. A high mountain in Provence. It is rathermore than 1800 feet above the level of the sea. It con-sists of a compact calcareous stone, in regular beds,which rise to the south, or against the sea. A villageof the same name is built on the side of this mountain.

FABLE, which, in its most extensive sense, issynonymous with fictitious narration, has, in poetry,a double signification, since it expresses, in dramaticand epic poetry, the arrangement of the eventsrelated, and is also the name of a particular class ofpoetical writings. When we speak of the fable ofan epic or dramatic poem, it is used in opposition tohistory. The poet’s description aims at beauty ; hiswork must please as a whole, and the occurrencesmust be so arranged and exhibited as to accomplishthis end. He paints not the real, but the possible ;not things as they are, but as they might well be ; notwith historic truth, but according to the laws ofpoetical probability. The fable, as a particular kindof poetry, is justly considered a species of didacticcomposition, and is a kind of allegory.

It may be described as a method of inculcatingpractical rules of worldly prudence or wisdom, byimaginary representations drawn from the physicalor external world. It consists, properly, of twoparts: the symbolical representation, and the appli-cation, or the instruction intended to be deducedfrom it, which latter is called the moral of the tale,and must be apparent in the fable itself, in order torender it poetical. On account of its aim, it liesupon the borders of poetry and prose ; is rarely intrue poetic spirit, and pleases independently of itsobject. The satisfaction which we derive from fablesdoes not lie wholly in the pleasure that we receivefrom the symbolical representation, but still deeper,—in the feeling that the order of nature is the same inthe spiritual and the material worlds. In the materialworld, the eternal forms of laws and qualities are

more uniform and perceptible than in the moralworld, and, for this reason, the fabulist, whose object'is not merely to render a truth perceptible by meansof a fictitious action (for a parable wotdd do this),chooses his characters from the brute creation.

Herder divides fables into three classes : 1, Theo-retic, intended to form the understanding : thus aphenomenon of nature, as illustrative of the laws ofthe universe, is used to exercise the understanding.For example, when the dog, with a mouthful, snapsat a shadow in the water ; when the sheep contendswith the wolf, or the hare hunts with the lion.

2, Moral, which contains rules for the regulation ofthe will. We do not learn morality from the brutes,but view the great family of nature, and observe thatshe has connected the happiness of all living crea-tures with the unchangeable, eternal law of effort,and take example from the observance of this law bythe lower orders of creation ; as, for example, “ Go tothe ant, thou sluggard!”

3, Fables of fate or destiny. It cannot always bemade evident how one thing follows as a necessaryconsequence from another ; here, then, comes in playthe connexion of events which we call fate, or chance,and which shows that things follow at least after, ifnot from,each other,by an order from above. Thus theeagle carries, with her plunder, a coal from the altar,which sets fire to her nest, and thus her unfledgedbrood becomes the prey of animals which she hasalready robbed of their young.

The earliest collection of fables extant is of easternorigin, and preserved in the Sanscrit language. It iscalled Hitopadesa, and the author Veshnoo Sarnia ;but they are known in Europe as the Tales andFables of Bidpay, or Pilpay, an ancient Indian phi-losopher. Of this collection sir William Jones takesthe following notice :—“ The Fables of VeshnooSarma, whom we improperly call Pilpay, are the mostbeautiful, if not the most ancient, collection of apo-logues in the world. They were first translated fromthe Sanscrit in the sixth century, by Buzerchumihr,the chief physician, and afterwards the vizier of thegreat Aunshirwaer, and are extant under variousnames, in more than tw'enty languages. But theiroriginal title is Hitopadesa, or Amicable Instruction :and as the very existence of A3sop, whom the Arabsbelieve to have been Abyssinian, appears ratherdoubtful, I am not disinclined to suppose that thefirst moral fahles which appeared in Europe were ofIndian or Ethiopian origin.”

In Frazer’s History of Nadir Shah, we find thefollowing account of the Hitopadesa :—“ The ancientbrahmins Of India, after a good deal of time andlabour, compiled a treatise (which they called KurtukDumnik), in which were inserted the choicest trea-sures of wisdom, and the most perfect rules forgoverning a people. This book they presented totheir rajahs, who kept it with the greatest secrecy andcare. About the time of Mohammed’s birth, or thelatter end of the sixth century, Noishervan the Just,who then reigned in Persia, discovered a greatinclination to see that book ; for which purposeBurzuvia, a physician, who had a surprising talent inlearning several languages, particularly Sanscrit, wasintroduced to him as the most proper person to beemployed to get a copy of it. He went to India,where, after some years’ stay and great trouble, heprocured it. It was translated into the Pehlavi (theancient Persian language), by him and Buzrjumehr,