AESOP
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sin,—I have a curious old book printed in 1812, by "Luke Hansard & Sons, near Lincoln's Inn Fields." It is a collection of Aesop's fables with a life of the fabulist written by R. Dodsley. The writer indignantly repudiates the idea that Aesop was an Ethiopian. He asserts that an Eastern monk named Planudes was " the great distorter both of Aesop's life and person." This monk lived at Constantinople towards the end of the fourteenth century.
"He published several fables in Creek, under the name of Aesop, and prefixed a life of him to his edition of them ; in which he is supposed, by very good judges, to have confounded the oriental fabulist, Lokman, with Aesop ; and to have attributed what may have been true of the former to the latter. Lokman (Sale's Koran, page 536) is described as deformed, of a black com- plexion, with thick lips, and splay feet."
R. Dodsley is amusingly indignant with the monk Planudes, and goes on to point out several startling anachronisms, one being that he "makes Aesop quote Euripides, who was not born till almost eighty years after his death." The book has a curious woodcut to illustrate each fable. "T. Gilbert del. et seulp. : 1777."
Unfortunately I only possess one volume, the first of the three published. I would much like to know if it is of any value. I should also like to know if any modern scholars think R. Dodsley correct in his statements.—I am, Sir, &v.,
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