Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY BERNARD MANDEVILLE ÆSOP DRESS'D OR A COLLECTION OF FABLES _WRIT IN FAMILIAR VERSE_ (1704) _INTRODUCTION_ BY JOHN S. SHEA PUBLICATION NUMBER 120 WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES 1966 GENERAL EDITORS Earl Miner, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Maximillian E. Novak, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Lawrence Clark Powell, _Wm. Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ ADVISORY EDITORS Richard C. Boys, _University of Michigan_ John Butt, _University of Edinburgh_ James L. Clifford, _Columbia University_ Ralph Cohen, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_ Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_ Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_ Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_ Everett T. Moore, _University of California, Los Angeles_ James Sutherland, _University College, London_ H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_ CORRESPONDING SECRETARY Edna C. Davis, _Wm. Andrews Clark Memorial Library_ INTRODUCTION Bernard Mandeville's first extant book in English, _Some Fables after the Easie and Familiar Method of Monsieur de la Fontaine_, was published in 1703; it reappeared with additional fables in 1704 as _Aesop Dress'd_.[1] Neither title reveals that, except for two original fables by Mandeville, the book consists entirely of verse translations from the twelve books of La Fontaine's _Fables_ (1668-1694). It is the first book-length translation from these poems into English. The only previous translations from _Fables_ into English verse appear to have been those made ten years earlier by John Dennis. _Miscellanies in Verse and Prose_ (1693) was a curious volume of Pindaric odes, imitations of Horace, Juvenal, and Boileau, and letters that the young Dennis had written during his travels in France and Italy, including the well-known account of the "delightful horrour" and "terrible Joy" that he had experienced while crossing the Alps; there were, finally, ten fables in octosyllabic couplets--all of them translations from La Fontaine. A word about Dennis's fables may help to put Mandeville's into perspective.