Their resemblance to the French originals is slight. Not La Fontaine, but Samuel Butler, presides over Dennis's fables; indeed, when Dennis discusses them in the Preface to _Miscellanies_, he fails to mention La Fontaine, although he devotes a large proportion of his remarks to a defense of Butler's burlesque verse, which he acknowledges as his model.[2] Many people were writing Hudibrastics in the 1680's and 1690's: the propensity of Butler's couplet for arousing laughter had made it a fad.[3] With its jog-trot meter, insinuating swiftness, and jarring double and triple rhymes, the Hudibrastic couplet was ideally suited to the mockery performed by low burlesque. All burlesque works by an incongruity between subject and style; the particular function of low burlesque is to debase an elevated subject by treating it in an undignified manner.[4] So it was that Butler, with the assistance of a crazy style, had exploited the gap between the high pretensions and the ridiculous performances of a Puritan knight and his squire. But of the hordes of scribblers that followed in the wake of _Hudibras_, scarcely any possessed Butler's sense of satiric propriety. Where his success had been founded on the discrepancy between subject and style that is essential to burlesque, they employed his style with no regard for its suitability to their subjects. Ordinary narrative poems with no satiric intent were decked in Hudibrastic couplets for the sake of a superficial cleverness.[5] Dennis followed the fashion. His ten verse-fables are filled with outrageous Butlerisms: Isgrim had all the Winter far'd So very ill, his looks Men scar'd. He had (poor Dog!) got an evil habit, Of going to Bed with the Devil a bit, So that he had contracted a meen, Which truly represented Famine. * * * * * At sight of Steed that's one huge bit of Fat, Hight Isgrim's heart for joy went pit a pat. * * * * * Had I not known thy Self and Kindred, Ev'n I my self should have been in dread. * * * * * The _Crane's_ arrival was opportune, Order'd for _Isgrim's_ good by fortune.[6] Whatever the intentions of the poet, it seems to be the property of the Hudibrastic couplet inevitably to denigrate its subject. While it is probable that Dennis intended his fables to be clever and modish, and nothing more, they turn out to be travesties of La Fontaine.