Jean Jacques Rousseau is the only writer of eminence who has inveighed against this use of the fable, but his remarks are by no means convincing. He accounted them lies without the 'medicinable quality,' and reprobated their employment in the instruction of youth. 'Fables,' says Rousseau, 'may amuse men, but the truth must be told to children.' His animadversion had special reference to the fables of La Fontaine, and doubtless some of these, and the morals deduced from them, are open to objection; but to condemn fables in general on this account is surely the height of unreason. A greater than Rousseau had, long before, given expression in cogent language to the worth of the fable as a vehicle of instruction for youth. Plato, whilst excluding the mythical stories of Hesiod and Homer from the curriculum of his 'Republic'--that perfect commonwealth, in depicting which he lavished all the resources of his wisdom and genius--advised mothers and nurses to repeat selected fables to their children, so as to mould and give direction to their young and tender minds. Phædrus, again, in the prologue to his fables, says-- ''Tis but a play to form the youth By fiction in the cause of truth,' so that his view of the question also was just the very antipodes of that of the French philosopher. Quintilian urges[17] that 'boys should learn to relate orally the fables of Æsop, which follow next after the nurse's stories.' True, he recommends this with a view to initiating them in the rudiments of the art of speaking; but he would not have inculcated the use of fables for children for even this secondary purpose, if he had dreamt for a moment they would have had a bad effect on their minds. Rousseau, with all his knowledge of human character and his power of imagination, had a matter-of-fact vein running through his mind, which led him to entertain the mistaken view that the influence of fables on the juvenile mind was objectionable. Cowper, who was no mean writer of fables himself, with his clear common sense, broad natural instincts, and mother wit--in which Rousseau was lacking--saw the unwisdom of the philosopher's conclusions, and satirized his views in the well-known lines: 'I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau If birds confabulate or no; 'Tis clear that they were always able To hold discourse, at least in fable; And e'en the child, who knows no better Than to interpret by the letter A story of a cock and bull, Must have a most uncommon skull.'[18] It is no exaggeration to assert that the effect which fables and their lessons have had on the people is incalculable. They have been read and rehearsed and pondered in all ages, and by thousands whom no other class of literature could attract. The story and its moral (in the Æsopian fable at least) are obvious to the dullest comprehension, and they cling to the memory like the limpet to the rock, and find their application in all the concerns of daily life.