Robert Dodsley, born at Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, in 1703, died at Durham, December 25, 1764, buried in the abbey churchyard there, author of 'The Economy of Human Life' and other estimable works, compiled a volume of fables (1761). This was the favourite collection in this country at the end of last and the beginning of the present century. The contents of the volume are in three parts, and comprise 'Ancient Fables,' 'Modern Fables,' and 'Fables Newly Invented.' The first two divisions of the volume are Æsopian in character. The fables contained in the last were not all written by Dodsley, some of them being contributed, as he states in his preface, 'by authors with whom it is an honour to be connected, and who having condescended to favour him with their assistance, have given him an opportunity of making some atonement for his own defects.' It is to be regretted that he did not give the names of the authors referred to. The work contains a life of Æsop 'by a learned friend' (no name given),[60] and an excellent, though somewhat pedantic, 'Essay on Fable.' The following are three original fables from Dodsley's collection: '_The Miser and the Magpie._--As a miser sat at his desk counting over his heaps of gold, a magpie eloped from his cage, picked up a guinea, and hopped away with it. The miser, who never failed to count his money over a second time, immediately missed the piece, and rising up from his seat in the utmost consternation, observed the felon hiding it in a crevice of the floor. "And art thou," cried he, "that worst of thieves, who hast robbed me of my gold without the plea of necessity, and without regard to its proper use? But thy life shall atone for so preposterous a villainy." "Soft words, good master!" quoth the magpie. "Have I, then, injured you in any other sense than you defraud the public? And am I not using your money in the same manner you do yourself? If I must lose my life for hiding a single guinea, what do you, I pray, deserve, who secrete so many thousands?"'