[38] Bidpaii; and the _Hitopadesa_. See extract from Sir William Jones's translation of the latter in Translator's Preface. * * * * * BOOK IX. I.--THE FAITHLESS DEPOSITARY.[1] Thanks to Memory's daughters nine, Animals have graced my line: Higher heroes in my story Might have won me less of glory. Wolves, in language of the sky, Talk with dogs throughout my verse; Beasts with others shrewdly vie, Representing characters; Fools in furs not second-hand, Sages, hoof'd or feather'd, stand: Fewer truly are the latter, More the former--ay, and fatter. Flourish also in my scene Tyrants, villains, mountebanks, Beasts incapable of thanks, Beasts of rash and reckless pranks, Beasts of sly and flattering mien; Troops of liars, too, I ween. As to men, of every age, All are liars, saith the sage. Had he writ but of the low, One could hardly think it so; But that human mortals, all, Lie like serpents, great and small, Had another certified it, I, for one, should have denied it. He who lies in Aesop's way, Or like Homer, minstrel gray, Is no liar, sooth to say. Charms that bind us like a dream, Offspring of their happy art, Cloak'd in fiction, more than seem Truth to offer to the heart. Both have left us works which I Think unworthy e'er to die. Liar call not him who squares All his ends and aims with theirs; But from sacred truth to vary, Like the false depositary, Is to be, by every rule Both a liar and a fool. The story goes: