We give, first, the brief fable which is said to have been the prime favorite of the author himself. It is the fable of "The Oak and the Reed." Of this fable French critics have not scrupled to speak in terms of almost the very highest praise. Chamfort says, "Let one consider, that, within the limit of thirty lines, La Fontaine, doing nothing but yield himself to the current of his story, has taken on every tone, that of poetry the most graceful, that of poetry the most lofty, and one will not hesitate to affirm, that, at the epoch at which this fable appeared, there was nothing comparable to it in the French language." There are, to speak precisely, thirty-two lines in the fable. In this one case let us try representing La Fontaine's compression by our English form. For the rest of our specimens, after a single further exception, introduced, we confess, partly because it could be given in a graceful version by Bryant, we shall use Elizur Wright's translation--a meritorious one, still master of the field which, about fifty years ago, it entered as pioneer. Mr. Wright here expands La Fontaine's thirty-two verses to it forty-four. The additions are not ill-done, but they encumber somewhat the Attic neatness and simplicity of the original. We ought to say, that La Fontaine boldly broke with the tradition which had been making Alexandrines--lines of six feet--obligatory in French verse. He rhymes irregularly, at choice, and makes his verses long or short, as pleases him. The closing verse of the present piece is, in accordance with the intended majesty of the representation, an Alexandrine: The Oak one day said to the Reed, "Justly might you dame Nature blame. A wren's weight would bow down your frame; The lightest wind that chance may make Dimple the surface of the lake Your head bends low indeed, The while, like Caucasus, my front To meet the branding sun is wont, Nay, more, to take the tempest's brunt. A blast you feel, I feel a breeze. Had you been born beneath my roof, Wide-spread, of leafage weather-proof, Less had you known your life to tease; I should have sheltered you from storm. But oftenest you rear your form On the moist limits of the realm of wind. Nature, methinks, against you sore has sinned." "Your pity," answers him the Reed, "Bespeaks you kind; but spare your pain; I more than you may winds disdain. I bend, and break not. You, indeed, Against their dreadful strokes till now Have stood, nor tamed your back to bow: But wait we for the end."