“_s’Auiticchia la vite, e l’olmo abbraccia, Anchor che il tempo secchi le sue piante; Nopo morte l’Amor tiensi constante. Non teme morte Amore, anzi la scaccia._” It is in the _Comedy of Errors_ (act ii. sc. 2, l. 167, vol. i. p. 417) that Shakespeare refers to this fable, when Adriana addresses Antipholus of Syracuse,— “How ill agrees it with your gravity To counterfeit thus grossly with your slave, Abetting him to thwart me in my mood! Be it my wrong, you are from me exempt, But wrong not that wrong with a more contempt. Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine: Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine, Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state, Makes me with thy strength to communicate.” With a change from the vine to the ivy a very similar comparison occurs in the _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (act iv. sc. 1, l. 37, vol. ii. p. 250). The infatuated Titania addresses Bottom the weaver as her dearest joy,— “Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. Fairies begone, and be all ways away. So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist; the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!” The fable of the Fox and the Grapes is admirably represented in Freitag’s _Mythologia Ethica_ (p. 127), to the motto, “Feigned is the refusal of that which cannot be had,”— Ficta eius quod haberi nequit recuſatio. [Illustration: _Freitag, 1579._] _Fatuus ſtatim indicat iram ſuam: qui autem diſſimulat iniuriam, callidus eſt._ _Prouerb._ 12, 16. “A fool’s wrath is presently known: but a prudent man covereth shame.” The fable itself belongs to an earlier work by Gabriel Faerni, and there exemplifies the thought, “to glut oneself with one’s own folly,”— “_Stultitia sua seipsum saginare._” “VULPES esuriens, alta de vite racemos Pendentes nulla quum prensare arte valeret, Nec pedibus tantum. aut agili se tollere saltu. Re infecta abscedens, hæc secum, Age, desine, dixit. Immatura vva est, gustuque insuavis acerbo. Consueuere homines, eventu si qua sinistro Vota cadunt, iis sese alienos velle videri.” Whitney takes possession of Faerni’s fable, and gives the following translation (p. 98), though by no means a literal one,—