“At Bamberg this little book ended is After the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, When one counts a thousand four hundred year, And to it, as truth, one and sixty more, On the day of holy Valentine; God shield us from the wrath divine. Amen.” The fables were collected by Ulric Boner, a Dominican friar of Bonn, in the thirteenth or at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Their chief value is that they present the most precious remains of the Minnesingers, or German Troubadours, and possess much grace, and “une moralité piquante.” See _Biographie Universelle_, vol. v. pp. 97, 98: Paris, 1812; and vol. xxxiii. p. 584: Paris, 1823. Of Æsop’s _Fables_ in Greek, the Milan edition, about A.D. 1480, was the earliest. There had been Latin versions, previously at Rome in 1473, at Bologna and Antwerp in 1486, and elsewhere. The German translation appeared in 1473, the Italian in 1479, the French and the English in 1484, and the Spanish in 1489. Besides these there were at least thirty other editions previous to the year 1500. It has been doubted if Fables should be classed among the Emblem Literature,—but whether _nude_, as other emblems have been named when unclothed in the ornaments of wood or copper engravings, or _adorned_ with richly embellished devices, they are, as Whitney would name them, _naturally_ emblematical. Apart from whatever artistic skill can effect for them, they have in themselves meanings to be evolved different from those which the words convey. The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass are not simply names for the veritable animals, but emblems of different characters and qualities among the human race; they symbolize moral sentiments and actions, and when we add the figures of the creatures, though we may make pleasing and significant pictures, we do little for the real development of the emblems. Books of Fables, however, are so numerous that they and their editors may be counted by hundreds; and as Dibdin intimates, the Bibliomaniac who had gathered up all the editions of Æsop in nearly all the languages of the civilized world, would have formed a very considerable library. Only on a few occasions therefore shall we make mention of books of Fables in our present inquiries. We shall not however pass unnoticed, since it belongs especially to this period, the “~Dyalogus Creaturarum~,” or, _Dialogues of the Creatures_, a collection of Latin Fables, attributed in the fourteenth century to Nicolas Pergaminus, first printed at Gouda in Holland by Gerard Leeu in 1480, and at Stockholm by John Snell in 1483. (See Brunet, vol. ii. p. 674.) A French version, by Colard Mansion, was issued at Lyons in 1482, _Dialogue des Creatures moralizie_; and an English version, about 1520, by J. Rastall, “Powly’s Churche,” London, namely, “The Dialogue of Creatures moralyzed, of late translated out of latyn in to our English tonge.” [Illustration: _Dyalogus Creat., ed. 1480._]