Whoe’er by practice indiscreet Has pass’d for a notorious cheat, Will shortly find his credit fail, Though he speak truth, says Esop’s tale. The Wolf the Fox for theft arraign’d; The Fox her innocence maintain’d: The Ape, as umpire, takes his seat; Each pleads his cause with skill and heat. Then thus the Ape, with aspect grave, The sentence from the hustings gave: “For you, Sir Wolf, I do descry That all your losses are a lie-- And you, with negatives so stout, O Fox! have stolen the goods no doubt.” XI. THE ASS AND THE LION HUNTING. A coward, full of pompous speech, The ignorant may overreach; But is the laughing-stock of those Who know how far his valor goes. Once on a time it came to pass, The Lion hunted with the Ass, Whom hiding in the thickest shade He there proposed should lend him aid, By trumpeting so strange a bray, That all the beasts he should dismay, And drive them o’er the desert heath Into the lurking Lion’s teeth. Proud of the task, the long-ear’d loon Struck up such an outrageous tune, That ’twas a miracle to hear-- The beasts forsake their haunts with fear, And in the Lion’s fangs expired: Who, being now with slaughter tired, Call’d out the Ass, whose noise he stops. The Ass, parading from the copse, Cried out with most conceited scoff, “How did my music-piece go off?” “So well--were not thy courage known, Their terror had been all my own!” XII. THE STAG AT THE FOUNTAIN. Full often what you now despise Proves better than the things you prize; Let Esop’s narrative decide: A Stag beheld, with conscious pride, (As at the fountain-head he stood) His image in the silver flood, And there extols his branching horns, While his poor spindle-shanks he scorns-- But, lo! he hears the hunter’s cries, And, frighten’d, o’er the champaign flies-- His swiftness baffles the pursuit: At length a wood receives the brute, And by his horns entangled there, The pack began his flesh to tear: Then dying thus he wail’d his fate: “Unhappy me! and wise too late! How useful what I did disdain! How grievous that which made me vain.” XIII. THE FOX AND THE CROW. His folly in repentance ends, Who, to a flatt’ring knave attends. A Crow, her hunger to appease, Had from a window stolen some cheese, And sitting on a lofty pine In state, was just about to dine. This, when a Fox observed below, He thus harangued the foolish Crow: “Lady, how beauteous to the view Those glossy plumes of sable hue! Thy features how divinely fair! With what a shape, and what an air! Could you but frame your voice to sing, You’d have no rival on the wing.” But she, now willing to display Her talents in the vocal way, Let go the cheese of luscious taste, Which Renard seized with greedy haste. The grudging dupe now sees at last That for her folly she must fast. XIV. THE COBBLER TURNED DOCTOR.