out certain original and leading features of resemblance betwixt his emblems, and that which they are intended to represent, and he may be permitted to take considerable latitude in their farther approximation. It may be farther urged in Dryden's behalf, that the older poets whom he professed to imitate, Spenser, for example, in "Mother Hubbart's Tale," which he has actually quoted, and Chaucer, in that of the "Nun's Priest's tale" have stepped beyond the simplicity of the ancient fable, and introduced a species of mixed composition, between that and downright satire. The names and characters of beasts are only assumed in "Mother Hubbart's Tale," that the satirist might, under that slight cloak, say with safety what he durst not otherwise have ventured upon; and in the tale of Chaucer, the learned dialogue about dreams is only put into the mouths of a cock and hen, to render the ridicule of such disquisitions more poignant. Had Spenser been asked, why he described the court of the lion as exactly similar to that of a human prince, and introduced the fox as composing madrigals for the courtiers? he would have bidden the querist, ----Yield his sense was all too blunt and base, That n'ote without a hound fine footing trace. And if the question had been put to the bard of Woodstock, why, he made his cock an astrologer, and his hen a physician, he would have answered, that his satire might become more ludicrous, by putting these grave speeches into the mouths of such animals. Dryden seems to have proposed as his model this looser kind of parable; giving his personages, indeed, the names of the Hind and Panther, but reserving to himself the privilege of making the supposed animals use the language and arguments of the communities they were intended to represent. I must own, however, that this licence appears less pardonable in the First Part, where he professes to use the majestic turn of heroic poetry, than in those which are dedicated to argument and satire. Dryden has, in this very poem, given us two examples of the more pure and correct species of fable. These, which he terms in the preface Episodes, are the tale of the Swallows seduced to defer their emigration, and that of the Pigeons, who chose a Buzzard for their king.[78] It is remarkable, that, as the former is by much the most complete story, so, although put in the mouth of a representative of the heretical church, it proved eventually to contain a truth sorrowful to our author, and those of the Roman Catholic persuasion: For, while the Buzzard's elevation (Bishop Burnet by name) was not attended with any peculiar evil consequences to the church of England, the short gleam of Popish prosperity was soon overcast, and the priests and their proselytes plunged in reality into all the distress of the swallows in the Panther's fable.