The Editor must claim the privilege of adding a few words on a matter personal to himself. He has already within the last few months been connected with one edition of Æsop, and it may seem strange that he should be willing to undertake the superintendence of another. His answer is, that the two works on which he has been engaged were totally distinct, and entirely independent of each other. The first was a request to furnish new morals and applications to a definite number of fables; Ihe other was a commission to add a large number of additional fables and to make a wholly new translation. The necessity of a new and improved translation the Editor then recognized, and would have willingly undertaken. It was a wish he had much at heart, and when the proposal was voluntarily made to him by the present Publishers, to undertake the task of a new translation of an enlarged number of Æsop’s Fables, he saw no reason for refusing the offer because of his prior discharge of a totally different design; and he resolved to comply with the request submitted to him, and to do his best towards the attainment of so desirable an object as a purer translation and more literal rendering of fables so justly celebrated. The following are the sources from which the present translation has been prepared:— Babrii Fabulæ Æsopeæ. George Cornewall Lewis. Oxford, 1846. Babrii Fabulæ Æsopeæ. E codice manuscripto partem secundam edidit. George Cornewall Lewis. London: Parker, 1857. Mythologica Æsopica. Opera et studia Isaaci Nicholai Neveleti. Frankfort, 1610. Fabulæ Æsopiacæ, quales ante Planudem ferebantur cura et studio Francisci de Furia. Lipsiæ, 1810. Αἰσωπεὶων Μυθῶν Συναγωγή. Ex recognitione Caroli Halmii. Lipsiæ, 1851 Phædri Fabulæ Esopiæ. Delphin Classics. 1822. GEORGE FYLER TOWNSEND LIFE OF AESOP