Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (2)

Here are some more fables from Lessing's Fables and Epigrams, translated into English (translator's name unknown). Click here for more fables by Lessing here at the blog. As you will see, several of these fables are directly responding to fables by Aesop, almost as anti-fables (i.e. like anti-proverbs, in the phrase coined by Wolfgang Mieder).

THE MAN AND THE DOG

A man who was bitten by a dog, flew into a passion and killed it. The wound appearing dangerous, a surgeon was deemed necessary. 

"I am not acquainted with a better remedy," said the latter, "than that of dipping a piece of bread in the wound, and causing the mischievous dog to eat it. If that sympathetic prescription avail not, then" — here the surgeon shrugged up his shoulders. 

"O, fatal anger," exclaimed the man, "I have killed the dog!" 

19th-century Aesop: the dog-bite

THE MONKEY AND THE FOX

"Name me an animal so clever, that I cannot imitate it," boasted the monkey to the fox. 

"Can you point out any animal so insignificant as to imitate you?" runs the answer.

Ye authors of a certain class, need I explain myself further? 

AESOP AND THE ASS.

"When you again tell any stories concerning me," said the ass to Aesop, "pray make me say something smart and witty." 

"In that case," replied Esop, "will not people say that you are the moralist, and I the ass?"

THE SICK WOLF 

The wolf being at the point of death, cast a retrospective glance on his past life. " I am certainly a sinner," he plaintively observed, "but, I trust, not one of the greatest. I have doubtless committed evil, but I have also done much good. I remember that once when a lamb, which had strayed from the flock, came so near me, I might have devoured it with the greatest ease; I forbore to do so. About the same time listened to the abuse of an angry sheep with the most edifying indifference, although no watch-dog was to be feared." 

"To all this I can bear witness," said the fox, who was assisting his ghostly preparations; "I recollect all the particulars. It was just at the time you suffered so much from the bone in your throat." 

THE MISER

"Unfortunate man that I am!" ejaculated a miser to his neighbour; "someone, last night, stole my treasure, which I had buried in my garden, and placed a worthless stone in its place." 

"You would never have used your treasure," returned his neighbour; "only, therefore, imagine the stone to be your treasure, and you are nothing the worse."

"Nothing the worse! And suppose it was so, is not somebody else the better? I shall go distracted!"

Grandville's illustration of Aesop's miser