inexperienced men: I eat my bread in the sweat of my face."
And the thief says in his turn:
"I have not slept during the night, I have labored with my hands: I eat my bread, more truly than you, in the sweat of my face."
If it is not by truth, it is by cunning and eloquence that you gain your cause, as Kriloff has said.[1] "All the animals who are provided with claws and teeth are innocent, they are al-
- ↑ Kriloff (Ivan Andreiewitch), the Russian fabulist, was born in a small village of Orenburg in 1768, and died at St. Petersburg in 1864. Attracted by the theatre, he composed in early youth a farce called "The Coffee-pot" (1783), and several comedies and tragedies, of which the principal ones are Cleopatra and Philomela.
But this was not his real vocation. In 1808, by the advice of one of his friends, who foresaw his true talent, he translated two of La Fontaine's fables, The Maid and The Oak and the Reed. His translation was striking in its originality and its picturesque character.
Published in the Spectator cf Moscow', they obtained a great success. Kriloff then devoted himself exclusively to the composition of fables, and became the La Fontaine of Russia.
Nevertheless, the pen of Kriloff gave all subjects a Russian aspect. He distinguished himself from La Fontaine and Lessing by his coarse pleasantry and cynical wit, which are qualities that are popular in Moscow.
His Fables form a considerable collection (St. Petersburg, 1847, 3 vols, in 8vo). Count Orloff published in Paris, in 1825, Russian Fables taken from M. Kriloff's Collection, and imitated in French and Italian Verse by several Authors (2 vols, in 8vo). M. A. Baugeault has translated in verse Kriloff's principal fables (Paris, 1852, 8vo). We must also mention the metrical version of Charles Parfait (Plon, 1867.) The fable referred to by Bondareff is an imitation of The Animals Sick of the Plague, by La Fontaine.
