INTRODUCTION.
La Fontaine, Avertissement au second
recuiel, 1678.
The work I am to introduce to the reader is the earliest English representative of a cycle of stories which has passed into every civilised tongue, and into many not civilised. The bare description of the “Morall Philosophie of Doni” will suffice to indicate how wide a traveller it had been before it reached these shores. It is the English version of an Italian adaptation of a Spanish translation of a Latin version of a Hebrew translation of an Arabic adaptation of the Pehlevi version of the Indian original. And this enumeration only indicates one of many paths which these fables took to reach Europe. To trace these paths is a fascinating pursuit for the bibliographer
