Bernard Mandeville

Aesop Dress'd Bernard Mandeville

Book Excerpt: ... Fable of the Bees_ to his analysis of pride, [20] it is appropriate that pride engaged his attention in this early book of fables. "The Frog" is notable chiefly because Mandeville lengthened La Fontaine's moral of four lines to fourteen in order to glance at the social and economic implications of pride: So full of Pride is every Age!A Citizen must have a Page, A Petty Prince Ambassadors, And Tradesmens Children Governours; A Fellow, that i'n't worth a Louse, Still keeps his Coach and Country-house; A Merchant swell'd with haughtiness, Looks ten times bigger than he is; Buys all, and draws upon his Friend, As if his Credit had no end; At length he strains with so much Force, Till, like the Frog, he bursts in course, And, by his empty Skin you find, That he was only fill'd with Wind.[21]Two of the 39 fables in the collection are original productions: "The Carp" and "The Owl and the Nightingale." Both poems focus upon pride. "The Carp"