FABLES OF JOHN GAY
(SOMEWHAT ALTERED).

FABLES OF JOHN GAY

(SOMEWHAT ALTERED).


AFFECTIONATELY PRESENTED TO

MARGARET ROSE,

BY HER UNCLE

JOHN BENSON ROSE.

[FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION.]

LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES & SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
AND CHARING CROSS.

1871.

DEDICATION.

Si doulce la Margarite.

When I first saw you—never mind the year—you could speak no English,and when next I saw you, after a lapse of two years, you would prattleno French; when again we met, you were the nymph with bright and flowinghair, which frightened his Highness Prince James out of his felinesenses, when, as you came in by the door, he made his bolt by thewindow. It was then that you entreated me, with "most petitionaryvehemence," to write you a book—a big book—thick, and all foryourself—

I have not written the book, nor is it thick: but I have printed you abook, and it is thin. And I take the occasion to note that old GeoffryChaucer, our father poet, must have had you in his mind's eye, byprescience or precognition, or he could hardly else have written twopoems, one on the daisy and one on the rose. They are poems too long formodern days, nor are we equal in patience to our fore-fathers, who read'The Faërie Queen,' 'Gondibert,' and the 'Polyolbion,' annually, as theycheeringly averred, through and out. Photography, steam, andelectricity make us otherwise, and Patience has fled to the spheres;therefore, if feasible, shall "brevity be the soul of wit," and we willeschew "tediousness and outward flourishes" in compressing 'The Flowerand the Leaf' into little:—