



Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sarah Gutierrez, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was made using scans of public domain works in the International
Children's Digital Library.)









    FABLES OF JOHN GAY
    (SOMEWHAT ALTERED).

    [Illustration]




    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_
prattle no French; when again we met, you were the nymph with bright
and flowing hair, which frightened his Highness Prince James out of
his feline senses, when, as you came in by the door, he made his bolt
by the window. It was then that you entreated me, with "most
petitionary vehemence," to write you a book--a big book--thick, and
all for yourself--

    "Apollo heard, and granting half the prayer,
    Shuffled to winds the rest and tossed in air."

I have not written the book, nor is it thick: but I have printed you a
book, and it is thin. And I take the occasion to note that old Geoffry
Chaucer, our father poet, must have had you in his mind's eye, by
prescience or precognition, or he