INTRODUCTION XXVIL

elementary virtues and vices with the characters
of the best known birds, beasts, and fishes.
Man may be the most interesting thing to
man, but animals are more interesting to
children and to men of childlike mind. The
cynic has observed, ‘ The more I know of men,
the more I respect dogs.’ But the fabulists
invert the process and say that the more they
observe animals the more they understand
men. What applies to the simpler fable is
even more applicable to the more elaborate
Beast Satire, which is better suited to display
the complicated forces which go to make up
life,

The life depicted in the Reynard is, indeed,
a somewhat limited one. We have got down
to ‘hard pan,’ as American miners say. It ts,
in truth, the bare struggle for existence that
Reynard portrays, and is a fit outcome of the
Feudal Age when for all but the barons life
was but a bare struggle. Medieval literature
presents us, for the most part, pictures of life
as seen by those above the salt. Reynard, the
Fabliaux, and Villon present us with life as
it appeared to the Disinherited Folk. What
a life is there presented! Greed, hypocrisy,
brute force, and cunning rule the roast. Force