“The fool's tongue is, like the rattlesnake's alarum, the providential sign by which we may avoid him.” In his adaptation of the fable about a conceited young mole, Charles H. Bennett applies Aesop's moral to the art critics of his time. Ignorant of its own inexperience and sensory limits, the colorblind creature emerges from underground to mock a painting for its purple grass and non-blue sky. Bennett, who colored his works by hand, left the framed artworks in a mole’s monochrome palette. Aesop remains the prolific author-illustrator’s most widely reprinted work.
Charles H. Bennett (1829–1867), The Fables of Aesop and Others, Translated into Human Nature (London: W. Kent & Co., [1857]). Bequest of Gordon N. Ray, 1987. PML 142654.