. Bentley, in the first draft (1697) of the part
of his famous 'Dissertation' treating of the fables of Aesop,
speaks thus of Babrius, and goes not far out of his way to
give a rap at Planudes, a late Greek, who turned works of
Ovid, Cato, and Caesar into Greek:--

"... came one Babrius, that gave a new turn of the fables
into choliambics. Nobody that I know of mentions him but
Suidas, Avienus, and Tzetzes. There's one Gabrias, indeed,
yet extant, that has comprised each fable in four sorry
iambics. But our Babrius is a writer of another size and
quality; and were his book now extant, it might justly be
opposed, if not preferred, to the Latin of Phaedrus. There's
a whole fable of his yet preserved at the end of Gabrias, of
'The Swallow and the Nightingale.' Suidas brings many
citations out of him, all which show him an excellent
poet.... There are two parcels of the present fables; the
one, which are the more ancient, one hundred and thirty-six
in number, were first published out of the Heidelberg Library
by Neveletus, 1610. The editor himself well observed that
they were falsely ascribed to Aesop, because they mention
holy monks. To which I will add another remark,--that there
is a sentence out of Job.... Thus I have proved one-half of
the fables now extant that carry the name of Aesop to be
above a thousand years more recent than he. And the other
half, that were public before Neveletus, will be found yet
more modern, and the latest of all.... This collection,
therefore, is more recent than that other; and, coming first
abroad with Aesop's 'Life,' written by Planudes, 'tis justly
believed to be owing to the same writer. That idiot of a monk
has given us a book which he calls 'The Life of Aesop,' that
perhaps cannot be matched in any language for ignorance and
nonsense. He had picked up two or three true stories,--that
Aesop was a slave to a Xanthus, carried a burthen of bread,
conversed with Croesus, and was put to death at Delphi; but
the circumstances of these and all his other tales are pure
invention.... But of all his injuries to Aesop, that which
can least be forgiven him is the making such a monster of him
for ugliness,--an abuse that has found credit so universally
that all the modern painters since the time of Planudes h