ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of Smart's involvement with the fable form through close readings of his translated and original works. It considers political and social concerns in Phaedrus's and Christopher Smart's translation of the fables, showing how the translator locates the fabular theme of hierarchy in an account of universal propriety. The chapter presents a view of Smart's 1765 Fables of Phaedrus as they are officially presented: an economic endeavour with didactic aims. Phaedrus's fable of the cock and the pearl is unfortunately apt as a starting point for looking at Smart efforts to translate Roman apologue. Smart worked on his renderings of Horace and Phaedrus, both of which displayed his facility in English versification and Latin translation. Smart's Englishing produces a curiously academic form of satire. Smart's replacement of the punishment or correction of wrongdoing with an idea of repentance reveals the fact that his didactic aims might have a Christian focus, even in secular verse.
