REYNARD THE FOX, the title of a celebrated epic fable of the middle ages, belong ing to, and terminating the series of poems in which "beasts" are the speakers and actors. It is written in low-German, professedly by a Hinreck van Alckmer, " school master and tutor of that noble virtuous prince and lord, the duke of Lorraine," and was printed at Lubeck in 1498, under the title of Reinke Vos; but German critics in general are disposed to believe that no such person as Hinreck van Alcknaer ever existed—he is nowhere else mentioned in history, literary or otherwise—and that the real author is a Hermann 13arkhusen, town-clerk and book-printer in Rostock, who, according to a com mon enough practice, sent his book into the world under a pseudonym. A Rostock edition appeared in 1517, which was long believed to be the earliest, until the discovery of a copy—the only one known to exist—of the older Lubeck edition in the Wolfen btlttel library by prof. Hakeinann, who published it in 1711. Since then the work has. been repeatedly republished in Germany—the best edition being that of Hoffmann von Fallersleben (Bresl. 1834; 2d edit. 1852), which is enriched .with an "introduction," " notes," and " glossary."—At a comparatively early period, translations were made. from the Rostock edition into high-German, that of Mich. Beuther (Frankf. 1544), though badly executed, passing through more than 20 editions. The high-German translation was retranslated into Latin verse by Hartmann Schopper (Frankf. 1567), and this gradually found its way into other countries. Goethe translated the work anew into modern German hexameters with admirable spirit and freshness (Berl. 1794), and his translation has been charmingly illustrated by Kaulbach (Mun. 1847): later trans lations are those by Soltau (Berl. 1803) and Simrock (Frankf. 1845-52), both of which are executed in the measure of the original—i.e., rhymed iambic couplets. A Danish translatitin in verse by Herm. Weiger was published at Lubeck in 1555; a Swedish, at Stockholm in 1621—prose version, 1775.
This brief outline of the literary history of Reinke Vos, leads us to the second and even more important part of the subject. Was that work strictly an original product of the author's fancy, or was it merely the final form assumed by a wide-spread fable? Till Jakob Grimm published the results of his laborious researches, everybody supposed that the poem printed at Lubeck in 1498, by whomsoever composed, was the earliest literary embodiment, if not the direct source, of the fable; but that opinion is no longer tenable. Grimm has shown that, in one form or another, the "beast-fable" (Ger. goes. back to the remotest antiquity, and is a common inheritance of the Aryan or Indo-Ger manic races—Hindus, Celts, Greeks, Romans, Slaves, Esthonians, Germans—and even the Finns; and he explains with great clearness the conditions of thought, intellectual and religious, under which such a literary form is developed. But all nations do not. attain equal success in its cultivation, and it was among the Germans, particularly the Franks, that it attained its most complete poetical elaboration. Grimm is, however, inclined to think that the particular fable of ReinekeVos is of German rather than Orien tal origin (although the Persian version of Pilpay's fables, entitled Aracir-i Sultaili, or the Lights of Canopus, translated by Mr. Eastwick, Hertford, 1854, contains a story strikingly similar), and that the Franks brought it with them to the Netherlands and to France, where (and not in Low-Germany) it first appeared. Grimm published, in the Lateinisehe Gedichte des 10 and 11 Jahrh. (Gott. 1838), some small pieces, containing the nucleus or germ of the fable, and showing how soon, in the bands of the verse-loving monks, it had been turned to didactic and satiric purposes. Somewhat later stories make their appearance, bearing more or less on the history of Reynard, but none of them setting forth the fable in the same manner as we now have it—the two principal being Isengrimus (apparently the composition of an ecclesiastic in southern Flanders about the beginning of the 12th c., and containing two stories of the wolf) and Reinardas (also originating from a Flemish ecclesiastic named Nivardus, which, besides an expan sion of the Isengrimus, contains ten new stories; its date is about half a century later).
But while, in these clerical compositions, side-allusions to the papacy, to the discipline of the church, and to the then powerful and flourishing order of the Cistercians, are very noticeable, in the mouth of the Franco-Flemish peOple, on the other hand, the story kept itself free of such temporary phenomena, and gradually shaped itself into a style of pure epic satire, reflecting general human characteristics. Before the close of the 12th c., this purer and more epic form of the satire found its way into both German and Flemish. literature. In the former, this happened about 1170, when Heinrich der Glieliezare (i.e., Henry "the Feigner" = Inventor or Troubadour), a native of Alsace, wrote in High German his lsengrznes not; and again in Flemish, a little later, when a poet; whose name, is scarcely known, wrote Der Reinaert, a work of the purest epic character, and far sur-. passing all its predecessors both in conception and execution. Both works were after ward redacted by unknown hands—the German about time beginning of the 13th c., 'when its redactor gave it the title of Reinhart (published by Maihith and KOffinger, in the "Koloczaer Codex," Pesth, 1818; and again in a purer state, with all his valuable, historical investigations, by Jakob Grimm, Reinhart Fuchs, Berl. 1834); the Flemish, about the close of the 13th c., when it received the name of Rei paert deVos, part of which_ appeared in Grimm's Reinhart Fuchs, but the whole of which was published by J. F. Willeins (Ghent, 1S36-50), at the expense of the Belgian government.—Meanwhile, in France, the number of poems in which fables about Rcynard are set forth had mightily increased, but only the oldest among those which have survived (which only reach back to about the beginning of the 13th c.) display a pure epic character. In 1826 M. ?ilon published a collection, in 4 vols., of the stories extant in Norman-French, under the title of Le Roman du Renart, to which M. Chabaille, in 1835, added Supplgments, with various readings and corrections. The 1?enart li Contrefet, of an unknown poet of Champagne, has only been partially printed. From such sources sprung the French chap-books: (YrolksbUcher), which came into vogue after the 15th century. How popular the became in France may be estimated from the fact that the German word reinhart (old form, ragirwhart—i.e., "bold". or "cunning in counsel "), which merely designates the character of the fox, has entirely superseded the old Franco-Latin word thn Latin valpes). The Swabian court-poetry of Germany had little in harmony with tho "beast-fable," which was little cultivated while the former continued to flourish. In the Netherlands, on the other hand, it continued to keep its ground, but as the medixval spirit of poetry declined, it passed into prose—e.g., De Hystorie San Reinaert de tins, pub lished in Dutch at Gouda, in Holland., in 1479; which, in its turn, was translated into. English in 1481 by William Caxton—Ifyer begynneth thystorye of Reynard the Foxe ; republished, with a few chauges, by W. J. Thorns (Loud. 1844).—Thus have we sketched in meager outline the history of the fable of Reynard the fox in different countries, and from interval evidence it is clear that the substance of the Low-German Reinke Vos of Hinreck van Alckmer or Hermann Barkhusen was derived from the Flemish sources. already referred to. Its peculiarity consists in this, that it is the latest, best, and most complete of the whole series of poems about the fox, gathering up into itself, as it were, whatever scattered merits its predecessors possess, and presenting the whole in epic unity for the pleasure and profit of all future ages. The work now consulted by general read ers is Goethe's version, of which an excellent translation into English heroic verse was made by T. J. Arnold, with illustrations by J. Wolf (Lond. 1855). For a critical appre ciation of the fable, see Carlyle's "Essay on German Literature of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries" (Miscellaneous Essays).