3-052-330 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Fox Disguised as a Physician, from "Reynard the Fox", 1872. Illustration from a Christmas book. '"The Pleasant History of Reynard the Fox" (Sampson Low, Marston, and Searle) is a prose translation [of a German fable, "Reinecke Fuchs"], by the late Mr. Thomas Roscoe, now reprinted in a form which will be found quite as readable as any metrical version likely to be offered in our language, and its perusal is recommended by the liberal accompaniment of nearly a hundred engravings. The designs are by Mr. A. T. Elwes and Mr. Jellicoe; the engraver is Mr. J. D. Cooper...[Our engraving] refers to that part of Reynard's discourse to King Lion in which he tells how the elder Fox, his father, was a student of medicine at Montpelier, and became a physician so expert and learned that, wearing a silk robe, with a golden girdle, he was called to attend the sick bed of the late Lion, father to his present Majesty; and how he then prescribed a dose of the blood of the Wolf (his own sworn foe) to cure the disease of his royal patient. This is a very fair sample of the shrewd hits at Court intrigue, or political and ecclesiastical abuses, with which "Reynard the Fox " abounds, and for the sake of which...it is worthy to be read in every age'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.