Fable XVIII The Fir and a Bramble
My head, says the boasting Fir-tree to the humble Bramble, is advanced among the stars; I furnish beams for palaces, and masts for shipping; the very sweat of my body is a sovereign remedy for the sick and wounded: whereas thou, O rascally Bramble, runnest creeping in the dirt, and art good for nothing in the world but mischief. I pretend not to vie with thee, said the Bramble, in the points thou gloriest in. But, not to insist upon it, that He who made thee a lofty Fir, could have made thee an humble Bramble, I pray thee tell me, when the Carpenter comes next with the axe into the wood, to fell timber, whether thou hadst not rather be a Bramble than a Fir-tree?
Morals
Poverty secures a man from many dangers; whereas the rich and the mighty are the mark of malice and cross fortune; and still the higher they are, the nearer the thunder.
Minions of fortune, pillars of the state,
Round your exalted heads what tempests low’r!
While peace secure, and soft contentment wait
On the calm mansions of the humble poor.
Reflection
The answer of the humble Bramble to the proud Fir-tree is so pathetic, that it may of itself serve for a very good moral to this fable. Nothing of God’s works is so mean as to be despised, and nothing so lofty but it may be humbled; nay, and the greater the height the greater the danger. For a proud great man to despise an humble little one, when Providence can so easily exalt the one, and abase the other, and has not for the merit of the one, or the demerit of the other, conferred the respective conditions, is a most inexcusable arrogance: and history has given numberless instances, where the overgrown Fir, though a Prime Minister, or great Prince, in the very height of its pride, has been forced to submit to the executioner’s axe, while the humble Bramble, or contented poor man, has continued safe and unhurt in his lowly obscurity. We may further observe on this fable, that there is no state of life but has its mixture of good and evil. The Fir may boast of the uses to which it is put, and of its strength and stature; but then it has not to boast of the creeping Bramble’s safety; for the value of the one tempts the Carpenter’s axe, while the poverty of the other makes it little worth any one’s while to molest it. Upon the whole matter, we may add, That as pride or arrogance is a vice that seldom escapes without a punishment; so humility is a virtue that hardly ever goes without a blessing.