In the Correspondence on Tragedy, Lessing had advised his friends to “go and learn from the ancients” (Nov 28, 1756; B 3, 681). The ancients also became his benchmark in his critical engagement with contemporary fable production, particularly the German imitators of Jean de La Fontaine. It is not against him, “this peculiar genius”, that Lessing’s qualms are directed, but against La Fontaine’s “blind worshippers” (B 4, 399). Lessing treats with scepticism the verse and the casual tone that La Fontaine had cultivated in his fables; in his view, this form of presentation contradicts the “precision and brevity” (B 4, 398) that originally characterises the genre and that is alone appropriate to its nature.