Lives of the most eminent literary and scientific men of France, Vol. 1 (of 2)

LA FONTAINE

1621-1695

The life of this celebrated fabulist is marked by fewer incidents than the generality even of literary lives. Unambitious, indolent, "simple," it has been said, "as the heroes of his own fables," and subject to the most whimsical lapses of thought and memory, his habitual state was a sort of abstracted ruminating quietism, roused from which, he amused by his singularities, or delighted by his inspirations. He lived almost a stranger to the literary disputes of his time. Personal resentment or dislike was a feeling too uncongenial, and an effort too fatiguing, for him to sustain, beyond the excitement of the moment, even on two occasions when he was wantonly ill used. His designation of "bon homme," first applied to him by Boileau and Racine, then by the public, and since by posterity, paints him very happily. The particulars recorded of him are what would naturally be expected—traits of character rather than events.

Jean de la Fontaine was born on the 8th day of July, 1621, at Château Thierry. Some of his biographers have maintained his pretensions to nobility with a silly zeal. His father, Jean de la Fontaine, was master or keeper of the royal domains in his district, which appears to have been an honourable charge. The youth of the poet gave no promise of his future success. He was remarkable only for his dulness, and a certain easy tractable good nature. His teachers pronounced him a well disposed but hopeless dunce; but his father, a very zealous and still more undiscerning admirer of poetry, resolved that he should cultivate the muses,—and poor La Fontaine laboured with all the complaisance of filial duty. His efforts were vain. He could not produce a rhyme,—he who afterwards rhymed with so much felicity and abundance,—and who alone, of all the poets of his country, before and since his time, has, by the disposition of his rhymes and the structure of his verses, completely vanquished the monotony of French versification.

The father did not abandon his cherished hopes until he beheld his son arrived at the age of nineteen, when, disappointed of making him a poet, he took the more feasible resolution of making him a priest. With no other fruits of education than such a stock of Latin as a dull boy could have acquired under a village schoolmaster, La Fontaine, now in his twentieth year, entered the religious order of the "oratoire,"—in passive compliance with the wishes of his father, and the example of his brother, a respectable ecclesiastic, who was affectionately attached to the poet, and who subsequently made over to him his share of their paternal inheritance. It may be set down among the instances of La Fontaine's characteristic simplicity, that he did not perceive his utter inaptitude for such a life. He renounced the cloister and returned to society after eighteen months. "The wonder is not," says the abbe Olivet, "that La Fontaine threw off the fetters of a monastic life, but that he ever assumed them;" to which it may be added, as a second wonder, that after living, as he did, in ease and freedom, without system or control, he was able to bear them so long.

It seems to have been his destiny in early life to have conditions chosen for him by others, and adopted by himself, with a curious opposition to his habits and character. Upon his return to the paternal roof, his father proposed to him the transfer of his charge, and a marriage with Marie d'Hericart, the daughter of a friend of his family. La Fontaine accepted both, with the same unthinking docility. The duties of his mastership of the royal domains were light and few, and his wife had talents and beauty; but he neglected alike his official and domestic obligations, with an innocent unconsciousness of both which disarmed censure and silenced complaint.

It would appear that his father now thought once more of seeing him a poet, hopeless as this appeared to everybody else, and to none more than to La Fontaine. His perseverance was strangely rewarded at last. An accident, or an incident so described, called forth the latent fire at the age of twenty-two. The best company of the neighbourhood, and more particularly those who had any pretensions to literature, visited the father of La Fontaine. Among them an officer of the garrison at Château Thierry, a great admirer and reciter of verse, brought with him the poems of Malherbe, and read before young La Fontaine the ode on the assassination of Henry IV. beginning—

Between the lyric spirit of the poet, and the energy of the declaimer, La Fontaine's dormant faculty was suddenly excited. For some days he could think of nothing but the odes of Malherbe. He read them, recited them, spoke of them, with an unconscious and comic disregard of time, place, and persons. He commenced immediately writing odes in imitation of his great idol; and the happy father, on beholding his first essay, wept for joy. But if La Fontaine had written nothing else, or if he had always adhered to the same model, he would have left only the proofs of his own mediocrity, and of his father's want of taste. The choice of Malherbe was as unhappy a mistake of his peculiar genius as his previous destination had been of his character. That poet's forced thoughts and lofty diction are directly opposed to the simple graces of expression and imagination which characterise La Fontaine. He fortunately discovered his mistake, and the secret of his strength, chiefly through the advice of a judicious friend. This was a man of cultivated mind, named Pintrel, translator of the letters of Seneca. His name and his translation would doubtless have sunk into oblivion, were they not thus associated with the early studies of La Fontaine, who, ever grateful to the memory of his guide and friend, republished the forgotten translation.

La Fontaine's modern reading was hitherto confined to Malherbe,—his education, to just as much or as little Latin as was requisite for his admission to a religious order. Pintrel recommended to him the abandonment of Malherbe and verse-making for a time, and the studious perusal of Virgil, Horace, Terence, Livy, and Quintilian. He adopted this judicious counsel, and improved at the same time his knowledge of the Latin language and his taste. Horace, he long afterwards declared, in a letter to the learned Huet, bishop of Avranches, saved him from being spoiled by Malherbe.

It is a curious fact that, as La Fontaine became more conversant with those antique and eternal models of true beauty, he disrelished the French literature of his own time. He went back from the age of Louis XIV. to that of Francis I., preferring the simple and undisciplined manner of the one to the civilised, fastidious, and artificial system of the other. The mere English reader will understand the nature and the justice of this preference, by imagining an English writer, of the reign of Charles II., discarding the wits of that reign for the redundant and unadulterated literature of Elizabeth or Henry VIII.; and they who understand the ancient classics in their spirit and genius, not in external forms, will not be surprised by their producing this effect. The true antique is simple and indulgent, as well as elegant, noble, and governed by rules. It should not be forgotten, or lost sight of, however, that at this period the French literature of the age of Louis XIV. had not yet reached its distinctive character and excellence. The Balzacs, Voitures, and Cotins, with their conceits and mannerisms, had not yet been banished by the force of satire, and the example of better taste in Boileau and Molière. Boileau had not yet written his satires and art of poetry; Molière had not yet dissected, and exposed on the stage, the verses of an admired court poet of the day.[47]

La Fontaine's favourite French writers, from the commencement to the end of his literary career, were Rabelais and Clement Marot; the one for his humour, invention, and happy manner of narrating, in his episodical and most eccentric tales,—the other for his gaiety and naïveté,—and both for the archaic simplicity of their diction. He also read with delight Ariosto, Boccaccio, and Machiavelli,—the last named not only in his lighter, but more serious works. Being asked why he preferred the writers of Italy to those of his own nation, he replied, in that tone of simplicity, bordering on silliness, which obtained him the name of "bon homme," that "they diverted him more." This avowed predilection for the great writers of Italy, at a time when they were not appreciated in France, when Boileau had the impertinence to speak lightly of "Messire Arioste," proves not only the instinctive correctness of his taste, but the independence of his judgment.

Wholly ignorant of the Greek language in his youth, he was too indolent to acquire it at a later period. Translations, and the help of a friend, named Maucroix, who aided him in his studies, like Pintrel, supplied this defect,—as far as it could be supplied. La Fontaine, in return, associated Maucroix, a good scholar, an indifferent poet, and a true friend, with his own immortality, in his letters and minor poems. It may be observed, that, when he resorts to the Greek writers, he seizes their spirit with a justness which would imply a knowledge of their language. This is ascribed to his early intimacy with Racine, who was the most accomplished Greek scholar of his country, and explained as well as translated several portions of the Greek classics for the use of his friend. La Fontaine chiefly delighted in Plutarch and Plato. His partiality to the former may be easily conceived. The lives of Plutarch were calculated to charm his indolence and his imagination. There is something not quite so obvious in his choice of Plato. But the attentive reader will discover, in his fables and tales, traits of observation and ethical philosophy the most profound, as well as ingenious,—worthy of Plato, or of Machiavelli,—yet so happily disposed, and so simply expressed, as to appear perfectly in their place. The abbé Olivet mentions his having seen a copy of Plato once possessed by La Fontaine, and noted by him in such a manner as to betray the source of many of his maxims and observations.

It is curious and instructive to observe one who has been regarded as essentially the poet of nature—one supposed never to have meditated or read—thus storing his mind with knowledge from the best sources, and forming his taste after the best models. His verses even, indolent as he was, and easy and careless as they seem, were slowly and laboriously produced. He has declared this in his letters and prefaces, and it is attested by some who knew him. The fact cannot be too strongly impressed. Mistaken or misrepresented instances of uncultivated genius, and of composition without labour or length of time, too frequently stimulate ignorant and pretending mediocrity to teaze the press and the public with commonplaces, without value as without number.

La Fontaine continued some years at Château Thierry, obscure and indolent,—neglecting his charge, his family, and his fortune,—reading his favourite authors, writing verse, and translating Terence. The preface to his poem of "Adonis," and its being composed in heroic verse, for which he had an early predilection, would imply that it was written during this period. Most of his other earlier verses have been lost through his neglect of the manuscripts; but, judging by some early pieces given in his posthumous works, their disappearance is scarcely to be regretted.

The monotony of his rural life was broken only by a visit to Paris, or some village adventure. The following affair is truly curious, as illustrating the character of the man:—Some self-called friends, either in jest or malice, intimated to him that the frequent visits of an old military officer, named Poignan, at his house, compromised the reputation of madame La Fontaine, and that her husband was bound in honour to challenge him. La Fontaine, the most negligent of husbands, and the most easy and credulous of mankind, listened implicitly to their counsel, made an extraordinary effort to rise at five in the morning, girded on his sword, sallied forth, and found Poignan in bed. "My dear friend," said the old captain, "what brings you out so early? Has any misfortune happened? Is your house on fire?" "Rise, and follow me," said the poet. The captain repeated and reiterated his entreaties for some explanation, but in vain. He was obliged to leave his bed, arm himself, and follow La Fontaine, without the remotest idea of his purpose. After they had gone some short distance. La Fontaine stopped, drew his sword, and desired his companion to draw and defend himself.

The latter, having no alternative, drew in his own defence; and, with his superior address as a military man, disarmed the poet at the first pass. He now obtained an explanation. "They have told me," said La Fontaine, "that I ought to fight you, because you go to my house to see my wife." "My dear friend," replied the captain, who was past the age of gallantry, and, having neither family nor occupations, sought, in his visits, only an escape from ennui, "you have been abused, and I slandered: but, to set your mind quite at ease, I will never again cross your threshold, grievous as the privation is to me." "No, my friend," rejoined the poet, "I have satisfied them by fighting you, as they advised me, and henceforth you shall come to my house more frequently than ever." This anecdote is scarce reconcilable with the maxims of one who reduced the question of conjugal fidelity to the following dilemma:—"Quand on ne le scait pas, ce n'est rien—quand on le scait c'est peu de choses." But it has passed without question in every biographical notice of him.

La Fontaine, according to some accounts, was an unfaithful as well as negligent husband. But his rural gallantries, besides the uncertain evidence of them, are too frivolous to be noticed here.

Opinions and representations are divided as respects madame La Fontaine. According to some, her talents and beauty were marred by an imperious temper, and she was the very original of "Madame Honesta," in the tale of Belphegor, who was

La Fontaine, they add, accordingly, like the husband in Belphegor, took occasion to absent himself as often and as long as he could. Others, again, assert that the lady was gentle as she was beautiful, and that her husband bore testimony to her good qualities of temper expressly, as well as to her taste, by submitting to her his poetical labours. It may be said, that the neglect and absences of such a husband as La Fontaine form no presumption against the conjugal temper of his wife. Some anecdotes related of his negligence and distractions startle belief. Despatched by his father to Paris, on business the most important and most urgent, he met a friend, dined with him, went to the play with him, supped with him, took up his lodging for the night in his house, and returned to Château Thierry next day. "Well, you have arranged every thing satisfactorily?" said the father. La Fontaine opened wide his eyes in astonishment. He had wholly forgotten the matter till that moment! Going to Paris on another occasion, with papers, upon which depended his private fortune and his public charge, he was overtaken by the postman. "Monsieur," said the latter, "has dropped some papers on the way." "No, no," replied the poet. But the other, knowing with whom he had to do, or having discovered from the papers to whom they belonged, requested him to examine his saddle-bags; upon which he remembered, for the first time, that he even had papers to lose. In his reveries and distractions, he was unconscious not only of the lapse of time but of the inclemency of the weather. He loved reading and musing in the open air. The duchess of Bouillon left him one morning, with a Livy in his hand, pacing up and down between two rows of trees. On her return in the evening she found him still pacing and reading in the same place. What made this the more extraordinary was a heavy fall of rain in the interim, and La Fontaine having all the time had his head uncovered.

He probably owed, and the world owes it, to his acquaintance with the duchess of Bouillon, that he did not pass his life idly and obscurely at Château Thierry. This lady was one of the celebrated Mancinis, nieces of Cardinal Mazarin. She inherited her uncle's ambition, sagacity, and love of intrigue: she shared with her sisters wit, gaiety, and the graces; and, with her family, a taste for literature. Whilst living in court disgrace at Château Thierry, some verses of La Fontaine happened to meet her eye. She immediately had the poet introduced to her, and soon became his friend. She had, it is said, the merit of discerning not only his genius but its peculiar bent. La Fontaine had yet written neither tales nor fables. She advised him to devote himself to simple and playful narrations in verse. His first tales in point of time, and some of the first in point of merit, are said to have been composed by him according to her suggestions, both of the matter and the manner. He is supposed indebted to her for that grace and delicacy of perception and expression which he combined with so much of simplicity and nature. He lived in her intimate society, and that alone must have been a great advantage to him. The conversation of a woman who knew the world, loved poetry, and judged of both with discernment, must have been the best school for one so simple and inexperienced, yet so ingenious and inspired, as La Fontaine.

It may appear strange that La Fontaine, a simple bourgeois, and village poet, was thus familiarly treated by a woman of the highest rank. His charge even placed him in the relation of a servant to the duke of Bouillon, her husband, who held some superior and sinecure charge of the royal domains. But, strongly as the gradations of birth and title were marked in France, it will be found that sense, wit, and genius conferred privilege, or, like love and death, levelled all degrees. Voiture, the son of a vintner, was the companion of princes, the lover of princesses, and would never have been reminded of his birth, had he not had the weakness to be ashamed of it; and even then only in pleasantries, which he well deserved for his weakness and vanity. A court lady, provoked by his conceit, one evening, whilst "playing at proverbs," as it was called, said to him, "Come, that won't do; give us a fresh tap—(percez nous en d'un autre)."

The duchess of Bouillon, on the expiration or remission of her exile, took La Fontaine with her to Paris. He now became known to the persons most distinguished in the capital for rank and genius in the circles of his patroness, and of her sister, the celebrated duchess of Mazarin, so well known for her wit, graces, gallantries, and conjugal disputes. Both sisters continued the friends of La Fontaine through life, and exercised great influence over his writings. Their characters may be illustrated, in passing, by a single anecdote. It is related in the memoirs of the duchess of Mazarin,—written by herself, or under her immediate direction.

Their breaches of court discipline subjected them frequently to mitigated imprisonments,—sometimes at their own seats, sometimes in a convent, where the offence demanded a more serious lesson of penance and reform. Having been on one occasion consigned to the same convent they amused themselves by putting ink into the holy water. The nuns, who on their way to matins and vespers dipped their fingers in the font, and crossed their foreheads with the sacred lymph, on meeting in the chapel, beheld upon each other's brows, with surprise and terror, the dark signs of reprobation.

La Fontaine doubtless owed that finesse of expression which sometimes palliates, if it does not redeem, the freedom of his pleasantries, to his intercourse with two persons so witty, accomplished, and unconstrained.

Soon after his arrival in Paris he formed that union of friendship between him, Molière, Boileau, and Racine, which death only interrupted. These celebrated men appreciated his genius, before it yet received the stamp of public admiration, and always regarded him with affection. Boileau and Racine, indeed, amused themselves with his simplicity, and treated him sometimes with a certain air of protection. The conversation happening to turn one evening, at a supper party where they were, upon the dramatic probability of what are called stage whispers or "asides," La Fontaine said it was absurd to suppose that what was heard by the whole audience could escape a person on the stage. A discussion ensued, as it commonly happened when any question of art or literature was started, even in the highest circles,—so different from modern fashionable life. "Don't you think La Fontaine a great rogue?" said Boileau, to his nearest neighbour, aside, but loud enough to be heard, and laughed at by everybody except La Fontaine, who was thinking of something else. The argument, as well as the laugh, was immediately turned against him; but most illogically, for the fact proved not the reasonableness of "asides;" it was evidence only of La Fontaine's distractions. "Let them laugh," said Molière, "le bon homme will take a flight beyond them—(le bon homme ira plus loin qu'eux)." This prediction has been verified; La Fontaine's reputation has been uniformly spreading and rising, in spite of the disposition, even in France, during and since the latter half of the last century, to detract from the age of Louis XIV. It is worth remarking, with reference to this anecdote, that, of all the poets of that age, he and Molière alone have maintained their pre-eminence undisputed through every change of taste and time.

La Fontaine now passed his life in the coteries of the duchesses of Bouillon and Mazarin, Boileau and Racine, without giving a thought to his home or family. Boileau and Racine, both strictly religious moralists, were scandalised by his complete separation from his wife, and pointed out to him its indecency. Simple and docile, as usual, he admitted the justice of their remonstrance; said the impropriety of his conduct had never occurred to him; and, to make amends, he said he should go and see his wife without delay. He set out for Château Thierry the next morning, and came back the succeeding day. His friends made their inquiries respecting madame La Fontaine. "I did not see her," said he. "How," said they, "not see her? was she from home?" "Yes; she was gone to prayers; and the servant, not knowing me, would not let me stay in the house till she returned." In this extremity the poor poet, shut out of his own house, went to that of a friend, where he dined, supped, and slept; and from which he started for Paris next morning, without seeing his wife, or making his house a second visit.

The most imperative of all motives, however, the want of money, sometimes sent him to Château Thierry, for the purpose of selling part of his estate, to provide for his expenses at Paris. His improvident practice, of consuming the principal after the interest was gone, "mangant son fonds aprez son revenu," as he himself expressed it, together with his wife's want of economy—for in this at least they perfectly agreed,—would have soon left him destitute, if he had not become known to the celebrated and unfortunate Foucquet. That prodigal financier and magnificent patron, upon being made acquainted with the genius, character, and wants of La Fontaine, settled on him a liberal pension, to be paid quarterly, on the condition of a quarterly quittance in verse; and this condition he religiously fulfilled. His pension, or rather his gratitude, dictated to him some of the most beautiful of his smaller pieces. He celebrated and ministered to the fêtes and gallantries, and sang the groves, gardens, and fountains, of Vaux,—that princely residence, which Foucquet adorned with all that wealth, prodigality, and the arts could produce; and which, it has been supposed, contributed not a little to his ruin, by provoking the jealous or envious pride of Louis XIV.

Though La Fontaine's acknowledgments are grateful, they are not servile. Whatever appears exaggerated at the present day fell far short of the tone of his contemporaries, and is moreover nobly borne out by his fidelity in his patron's memorable disgrace.

Foucquet provoked, not only the displeasure, but the personal jealousy and vengeance of Louis XIV., by rivalling him in princely magnificence at Vaux; and in gallantry, it has been said, by making pretensions to the royal mistress La Vallière[48]; yet had La Fontaine not only the generosity to adhere to him, but the courage, for such it was, to solicit his pardon of Louis XIV., in an elegy full of touching pathos and philosophy. Alluding to the fickleness of fortune and court favour, he says:—

To move Louis he brings before him the example of Henry IV.—

Louis, however, alike insensible to justice, mercy, and poetry, changed, by a mockery of commutation, the minister's sentence of banishment into solitary confinement for life. Colbert, the enemy and successor of Foucquet, could not forgive the crime of fidelity to a fallen patron in a poet, and took away La Fontaine's pension.

La Fontaine, it has been observed, was in his twenty-third year before he gave the least indication of the poetic faculty. He had passed his fortieth before his genius and reputation attained their full height and splendour. A small volume, entitled "Contes et Merveilles en vers," published with his name, in 1664, determined his place as a poet, established his supremacy over all fabulists, modern and ancient, and formed an epoch in French literature. His fortune did not improve with his fame. It is true that his celebrity made him known to the prince of Condé and the duke and abbé de Villars, by whom, as well as by the duchesses of Bouillon and Mazarin, he was occasionally and liberally supplied; but his want of all order and economy rendered their liberality unavailing, because it was irregular and occasional.

He joined in the universal pæan of the day to Louis XIV. His tale of "Psyche and Cupid" is disfigured by episodic descriptions of the magnificence of Versailles, with a due seasoning of compliment to the great king; but he continued unpatronised, even after the death of Colbert, whose injustice to La Fontaine is a stain upon his otherwise illustrious memory. The neglect, or, it may be termed, the exception of him by Louis, who was so munificent to other men of genius, has been accounted for.[49] That monarch admired and rewarded only those talents which ministered to his pride or his pleasures—to the splendours of his court or government. He had a taste only for the grand, the gorgeous, and the adulatory. Boileau owed the royal favour to two indifferent odes much more than to his satires, epistles, art of poetry, and Lutrin; and Molière, to those court ballets in which Louis danced, rather than to his dramatic chefs d'œuvre. Louis XIV. had the same distaste for La Fontaine as a poet and Teniers as a painter; and, from the same principle,—he could not admire humble subjects, treated in a true and simple, however charming, style. He would not condescend to understand the language of "Jean Lapin" and "Maître Corbeau." La Fontaine offered him incense in his way; but it was not of the kind acceptable to the idol; and he continued neglected, even when, in an evil hour, he sang the revocation of the edict of Nantes. La Fontaine was also in bad odour with the intriguing devotees of the court; and Louis, a weak bigot, with all his arrogance and pride, may have been indisposed towards him on this account, from their suggestions or his own.

The loss of his pension thus remained unsupplied; and he continued once more carelessly spending "son fonds aprez son revenu," when he came under the notice of the most accomplished, enlightened, and amiable princess of her time—Henrietta of England, daughter of Charles I., most unworthily married to the duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV. She attached him to her suite, as one of the gentlemen of her household, with a salary to receive, and no service, beyond some volunteer verses, to perform. But La Fontaine had not long enjoyed her patronage when the princess died, under suspicion of poison, regretted by all France, her husband excepted; and La Fontaine was once more in distress—if that to which he was wholly insensible can be so termed. He seems to have derived from nature the happy or unhappy insensibility to the accidents of life, which some ancient philosophers attained only through the severest exercise of reason and discipline.

It appears to have been his fortune to be indebted to the discernment and kindness of women. Among the persons uniting high rank to a taste for literature, with whom he became acquainted at Paris, was madame de la Sablière. This accomplished and kind-hearted woman, perceiving La Fontaine's utter inability to regulate the economy of the simplest household, relieved him of all care at once by giving him an apartment in her house. Here he passed twenty (the happiest) years of his life, relieved from all anxiety,—his wants supplied, and his humour indulged, with the utmost attention and kindness. Some of his pieces are dedicated to his benefactress, and he has celebrated her name in verse, but with reserve and delicacy. Madame de la Sablière had the good taste to control the poet's expression of his feelings in their particular relation to each other.

He composed during this period the most popular of his tales, "Joconde," and dedicated it to madame de la Sablière. It is the most justly admired of all his tales; and, being imitated from Ariosto, placed him in a state of rivalry with the great Italian poet. An officer in the household of the duke of Orleans, named Bouillon, gave at the same time a rival version, and persons were found courtly or tasteless enough to prefer it to La Fontaine's. The question was even made the subject of a wager; and the arbiter appealed to declined giving an opinion. Boileau did indignant justice to genius and his friend, and Bouillon's "Joconde" was no more heard of. "La Fontaine," says Boileau, "imitated Ariosto as Virgil imitated Homer, and Tasso Virgil; Bouillon like a trembling valet, who dared not put one foot before the other without his master's leave." He even insinuates that La Fontaine had treated the subject in a manner superior to Ariosto himself. There is, it is true, in La Fontaine's manner, a simplicity, and ease, and graceful levity, somewhat more suitable to the matter and to a mere fabulist. But those who are acquainted with the Italian poet will consider any deficiency of these minor graces in him much more than redeemed by his superior richness, and variety of invention, and vigour of imagination.

The society of madame de la Sablière comprised princes, nobles, poets, and philosophers. She cultivated science as well as literature,—but in secret. Bernier, who also had an apartment in her house, gave La Fontaine some notions in natural philosophy. It was under this influence, whilst his head was filled with physical science, that he wrote his poem on Jesuits' bark (Le Quinquina)—a dull production, on a barren subject; which, however, was not then quite so uninviting as it may appear now. Bark had just performed what were deemed marvellous cures on Louis XIV. and Colbert, and it was sold by the Jesuits at its weight in gold. Colbert had the littleness to be unjust to La Fontaine; but the poet had the magnanimity to be just to the minister. He alludes to him in this poem in a tone of manly, independent, and merited praise.

La Fontaine added considerably to the number of his fables and tales, and wrote several dramatic pieces, whilst he lived under the roof of madame de la Sablière. His dramas, chiefly operas and light comedies, with an attempt or two at tragedy, are below mediocrity. He wanted the dramatic instinct. There are scenes of easy graceful dialogue, but strung together without art or interest. Some were written by him in partnership with the comedian Champmélé, husband of the celebrated actress of that name, who played in the tragedies and figures in the life of Racine, and in the letters of madame de Sévigné. It is told of him that, whilst sitting in the pit, during the first performance of one of his own operas, he fell asleep! But this is too much, even for La Fontaine; and it should not be forgotten, that an opera was the cause of the only satire he ever wrote, and of one of the only two quarrels he ever had. The celebrated Lulli obtained his easy promise to write him an opera on the story of Daphne, teased him until it was completed, and then capriciously adopted the "Proserpine" of Quinault. La Fontaine, now an old man, or, as he called himself, "un enfant à barbe grise," a child with a grey beard, knew, for the first time, what it was to feel personal resentment, and wrote the satire entitled "Le Florentin." It is merely a narrative of the affair between him and Lulli, in the manner of his tales. But he was soon and easily reconciled; and he complained afterwards that the little gall in him was stirred by others on the occasion.

The only symptom of literary ambition ever shown by La Fontaine was his desire to become a member of the French academy. A vacancy having occurred in 1683, he became a candidate. The devotees at court opposed and denounced him as a mere writer of frivolous and licentious tales, fit only to rank with Clement Marot and Rabelais, and unworthy of a place in that grave and learned body. Yet was he elected the successor of the great Colbert, whose death had caused the vacancy, and in opposition to Boileau, by a majority of sixteen to seven. Louis XIV. never interfered in the elections; but his sanction was necessary before the elected candidate could be received. He withheld his approbation for several months, from his dislike of La Fontaine, and his pique at the rejection of Boileau, then his chief eulogist and historiographer. So anxious was La Fontaine during the interval, that he solicited the interest of the royal mistress, madame de Montespan, through her sister, madame de Thiars, and addressed a supplicatory ballad to Louis XIV. Another vacancy soon occurred; Boileau was elected; and a deputation of the academy waited on Louis to acquaint him. His reply was, "Your choice of M. Boileau will be universally approved, and you may now receive La Fontaine. He has promised to be good—(il a promise d'être sage").

He certainly wrote fewer tales henceforth; but it is doubtful whether this did not proceed more from indolence than the promise of reformation. The private sittings of the academy, also, "diverted" him, as he expressed it, during those hours which he before consumed in diverting himself with writing verse. His becoming a member of the academy led to his second and last quarrel, and in a manner truly worthy of La Fontaine. This authentic fact goes a great way in establishing the credit of other anecdotes deemed untrue or exaggerated from their improbability. The French academy was at this time engaged in its great undertaking of a dictionary which should fix the French language. The abbé Furetière, then a popular writer, and one of "the forty," announced a dictionary of the French language in his own name. He was immediately charged with pirating the common stock. A ferment was excited in the academy, and throughout the republic of letters in France. Furetière, publicly arraigned, defended himself with keen and virulent personalities, and, after several discussions, was expelled. La Fontaine was one of the minority in his favour, and meant to give him his vote; but unluckily, in one of his usual distractions, dropped his ball, by mistake, in the rejecting compartment of the balloting-box. Furetière would not pardon the blunder, and attacked him bitterly. After an exchange of epigrams, which did credit to neither. La Fontaine thought of the affair no more; but was never reconciled.

Furetière, in his vengeance, revealed the secrets of the learned assembly. If his account maybe relied on, the process by which the academy proposed its famous dictionary was truly laughable. "He only is right," says Furetière, "who talks loudest: one makes a long speech upon some trifle; another echoes the nonsense of his predecessor; sometimes three or four talk at the same time. When five or six are in close committee, one reads, another delivers his opinion, two are chatting together, a fifth looks over some dictionary which may happen to be on the table, and the sixth is sleeping." The treachery of the disclosure was condemned, but its truth generally admitted; and the private sittings of the academy were the theme of public ridicule and amusement, like the consultations of physicians, so pleasantly treated by Molière.

Whatever excuse there may have been for Furetière's bitterness against his adversaries and the academy, there was none for his attack on La Fontaine. The blunder was provoking, but committed most innocently. La Fontaine's character placed his good faith beyond all doubt. His singularities were so well known that his mistakes and eccentricities were chartered in society, and excused even by Louis XIV. Having been introduced to the royal presence to present one of his works, he searched, and searched in vain, for the votive volume, and then frankly told the king that he had forgotten it! "Let it be another time, M. de la Fontaine," said the monarch, with a graciousness and good humour which did him honour, and dismissing the poet with a purse of gold. This misadventure did not quicken his attention even for the moment: he left his purse of gold behind him in the carriage.

The stories of his careless apathy, and absences of mind, are numberless. Meeting, at a large dinner party, a young man with whose conversation he seemed pleased, somebody asked his opinion of him. "He is a young man of sense and promise," said La Fontaine. "Why, it is your own son," said the questioner. "Ah! I am very glad of it," rejoined the father, with the utmost indifference. He had forgotten that he even had a son; who fortunately had been taken charge of and educated by others. La Fontaine treated religion with the same indifference as all other subjects, however serious. Racine took him one day to an extraordinary service, on one of the festivals of the Roman catholic church. Knowing that the service would be long, and apprehending the effect upon La Fontaine, he gave him a small bible to read, as a preventative against sleeping, or some other indecorum. The book happening to open before him at the lesser prophets, his attention soon became wholly absorbed by the prayer of the Jews in Baruch. It took the same possession of his imagination in his advanced age as the ode of Malherbe in his youth. His first question to everybody was, "Have you read Baruch? Do you know he was a man of genius?" This was his common expression for some time to all whom he met, without distinction of persons, from a buffoon to a bishop.

It was one of his singularities, that, when anything took his fancy, he could think of nothing else for the time; and he introduced his favourite topic, or favourite author, in a manner at once unseasonable and comic. One day, whilst in company with the abbé Boileau, his head full of Rabelais, whom he had just been reading, he abruptly asked the grave ecclesiastic which he thought had more wit, Rabelais or St. Austin. Some were shocked, others laughed; and the abbé, when recovered from his surprise, replied, "M. de la Fontaine, you have put on your stocking the wrong side out," which was really the fact. Wishing to testify his respect for the celebrated Arnaud, he proposed dedicating to him one of the least scrupulous of his tales, in which a monk is made to cite scripture in a manner far from edifying. Boileau and Racine had the utmost difficulty in making him comprehend that such an offering would be an outrage to the respected and rigid Jansenist. He was nearly as absent as the man who forgot in the evening that he had been married in the morning. It occurred to him one day to go and dine with a friend. On his knocking at the door, a servant in mourning informed him that his friend had been buried ten days before, and reminded him that he had himself assisted at the funeral.

The humour and fancy which abound in his tales, and his reputation among the men of genius of his time, made him an object of curiosity. He was sought and shown in company as "a lion," if one may use that ephemeral term. A farmer-general invited a large party "to meet the celebrated La Fontaine." They came prepared to hear him talk like "Joconde," or tell such stories as "The Matron of Ephesus." Poor La Fontaine eat, drank, never opened his mouth for any other purpose, and soon rose, to attend, he said, a meeting of the academy. "The distance is short: you will be too early," said the host. "I'll take the longest way," replied La Fontaine. Madame de la Sablière at one time discharged her whole establishment whilst La Fontaine was residing in her house. "What!" said somebody, "have you kept none?" "None," replied the lady, "except mes trois bêtes[50],—my cat, my dog, and La Fontaine." Such was her idea of his thoughtless and more than childish simplicity. It will hardly cause surprise that such a man never had a study or a library. He read and wrote when and where he felt disposed; and never thought of being provided with any other books than those he was immediately using.

After twenty years of unwearied kindness, he was deprived of the society and care of his benefactress, and soon after of the home which he had enjoyed in her house. The circumstances present one of the most curious views of French manners and character at the time. Madame de la Sablière, a married woman, with an independent fortune, lived on terms of civility with her husband, who scarcely merited even this, and maintained with the anacreontic poet. La Fare, that ambiguous but recognised relation of tender friendship, into which no one looked beyond its decorous exterior, and which created neither scandal nor surprise. La Fare, after an attachment of some years, deserted his "friend" for the gaming table and the actress Champmélé, who turned so many heads in her day. This desertion so preyed upon the mind of madame de la Sablière that she sought refuge in devotion and a convent. Her husband, a rhyming marquis, who passed his life in writing madrigals upon his frivolous amours, was deserted about the same time by a mistress, and took it so to heart that he poisoned himself—at the romantic age of sixty-five! This event had such an effect upon madame de la Sablière, joined with her own private sorrows, that she did not long survive him, and La Fontaine was once more thrown helpless and homeless upon the world.

The duchess of Bouillon was at this time in England with her sister, the duchess of Mazarin, who had taken up her residence there to avoid breathing the same air with her husband, when tormenting him had ceased to be an amusement to her. The poet St. Evremond, her friend, had, also, been long established in England. Learning the melancholy state in which La Fontaine was left by the death of madame de la Sablière, the three invited him over to England, with an assurance of being well provided for. Some English persons of distinction, who had known La Fontaine at Paris, and admired his genius, among them lords Godolphin and Danby, and lady Hervey, joined in the invitation. La Fontaine, now infirm and old, and at all times the most indolent of men, could not bring himself to make the effort. He, however, rather hesitated than declined. An opportune present of fifty louis from the duke of Burgundy, or rather in his name, for he was then but a child, decided his refusal.

Notwithstanding this temporary supply, he would soon have been destitute, if he had not become indebted once more for a home and its comforts to the friendship of a woman. Madame d'Hervart, the wife of a rich financier, who had known him at the house of madame de la Sablière, offered him a similar asylum, in her own. Whilst on her way to make the proposal she met him in the street, and said, without preface or form, "La Fontaine, come and live in my house." "I was just going, madam," said the poet, with as much indifference as if his doing so was the simplest thing in the world; and this relation of kindness and confidence subsisted without change to his death. The protection and proofs of friendship which La Fontaine received from the sex reflect honour upon the memory of his benefactresses. But his is by no means a single instance. An interesting volume might be written upon the obligations which unprotected talents, literature, and the arts are under to the discerning taste and generosity of Frenchwomen.

La Fontaine's health had been declining for some time; but whether from his having no immediate apprehension of death, or from his habitual indolence, he manifested no sense of the truths and duties of religion. The idea of his dying impenitent agitated the court and the sorbonne. It was arranged that father Poujet, a person of note as a controversialist and director of consciences, should make him a visit, under pretence of mere civility. The abbé Nicéron, in his memoirs of men of letters, describes this interview. The wily confessor, after conversing some time on ordinary topics, introduced that of religion with an adroitness wholly superfluous with so simple a soul as La Fontaine. They spoke of the Bible. "La Fontaine," says Nicéron, "who was never irreligious in principle, said to him, with his usual naïveté, 'I have been lately reading the New Testament: it is a good book—yes, upon my faith! a very good book; but there is one article to which I cannot subscribe—the eternity of punishment. I do not comprehend how this can be consistent with the goodness of God.' Father Poujet," continues Nicéron, "discussed the subject with him fully; and, after ten or twelve visits and discussions, succeeded in convincing La Fontaine of all the truths of religion."

His state soon became so alarming that he was called upon to make a general confession, preparatory to his receiving the sacrament. Certain reparations and expiations were to be previously made; and father Poujet, with all his logic and adroitness, had some difficulty in obtaining them. The first sacrifice required of him was, that he should abandon the proceeds of an edition of his tales, then publishing under his direction in Holland; the publication of them in France having been prohibited since 1677. He readily consented for himself; but wished to make over the profits to the poor, as more consonant with humanity, and more grateful in the eyes of God, than yielding them to a griping rogue of a Dutch publisher. The priest convinced him that "the wages of sin" could not with propriety be applied to the service of God and of charity. He gave up the point; and such was the satisfaction caused by his conversion at court, that a sum, equal to what he should have received for his tales, was sent to him in the name of the young duke of Burgundy, "who thought it unreasonable that La Fontaine should be the poorer for having done his duty." According to some accounts, this would appear to be the same donation of fifty louis already mentioned; and it is most probable. The devotees of the court were much more likely to reward the conversion than relieve the distress of La Fontaine, at a time when the tone was given by père la Chaise and madame de Maintenon.

He was next required to consign to the flames, with his own hands, a manuscript opera, which he intended to have performed. The sacrifice was not consented to without some qualms of authorship, even by La Fontaine. The last condition was the hardest of all,—that he should ask pardon of God and the church, publicly, for having scandalised both in the publication of his tales. La Fontaine, with all his indolence and simplicity, and enfeebled as he was by sickness and age, resisted the demand of a public reparation, in spite of all the arguments and artifices of the confessor. It was agreed between them to appeal to the sorbonne. A deputation of three doctors accordingly waited on La Fontaine, and took part, as might be anticipated, with the confessor. They argued and disputed, but the poet still held out against making satisfaction publicly. An old nurse, who attended him, seeing the pitiless zeal with which they fatigued and teased the poor poet, said to them. "Don't torment him, my reverend fathers; it is not ill-will in him, but stupidity, poor soul; and God Almighty will not have the heart to damn him for it." They, however, did persevere, and gained their point. A deputation from the academy was called in to witness La Fontaine's public reparation, given as follows by Nicéron:—"It is but too public and notorious that I have had the misfortune to compose a book of infamous tales. In composing it I had no idea of the work being so pernicious as it proves to be. My eyes have been opened, and I confess that it is an abominable book: I am most sorry that I ever wrote and published it; and I ask pardon of God and the church for having done so. I wish the work had never proceeded from my pen, and it were in my power wholly to suppress it. I promise solemnly, in the presence of my God, whom, though unworthy, I am going to receive, that I will never contribute to the impression or circulation of it: and I renounce, now and for ever, all profit from an edition which I unfortunately consented should be given in Holland."

There appears no reasonable doubt of a public reparation of some sort having been made by La Fontaine; but that above cited differs so entirely from his turn of thought and style as to suggest a suspicion of its having been fabricated or dictated to him. The report of his death was circulated with that of his conversion; and Linière, a satirical poet of the day, wrote the following epigram upon him and Pelisson, who had died shortly before:—