Part 2

Whilst this intimacy lasted, La Fontaine frequently took Racine and Boileau to Château-Thierry, whither he went from time to time to sell a few acres of land, in order to enable him to balance his receipts against his expenditure. The amiable Maucroix, another Epicurean, arrived in his turn to complete the revel which was now carried on at Rheims, to which city he gladly enticed his dear La Fontaine, who desired nothing better than to follow him thither, for, as he has himself told us,

"Of all fair cities do I most love Rheims, At once the beauty and the pride of France."

Madame de la Fontaine soon became weary of this life of dissipation, and ceased to follow her volatile husband to Paris. The separation between the spouses was effected, if not without disputes, at any rate without any legal process. Racine frequently urged his friend to become reconciled to his wife, and it was in compliance with such counsels that he made that celebrated journey to Château-Thierry, from which he returned without having even seen Madame de La Fontaine. The anecdote is well known. "Well, have you seen your wife? Are you reconciled?" "I went to see her; but she was in retirement." "Ah! how charmingly naive!" exclaim the biographers; "what a delightful illustration of the poet's habitual bonhomie and abstraction!" Alas! it is nothing of the kind. La Fontaine knew what he was about. He had set out in compliance with his friend's wish, and, in fulfilment of his promise, he had gone to his house door; but, having found no one at home, he had quietly returned, only too glad that he had redeemed his promise, and avoided an interview which he dreaded. Then, returning to his friends, he put them off with a childish excuse, at which he would not be the last to laugh with all his heart. The whole incident is quite in accordance with the man's character. His weak resolution induced him at first to yield, but the natural buoyancy of his spirit recovered itself, and triumphed in the end.

La Fontaine was now more than forty years of age, and, with the exception of his frigid imitation of Terence's comedy, and his admirable elegy on Fouquet, he had produced nothing which proved that he was anything more than a pleasant and elegant versifier. We must remark, however, that he obtained at this time the position of Gentleman-in-Waiting to the Dowager Duchess of Orleans, widow of Gaston, brother of Louis XIII. The little court of the Luxembourg, at least, if not that of the grand King's, was thrown open to La Fontaine, and he was received there on terms of the pleasantest intimacy. The office to which he was appointed was not merely honorary, and it justified his acceptance of liberalities of which he was not a little in need. The Duchess of Bouillon also became a patroness of our poet, whom she had met at Château-Thierry; and he was now engaged by this princess of easy manners and voluptuous disposition, to apply his talents to, the imitation in verse of those somewhat too gallant tales which Ariosto and Boccaccio borrowed from our Trouvères. This advice, eagerly followed, opened up to La Fontaine a new vein of his genius, and threw him upon apologue as one of the means of poetic expression. "Joconde" was his first effort in this style; and this tale, freely rendered from Ariosto, was the cause of a literary discussion, in which Boileau broke a lance in the service of his friend with another imitator against whom La Fontaine was then pitted, and who has since been forgotten: it was like Pradon being compared to Racine. The success of this first effort encouraged the author to make fresh ones, and he speedily produced new tales, as ingenious and indecent as the first. Such fame as Fontaine acquired by these tales must not be dilated on; for, although there was nothing in the corrupt ingenuity of the pleasant poet that was deliberately vicious, and although he was sincerely astonished that, on account of a few rather free narratives, he should be accused of corrupting the innocence of youth, we must nevertheless hold that the accusation was well founded.

Recognised and appreciated as La Fontaine's talents now were, he would doubtless have been the object of some of those distinguishing marks of favour which Louis XIV. was ever ready to bestow upon men of genius, had not his irregular mode of life, and the character of some of his later productions, offended the susceptibilities of the monarch and those of the severe Colbert, the administrator of his liberalities. That La Fontaine should have once been the friend of Fouquet is not sufficient to account for this denial of royal favour, since Pélisson, the eloquent defender of the Surintendant, was himself at this period the object of distinguished royal patronage. The fall of Fouquet was, indeed, so terribly complete and hopeless, that his enemies could well afford to allow his friends to shelter themselves under the cloak of amnesty. To say, as some have done, that La Fontaine was neglected because he belonged to the "party of the opposition," is idle; for, in the first place, le bonne homme had not the courage to resist the majority, and in the second place, there was nothing he more eagerly desired than to be one of the Court poets. Indeed, he seized every opportunity of celebrating the glories of the reign of Louis the Great.

The real truth is, that he was treated coldly on account of the licentiousness, equally great, both of his verses and his mode of life, at a time when he would merely have had to promise amendment for the future, to have been a participator in the royal benefits, and to have been made a member of the Academy.

La Fontaine had not a conscience entirely pure, and, accordingly, strove to hide his misdoings under cover of works perfectly irreproachable. Uninvited, he now proposed to himself the task of amusing and instructing the Dauphin, whose education had then commenced. It was an honourable method of paying homage to the Court, and of atoning for past errors. The elegance of Phædrus and the simplicity of Æsop had already fascinated him--he was ambitious of imitating them; but although thoroughly skilled in the art of narrating, he never suspected that he was about to eclipse his models. He set himself below Phædrus, and Fontenelle has declared that his doing so was one of his blunders--a piquant word, which we may translate in this instance as "a sincere and even exaggerated admiration for consecrated names." A feeling of and a taste for perfection are, moreover, the surest curb-reins to self-love. The playfulness, delicacy, and ingenuity of La Fontaine's spirit, as well as the natural simplicity of his character, preserved him from the illusions of vanity, and caused him even to misconceive the real value of his genius. It was necessary, then, in the first place, that his true vocation should be revealed to him, and actual fame alone could show that his talent had raised him to the first rank.

His first collection of fables, arranged in six books, appeared in 1668, under the modest title of "Æsop's Fables: Translated into Verse by M. de la Fontaine." The work was dedicated to the Dauphin, and this dedication reveals to us the poet's secret intention in the publication of the volume. At a later period we find him taking a more direct part in the education of the grandson of Louis XIV., through the medium of Fénélon. And now, as we have followed so many others in judging of these inimitable compositions, we remark how slowly La Fontaine's talent developed itself, the better to attain the highest state of maturity. If the poet, on the one hand, careless as to fortune, allowed his patrimony to melt away, let us observe how much time, pure air, and sunlight he has given to the peaceful cultivation of his genius. The tree has been covered with branches, the leaves in due season have adorned them, and then fruits the most delicious have appeared craving to be gathered. Oh, careless great one! full well had you the right to spurn all vulgar cares; to devour, as you have said, your capital together with your revenue, since you stored up for yourself another capital, which will give you immortal wealth!

La Fontaine's improvidence may be attributed in some degree to his friends, who seem never to have failed him in any necessity. When death had deprived him of the protection of the Duchess of Orleans, he was immediately adopted, so to speak, by the Duchess de la Sablière, whose generosity provided for all his wants, and whose delicate kindness anticipated all his wishes. It was, doubtless, the gratitude with which this lady inspired him, that drew from La Fontaine's heart those verses, which so many others have since recited in a spirit of bitterness--

"Oh, what it is to have a faithful friend," &c.

And here we have another of those names on which one loves to dwell so fondly. Madame de la Sablière was a genuine patroness of philosophers and men of letters. Her house was always open to them, and her fortune encouraged them to prosecute their labours. Sauveur, Roberval, and Bernier experienced her discreet liberality, which disguised itself only that it might be the more freely bestowed. She loved knowledge, and possessed it without the desire of display; she had a passion for doing good, yet she employed an innocent art in concealing it. The devotion which she displayed in an unholy love was, for this woman, otherwise so irreproachable, only a transition to those transports of sincere piety which occupied the closing years of her life. La Fontaine was, up to the seventy-second year of his life, the familiar genius of Madame de la Sablière's mansion, and passed more than twenty years in it in complete tranquillity, at first as one of a most select circle of wits and philosophers, and afterwards as an independent host, doing himself the honours of the house to a rather miscellaneous circle of visitors, which he gathered round him during the prolonged religious seclusions of his patroness, who latterly devoted herself entirely to care for the safety of her soul.

La Fontaine had no longer any need to secure fresh protectors. His destiny was secured, for, like the rat in the fable,

"Provisions and lodgings! what wanted he more?"

We may now, therefore, be as tranquil on his account as he was himself, merely observing that he took advantage of this security to deliver himself up with a species of fury to the demon of poetry, which never deserted him. His first fables were received with favour, and when he published others he met with a good fortune which is accorded to but few poets, for even the later ones increased his fame. However, this, his favourite species of writing, had not completely absorbed his attention; the romance of "Psyche," and some theatrical pieces, occupied his time at intervals. "Psyche," which still amuses us, amused him also much. He worked at it when he wished to rest from other labours, and also at length completed it. The "Songe de Vaux" was less happy; but how could he recall the enchantments and fairy lore of that château where Fouquet had passed the last years of his life in hopeless captivity? Versailles had surpassed it in magnificence, and La Fontaine employed his descriptive talents in describing the palace whose increasing marvels, which struck every eye, he attached incidentally to the plot of his allegorical fable, already complicated with interlocutors, who may be easily recognised under feigned names as Molière, Boileau, Racine, and La Fontaine. The publication of this romance, of which the prose is elegant, and which also contains many excellent verses, took place soon after that of the first fables. It was received with much favour, and Molière, assisted by Corneille and De Quinault, extracted from it an opera, the music of which was composed by Lulli.

La Fontaine's dramatic attempts were, it must be confessed, seldom happy; but Furetierè certainly exaggerates when he tells us that managers never ventured to give a second representation of his pieces, for fear of being pelted. However this may be, the theatre had a great attraction for La Fontaine, and the society of actors a still greater. When Madame de la Sablière's drawing-room appeared too serious to him, he would go to amuse himself at Champmeslé's, and, whilst Racine shaped the talents of this great actress, La Fontaine assisted her husband in the composition of mediocre comedies, in which we can find but few traces of the poet's skill. It is on this account that he has been made to share the responsibility of the authorship of "Ragotin," a dull imitation of the "Roman Comique." There is little more, indeed, to be said in favour of "Je vous prends sans Verts," which has been attributed to him, and which we may surrender to Champmeslé, who will not gain much, while La Fontaine would certainly lose by it. Of all the pieces put on the stage by Champmeslé, there is only one that we should wish to be able, with a clear conscience, to assign to La Fontaine, and that is "Le Florentin," an amusing little comedy, which contains one scene worthy of Molière. The share which La Fontaine took, or is asserted to have taken, in the composition of these comedies, is difficult to determine. What there can be no doubt of is, that at one time he formed the design of writing a tragedy, and this, perhaps, at the instigation of Racine, who could never refrain from a joke, especially at the expense of his friends. Achilles was the hero selected by our poet; but he prudently paused after having made a commencement.

This brings us to the mention of La Fontaine's one great, solitary, and brief fit of anger. Always ready to yield to the advice of his friends, he imprudently listened to Lulli, who had importuned him to produce, at a very short notice, the libretto of an opera. The music was to be marvellous, the Court would applaud to the skies the author and the composer, and the poet would be free of the theatre, and have acquired all the rights of dramatic authorship. What a temptation was this! La Fontaine courageously set himself to work under the guidance of Lulli, who urged him forward, and day by day made fresh suggestions. The poet readily obeyed the spur, and even yielded to the sacrifice of some of his verses; but he had scarcely finished, when he discovered that his perfidious employer had passed over, with all his musical baggage, to the Proserpine of Quinault. We may judge of the poet's rage. The four months' labour utterly lost; the nights passed without sleep; the treachery of the instigation; the heartless abandonment! Ah! how many causes of complaint had the poet against this traitor! La Fontaine could not contain himself, and wrote a satire, compound of gall and bile, in which he complains of having been made a fool of. This fit of passion, however, did not last long. Madame de Thianges brought about a reconciliation between the culprit and the victim, and that without much difficulty, for, after all, Lulli was an excellent companion, and La Fontaine was incapable of nursing anger long. To be angry was a trouble to him, and consequently he never kept up a sense of ill-feeling for any length of time. His friends might become estranged from or quarrel with each other; but he remained on the best of terms with them, and saw them separately. One might have thought that he had taken for his motto the verse of the old poet, Garnier--

"To love I am plighted, but never to hate."

The poetical excursions of La Fontaine out of his own domain added nothing to his renown, and were scarcely perceived amidst the rays of his glory as a fabulist--the title by which he is known to posterity; and it may be added, that the Fable, as it is fashioned by La Fontaine, is one of the happiest creations of the human mind. It is, properly speaking, a charm , as he has said, for in it all the resources of poetry are enclosed in one frame. La Fontaine's apologue is connected with the épopée by the narrative, with the descriptive style by his pictures, with the drama by the play of various personages, and the representation of various characters, and with didactic poetry by the precepts which he inculcates. Nor is this all; for the poet frequently speaks in his own person. The supreme charm of his compositions consists in the vitality with which they are imbued. The illusion is complete, and passes from the poet who has been first subjected to it, to the spectator, whom it entrances. Homer is the only poet who possesses this characteristic in the same degree. La Fontaine has always before his eyes all that he describes, and his description is an actual painting. His spirit, gently moved by the spectacle which at first it enjoys alone, reproduces it in vivid pictures. That simplicity for which he has been praised exists but in the nature of the images which he has chosen as the best means of representing his thoughts, or, rather, his emotions. Properly speaking, we do not so much read La Fontaine's fables as gaze at them; we do not know them by heart, but we have them constantly before our eyes. Let us take as an example "Death and the Woodman," since on this subject two great poets have weakly contended against our fabulist. In this laughable rivalry Boileau and J. B. Rousseau are killed by the spirit of abstraction; whilst La Fontaine triumphs by means of the image which glows before the eyes and penetrates the heart. If we add to the constant attractiveness of living reality the pleasure caused by the representation of humanity under animal symbols, we shall have before us the two active principles of the universal interest excited by La Fontaine's fables--I mean illusion , which excites the imagination; and allusion , which has a reduplicate action on the mind.

We do not pretend to assert that there were no French fabulists in France before La Fontaine. The Trouvères were fabulists, and one of the most remarkable specimens of the literature of the middle ages, the "Romance of the Fox," is a genuine study of feudal society, in the guise of personages selected from the animal kingdom. The resemblance of men to animals in this work is complete, and this strange épopée derives its interest from the allusion , which was so remarkable a characteristic of La Fontaine's fables. But our poet never drew from this abundant source, and was also unaware that Marie de France in the thirteenth century had adopted, in imitation of Æsop, the simplicity of treatment which he himself had surpassed, and that other poets of the same period had not only treated of similar subjects, but had written verses on them, which he reproduced in the full confidence that they were original. La Fontaine drew his materials directly from the Greek, the Latin, or the Oriental, Æsop, Phædrus, and Pilpay were his models; but it must be observed that he might have found amongst French writers guides to that perfection which he alone has attained. P. Blanchet, in "L'Avocat Patelin," has inserted the fable of "The Crow and the Fox," to the first of whom he has given the name of Maitre, adopted by La Fontaine. Clément Marot wrote a little drama, full of grace and playfulness, on the subject of the fable of "The Rat and the Lion;" and Régnier has illumined with his genius the oft-told story of "The Wolf and the Horse." La Fontaine knew no other predecessors, amongst modern poets, than the three above mentioned, and he was at no pains to imitate them. In spite of some few scattered similarities between his writings and theirs, La Fontaine was, on the whole, completely original.

La Fontaine's originality does not consist solely in the particular bent of his imagination, but also in his language. It is true that his style bears the impress of the purity and elegance of the language of his age, and is characterised by that finish which is common to all the great writers of his time; but there is also a peculiar richness, suppleness, and naturalness about his idiom. There is, indeed, a Gallic tone in his writings, which is to be found in the works of no other authors of the same period, and which, though derived from old sources, gives to his works a surprising air of novelty. The use of old words and phrases, which he has revived, is a genuine conquest over the lapse of time, and a convenient method of setting forth ideas which would have been unsuited to the over-strained dignity of classic language. Marot, Rabelais, and Bonaventure des Periers, all contributed to enable La Fontaine to make use of the best colloquial language that has ever been employed by any writer; but La Fontaine's thefts are never discoverable; they blend with such exquisite effect with his own ideas, that they seem rather to be reminiscences than robberies. It is in this way that he has robbed the ancients without betraying himself, and that Horace, Virgil, and Plato, even, have furnished him with happy phrases, which have been obdurate to the efforts of all their translators; phrases which La Fontaine has unconsciously appropriated. His brain took them as they fell in with the current of his thought, and they flowed on with it as though from the same source. Virgil may discover his frigus captabis opacum in "Gouter l'Ombre, et le Frais;" Horace, his O! imitatores, servum pecus in "Quelques Imitateurs sot Bétail, je l'Avoue;" and, again, his at nostri proavi in "Nos Aïeux, Bonnes Gens." But if either Virgil or Horace were to meet with La Fontaine, they would neither exclaim against him as a traitor nor a thief, but only hail him as a brother poet.

La Fontaine was permitted to present his second collection of fables to Louis XIV., and obtained a privilege with respect to its publication which was almost unique; a eulogium on the work being included in its authorisation . Our poet at this period assumed a most discreet air, and out of regard, doubtless, for his patroness, avoided all occasion for scandal. Another, and perhaps a stronger reason was, that he cherished a secret ambition of becoming a member of the Academy. Inspired by this hope, he prevailed on himself so far as to praise Colbert, who had been the vindictive means of the fall of Fouquet. The illustrious fraternity, it must be observed, had given him some intimation that it was willing to elect him, and entreated him to act in such a manner that the election might be unanimous. The goodwill of the Academy was so decided, that, at the death of Colbert, it preferred the fabulist to Boileau, who had the support of the royal favour. But a delay was necessary. The Academy's choice was neither annulled nor confirmed; the final decision being delayed until the death of another of the immortals had created a fresh vacancy, and Boileau and La Fontaine entered the Academy side by side; Boileau as soon as elected, and La Fontaine after a year's delay. As we have already said, he had performed his purgatory, and Louis XIV. had been willing to believe that he would henceforth be discreet. We shall see, however, that La Fontaine had only strength enough to promise, and that he was a living example of the refrain of one of his most charming ballads--

"A promise is one thing-- the keeping another."