BOOKS.

JEAN DE LA FONTAINE.* IT has been pointed out that La Fontaine, one of the darlings of the seventeenth century, was in his nature and genius the opposite of the spirit of that century—at least till near its end. The fashionable ideal in Louis XIII.'s reign with its reaction from the licence of an earlier time, and for the first twenty years of Louis XIV., was a certain restrained stateli- ness, with fine language, fine sentiments, a disregard of things natural, a stiff contempt for what society found common or ignoble. " L'esprit de society" reigned supreme. Into this rather artificial world came La Fontaine, poet and artist, and • Jean de la Fontaine. By Frank Hemel. With Photogravure Frontispiece and le other Illustrations. London Stanley Paul and Co. [16s. not.]

Miss Hamel in her interesting book writes once more the curious And charming chapter in literary history which shows hoiv he was received there.

Never, perhaps, did poet and artist fidfil more entirely the popular idea of such a character. From the first his genius had its own way with La Fontaine. Very little special

education or training interfered with the originality of the youth who grew up at Chateau-Thierry—not far from La Yert6-Milon, where Racine, the youngest of the famous Quatre Antis, was born some years later,--and learned to know and

love Nature while following his father on his rounds as maitre .des mum et forets, an office in which he was to be his very inefficient successor. Thus he would wander

"through glades and thickets, visiting tlisi outlying huts whore the foresters lived, interviewing the warders and gamekeepers on their beat, watching the woodchoppers at their work, and, while his father was busily engaged with the men, Blipping away by himself to climb trees for birds' nests or to gather spoils from the flower-laden bushes. . . Even at the most destructive age of boyhood his love of animals was profound.. . . For hours he would he watching the smallest specimens of the insect world carrying -on their domestic economy, or would wait contentedly for a 'squirrel to come down to earth, or for a mole to peep above it."

It these early studies of one who bus been called " the Plutarch of animals " we see the material out of which the Fables grew. And they were studies which did not cease with his youth at Chatean-Thierry. One of his less-known critics,

M. Fayolle, tells a story of La Fontaine in his latter years. It happened on some occasion when he was in the country with Ills friends.

"Un jour 11 no vint point diner. On rappela en :rain, it no

...parut que le soir. On lui demands vonait. 'Je reviens,' .dit-il, 'de l'enterrement d'une fourmi ; j'ai suivi to convoi dans le jardin, et j'ai reconduit Pa famine jinqu'k is maison.'" No poet was ever more absent and dreamy than La Fontaine, more simple and child-like in mind, more impatient of the

ordinary affairs of life. He had in him, developed to the highest point, that faculty of wonder and admiration which is a distinctive mark of genius. He was first roused to the glory of fine poetry by Malherbe's Ode to Henri IV. He was then twenty-two : the pedants who taught him the classics, it may be supposed, in his boyhood had made no impression on his mind beyond the disgust and weariness which find their echo in his writings; schoolmasters cut a poor figure there. But later his reading became wide and varied; not only Plato, whom he adored, and Homer (in Latin translations), but Virgil, Romeo, and the great poets nearer his own day were among his " dieux du Parnasse." One day he made a splendid discovery. Racine had taken him to church, and to beguile the length of the service gave him a copy of the Old "Testament. He read Baruch, and afterwards ran about in wild excitement among his friends : " Avez-vous lu Baruch ? Mais lisoz Baruch ! Quel homme que ce Baruch ! ' Mais uette scene," says M. Emile Faguet, "c'est is vie entiere de La Fontaine."

Though absorbed in his fancies, helpless in daily life and -utterly dependent on the kindness of his friends, La Fontaine 'was not quite the incapable being some of his biographers have represented. Miss Hamel remarks on the fact that he was " extremely capable of discovering friends who devoted themselves to him and his entertainment." "Dana la society," .says M. Fayolle, " it n'etait ni si distrait ni si nail qu'on s'est phi A. le ropeter." The same writer—one of the nineteenth- century editors of La Fontaine's works—observes how, in spite-of a certain free and rustic naturalness that never left him, he was quite able, like Voltaire in later days, to deal successfully with the' great men of his time, and, more difficult still, with gib groat ladies. His choice of the succes- sive patrons who helped him through life goes to prove that is bonhomme had a . certain dash of shrewdness mingled 'with his confiding charm. When he dedicated his early poem

• ' Adonis " to Fouquet, the great financier was at the height of his power both in the State and in society. For the sake

of such a patron and the pension ho bestowed La Fontaine took on himself the responsibilities of a poet laureate. He was to glorify Vans, the palace which ,so foolishly rivalled Versailles. He signed a contract " to produce verses on fixed 'dates : madrigals at midsummer, odes in October, ballads at

the New Year, and devout sonnets at Easter." When the quantity—not the quality—of. the lines sent did not content

.Fouquet, the poet was rebuked. No wonder that so original a genius suffered from being turned into a machine, and that La Fontaine's independent spirit found the bargain irksome. It is to his credit, however, that in Fouquet's sudden disgrace he was not afraid to intercede with the • angry King for his pardon.

The fall of Fouquet was not, after all, such a terrible mis- fortune for La Fontaine. It left him free to use his talents as he pleased, or at least to work for easier employers, while lie delighted society with a gay philosophy, an original touch (quite new to the time), and enjoyed the immortal friendship, so charmingly described in the earlier pages of Les Amours, do Psyche at de Cupidon, of Moliere, Boileau, and Racine: His

appointment as a Gentleinan-in-Waiting- to Marguerite de Lorraine, widoiv of Gaston, Duo d'Orleans, brought him into connexion with the Court, for that lady's household at the Luxembourg Palace, which she shared with her step-daughter, Mademoiselle de Moutpensier, if rather funereal in its arrange-

ments, was entirely royal. La Fontaine's post was something of a sinecure. He wrote poems to Madame's daughters and her little dog, and dedicated a new collection of his Fables to her son-in-law, the Due de Guise. His duties at the Luxem- bourg did not interfere with his devotion to a much more

lively patroness, the famous Duchesse de Bouillon, Marie- Anne Mancini, the daring, dominating centre of a circle which in wit, gaiety, literary cleverness, and easy morality— to speak mildly—was an entire contrast to that of Madame Marguerite. Madame de Bouillon was the great lady of

ChAteau-Thierry, where La Fontaine now held his father's appointment, and where his neglected wife lived; thus local causes had something to do with his introduction to her.

It is unjust, perhaps, to make her entirely responsible for inspiring the Conies. Miss Hamel thinks so, but she is an

indulgent biographer, both of her hero and his friends. In any case, it was by Mine. de Bouillon's encouragement and in the atmosphere of her society that La Fontaine gave a free rein to his own taste for that kind of light literature.

The story is well known which tells how Louis XIV.'s dis- approval of the Contes caused a long delay iu La Fontaine's admission to the Academy. It was not till 1684 that the King, Boileau having been elected to please his Majesty, informed the Forty that they might now, if they pleased, receive M. de La Fontaine. " 11 a promis d'être sage."

Gay, irresponsible, made for art, and for that one-sided friendship which takes much and gives little, is bonhomme led a happy life among patrons and admirers who made it their business to save him from all the daily worries of existence. Madame de Bouillon was not the only powerful lady under whose protection he lived and wrote. The kindest and most hospitable of all his friends was Mine. do La Sablibre, the wife of a rich financier to whom half society 'was in debt. For nearly twenty years, till

she retired from a disappointing world and gave her- self up to nursing in the hospitals, La Fontaine lived in Mme. de La Sabliere's house. She watched over

him like a sister, and nothing would have induced her to part with him. He was a kind of domestic pet.

One day, when she had been obliged for some reason to discharge all her servants, she said to a friend: "Je n'ai garde aupres de moi que mes trois animaux—mon chien, mon chat, et La Fontaine." After her death the poet hardly waited for an invitation to establish himself by the friendly hearth of M. and Mme. d'Hervart, with whom he spent most of his remaining life. He did not grow more serious with the years, and some of his later friendships were neither wise nor edify. ing. But he was always the same bonhornme : more admirable as a poet than as a man, yet so simple, and finally so re- pentant, that on his death-bed his nurse declared, "Dieu n'aurait pas le courage do le damner."

Miss Hainers subject was a difficult one. La Fontaine's genius was so entirely French, his character so elusive, that his poetry and himself seem alike to be beyond any but the finest native .criticism. Considering this his present biographer deserves credit for a straightforward and satis- factory piece of work.