206 LA FONTAINE
rule of modern criticism, each in its kind, and judged simply according to their rank in that kind, they fall far below the merits of the two great collections of verse narratives which have assured La Fontaine's immortality.
Between the actual literary merits of the two there is not much to choose, but the change of manners and the altered standard of literary decency has thrown the Contes into the shade. These tales are identical in general character with those which amused Europe from the days of the early fabliau writers through the period of the great Italian novellieri to that of the second great group of French tale-tellers ranging from Antoine de la Salle to Béroalde de Verville, Light love, the misfortunes of husbands, the cunning of wives, the breach of their vows by ecclesiastics, constitute the staple of their subject. In some respects La Fontaine is the best of such tale-tellers, while he is certainly the latest who deserves such excuse as may be claimed by a writer who does not choose indecent subjects from a deliberate knowledge that they are considered indecent and with a deliberate desire to pander to a vicious taste. No one who followed him in the style can claim this excuse; he can, and the way in which contemporaries of stainless virtue such as Madame de Sévigné speak of his work shows that though the new public opinion was growing up it was not finally accepted. In the Contes La Fontaine for the most part attempts little originality of theme. He takes his stories (varying them it is true in detail not a little) from Boccaccio, from Marguerite, from the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, &c. He applies to them his marvellous power of easy sparkling narration, and his hardly less marvellous faculty of saying more or less outrageous things in the most polite and gentlemanly manner. These Contes have indeed certain drawbacks. They are not penetrated by the half pagan ardour for physical beauty and the delights of sense which animates and excuses the early Italian Renaissance. They have not the subtle mixture of passion and sensuality, of poetry and appetite, which distinguishes the work of Marguerite and of the Pléiade. They are emphatically contes pour rire, a genuine expression of the esprit gaulois of the fabliau writers and of Rabelais, destitute of the grossness of envelope which had formerly covered that spirit. A comparison of "La Fiancée du Roi de Garbe" with its original in Boccaccio (especially if the reader takes M. Émile Montégut's admirable essay as a commentary) will illustrate better than anything else what they have and what they have not. Some writers have pleaded hard for the admission of actual passion of the poetical sort in such pieces as "La Courtisane Amoureuse," but as a whole it must be admitted to be absent.
The Fables, with hardly less animation and narrative art than the Contes, are free from disadvantages (according to modern notions) of subject, and exhibit the versatility and fecundity of the author's talent perhaps even more fully. La Fontaine had of course many predecessors in the fable and especially in the beast fable. In his first issue, comprising what are now called the first six books, he adhered to the path of these predecessors with some closeness; but in the later collections he allowed himself far more liberty, and it is in these parts that his genius is most fully manifested. The boldness of the politics is as much to be considered as the ingenuity of the moralizing, as the intimate knowledge of human nature displayed in the substance of the narratives, or as the artistic mastery shown in their form. It has sometimes been objected that the view of human character which La Fontaine expresses is unduly dark, and resembles too much that of La Rochefoucauld, for whom the poet had certainly a profound admiration. The discussion of this point would lead us too far here. It may only be said that satire (and La Fontaine is eminently a satirist) necessarily concerns itself with the dark rather more than with the lighter shades. Indeed the objection has become pretty nearly obsolete with the obsolescence of what may be called the sentimental-ethical school of criticism. Its last overt expression was made some thirty years ago, in a curious outburst of Lamartine's, excellently answered by Sainte-Beuve. Exception has also been taken to the Fables on more purely literary grounds by Lessing, but, as this exception depends on differences inevitable between those who would shape all literature on rules derived from the study of Greek models and those who with the highest respect for those models rank them only among and not above others, it is equally needless to enter into it. Perhaps the best criticism ever passed upon La Fontaine's Fables is that of Silvestre de Sacy, to the effect that they supply three several delights to three several ages: the child rejoices in the freshness and vividness of the story, the eager student of literature in the consummate art with which it is told, the experienced man of the world in the subtle reflexions on character and life which it conveys. Nor has anyone, with the exception of a few paradoxers like Rousseau and a few sentimentalists like Lamartine, denied that the moral tone of the whole is as fresh and healthy as its literary interest is vivid. The book has therefore naturally become the standard reading book of French both at home and abroad, a position which it shares in verse with the Télémaque of Fénelon in prose. It is no small testimony to its merit that not even this use or misuse has interfered with its popularity among French men of letters, who, with hardly an exception, speak as affectionately of it as if they had never been kept in on a summer's day to learn La Cigale et la Fourmi.
The general literary character of La Fontaine is, with allowance made for the difference of subject, visible equally in the Fables and in the Contes, and it is necessary to say a few words as to the nature of this character. Perhaps one of the hardest sayings in French literature for an English student is the dictum of Joubert to the effect that "Il y a dans La Fontaine une plénitude de poésie qu'on ne trouve nulle part dans les autres auteurs Français." Most English critics would probably admit at once La Fontaine's claim to a position in the first class of writers, but would demur to his admission to the first class of poets. The difference arises from the ambiguity of the terms. In Joubert's time, and perhaps a good deal later, inventiveness of fancy and diligent observation of the rules of art were held to complete the poetical differentia, and in both these La Fontaine deserves if not the first almost the first place among French poets. As to the first point there is hardly any dispute; few writers either in French or any other language have ever equalled him in this respect. In his hands the oldest story becomes novel, the most hackneyed moral piquant, the most commonplace details fresh and appropriate. As to the second point there has not been such unanimous agreement. It used to be considered that La Fontaine's ceaseless diversity of metre, his archaisms, his licences in rhyme and orthography, were merely ingenious devices for the sake of easy writing, intended to evade the trammels of the stately couplet and rimes difficiles enjoined by Boileau. Lamartine in the attack already mentioned affects contempt of the "vers boiteux, disloqués, inegaux, sans symmétrie ni dans l'oreille ni sur la page." This opinion may be said to have been finally exploded by the most accurate metrical critic and one of the most skilful metrical practitioners that France has ever had, M. Théodore de Banville; and it is only surprising that it should ever have been entertained by any professional maker of verse. There can be little doubt that La Fontaine saw the drawbacks of the "Alexandrine prison," as it has been called, but in freeing himself from it he by no means took refuge in merely pedestrian verse. His irregularities are strictly regulated, his cadences carefully arranged, and the whole effect may be said to be (though of course in a light and tripping measure instead of a stately one) similar to that of the stanzas of the English pindaric ode in the hands of Dryden or Collins. There is therefore nothing against La Fontaine on the score of invention and nothing on the score of art. But something more, at least according to English standards, is wanted to make up a "plenitude of poesy," and this something more La Fontaine seldom or never exhibits. In words used by Joubert himself elsewhere, he never "transports." The faculty of transporting is of course possessed and used in very different manners by different poets. In some it takes the form of passion, in some of half mystical enthusiasm for nature, in some of commanding eloquence, in some of moral fervour. La Fontaine has none of these things: he is always amusing, always sensible, always clever, sometimes even affecting, but at the same time always more or less prosaic, were it not for his admirable versification. The few passages which may be cited to the contrary are doubtfully admissible, and cannot in any case suffice to leaven so great a mass of other work. It is needless to say that this is no discredit to him. A man can but be the very best in his own special line, and that very best La Fontaine assuredly is. He is not a great poet, and a deficiency very similar to that which deprives him of this name deprives him of the name of a great humorist; but he is the most admirable teller of light tales in verse that has ever existed in any time or country; and he has established in his verse-tale a model which is never likely to be surpassed, and which has enriched literature with much delightful work.
La Fontaine did not during his life issue any complete edition of his works, nor even of the two greatest and most important divisions of them. The most remarkable of his separate publications have already been noticed. Others were the Poëme de la Captivité de St Malo (1673), one of the pieces inspired by the Port-Royalists, the Poëme du Quinquina (1602), a piece of task work also, though of a very different kind, and a number of pieces published either in small pamphlets or with the works of other men. Among the latter may be singled out the pieces published by the poet with the works of his friend Maucroix (1685). The year after his death some posthumous works appeared, and some years after his son's death the scattered poems, letters, &c., with the addition of some unpublished work bought from the family in manuscript, were carefully edited and published as Œuvres Diverses (1729). During the 18th century two of the most magnificent illustrated editions ever published of any poet reproduced the two chief works of La Fontaine. The Fables were illustrated by Oudry (1755-59), the Contes by Eisen (1762). This latter under the title of "Édition des Fermiers-Généraux" fetches a high price. During the first thirty years of the present century Walckenaer, a great student of French 17th century classics, published for the house of Didot three successive editions of La Fontaine, the last (1826-27) being perhaps entitled to the rank of the standard edition. More recently the editions of M. Marty-Laveaux in the Bibliothèque Elzévirenne, A. Pauly in the
