Fables of La Fontaine

Front matter

FABLES

OF

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Preface

(Human nature, when fresh from die hand of God, was full of poetry./ Its sociality coul ^ot be pent within th » bounds of the actual. To tht ower inhabitants of air, ear?.h, and water, — and even to those elements themselves, in all their parts and fonaa, — it gave speech and reason. The skies it peopled with beings, on the noblest model of which it could have any conceptionto wit, its own. The intercourse of these beings, thus created and endowed, — from "he deity kindled into immortality by the imagination, to the clod personified for the moment, — gratified one of its strongest propensities , for man may well enough be defined as the historica. animal. The faculty which, in after ages, was to chronicle the realities developed by time, had at first no em ployment but to place on record the productions of the imagination. Hence, fable blossomed and ripened in the remotest antiquity. We see it mingling itself with the primeval history of all nations. It is not improbable that many of the narratives which have been preserved for us, by the bark or parchment of the first rude histories, as serious matters of fact, were originally apologues, or parables, invented to give power and wings to moral lessons, and afterwards modified, in their passage from mouth to mouth, by the well-known magic of credulity

O FABLE AND THE FABULISTS.

The most ancient poets graced their productions with apologues. Hesiod's fable of the Hawk and the Nightingale is an instance. The fable or parable was anciently, as it is even now, a favorite weapon of the most successful orators. When Jotham would show the Shechernites the folly of their ingratitude, he uttered the fable of the Fig-tree, the Olive, the Vine, and the Bramble. When the prophet Nathan would oblige David to pass a sentence of condemnation upon himself in the matter of Uriah, he brought before him the apologue of the rich man who, having many sheep, took away that of the poor man who had but one. When Joash, the king of Israel, would rebuke the vanity of Amaziah, the king of Judah, he referred him to the fable of the Thistle and the Cedar. COuv blessed Savior, the best of all teachers, was remarkable for his constant use of parables, which are but fables — we speak it with reverence — adapted to the gravity of the subjects on which he discoursed!/ And, in profane history, we read that Stesichorus put the Himerians on their guard against the tyranny of Phalaris by the fable of the Horse and the Stag. Cyrus, for the instruction of kings, told the story of the fisher obliged to use his nets to take the fish that turned a deaf ear to the sound of his flute. Menenius Agrippa, wishing to bring back the mutinous Roman people from Mount Sacer, ended his harangue with the fable of the Belly and the Members. A Ligurian, in order to dissuade King Comanus from yielding to the Phocians a portion of his territory as the site of Marseilles, introduced into his discourse the story of the bitch that borrowed a kennel in which to bring forth her young, but, when they were sufficiently grown, refused to give it up.

In all these instances, we see that fable wa3 a mere auxiliary of discourse — an implement of the orator. Such, probably, was the origin of the apologues which now form the bulk of the most popular collections. f^Msop, who lived about six hundred years before Christ, so far as we can reach the reality of his life, was an orator who wielded the apologue with remarkable skill. From a servile condition, he rose, by the force of his genius, to be the counsellor of kings and states. His wisdom was in demand far and wide, and on the most important occasions. The pithy apologues which fell from his lips, which, like the rules of arithmetic, solved the difficult problems of human conduct constantly presented to him, were remembered when the speeches that contained them were forgotten. He seems to have written nothing himself; but it was not long before the gems which he scattered began to be gathered up in collections, as a distinct species of literature. The great and good Socrates employed himself, while in prison, in turning the fables of iEsop into verse. Though but a few fragments of his composition have come down to us, he may, perhaps, be regarded as the father of fable, considered as a distinct art. Induced by his example, many Greek poets and philosophers tried their hands in it. Archilocus, AlcEeus, Aristotle, Plato, Diodorus, Plutarch, and Lucian, have left us specimens. Collections of fables bearing the name of iEsop became current in the Greek language. It was not, however, till the year 1447, that the large collection which now bears his name was put forth in Greek prose by Planudes, a monk of Constantinople. This man turned the life of iEsop itself into a fable ; and La Fontaine did it the honor to translate it as a preface to his own collection. Though burdened with insufferable puerilities, it is not without the moral that a rude and deformed exterior may conceal both wit and worth.

The collection of fables in Greek verse by Babrias was exceedingly popular among the Romans. It was the favorite book of the Emperor Julian. Only six of these fables, and a few fragments, remain ; but they are sufficient to show that their author possessed all the graces of style which befit the apologue. Some critics place him in the Augustan age ; others make him contemporary with Moschus. His work was versified in Latin, at the instance of Seneca ; and Quinctilian refers to it as a reading-book for boys. Thus, at all times, these playful fictions have been considered fit lessons for children, as well as for men, who are often but grown-up children. So popular were the fables of Babrias and their Latin translation, during the Roman empire, that the work of Phsedrus was hardly noticed. The latter was a freedman of Augustus, and wrote in the reign of Tiberius. (His verse stands almost unrivalled for its exquisite elegance and compactness j and posterity has abundantly avenged him for the neglect of contemporaries. La Fontaine is perhaps more indebted to Phosdrus than to any other of his predecessors ; and, especially in the first six books, his style has much of the same curious condensation. When the seat of the empire was transferred to Byzantium, the Greek language took precedence of the Latin; and the rhetorician Aphtonius wrote forty fables in Greek prose, which became popular. Besides these collections among the Romans, we find apologues scattered through the writings of their best poets and historians, and embalmed in those specimens of their oratory which have come down to us.

The apologues of the Greeks and Romans were brief, pithy, and epigrammatic, and their collections were without any principle of connection. But, at the game time, though probably unknown to them, the same species of literature was flourishing elsewhere under a somewhat different form. It is made a question, whether ./Esop, through the Assyrians, with whom the Phrygians had commercial relations, did not either borrow his art from the Orientals, or lend it to them. This disputed subject must be left to those who have a taste for such inquiries. Certain it is, however, that fable nourished very anciently with the people whose faith embraces the doctrine of metempsychosis. Among the Hindoos, there are two very ancient collections of fables, which differ from those which we have already mentioned, in having a principle of connection throughout. They are, in fact, extended romances, or dramas, in which all sorts of creatures are introduced as actors, and in which there is a development of sentiment and passion as well as of moral truth, the whole being wrought into a system of morals particularly adapted to the use of those called to govern. One of these works is called the Pantcha Tantra, which signifies "Five Books," or Pentateuch. It is written in prose. The other is called the Hitopadesa, or " Friendly Instruction," and is written in verse. Both are in the ancient Sanscrit language, and bear the name of a Bramin, Vishnoo Sarmah, as the author. Sir William Jones, who is inclined to make this author the true iEsop of the world, and to doubt the existence of the Phrygian, gives him the preference to all other fabulists, both in regard to matter and manner. ) He has left a prose translation of the Hitopadesa, which, though it may not fully sustain his enthusiastic preference, shows it not to be entirely groundless. We give a sample of it, and select a fable which La Fontaine has served up as the twenty-seventh of his eighth book. It should be understood that the fable, with the moral reflections which accompany it, is taken from the speech of one animal to another.

" Frugality should ever be practised, but not excessive parsimony ;■■ for see how a miser was killed by a bow drawn by himself! "

" How was that?" said Hiranyaca. •" *' In the country of Calyanacataca," said Menthara, " lived a mighty hunter, named Bhairaza, or Terrible. One day he went, in search of game, into a forest on the mountains Vindhya ; when, having slain a fawn, and taken it up, he perceived a boar of tremendous size ; he therefore threw the fawn on the ground, and wounded the boar with an arrow; the beast, horribly roaring, rushed upon him, and wounded him desperately, so that he fell, like a tree stricken with an axe.

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" In the mean while, a jackal, named Lougery, was roving in search of food ; and, having perceived the fawn, the hunter, and the boar, till three dead, he said to himself, ' What a noble provision is here made for me ! '

" As the pains of men assail them unexpectedly, so their pleasures come in the same manner ; a divine power strongly operates in both.

" ' Be it so ; the flesh of these three animals will sustain me a whole month, or longer.

" ' A man suffices for one month; a fawn and a honr, for two; a .=nak<", for a whole day; and then I will devour the bowstring,' When the first impulse of his hunger was allayed, he said, 'This flesh is not yet tender; let me taste the twisted string, with which the horns of this bow are joined.' So saying, he began to gnaw it : but, in the instant when he had cut the string, the severed bow leaped forcibly up, and wounded him in the breast, so that he departed in the agonies of death. This I meant, when I cited tho verse, Frugal ity should ever be practised, &.c."

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FABLE AND THE FABULISTS.

"What thou givest to distinguished men, and what thou eatest every day — that, in my opinion, is thine own wealth: whose is the remainder, which thou hoardest? "

Works of Sir William Jones, Vol. VI., p. 36.

/it was one of these books which Chosroe's, the king of Persia, caused to be translated from the Sanscrit into the ancient language of his country, in the sixth century of the Christian era, sending an embassy into Hindostan expressly for that purposed) Of the Persian book a translation was made, in the time of the Calif Mansour, in the eighth century, into Arabic. This Arabic translation it is which became famous under the title of " The Book of Calila and Dimna, or the Fables of Bidpai." Calila and Dimna are the names of two jackals that figure in the history, and Bidpalf is one of the principal human interlocutors, who came to be mistaken for the author. This remarkable book was turned into verse by several of the Arabic poets, was translated into Greek, Hebrew, Latin, modern Persian, and, in the course of a few centuries, either directly or indirectly, into most of the languages of modern Europe.

Forty-one of the unadorned and disconnected fables of iEsop were also translated into Arabic at a period somewhat more recent than the Hegira, and passed by the name of the " Fables of Lokman." Their want of poetical ornament prevented them from acquiring much popularity with the Arabians ; but they became well known in Europe, as furnishing a convenient text-book in the study of Arabic.

The Hitopadesa, the fountain of poetic fables, with its innumerable translations and modifications, seems to have had the greatest charms for the Orientals. As it passed down the stream of time, version after version, the ornament and machinery outgrew the moral instruction, till it gave birth, at last, to such works of mere amusement as the " Thousand and One Nights."

Fable slept, with other things, in the dark ages of Europe. Abridgments took the place of the large collections, and probably occasioned the entire loss of some of them. As literature revived, fable was resuscitated. The crusades had brought European mind in contact with the Indian works which we have already described, in their Arabic dress. Translations and imitations in the European tongues were speedily multiplied. The " Romance of the Fox," the work of Perrot de Saint Cloud, one of the most successful of these imitations, dates back to the thirteenth century. It found its way into most of the northern languages, and became a household book. It undoubtedly had great influence over the taste of succeeding ages, shedding upon the severe and satirical wit of the Greek and Roman literature the rich, mellow light of Asiatic poetry. The poets of that age were not confined, however, to fables from the Hindoo source. Marie de France, also, in the thirteenth century, versified one hundred of the fables of iEsop, translating from an English collection, which does not now appear to be extant. Her work is entitled the Ysopet, or "Little iEsop." Other versions, with the same title, were subsequently written. It was in 1447 that Planudes, already referred to, wrote in Greek prose a collection of fables, prefacing it with a life of JEsop, which, for a long time, passed for the veritable work of that ancient. In the next century, Abstemius wrote two hundred fables in Latin prose, partly of modern, but chiefly of ancient invention. At this time, the vulgar languages had undergone so great

FABLE AND THE FABULISTS.

changes, that works in them of two or three centuries old could not be understood, and, consequently, the Latin became the favorite language of authors. Many collections of fables were written in it, both in prose and verse. By the art of printing, these works were greatly multiplied ; and again the poets undertook the task of translating them into the language of the people. The French led the way in this species of literature, their language seeming to present some great advantages for it. One hundred years before La Fontaine, Corrozet, Guillaume Gueroult, and Philibert Hegemon, had written beautiful fables in verse, which it is supposed La Fontaine must have read and profited by, although they had become nearly obsolete in his time. It is a remarkable fact, that these poetical fables should so soon have been forgotten. It was soon after their appearance that the languages of Europe attained their full development ; and, at this epoch, prose seems to have been universally preferred to poetry. So strong was this preference, that Qgilby, the Scotch fabulist, who had written a collection of fables in English verse, reduced them to prose on the occasion of publishing a more splendid edition in 1668. It seems to have been the settled opinion of the critics of that age, as it has, indeed, been stoutly maintained since, that the ornaments of poetry only impair the force of the fable — that the Muses, by becoming the handmaids of old JEsop, part with their own dignity without conferring any on him. La Fontaine has made such an opinion almost heretical. In his manner there is a perfect originality, and an immortality every way equal to that of the matter which he gathered up from all parts of the great storehouse of human experience. His fables are like pure gold enveloped in solid rock-crystal. In English, a few of the faDles of Gay, of Moore, and of Cowper, may be compared with them in some respects, but we have nothing resembling them as a whole. Gay, who has done more than any other, though he has displayed great power of invention, and has gi^en his verse a flow worthy of his master, Pope, has yet fallen far behind La Fontaine in the general management of his materials. His fables are all beautiful poems, but few of them are beautiful fables. His animal speakers do not sufficiently preserve their animal characters. It is quite otherwise with La Fontaine. His beasts are made most nicely to observe all the proprieties not only of the scene in which they are called to speak, but of the great drama into which they are from time to time introduced. His work constitutes an harmonious whole. To those who read it in the original, it is one of the few which never cloy the appetite. As in the poetry of v Burns, you are apt to think the last verse you read of him the best.

But the main object of this Preface was to give a few traces of the life and literary career of our poet. A remarkable poet cannot but have been a remarkable man. Suppose we take a man with native benevolence amounting almost to folly ; but little cunning, caution, or veneration ; good perceptive, but better reflective faculties ; and a dominant love of the beautiful; — and toss him into the focus of civilization in the age of Louis XIV. It is an interesting problem to find out what will become of him. Such is the problem worked out in the life of Jean de La Fontaine, born on the eighth of July, 1621, at Chateau-Thierry. His father, a man of some substance and station, committed two blunders in disposing of his son. First, he encouraged him to seek an education for ecclesiastical life, which was evidently unsuited to his

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dispositions. Second, he brought about his marriage with a woman who was unfitted to secure his affections, or to manage his domestic affairs. In one other point, he was not so much mistaken : he labored unremittingly to make his son a poet. Jean was a backward boy, and showed not the least spark of poetical genius till his twenty-second year. His poetical faculties did not ripen till long after that time. But his father lived to see him all, and more than all, that he had ever hoped.

This case is apparently, and only apparently, an exception to the old rule, Poeta nascitur, orator jit, — The poet is born, the orator is made. ; The truth is, without exception, that every poet is born such ; and many are born such of whose poetry the world knows . nothing. Every known poet is also somewhat an orator ; and as to this part of his character, he is made. ( And many are known as poets who are altogether made ; they are mere second-hand, or orator poets, and are quite intolerable unless exceedingly well made, which is unfortunately seldom the case. : It would be wise in them to busy themselves as mere translators. Every one who is born with propensities to love and wonder too strong and deep to be worn off by repetition or continuance, — in other words, who is born to be always young, — is born a poet. The other requisites he has of course. Upon him the making will never be lost. ; The richest gems do the most honor to their polishing. But they are gems without any. So there are men who pass through the world with their souls full of poetry, who would not believe you if you were to tell them so. Happy for them is their ignorance, perhaps. La Fontaine came near being one of them. All that is artificial in poetry to him came late and with difficulty. Yet it resulted from his keen relish of nature, that he was never satisfied with his art of verse till he had brought it to the confines of perfection. He did not philosophize over the animals; he sympathized with them. A philosopher would not have lost a fashionable dinner in his admiration of a common ant-hill. La Fontaine did so once, because the well-known little community was engaged in what he took to be a funeral. He could not in decency leave them till it was over. Verse-making out of the question, this was to be a genuine poet, though, with common-place mortals, it was also to be a fool.

As we have already said, Jean was a backward boy. But, under a dull exterior, the mental machinery was working splendidly within. He lacked all that outside care and prudence, — that constant looking out for breakers, — which obstruct the growth and ripening of the reflective faculties. The vulgar, by a queer mistake, call a man absent-minded, when his mind shuts the door, pulls in the latch-string, and is wholly at home. La Fontaine's mind was exceedingly domestic. It was nowhere but at home when, riding from Paris to Chateau-Thierry, a bundle of papers fell from his saddle-bow without his perceiving it. The mail-carrier, coming behind him, picked it up, and, overtaking La Fontaine, asked him if he had lost any thing. "Certainly not," he replied, looking about him with great surprise. " Well, I have just picked up these papers," rejoined the other. "Ah! they are mine," cried La Fontaine; "they involve my whole estate." " And he eagerly reached to take them. On another occasion, he was equally at home. Stopping on a journey, he ordered dinner at a hotel, and then took a ramble about the town. On his return, he entered another hotel, and, passing through into the garden, took from his pocket a copy of Livy, in which he quietly set himself to read till his dinner should be ready. The book made him forget his appetite, till a servant informed him of his mistake, and he returned to his hotel just in time to pay his bill and proceed on his journey.

It will be perceived that he took the world quietly, and his doing; so undoubtedly had important bearings on his style. We give another anecdote, which illustrates this peculiarity of his mind as well as the superlative folly of duelling. Not long after his marriage, with all his indifference to his wife, he was persuaded into a fit of singular jealousy. He was intimate with an ex-captain of dragoons, by the name of Poignant, who had retired to Chateau-Thierry ; a frank, open-hearted man, but of extremely little gallantry. Whenever Poignant was not at his inn, he was at La Fontaine's, and consequently with his wife, when he himself was not at home. Some person took it in his head to ask La Fontaine why he suffered these constant visits. u And why," said La Fontaine, " should I not ? He is my best friend." " The public think otherwise," was the reply; " they say that he comes for the sake of Madam La Fontaine." " The public is mistaken ; but what must I do in the case ? " said the poet. u You must demand satisfaction, sword in hand, of one who has dishonored you." " Very well," said La Fontaine, " 1 will demand it." The next day he called on Poignant, at four o'clock in the morning, and found him in bed. " Ptise," said he, " and come out with me ! " His friend asked him what was the matter, and what pressing business had brought him so early in the morning. "I shall let you know," replied La Fontaine, " when we get abroad." Poignant, in great astonishment, rose, followed him out, and asked whither he was leading. " You shall know by and by," replied La Fon-

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taine ; and at last, when they had reached a retired place, he said, " My friend, we must fight." Poignant, still more surprised, sought to know in what he had offended him, and, moreover, represented to him that they were not on equal terms. "I am a man of war," said he, "while, as for you, you have never drawn a sword." " No matter," sajd La Fontaine ; " the public requires that I should fight you." Poignant, after having resisted in vain, at last drew his sword, and, having easily made himself master of La Fontaine's, demanded the cause of the quarrel. "The public maintains," said La Fontaine, " that you come to my house daily, not for my sake, but my wife's." "Ah, my friend," replied the other, "1 should never have suspected that was the cause of your displeasure, and I protest I will never again put a foot within your floors." f On the contrary," replied La Fontaine, seizing him by the hand, " I have satisfied the public, and now you must come to my house every day, or I will fight you again." The two antagonists returned, and breakfasted together in good humor.

It was not, as we have said, till his twenty-second year, that La Fontaine showed any taste for poetry. The occasion was this : — An officer, in winter-quarters at Chateau-Thierry, one day read to him, with great spirit," an ode of Malherbe, beginning thus —

Que direz-vous, races futures,

Or, as we might paraphrase it, —

What will ye'say, ye future days, If I, for once, in honest rhymes,

ftecouht to you the deeds and ways Of our abominable times?

La Fontaine listened with mechanical transports of joy, admiration, and astonishment, as if a man born with a genius for music, but brought up in a desert, had for the first time heard a well-played instrument. He set himself immediately to reading Malherbe, passed his nights in learning his verses by heart, and his days in declaiming them in solitary places. He also read Voiture, and began to write verses in imitation. Happily, at this period, a relative, named Pintrel, directed his attention to ancient literature, and advised him to make himself familiar with Horace, Homer, Virgil, Terence, and Quinctilian. He accepted this counsel. M. de Maucroix, another of his friends, who cultivated poetry with success, also contributed to confirm his taste for the ancient models. His great delight, however, was to read Plato and Plutarch, which he did only through translations. The copies which he used are said to bear his manuscript notes on almost every page, and these notes are the maxims which are to be found in his fables. Returning from this study of the ancients, he read the moderns with more discrimination. His favorites, besides Malherbe, were Corneille, Rabelais, and Marot. In Italian, he read Ariosto, Boccaccio, and Machiavel. In 1654, he published his first work, a translation of the Eunuch of Terence. It met with no success. But this does not seem at all to have disturbed its author. He cultivated verse-making with as much ardor and good-humor as ever ; and his verses soon began to be admired in the circle of his friends. No man had ever more devoted friends. Verses that have cost thought are not relished without thought. When a genius appears, it takes some little time for the world to educate itself to a knowledge of the fact. By one of his friends, La

Fontaine was introduced to Fouquet, the minister of finance, a man of great power, and who rivalled his sovereign in wealth and luxury. It was his pride to be the patron of literary men, and he was pleased to make La Fontaine his poet, settling upon him a pension of one thousand francs per annum, on condition that he should produce a piece in verse each quarter, — a condition which was exactly complied with till the fall of the minister.

Fouquet was a most splendid villain, and positively, though perhaps not comparatively, deserved to fall. But it was enough for La Fontaine that Fouquet had done him a kindness. He took the part of the disgraced minister, without counting the cost. His " Elegy to the Nymphs of Vaux " was a shield to the fallen man, and turned popular hatred into sympathy. The good-hearted poet rejoiced exceedingly in its success. Bon-komme was the appellation which his friends pleasantly gave him, and by which he became known every where; — and never did a man better deserve it in its best sense. He was good by nature — not by the calculation of consequences. Indeed, it does not seem ever to have occurred to him that kindness, gratitude, and truth, could have any other than good consequences. He was truly a Frenchman without guile, and possessed to perfection that comfortable trait, — in which French character is commonly allowed to excel the English, — good-humor with the whole world.

La Fontaine was the intimate friend of Molicre, Boileau, and Racine. Moliere had already established a reputation ; but the others became known to the world at the same time. Boileau hired a small chamber in the Faubourg Saint Germain, where they all met several

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times a week ; for La Fontaine, at the age of forty-four, had left Chateau-Thierry, and become a citizen of Paris. Here they discussed all sorts of topics, admitting to their society Chapelle, a man of less genius, but of greater conversational powers, than either of them — a sort of connecting link between them and the world. Four poets, or four men, could hardly have been more unlike. Boileau was blustering, blunt, peremptory, but honest and frank ; Racine, of a pleasant and tranquil gayety, but mischievous and sarcastic ; Moliere was naturally considerate, pensive, and melancholy ; La Fontaine was often absent-minded, but sometimes exceedingly jovial, delighting with his sallies, his witty na'ivttis, and his arch simplicity. These meetings, which no doubt had a great influence upon French literature, La Fontaine, in one of his prefaces, thus describes : — " Four friends, whose acquaintance had begun at the foot of Parnassus, held a sort of soeiety, which I should call an Academy, if their number had been sufficiently great, and if they had had as much- regard for the Muses as for pleasure. The first thing which they did was to banish from among thern all rules of conversation, and every thing which savors of the academic conference. When they met, and had sufficiently discussed their amusements, if chance threw them upon any point of science or belles-lettres, they profited by the occasion; it was, however, without dwelling too long on the same subject, flitting from one thing to another like the bees that meet divers sorts of flowers on their way. Neither envy, malice, nor cabal had any voice among them. They adored the works of the ancients, never refused .due praise to those of the moderns, spoke modestly of their own, and gave each other sincere counsel, when any one of them — which