Fables of La Fontaine Part 3

To heaven an easy pace may go, Whatever crazy ARNAULD saith, Who aims at pleasure causeless wrath.

Seek we the better world afar?

We're fools to choose the rugged path: A velvet road hath ESCOBAR.

Although he does not say you can, Should one with you for nothing strive, Or for a trifle, kill the man-- You can for ducats four or five.

Indeed, if circ.u.mstances drive, Defraud, or take false oaths you may, Or to the charms of life give way, When Love must needs the door unbar.

Henceforth must not the pilgrim say, A velvet road hath ESCOBAR?

Now, would to G.o.d that one would state The pith of all his works to me.

What boots it to enumerate?

As well attempt to drain the sea!-- Your chart and compa.s.s let them be; All other books put under ban; Burn ARNAULD and his rigid clan-- They're blockheads if we but compare;-- It is no joke,--I tell you, man, A velvet road hath ESCOBAR.

ADDRESS.

Thou warden of the prison black, Who didst on heaven turn thy back, The chieftain of th' infernal war!

To shun thy arrows and thy rack, A velvet road hath ESCOBAR.

The verses of La Fontaine did more for his reputation than for his purse.

His paternal estate wasted away under his carelessness; for, when the ends of the year refused to meet, he sold a piece of land sufficient to make them do so. His wife, no better qualified to manage worldly gear than himself, probably lived on her family friends, who were able to support her, and who seem to have done so without blaming him. She had lived with him in Paris for some time after that city became his abode; but, tiring at length of the city life, she had returned at Chateau-Thierry, and occupied the family mansion. At the earnest expostulation of Boileau and Racine, who wished to make him a better husband, he returned to Chateau-Thierry himself, in 1666, for the purpose of becoming reconciled to his wife. But his purpose strangely vanished.

He called at his own house, learned from the domestic, who did not know him, that Madame La Fontaine was in good health, and pa.s.sed on to the house of a friend, where he tarried two days, and then returned to Paris without having seen his wife. When his friends inquired of him his success, with some confusion he replied, "I have been to see her, but I did not find her: she was well." Twenty years after that, Racine prevailed on him to visit his patrimonial estate, to take some care of what remained. Racine, not hearing from him, sent to know what he was about, when La Fontaine wrote as follows:--"Poignant, on his return from Paris, told me that you took my silence in very bad part; the worse, because you had been told that I have been incessantly at work since my arrival at Chateau-Thierry, and that, instead of applying myself to my affairs, I have had nothing in my head but verses. All this is no more than half true: my affairs occupy me as much as they deserve to--that is to say not at all; but the leisure which they leave me--it is not poetry, but idleness, which makes away with it." On a certain occasion, in the earlier part of his life, when pressed in regard to his improvidence, he gaily produced the following epigram, which has commonly been appended to his fables as "The Epitaph of La Fontaine, written by Himself":--

Jean s'en alla comme il etait venu, Mangea le fonds avec le revenu, Tint les tresors chose peu necessaire.

Quant a son temps, bien sut le dispenser: Deux parts en fit, don't il souloit pa.s.ser L'urie a dormir, et l'autre a ne rien faire.

This confession, the immortality of which was so little foreseen by its author, liberally rendered, amounts to the following:--

John went as he came--ate his farm with its fruits, Held treasure to be but the cause of disputes; And, as to his time, be it frankly confessed, Divided it daily as suited him best,-- Gave a part to his sleep, and to nothing the rest.

It is clear that a man who provided so little for himself needed good friends to do it; and Heaven kindly furnished them. When his affairs began to be straitened, he was invited by the celebrated Madame de la Sabliere to make her house his home; and there, in fact, he was thoroughly domiciliated for twenty years. "I have sent away all my domestics," said that lady, one day; "I have kept only my dog, my cat, and La Fontaine." She was, perhaps, the best-educated woman in France, was the mistress of several languages, knew Horace and Virgil by heart, and had been thoroughly indoctrinated in all the sciences by the ablest masters. Her husband, M. Rambouillet de la Sabliere, was secretary to the king, and register of domains, and to immense wealth united considerable poetical talents, with a thorough knowledge of the world. It was the will of Madame de la Sabliere, that her favourite poet should have no further care for his external wants; and never was a mortal more perfectly resigned. He did all honour to the sincerity of his amiable hostess; and, if he ever showed a want of independence, he certainly did not of grat.i.tude. Compliments of more touching tenderness we nowhere meet than those which La Fontaine has paid to his benefactress. He published nothing which was not first submitted to her eye, and entered into her affairs and friends.h.i.+ps with all his heart. Her unbounded confidence in his integrity she expressed by saying, "La Fontaine never lies in prose." By her death, in 1693, our fabulist was left without a home; but his many friends vied with each other which should next furnish one. He was then seventy-two years of age, had turned his attention to personal religion, and received the seal of conversion at the hands of the Roman Catholic church. In his conversion, as in the rest of his life, his frankness left no room to doubt his sincerity. The writings which had justly given offence to the good were made the subject of a public confession, and everything in his power was done to prevent their circulation. The death of one who had done so much for him, and whose last days, devoted with the most self-denying benevolence to the welfare of her species, had taught him a most salutary lesson, could not but be deeply felt. He had just left the house of his deceased benefactress, never again to enter it, when he met M. d'Hervart in the street, who eagerly said to him, "My dear La Fontaine, I was looking for you, to beg you to come and take lodgings in my house." "I was going thither,"

replied La Fontaine. A reply could not have more characteristic. The fabulist had not in him sufficient hypocrisy of which to manufacture the commonplace politeness of society. His was the politeness of a warm and unsuspecting heart. He never concealed his confidence in the fear that it might turn out to be misplaced.

His second collection of fables, containing five books, La Fontaine published in 1678-9, with a dedication to Madame de Montespan; the previous six books were republished at the same time, revised, and enlarged. The twelfth book was not added till many years after, and proved, in fact, the song of the dying swan. It was written for the special use of the young Duke de Bourgogne, the royal pupil of Fenelon, to whom it contains frequent allusions. The eleven books now published sealed the reputation of La Fontaine, and were received with distinguished regard by the king, who appended to the ordinary protocol or imprimatur for publication the following reasons: "in order to testify to the author the esteem we have for his person and his merit, and because youth have received great advantage in their education from the fables selected and put in verse, which he has heretofore published." The author was, moreover, permitted to present his book in person to the sovereign. For this purpose he repaired to Versailles, and after having well delivered himself of his compliment to royalty, perceived that he had forgotten to bring the book which he was to present; he was, nevertheless, favourably received, and loaded with presents. But it is added, that, on his return, he also lost, by his absence of mind, the purse full of gold which the king had given him, which was happily found under a cus.h.i.+on of the carriage in which he rode.

In his advertis.e.m.e.nt to the second part of his Fables, La Fontaine informs the reader that he had treated his subjects in a somewhat different style. In fact, in his first collection, he had timidly confined himself to the brevity of Aesop and Phaedrus; but, having observed that those fables were most popular in which he had given most scope to his own genius, he threw off the trammels in the second collection, and, in the opinion of the writer, much for the better. His subjects, too, in the second part, are frequently derived from the Indian fabulists, and bring with them the richness and dramatic interest of the _Hitopadesa_.

Of all his fables, the Oak and the Reed is said to have been the favourite of La Fontaine. But his critics have almost unanimously given the palm of excellence to the Animals sick of the Plague, the first of the seventh book. Its exquisite poetry, the perfection of its dialogue, and the weight of its moral, well ent.i.tle it to the place. That must have been a soul replete with honesty, which could read such a lesson in the ears of a proud and oppressive court. Indeed, we may look in vain through this encyclopaedia of fable for a sentiment which goes to justify the strong in their oppression of the weak. Even in the midst of the fulsome compliments which it was the fas.h.i.+on of his age to pay to royalty, La Fontaine maintains a reserve and decency peculiar to himself. By an examination of his fables, we think, we might fairly establish for him the character of an honest and disinterested lover and respecter of his species. In his fable ent.i.tled Death and the Dying, he unites the genius of Pascal and Moliere; in that of the Two Doves is a tenderness quite peculiar to himself, and an insight into the heart worthy of Shakspeare.

In his Mogul's Dream are sentiments worthy of the very high-priest of nature, and expressed in his own native tongue with a felicity which makes the translator feel that all his labours are but vanity and vexation of spirit. But it is not the purpose of this brief Preface to criticize the Fables. It is sufficient to say, that the work occupies a position in French literature, which, after all has been said that can be for Gay, Moore, and other English versifiers of fables, is left quite vacant in ours.

Our author was elected a member of the French Academy in 1684, and received with the honour of a public session. He read on this occasion a poem of exquisite beauty, addressed to his benefactress, Madame de la Sabliere. In that distinguished body of men he was a universal favourite, and none, perhaps, did more to promote its prime object--the improvement of the French language. We have already seen how he was regarded by some of the greatest minds of his age. Voltaire, who never did more than justice to merit other than his own, said of the Fables, "I hardly know a book which more abounds with charms adapted to the people, and at the same time to persons of refined taste. I believe that, of all authors, La Fontaine is the most universally read. He is for all minds and all ages." La Bruyere, when admitted to the Academy, in 1693, was warmly applauded for his _eloge_ upon La Fontaine, which contained the following words:--"More equal than Marot, and more poetical than Voiture, La Fontaine has the playfulness, felicity, and artlessness of both. He instructs while he sports, persuades men to virtue by means of beasts, and exalts trifling subjects to the sublime; a man unique in his species of composition, always original, whether he invents or translates,--who has gone beyond his models, himself a model hard to imitate."

La Fontaine, as we have said, devoted his latter days to religion. In this he was sustained and cheered by his old friends Racine and De Maucroix. Death overtook him while applying his poetical powers to the hymns of the church. To De Maucroix he wrote, a little before his death,--"I a.s.sure you that the best of your friends cannot count upon more than fifteen days of life. For these two months I have not gone abroad, except occasionally to attend the Academy, for a little amus.e.m.e.nt. Yesterday, as I was returning from it, in the middle of the Rue du Chantre, I was taken with such a faintness that I really thought myself dying. O, my friend, to die is nothing: but think you how I am going to appear before G.o.d! You know how I have lived. Before you receive this billet, the gates of eternity will perhaps have been opened upon me!" To this, a few days after, his friend replied,--"If G.o.d, in his kindness, restores you to health, I hope you will come and spend the rest of your life with me, and we shall often talk together of the mercies of G.o.d. If, however, you have not strength to write, beg M. Racine to do me that kindness, the greatest he can ever do for me. Adieu, my good, my old, and my true friend. May G.o.d, in his infinite, goodness, take care of the health of your body, and that of your soul." He died the 13th of April, 1695, at the age of seventy-three, and was buried in the cemetery of the Saints-Innocents.

When Fenelon heard of his death, he wrote a Latin eulogium, which he gave to his royal pupil to translate. "La Fontaine is no more!" said Fenelon, in this composition; "he is no more! and with him have gone the playful jokes, the merry laugh, the artless graces, and the sweet Muses."

THE FABLES OF LA FONTAINE

To Monseigneur The Dauphin.[1]

I sing the heroes of old Aesop's line, Whose tale, though false when strictly we define, Containeth truths it were not ill to teach.

With me all natures use the gift of speech; Yea, in my work, the very fishes preach, And to our human selves their sermons suit.

'Tis thus, to come at man, I use the brute.

Son of a Prince the favourite of the skies, On whom the world entire hath fix'd its eyes, Who hence shall count his conquests by his days, And gather from the proudest lips his praise, A louder voice than mine must tell in song What virtues to thy kingly line belong.

I seek thine ear to gain by lighter themes, Slight pictures, deck'd in magic nature's beams; And if to please thee shall not be my pride, I'll gain at least the praise of having tried.

[1] This dedication prefaced La Fontaine's first collection of his Fables, which comprised Books I. to VI., published in 1668. The Dauphin was Louis, the only son of Louis XIV. and Marie-Therese of Austria. He was born at Fontainebleau in 1661, and died at Meudon in 1712, before his father, the "Grand Monarque," had ceased to reign.

The Dauphin being but a child, between six and seven years old, at the time of this dedication, La Fontaine's act may be viewed rather as an offering to the King, than to the child himself. See the Translator's Preface.

BOOK I.

I.--THE GRa.s.sHOPPER AND THE ANT.[1]

A Gra.s.shopper gay Sang the summer away, And found herself poor By the winter's first roar.

Of meat or of bread, Not a morsel she had!

So a begging she went, To her neighbour the ant, For the loan of some wheat, Which would serve her to eat, Till the season came round.

'I will pay you,' she saith, 'On an animal's faith, Double weight in the pound Ere the harvest be bound.'

The ant is a friend (And here she might mend) Little given to lend.

'How spent you the summer?'

Quoth she, looking shame At the borrowing dame.

'Night and day to each comer I sang, if you please.'

'You sang! I'm at ease; For 'tis plain at a glance, Now, ma'am, you must dance.'

[1] For the story of this fable, as for the stories of so many of the fables which follow, especially in the first six books, La Fontaine is indebted to the Father of Fable, Aesop the Phrygian. See account of Aesop in the Translator's Preface.

II.--THE RAVEN AND THE FOX.[2]

Perch'd on a lofty oak, Sir Raven held a lunch of cheese; Sir Fox, who smelt it in the breeze, Thus to the holder spoke:-- 'Ha! how do you do, Sir Raven?

Well, your coat, sir, is a brave one!

So black and glossy, on my word, sir, With voice to match, you were a bird, sir, Well fit to be the Phoenix of these days.'

Sir Raven, overset with praise, Must show how musical his croak.

Down fell the luncheon from the oak; Which s.n.a.t.c.hing up, Sir Fox thus spoke:-- 'The flatterer, my good sir, Aye liveth on his listener; Which lesson, if you please, Is doubtless worth the cheese.'

A bit too late, Sir Raven swore The rogue should never cheat him more.

[2] Both Aesop and Phaedrus have a version of this fable.