The Fables of La Fontaine | Page 8

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 Aesop, 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 fables 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 given 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 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 disposition.
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 laboured 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 genius
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.[4]
[4] The Translator in his sixth edition replaced the next paragraph by
the following remarks:--"The case is apparently, and only apparently,
an exception to the old rule Poeta nascitur, orator fit--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 most honour 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.