The quarrel is too old and too futile to require a long history. Perrault's remarks on Homer, the cause of the war, merely show that Perrault was quite out of sympathy with the heroic age and with heroic song. He avers that, if a favourable Heaven had permitted Homer to be born under Louis XIV, Homer would have been a much better poet.
'Cent défauts qu'on impute au siècle où tu naquis Ne profaneroient pas tes ouvrages exquis[2].'
Men of letters who were men of sense would have smiled and let Perrault perorate. But men of letters are rarely men of sense, and dearly love a brawl. M. E. de Goncourt once complained that M. Paul de St. Victor looked at him 'like a stuffed bird,' because M. de Goncourt declared that Providence had created antiquity to prevent pedagogues from starving. Boileau was not less indignant with Perrault, who, by the way, in his poem had damned Molière with faint praise, and had not praised La Fontaine, Racine, and Boileau at all. The quarrel 'thundered in and out the shadowy skirts' of Literature for ten years. Boileau turned and rent the architect-physician Claude Perrault in his Art Poétique. But Boileau, stimulated by Conti, who wrote on his fauteuil, 'tu dors, Brutus,' chiefly thundered in his Réflexions Critiques on Longinus (1694). 'He makes four errors, out of ignorance of Greek, and a fifth out of ignorance of Latin,' is an example of Boileau's amenities. Why Boileau should have written at such length and so angrily on un livre que personne ne lit, he does not explain. Perrault kept his temper, Boileau displayed his learning. Arnauld had the credit of making a personal peace between the foes. Boileau suppressed some of his satirical lines (Satire X. line 459), and we now read them only in the foot-notes. Boileau's letter to Arnauld, in which he expresses his willingness even to read Saint Paulin for the sake of a peaceful life, is not unamusing. 'Faut-il lire tout Saint Paulin? Vous n'avez qu'à dire: rien ne me sera difficile' (June 1694). Meanwhile Perrault, in his comedy L'Oublieux, was mocking people who think it a fine thing 'to publish old books with a great many notes[3].' But Perrault himself was about to win his own fame by publishing versions of old traditional Fairy Tales.
The following essay traces the history and bibliography of these Tales. Perrault's last years were occupied with his large illustrated book, Eloges des Hommes Illustres du Siècle de Louis XIV (2 vols. in folio. 102 portraits.) He died on May 16, 1703. His fair enemy in the bookish battle, Madame Dacier, says 'il étoit plein de piété, de probité, de vertu, poli, modeste, officieux, fidèle à tous les devoirs qu'exigent les liaisons naturelles et acquises; et, dans un poste considérable auprès d'un des plus grands ministres que la France ait eus et qui l'honoroit de sa confiance, il ne s'est jamais servi de sa faveur pour sa fortune particulière, et il l'a toujours employée pour ses amis.'
Charles Perrault was a good man, a good father, a good Christian, and a good fellow. He was astonishingly clever and versatile in little things, honest, courteous, and witty, and an undaunted amateur. The little thing in which he excelled most was telling fairy tales. Every generation listens in its turn to this old family friend of all the world. No nation owes him so much as we of England, who, south of the Scottish, and east of the Welsh marches, have scarce any popular tales of our own save Jack the Giant Killer, and who have given the full fairy citizenship to Perrault's Petit Poucet and La Barbe Bleue.
[1] Registre de La Grange, p. 11.
[2] 'Exquis' is good.
[3] L'Oublieux was written in 1691. It was printed from the MS. by M. Hippolyte Lucas. Académie des Bibliophiles, Paris, 1868.
PERRAULT'S POPULAR TALES.
'Madame Coulanges, who is with me till to-morrow, was good enough to tell us some of the stories that they amuse the ladies with at Versailles. They call this mitonner, so she mitonned us, and spoke to us about a Green Island, where a Princess was brought up, as bright as the day! The Fairies were her companions, and the Prince of Pleasure was her lover, and they both came to the King's court, one day, in a ball of glass. The story lasted a good hour, and I spare you much of it, the rather as this Green Isle is in the midst of Ocean, not in the Mediterranean, where M. de Grignan might be pleased to hear of its discovery.'