This is the early bibliographical history, as far as it has been traced by M. André Lefèvre, of the stories in verse. They received a good deal of unfriendly criticism, and Perrault was said, in Peau d'Ane, to have presented the public with his own natural covering. This witticism, rather lacking in finish, is attributed to Boileau in an epigram published in Moetjens' Recueil. Boileau was still irritated with Perrault for his conduct in the great Battle of the Books between the Ancients and Moderns. By a curious revenge Perrault, who had blamed Homer for telling, in the Odyssey, old wives' fables, has found, in old wives' fables, his own immortality. In the Parallèle, iii. p. 117, the Abbé quotes Longinus, and his admiration of certain hyperboles in Homer. The Chevalier, another speaker in the dialogue, replies, 'this sort of Homeric hyperbole is only imitated by people who tell stories like Peau d'Ane, and introduce Ogres in seven-leagued boots (bottes à sept lieues).' The 'seven-leagued boots' are in the Chevalier's fancy an apt parallel to the prodigious bounds made by the horses of Discord, in the Iliad. Thus, even before Perrault began to write fairy tales, he and Boileau had a very pretty quarrel about Peau d'Ane. Boileau happened to remember that Zoilus of old had reviled Homer for his contes de Vieilles, and thus he could conscientiously treat Perrault as a new Zoilus. In the fifth volume of his works (Paris, 1772), in which these amenities are republished, there is a Vignette by Van der Meer representing Homer, very old and timid, cowering behind a shield which Boileau, like Ajax, holds up for his protection, while Perrault, in a sword and cocked hat, throws arrows at the blind bard of Chios. The strange thing is that they were all in the right. The Odyssey, as Fénelon's Achilles tells Homer in Hades, and as Perrault knew, is a mass of popular tales, but then these are moulded by the poet's art into an epic which Boileau could not over-praise[13].
In the edition of his stories in verse, published in 1695, Perrault replied to the criticisms that reached him, 'I have to do,' he said, 'with people who can only be moved by Authority, and the example of the Ancients;' meaning Boileau and the survivors of the great literary feud. Perrault therefore adduces old instances of classical contes, the Milesian Tales, and Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius. 'The Moral of Cupid and Psyche,' he says, 'I shall compare to that of Peau d'Ane, when once I know what it is.' Then he declares that his Contes have abundance of moral, which is true, but there are morals even in Cupid and Psyche. He sketches, very pleasantly, the enjoyment of children in those old wives' fables; 'on les voit dans la tristesse et dans l'abattement tant que le héros ou l'héroïne du conte sont dans le malheur, et s'écrier de joie quand le temps de leur bonheur arrive.' Indeed this was and is the best apology for M. Perrault of the French Academy, when he stooped his great perruque to listen to his little boy's repetition of his nurse's stories, and recorded them in the chronicles of Mother Goose.
Had Perrault only written contes in verse, it is probable that he would now be known chiefly as an imitator of La Fontaine. Happily he went further, and printed seven stories in prose. It is by these that he really lives, now that his architectural exploits, his sacred poems, his Defence of the Moderns, are all forgotten save by the learned. His Fairies have saved him from oblivion, and the countless editions and translations of his Contes de Ma Mère L'Oye, have won him immortality[14].
The tales in prose appeared in Moetjens' Recueil in the following order: In 1696, in the second part of Volume V, came La Belle au Bois Dormant (our 'Sleeping Beauty'); and in 1697 (Vol. V. part 4), came Le Petit Chaperon Rouge ('Red Riding Hood'), La Barbe Bleue ('Blue-beard'), Le Maistre Chat, ou le Chat Botté ('Puss in Boots,' or 'The Master Cat'), Les Fées ('The Fairy'), Cendrillon, ou la petite pantoufle de verre ('Cinderilla,' in the older English versions, now 'Cinderella'), Riquet à la Houppe ('Riquet of the Tuft'), and Le Petit Poucet ('Hop o' My Thumb, Little Thumb').
While Moetjens was producing these in his Miscellany, there was published in Paris, at Perrault's bookseller's (Guignard), a little volume called Bigarrures Ingénieuses, ou Recueil de diverses Pièces galantes en prose et en vers. The author was Mlle. L'Heritier de Villaudon, a relation of Perrault's. It is to his daughter, a Mademoiselle Perrault, that she addresses her first piece, Marmoisan ou l'Innocente Tromperie. The author says she was lately in a company where people began to praise M. Perrault's Griselidis, Peau d'Ane and Les Souhaits. They spoke also of 'the excellent education which M. Perrault gives his children, of their ingenuity, and finally of the Contes naifs which one of his young pupils has lately written with so much charm. A few of these stories were narrated and led on to others.' Marmoisan is one of the others, and Mlle. L'Heritier says she told it, 'avec quelque broderie qui me vint sur le champ dans l'esprit.' The tale is, indeed, all embroidery, beneath which the original stuff is practically lost[15]. But the listener asked the narrator to offer it 'à ce jeune Conteur, qui occupe si spirituellement les amusemens de son enfance.'
In a later page she wonders that the Contes should have been 'handed to us from age to age, without any one taking the trouble to write them out.' Then she herself takes the trouble to write the story of Diamonds and Toads, a story known in a rough way to the Kaffirs—and hopelessly spoils it by her broderie, and by the introduction of a lay figure called Eloquentia Nativa (Les Enchantemens de l'Eloquence, ou Les Effets de la Douceur). One has only to compare Mlle. L'Heritier's literary and embroidered Eloquentia with Perrault's Les Fées (the original of our Diamonds and Toads), to see the vast difference between his manner, and that of contemporary conteurs. Perrault would never have brought in a Fairy named Eloquentia Nativa. Mlle. L'Heritier's Eloquentia (1696) was in the field before Perrault's unembroidered version, Les Fées, which appeared in Moetjens' Recueil in 1697. The Lady writes:
'Cent et Cent fois ma Gouvernante Au lieu de Fables d'animaux[16] M'a raconté les traits moraux De cette Histoire surprenante.'
Here, then, is Mlle. L'Heritier speaking of one of Perrault's children who has written the fairy tales, 'with so much charm.' At this very time (1696-1697), fairy tales, 'written with much charm,' in prose, and without the author's name, were appearing in Moetjens' Recueil. In 1697 these prose contes were collected, published, and declared to be by P. Darmancour, Perrault's little boy, to whom the Privilége du Roy is granted[17].
Critics have often declared that Perrault merely used the boy's name as a cover for his own, because it did not become an Academician to publish fairy tales, above all in prose. It may be noted that Perrault did not employ his usual publisher, Coignard, but went to Barbin. There might also have been a hope that little Perrault Darmancour, while shielding his father, 'fit parfaitement bien sa Cour en même tems,' like Le Petit Poucet. Considering how Perrault's other works are forgotten, and how his Tales survive, and regarding his boy as partly their author, we may even apply to him the Moral of Le Petit Poucet.
'Quelquefois, cependant, c'est ce petit Marmot Qui fera le bonheur de toute la famille!'