[4] Monseigneur the Dauphin had two tutors: the first being M. the President de Perigni, and the second M. Bossuet, the Bishop of Meaux. La Fontaine, in the above passage, alludes to M. de Perigni.
[5] This refers to the Triple Alliance formed between England, Spain, and Holland, for the purpose of checking the conquests of the French monarch.
[6] Flanders, in which the French king made a campaign in 1667, when he took Douai, Tournoi, Oudenarde, Ath, Alost, and Lille.
[7] Franche-Comté, which he subdued in 1668.
[PREFACE.]
The indulgence with which some of my fables have been received[1] has induced me to hope that this present collection may meet with the same favour. At the same time I must admit that one of the masters of our eloquence[2] has disapproved of the plan of rendering these fables in verse, since he believes that their chief ornament consists in having none; and that, moreover, the restraints of poetry, added to the severity of our language, would frequently embarrass me, and deprive most of these narratives of that brevity which may be styled the very soul of the art of story-telling, since without it a tale necessarily becomes tame and languid. This opinion could only have been expressed by a man of exquisite taste, and I will merely ask of him that he will in some degree relax it, and will admit that the Lacedemonian graces are not so entirely opposed to the French language, that it is impossible to make them accord.
After all, I have but followed the example, I will not say of the ancients, which would not affect me in this case, but that of the moderns. In every age, amongst every poetical people, Parnassus has deemed this species of composition its own. Æsop's fables had scarcely seen the light, when Socrates[3] thought proper to dress them in the livery of the Muses; and what Plato says on this subject is so pleasant, that I cannot refrain from making it one of the ornaments of this Preface. He says, then, that Socrates having been condemned to death, his punishment was respited on account of the occurrence of certain fêtes. Cébès went to see him on the day of his death, and Socrates then told him that the gods had several times warned him by dreams that he should devote himself to music before he died. He did not at first understand the signification of these dreams; for, as music does not improve a man's moral nature, of what use could it be to him?[4] It was evident, however, that there was some mystery involved, for the gods never ceased to give him the same warning, and it had come to him again on the occasion of one of the fêtes to which I have above alluded. At length, after having deeply reflected on what it might be that Heaven intended him to do, he concluded that as music and poetry are so closely allied, it probably meant him to turn his attention to the latter. There can be no good poetry without harmony; but to good poetry fiction is also equally necessary, and Socrates only knew how to tell the truth. At length, however, he discovered a compromise; selecting such fables as those of Æsop, which always contain something of truth in them, he employed the last moments of his life in rendering them into verse.