This brings us to the mention of La Fontaine's one great, solitary, and brief fit of anger. Always ready to yield to the advice of his friends, he imprudently listened to Lulli, who had importuned him to produce, at a very short notice, the libretto of an opera. The music was to be marvellous, the Court would applaud to the skies the author and the composer, and the poet would be free of the theatre, and have acquired all the rights of dramatic authorship. What a temptation was this! La Fontaine courageously set himself to work under the guidance of Lulli, who urged him forward, and day by day made fresh suggestions. The poet readily obeyed the spur, and even yielded to the sacrifice of some of his verses; but he had scarcely finished, when he discovered that his perfidious employer had passed over, with all his musical baggage, to the Proserpine of Quinault. We may judge of the poet's rage. The four months' labour utterly lost; the nights passed without sleep; the treachery of the instigation; the heartless abandonment! Ah! how many causes of complaint had the poet against this traitor! La Fontaine could not contain himself, and wrote a satire, compound of gall and bile, in which he complains of having been made a fool of. This fit of passion, however, did not last long. Madame de Thianges brought about a reconciliation between the culprit and the victim, and that without much difficulty, for, after all, Lulli was an excellent companion, and La Fontaine was incapable of nursing anger long. To be angry was a trouble to him, and consequently he never kept up a sense of ill-feeling for any length of time. His friends might become estranged from or quarrel with each other; but he remained on the best of terms with them, and saw them separately. One might have thought that he had taken for his motto the verse of the old poet, Garnier—
"To love I am plighted, but never to hate."
The poetical excursions of La Fontaine out of his own domain added nothing to his renown, and were scarcely perceived amidst the rays of his glory as a fabulist—the title by which he is known to posterity; and it may be added, that the Fable, as it is fashioned by La Fontaine, is one of the happiest creations of the human mind. It is, properly speaking, a charm, as he has said, for in it all the resources of poetry are enclosed in one frame. La Fontaine's apologue is connected with the épopée by the narrative, with the descriptive style by his pictures, with the drama by the play of various personages, and the representation of various characters, and with didactic poetry by the precepts which he inculcates. Nor is this all; for the poet frequently speaks in his own person. The supreme charm of his compositions consists in the vitality with which they are imbued. The illusion is complete, and passes from the poet who has been first subjected to it, to the spectator, whom it entrances. Homer is the only poet who possesses this characteristic in the same degree. La Fontaine has always before his eyes all that he describes, and his description is an actual painting. His spirit, gently moved by the spectacle which at first it enjoys alone, reproduces it in vivid pictures. That simplicity for which he has been praised exists but in the nature of the images which he has chosen as the best means of representing his thoughts, or, rather, his emotions. Properly speaking, we do not so much read La Fontaine's fables as gaze at them; we do not know them by heart, but we have them constantly before our eyes. Let us take as an example "Death and the Woodman," since on this subject two great poets have weakly contended against our fabulist. In this laughable rivalry Boileau and J. B. Rousseau are killed by the spirit of abstraction; whilst La Fontaine triumphs by means of the image which glows before the eyes and penetrates the heart. If we add to the constant attractiveness of living reality the pleasure caused by the representation of humanity under animal symbols, we shall have before us the two active principles of the universal interest excited by La Fontaine's fables—I mean illusion, which excites the imagination; and allusion, which has a reduplicate action on the mind.
We do not pretend to assert that there were no French fabulists in France before La Fontaine. The Trouvères were fabulists, and one of the most remarkable specimens of the literature of the middle ages, the "Romance of the Fox," is a genuine study of feudal society, in the guise of personages selected from the animal kingdom. The resemblance of men to animals in this work is complete, and this strange épopée derives its interest from the allusion, which was so remarkable a characteristic of La Fontaine's fables. But our poet never drew from this abundant source, and was also unaware that Marie de France in the thirteenth century had adopted, in imitation of Æsop, the simplicity of treatment which he himself had surpassed, and that other poets of the same period had not only treated of similar subjects, but had written verses on them, which he reproduced in the full confidence that they were original. La Fontaine drew his materials directly from the Greek, the Latin, or the Oriental, Æsop, Phædrus, and Pilpay were his models; but it must be observed that he might have found amongst French writers guides to that perfection which he alone has attained. P. Blanchet, in "L'Avocat Patelin," has inserted the fable of "The Crow and the Fox," to the first of whom he has given the name of Maitre, adopted by La Fontaine. Clément Marot wrote a little drama, full of grace and playfulness, on the subject of the fable of "The Rat and the Lion;" and Régnier has illumined with his genius the oft-told story of "The Wolf and the Horse." La Fontaine knew no other predecessors, amongst modern poets, than the three above mentioned, and he was at no pains to imitate them. In spite of some few scattered similarities between his writings and theirs, La Fontaine was, on the whole, completely original.
La Fontaine's originality does not consist solely in the particular bent of his imagination, but also in his language. It is true that his style bears the impress of the purity and elegance of the language of his age, and is characterised by that finish which is common to all the great writers of his time; but there is also a peculiar richness, suppleness, and naturalness about his idiom. There is, indeed, a Gallic tone in his writings, which is to be found in the works of no other authors of the same period, and which, though derived from old sources, gives to his works a surprising air of novelty. The use of old words and phrases, which he has revived, is a genuine conquest over the lapse of time, and a convenient method of setting forth ideas which would have been unsuited to the over-strained dignity of classic language. Marot, Rabelais, and Bonaventure des Periers, all contributed to enable La Fontaine to make use of the best colloquial language that has ever been employed by any writer; but La Fontaine's thefts are never discoverable; they blend with such exquisite effect with his own ideas, that they seem rather to be reminiscences than robberies. It is in this way that he has robbed the ancients without betraying himself, and that Horace, Virgil, and Plato, even, have furnished him with happy phrases, which have been obdurate to the efforts of all their translators; phrases which La Fontaine has unconsciously appropriated. His brain took them as they fell in with the current of his thought, and they flowed on with it as though from the same source. Virgil may discover his frigus captabis opacum in "Gouter l'Ombre, et le Frais;" Horace, his O! imitatores, servum pecus in "Quelques Imitateurs sot Bétail, je l'Avoue;" and, again, his at nostri proavi in "Nos Aïeux, Bonnes Gens." But if either Virgil or Horace were to meet with La Fontaine, they would neither exclaim against him as a traitor nor a thief, but only hail him as a brother poet.
La Fontaine was permitted to present his second collection of fables to Louis XIV., and obtained a privilege with respect to its publication which was almost unique; a eulogium on the work being included in its authorisation. Our poet at this period assumed a most discreet air, and out of regard, doubtless, for his patroness, avoided all occasion for scandal. Another, and perhaps a stronger reason was, that he cherished a secret ambition of becoming a member of the Academy. Inspired by this hope, he prevailed on himself so far as to praise Colbert, who had been the vindictive means of the fall of Fouquet. The illustrious fraternity, it must be observed, had given him some intimation that it was willing to elect him, and entreated him to act in such a manner that the election might be unanimous. The goodwill of the Academy was so decided, that, at the death of Colbert, it preferred the fabulist to Boileau, who had the support of the royal favour. But a delay was necessary. The Academy's choice was neither annulled nor confirmed; the final decision being delayed until the death of another of the immortals had created a fresh vacancy, and Boileau and La Fontaine entered the Academy side by side; Boileau as soon as elected, and La Fontaine after a year's delay. As we have already said, he had performed his purgatory, and Louis XIV. had been willing to believe that he would henceforth be discreet. We shall see, however, that La Fontaine had only strength enough to promise, and that he was a living example of the refrain of one of his most charming ballads—
"A promise is one thing—the keeping another."
The desire to become a member of the Academy had been with La Fontaine a passion. He was attracted to the honour as well by his friendship for his comrades as by his love for literature. He rendered himself noticeable by the constancy with which he frequented the Academy, always joining its sittings in time to receive his fee for attendance. One day he was late, and, strict as the rule was, the members present, who knew that this little weekly payment was about all the pocket money their comrade enjoyed, proposed that the rule for that occasion should be relaxed; but La Fontaine was inflexible. Nevertheless, this act of heroism did not prevent Furetière, in the course of his quarrel with the Academy, from stigmatising La Fontaine as a jetonnier. It is well known why this lexicographical abbé, as bilious as reforming grammarians mostly are, entered upon a campaign against his comrades, and how his obstinacy and evil deeds, although he was really in the right, caused his exclusion from the Academy. Fontaine, either through inadvertence or from a feeling of esprit de corps, which is more probably the case, had deposited the fatal black ball for the exclusion of his obstinate friend. The consequence was, that Furetière pursued him with implacable animosity, and showered upon the head of the good old fabulist more than his share of epigrams, which were rather venomous than witty. It was the only attack of this sort that La Fontaine had to endure, but it was a particularly sharp one. To style the most inoffensive of men "a monster of perfidy" was the slightest of the onslaughts of the rancorous Abbé of Chalivoix. May Heaven preserve us all from the vengeance of soured friends, for there is nothing to equal their venom and malice!
La Fontaine found himself mixed up in another not less animated Academical quarrel, one in which his opponents did not display so great an absence of courtesy. I refer to the controversy between the ancient and modern schools, which was revived in full Academy by Christopher Perrault. Boileau was as eager in the matter as Racine. La Fontaine enrolled himself in their ranks, with less of partisanship, but equal decision. Thus, the three best instances that the panegyrist of the moderns could have employed in support of his position, were found ranged against him. The turn which the dispute took is singular indeed. Those who were really the rivals of antiquity declared themselves in its favour, while writers of mediocrity, who had much less personal interest in the question than they themselves imagined, proclaimed with fervour the superiority of the moderns. Saint-Sorlin had begun the battle. On Perrault's signal the weapons were snatched up once more, and Lamotte-Houdard continued the war. Strange champions of progress in letters! whom the absurdity of the contrast between their pretensions on behalf of their school and the little merits of themselves, its examples, have almost alone saved from oblivion. In fact, the only thing which remains of the least interest in the bulky files of this controversy is our poet's admirable epistle to the learned Huet, at the time Bishop of Soissons.