LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE (1621-1695), French poet, was born at Château Thierry in Champagne, probably on July 8, 1621. His father was Charles de La Fontaine, maitre des eaux et forets--a kind of deputy-ranger—of the duchy of Château Thierry; his mother was Francoise Pidoux. On both sides his family was of the highest provincial middle class, but was not noble. Jean, the eldest child, was educated at the college of Reims. He entered the Oratory in May 1641, and the seminary of Saint-Magloire in October; but he had no religious vocation. He is said to have been admitted as avocat. In 1647 his father resigned his rangership in his favour, and arranged a marriage for him with Marie Hericart, a girl of sixteen, who brought him twenty thousand livres, and expectations. The marriage was unhappy, and a separation de biens was arranged in 1658. For the greater part of the last forty years of La Fontaine's life he lived in Paris and his wife at Château Thierry, which, however, he frequently visited. One son was born to them in 1653.
Even in the earlier years of his marriage La Fontaine seems to have been much at Paris; about 1656 he became a regular visitor to the capital. He was past thirty when his literary career began. At first he wrote trifles in the fashion of the time—epigrams, ballades, rondeaux, etc. His first serious work was a translation or adaptation of the Eunuchus of Terence (1654). He was intro duced to Fouquet by Jacques Jannart, and he soon received a pension of i,000 livres (1659), on the easy terms of a copy of verses for each quarter's receipt.
After the fall of Fouquet La Fontaine found a new protector in the duke and still more in the duchess of Bouillon, his feudal superiors at Château Thierry. Some of La Fontaine's liveliest verses are addressed to the duchess, Anne Mancini, the youngest of Mazarin's nieces, and it is even probable that the taste of the duke and duchess for Ariosto had something to do with the writ ing of his first work of real importance, the first book of the Contes, which appeared in About this time the quartette of the Rue du Vieux Colombier, so famous in French literary history, was formed. It consisted of La Fontaine, Racine, Boileau and Moliere, the last of whom was almost of the same age as La Fontaine, the other two con siderably younger. Chapelle was also a kind of outsider in the coterie. Of the many anecdotes about these meetings the most
characteristic is perhaps that which asserts that a copy of Chape lain's unlucky Pucelle always lay on the table, a certain number of lines of which was the appointed punishment for offences against the company. The coterie furnished under feigned names the personages of La Fontaine's version of the Cupid and Psyche story, which, however, with Adonis, was not printed till 1669.
In 1664 La Fontaine was regularly commissioned and sworn in as gentleman to the duchess dowager of Orleans, and was in stalled in the Luxembourg. He still retained his rangership, and in 1666 we have something like a reprimand from Colbert suggest ing that he should look into some malpractices at Château Thierry. In the same year appeared the second book of the Contes, and in 1668 the first six books of the Fables, with more of both kinds in 1671. In 1672 he edited, at the instance of the Port-Royalists, a volume of sacred poetry dedicated to the prince de Conti. A year afterwards his situation changed. The duchess of Orleans died, and he apparently had to give up his rangership, probably selling it to pay debts. But there was always a providence for La Fontaine. Madame de la Sabliere invited him to make his home in her house, where he lived for some twenty years.
In 1682 he was, at more than sixty years of age, recognized as one of the first men of letters of France. Madame de Sevigne had spoken of his second collection of Fables published in the winter of 1678 as divine. He presented himself for election to the Academy, and, though the subjects of his Contes were scarcely calculated to propitiate that decorous assembly, while his con tinued attachment to Fouquet and to more than one representative of the old Frondeur party made him suspect to Colbert and the king, most of the members were his personal friends. He was first proposed in 1682, but was rejected for Dangeau. The next year Colbert died and La Fontaine was again nominated. Boileau was also a candidate, but the first ballot gave the fabulist six teen votes against seven only for the critic. The king, whose assent was necessary, was ill-pleased, and the election was left pending. Another vacancy occurred, however, some months later, and Boileau was elected. The king hastened to approve the choice.