His admission was indirectly the cause of the only serious literary quarrel of his life. A dispute took place between the Academy and one of its members, Antoine Furetiere (q.v.), on the subject of the latter's French dictionary, which was decided to be a breach of the Academy's corporate privileges. Furetiere bitterly assailed those whom he considered to be his enemies, and among them La Fontaine, whose unlucky Contes made him peculiarly vulnerable, his second collection of these tales having been the subject of a police condemnation. Shortly afterwards La Fontaine had a share in a still more famous affair, the cele brated Ancient-and-Modern squabble in which Boileau and Per rault were the chiefs, and in which La Fontaine (though he had been specially singled out by Perrault for favourable comparison with Aesop and Phaedrus) took the Ancient side. About the same time (1685-1687) he made the acquaintance of the last of his many hosts and protectors, Monsieur and Madame d'Hervart, and fell in love with a certain Madame Ulrich. This acquaintance was accompanied by a great familiarity with Vendome, Chaulieu and the rest of the libertine coterie of the Temple; but, though Madame de la Sabliere had long given herself up almost entirely to good works and religious exercises, La Fontaine continued an inmate of her house until her death in 1693. What followed is told in one of the best known of the many stories bearing on his childlike nature. Hervart on hearing of the death, had set out at once to find La Fontaine. He met him in the street in great sorrow, and begged him to make his home at his house. "J'y allais" was La Fontaine's answer. He did not survive Madame de la Sabliere much more than two years, dying on April 13, 1695, at the age of seventy-three. He was buried in the cemetery of thz Holy Innocents.
The curious personal character of La Fontaine, like that of some other men of letters, has been enshrined in a kind of legend by literary tradition. At an early age his absence of mind and indifference to business gave a subject to Tallemant des Reaux. His later contemporaries helped to swell the tale, and the i8th century finally accepted it, including the anecdotes of his meeting his son, being told who he was, and remarking, "Ah, yes, I thought I had seen him somewhere!" of his insisting on fighting a duel with a supposed admirer of his wife, and then imploring him to visit at his house just as before ; of his going into company with his stockings wrong side out ; with, for a contrast, those of his awkwardness and silence, if not positive rudeness, in com pany. One of the chief authorities for these anecdotes is Louis Racine, a man who possessed intelligence and moral worth, and who received them from his father, La Fontaine's attached friend for more than thirty years.
Works.—The works of La Fontaine, the total bulk of which is considerable, fall no less naturally than traditionally into three divisions, the Fables, the Contes and the miscellaneous works. Of these the first may be said to be known universally, the second to be known to all lovers of French literature, the third to be with a few exceptions practically forgotten. This distribution of the
judgment of posterity is as usual just in the main, but not wholly. There are excellent things in the Oeuvres Diverses, but their ex cellence is only occasional, and it is not at the best equal to that of the Fables or the Contes. The best dramatic pieces usually published under his name—Ragotin, Le Florentin, La Coupe enchantee, were originally fathered not by him but by Champ mesle, the husband of the famous actress who captivated Racine and Charles de Sevigne. His avowed work was chiefly in the form of opera. Psyche has all the advantages of its charming story and of La Fontaine's style.
In the Contes La Fontaine takes his stories (varying them, it is true, in detail not a little) from Boccaccio, from Marguerite, from the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, etc. He applies to them his marvel lous power of easy sparkling narration, and his hardly less marvellous faculty of saying more or less outrageous things in the most polite and gentlemanly manner. These Contes are em phatically contes pour rire, a genuine expression of the esprit gaulois of the fabliau writers and of Rabelais, destitute of the grossness of envelope which had formerly covered that spirit.
La Fontaine did not during his life issue any complete edition of his works, nor even of the two greatest and most important divisions of them. Among the works published in his lifetime which have not been already mentioned are: Poëme de la captivite de St. Male (1673), one of the pieces inspired by the Port-Royalists, the Pointe du Quinquina (1692), and a number of pieces published either in small pamphlets or with the works of other men. Among the latter may be singled out the pieces published by the poet with the works of his friend Maucroix (1685). The year after his death some post humous works appeared, and some years after his son's death the scattered poems, letters, etc., with the addition of some unpublished work bought from the family in manuscript, were carefully edited and published as Oeuvres diverses (1729).