PERRAULT, CHARLES, a French writer, b. at Paris, Jan, 12, 1628, was the son of an advocate, and received a good education. In 1651 he became a member of the Paris bar, and obtained a considerable measure of success as a pleader; but having made the acquaintance of the minister Colbert, he was ere long diverted from the practice of his profession by receiving the appointment of controller-general of the royal buildings. In 1671 the influence of procured for him an entrance into the French academy, into which learned body lie introduced several important reforms. What first made his name well known was his famous controversy with Boileau regarding the comparative merits of the ancients and moderns, which originated in a poem of Perrault's, entitled Le Siecle de Louis le Grand, read before his confreres of the academy, and intended to prove that modern authors were superior to Homer, Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, etc. It was followed up by en elaborate and methodically written ParallNe des Anciens et des MOdernes (4 vas. 1688-98), which, though an able and learned performance, is a complete failure in its logic. Boileau was his keenest opponent, and fiercely, not to say
rudely assailed him in his Reflexions sur Longin, to which Perrault replied with equal acrimony, but not with equal wit, in his Apologie des Femmes (1694). One good effect of this quarrel was to turn Perrault's attention still more closely and critically to his con temporaries, the result of which was an admirable work, Hommes Illustres du Siècle de Louis X/V., containing 200 critical biographies. But the work that has far more than any other preserved his name is his Fees, or Fairy Tales. See NOVELS. The grace, liveliness, and ingenious child-like fancy displayed in these charming composi tions, are beyond all praise, and when we remember that their author was far advanced in.years when he wrote them, the feat seems miraculous. "Second childhood" is not always so like the "first," as that of Perrault seems to have been. Perrault died May 16, 1703,