FONTAINE, Jon:T DE LA, a celebrated French poet, and one of the most original writers of that nation, was born at Chateau-Thierry, in the year 1621. He received a liberal education, but discovered no peculiar talent for poetry until his twenty-second year; at which period his latent powers are said to have been kindled by the perusal of some of the odes of Malesherbes. His first essays he was in the habit of submitting to the judgment of a !elation of his own, who encouraged him to proceed, and frequently used to read AVith him Quintilian, Horace, and the best Roman authors. La Fontaine also endeavoured to improve his genius, by an acquaintance with the French and Italian writers; and, from the works of the most eminent Greek authors, he drew many of those fine moral and political maxims, which he has interspersed among his fables.
A desire of enjoying the conversation of men of letters induced him to remove to Paris, where the intendant, Fou fillet, soon procured him a pension. He was afterwards ap pointed gentleman to the Queen Henrietta of England ; but the early death of that unfortunate princess put an end to all his hopes of court preferment. Some time after that event, the generous and witty Madame de la Sabliere invited him to reside in her house, offering to provide him with an apartment and all necessaries. The invitation was accepted ; and he soon became so domesticated in his new residence, that the lady, having once in a pet turned away all her servants, observed, that she had kept only her three animals,—her dog, her cat, and La Fontaine.
La Fontaine does not appear to have possessed any share of that lively sensibility, which has generally been con sidered as characteristic of the poetic tribe ; on the con trary, he seems to have been gifted with a very extraor dinary degree of apathy and indifference. In his conduct and behaviour, he was plain, artless, easy, open, and credu lous; he displayed no enty or ambition ; he never took umbrage at any thing that was said or clone; and he lived long in habits of the most cordial intimacy with the most celebrated wits of Paris. lie made no figure in company, hut frequently exposed himself to ridicule, in consequence of his awkwardness and absence of mind.
Upon the death of Madame de la Sabliere, with whom he had lived upwards of twenty years, he is said to have received very flattering invitations from several of the English nobility ; but he was induced to decline them, in consequence of the liberality of the Duke of Burgundy, and the emulation excited among his own counuymen by the generous invitation of the English lords.
Although far from being either an infidel or a libertine, La Fontaine had lived in extreme carelessness with regard to religious concerns. However, when in 1692 he was seized with a dangerous illness, the priest who attended him is said to have prevailed upon him to suppress a dramatic piece, which was just going to be offered for representation, and to make a solemn apology, or palinode, in presence of a deputation of the members of the academy, for the publication of his tales. The singularity of his ap pearance and habits was such as to pass for stupidity among the vulgar, or with those who were not intimately acquainted with his character. The nurse, who attended him during his illness, observing the fervour of the priest in his exhortations to the sick man, exclaimed : A h ! my good Sir, don't plague him so ; he is rather stupid than wicked." He died at Paris in the year 1693.
La Fontaine is generally accounted one of the most original writers of France. Ills fables are esteemed as master-pieces in that species of composition, and stand unrivalled by any writer of his own, or of any other country. Ingenious thoughts are unfolded with ad mirable clearness and simplicity, clothed in language at once easy and graceful, and adorned Ns ith all the charms of a brilliant versification, while the most pioround moral maxims and reflections are delivei ed in a style divested of dogmatism, and seem to arise naturally, and without effort, out of the narrative.
His tales, which ale borrowed for the most part from the Italian novelists and romance writers, are I elated with great humour and vivacity ; but it is to be regretted, that the subjects in general are such as admit of no moral ap plication ; and which no art can divest of a colouring offen sive to delicacy. (z)