George Saintsbury

“ The Fables, with hardly less animation and narrative art than the Contes, are free from disadvantages (according to modern notions) of subject, and exhibit the versatility and fecundity of the author’s talent perhaps even more fully. La Fontaine had many predecessors in the fable and especially in the beast fable. ”

“ 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 Œuvres Diverses, but their excellence is only occasional, and it is not at the best equal to that of the Fables or the Contes. It was thought by contemporary judges who were both competent and friendly that La Fontaine attempted too many styles, and there is something in the criticism. ”

“ He is not a great poet, perhaps not even a great humorist; but he is the most admirable teller of light tales in verse that has ever existed in any time or country; and he has established in his verse-tale a model which is never likely to be surpassed.
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. The most remarkable of his separate publications have already been noticed. ”

“ It may only be said that satire (and La Fontaine is eminently a satirist) necessarily concerns itself with the darker rather than with the lighter shades. Indeed the objection has become pretty nearly obsolete with the obsolescence of what may be called the sentimental-ethical school of criticism. Its last overt expression was made by Lamartine, excellently answered by Sainte-Beuve. Exception has also been taken to the Fables on more purely literary, but hardly less purely arbitrary grounds by Lessing. ”

“ Perhaps the best worth recording of all these stories is one of the Vieux Colombier quartette, which tells how Molière, while Racine and Boileau were exercising their wits upon “le bonhomme” or “le bon” (by both which titles La Fontaine was familiarly known) , remarked to a bystander, “Nos beaux esprits ont beau faire, ils n’effaceront pas le bonhomme.” They have not.
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. ”

“ Light love, the misfortunes of husbands, the cunning of wives, the breach of their vows by ecclesiastics, constitute the staple of their subject. In some respects La Fontaine is the best of such tale-tellers, while he is certainly the latest who deserves such excuse as may be claimed by a writer who does not choose indecent subjects from a deliberate knowledge that they are considered indecent, and with a deliberate desire to pander to a vicious taste. ”

“ Psyche has all the advantages of its charming story and of La Fontaine’s style, but it is perhaps principally interesting nowadays because of the framework of personal conversation already alluded to. ”

“ 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. Meanwhile the poet continued to find friends. In 1664 he was regularly commissioned and sworn in as gentleman to the duchess dowager of Orleans, and was installed in the Luxembourg. He still retained his rangership, and in 1666 we have something like a reprimand from Colbert suggesting that he should look into some malpractices at Château Thierry. ”

“ In 1682 he was, at more than sixty years of age, recognized as one of the first men of letters of France. Madame de Sévigné, one of the soundest literary critics of the time, and by no means given to praise mere novelties, had spoken of his second collection of Fables published in the winter of 1678 as divine ”