century, is a legend which has replaced history by disfiguring it. If
we confine ourselves exclusively to the testimonies of the ancients,
we shall be able to tell in a few words all that has come down to us
that is at all likely to be true respecting the life of Æsop. Although
various authors have attributed his birth-place in turn to Mesembria in
Thrace, to Samos, and to Sardis in Lydia, it is almost certain that he
was born in Phrygia, either at Amorium, or in another city of the same
province named Cotisium. The deformity which has been attributed to him
is simply an exaggeration of a certain ugliness of countenance; and as
he also stammered, he has been declared to have been almost dumb. The
first portion of his life was passed in slavery, at first under the
Lydian philosopher Xantus, and then under Iadmo at Samos, where he had
for a companion the celebrated courtesan, Rhodope. Having been freed by
Iadmo, he went to the court of Crœsus, where he enjoyed great favour.
Employed by this prince to convey his presents to the temple at Delphi,
and certain liberalities to the inhabitants, the perfidy and resentment
of the people, whom he had not deemed worthy of his master's gifts,
were the cause of his death. He was accused of having stolen a sacred
vase which had been treacherously concealed amongst his goods. Both
gods and men avenged his death. His journeys to Babylon and in Egypt
are pure inventions. If we may believe Plutarch, he was present at the
banquet of the Seven Wise Men at Corinth. The contradictory accounts
given by authors as to the place of his birth may be explained by his
many journeys; for he has been said to have been born wherever he
resided. It will be seen by this brief sketch, that the life of Æsop by
Planudes is not a pure invention, and that we may say with respect to
it--
"However great the lie may he.
Therein some grains of truth we see."
[3] In the lists of the Kings of Babylon there is found no
monarch of this name, and this is another proof amongst many that the
life of Æsop by Planudes is a fiction.
[4] The Athenians erected a statue to Æsop, which was the work
of the celebrated Lysippus, and it was placed opposite those of the
Seven Wise Men.
DEDICATION
TO
MONSEIGNEUR THE DAUPHIN[1]
MONSEIGNEUR,
If there be anything ingenious in the republic of letters, it may be
said that it is the manner in which Æsop has deduced his moral. It
were truly to be wished that other hands than mine had added to the
fable the ornaments of poetry, since the wisest of the ancients[2] has
decided that they are not useless. I venture, Monseigneur, to submit to
you certain attempts in this manner, as being not altogether unsuited
to your earlier years. You are of an age[3] at which amusements
and sports are allowed to princes; but at the same time you should
devote some portion of your attention to serious reflections. This
is precisely what we meet with in the fables which we owe to Æsop.
At first sight they appear puerile; but their puerility is only the
covering of important truths.
I do not doubt, Monseigneur, that you entertain a favourable opinion
of compositions which are at once so useful and so agreeable; for
what more can one desire than the useful and the agreeable? It is
these that have been the means of introducing knowledge amongst men.
Æsop has discovered the singular art of joining the one to the other.
The perusal of his works invariably plants in the soul the seeds of
virtue, and teaches it to know itself, without letting it feel that
it is pursuing a study, whilst, in fact, it even believes that it is
otherwise engaged. It is a means of instruction which has been happily
made use of by him whom His Majesty has selected as your tutor.[4] He
teaches you all that a prince should learn in such a manner that you
study not only without trouble, but even with pleasure. We hope much
from this; but, to tell the truth, there are things from which we hope
infinitely more, and those, Monseigneur, are the qualities which our
invincible monarch has bestowed upon you by the mere circumstance of
your birth, and the example which he gives you day by day. When you see
him forming such grand designs; when you see him calmly regarding the
agitation of Europe and the efforts which it makes to divert him from
his enterprises;[5] when you see him penetrating by a single effort
the heart of one province[6] bristling against him with insurmountable
obstacles, and subjugating another[7] within eight days, during that
season which is the most hostile of all others to the operations of
war, and when the courts of other princes are redolent only of peace
and pleasure; when you see him not content with merely subduing men,
but resolved also to vanquish the elements; and when, I say, on his
return from this expedition, in which he has conquered like another
Alexander, you see him ruling his people like another Augustus,--admit,
Monseigneur, that, in spite of the tenderness of your years, you
sigh for glory as ardently as your father, and that you await with
impatience the moment when you will be able to declare yourself his
rival in your worship of this divine mistress. But, no; you do not
await it, Monseigneur; you anticipate it; and in proof of this I need
no other witnesses than that noble restlessness, that vivacity, that
ardour, those many evidences of spirit, of courage, of greatness of
soul, which you so continually display. It must, doubtless, be the
greatest gratification to our monarch, as it is a most agreeable
spectacle to the universe, to see you thus growing up, a young plant
which will one day protect with its shadow peoples and nations.
I might enlarge upon this subject. But as the plan I have proposed to
myself of amusing you is more suited to my powers than that of praising
you, I shall hasten to have recourse to my fables, and will add to
the truths I have told you but this--and that is, Monseigneur, that I
am, with respectful zeal, your very humble, very obedient, and very
faithful servant,
DE LA FONTAINE.
[1] Louis, Dauphin of France, son of Louis XIV., and of Marie
Theresa of Austria, was born at Fontainebleau on the 1st of November,
1661, and died at Meudon on the 14th of April, 1671.
[2] Socrates.
[3] The Dauphin was six years and five months old when La
Fontaine published the collection of fables to which this Dedication
is prefixed. It was completed on the 3rd of March, 1668.
[4] Monseigneur the Dauphin had two tutors: the first being M. the
President de Perigni, and the second M. Bossuet, the Bishop of Meaux.
La Fontaine, in the above passage, alludes to M. de Perigni.
[5] This refers to the Triple Alliance formed between England,
Spain, and Holland, for the purpose of checking the conquests of the
French monarch.
[6] Flanders, in which the French king made a campaign in
1667, when he took Douai, Tournoi, Oudenarde, Ath, Alost, and Lille.
[7] Franche-Comté, which he subdued in 1668.
PREFACE.
The indulgence with which some of my fables have been received[1] has
induced me to hope that this present collection may meet with the same
favour. At the same time I must admit that one of the masters of our
eloquence[2] has disapproved of the plan of rendering these fables in
verse, since he believes that their chief ornament consists in having
none; and that, moreover, the restraints of poetry, added to the
severity of our language, would frequently embarrass me, and deprive
most of these narratives of that brevity which may be styled the very
soul of the art of story-telling, since without it a tale necessarily
becomes tame and languid. This opinion could only have been expressed
by a man of exquisite taste, and I will merely ask of him that he
will in some degree relax it, and will admit that the Lacedemonian
graces are not so entirely opposed to the French language, that it is
impossible to make them accord.
After all, I have but followed the example, I will not say of the
ancients, which would not affect me in this case, but that of the
moderns. In every age, amongst every poetical people, Parnassus has
deemed this species of composition its own. Æsop's fables had scarcely
seen the light, when Socrates[3] thought proper to dress them in
the livery of the Muses; and what Plato says on this subject is so
pleasant, that I cannot refrain from making it one of the ornaments
of this Preface. He says, then, that Socrates having been condemned
to death, his punishment was respited on account of the occurrence
of certain fêtes. Cébès went to see him on the day of his death, and
Socrates then told him that the gods had several times warned him by
dreams that he should devote himself to music before he died. He did
not at first understand the signification of these dreams; for, as
music does not improve a man's moral nature, of what use could it be to
him?[4] It was evident, however, that there was some mystery involved,
for the gods never ceased to give him the same warning, and it had come
to him again on the occasion of one of the fêtes to which I have above
alluded. At length, after having deeply reflected on what it might be
that Heaven intended him to do, he concluded that as music and poetry
are so closely allied, it probably meant him to turn his attention to
the latter. There can be no good poetry without harmony; but to good
poetry fiction is also equally necessary, and Socrates only knew how
to tell the truth. At length, however, he discovered a compromise;
selecting such fables as those of Æsop, which always contain something
of truth in them, he employed the last moments of his life in rendering
them into verse.
Socrates is not the only one who has regarded fables and poetry as
sisters. Phædrus has also declared that he held this opinion, and
by the excellence of his work we are able to judge of that of the
philosopher. After Phædrus, Avienus treated the same subject in the
same way; finally, the moderns have also followed their example,
and we find instances of this not only amongst foreign nations, but
in our own. It is true, that when our own countrymen devoted their
attention to this species of composition, the French language was so
different from what it now is, that we may regard them in this case
as foreigners. This has not deterred me from my enterprise. On the
contrary, I have flattered myself with the hope that, if I did not
pursue this career with success, I should at least earn the credit of
having opened the road.
It may possibly happen that my labours will induce others to continue
the work; and, indeed, there is no reason why this species of
composition should be exhausted until there shall remain no fresh
fables to put in verse. I have selected the best; that is to say, those
which seem to me to be so; but, in addition to the fact that I may
have erred in my selection, it will be by no means a difficult thing
for others to give a different rendering even to those which I have
selected; and if their renderings should be briefer than mine, they
will doubtless be more approved. In any case, some praise will always
be due to me, either because my rashness has had a happy result, and
that I have not departed too far from the right path, or, at least,
because I shall have instigated others to do better.
I think that I have sufficiently justified my design. As regards the
execution, I shall leave the public to be the judge. There will not be
found in my renderings the elegance and extreme brevity which are the
charms of Phædrus, for these qualities are beyond my powers; and that
being the case, I have thought it right to give more ornament to my
work than he has done. I do not blame him for having restricted himself
in length, for the Latin language enabled him to be brief; and, indeed,
if we take the trouble to examine closely, we shall find in this author
all the genuine characteristics and genius of Terence. The simplicity
of these great men is magnificent; but, not possessing the powers
of language of these authors, I cannot attain their heights. I have
striven, therefore, to compensate in some degree for my failings in
this respect, and I have done this with all the more boldness because
Quintilian has said that one can never deviate too much in narrative.
It is not necessary in this place to prove whether this be true or not;
it is sufficient that Quintilian has made the statement.[5]
I have also considered that, as these fables are already known to all
the world, I should have done nothing if I had not rendered them in
some degree new, by clothing them with certain fresh characteristics.
I have endeavoured to meet the wants of the day, which are novelty and
gaiety; and by gaiety I do not mean merely that which excites laughter,
but a certain charm, an agreeable air, which may be given to every
species of subject, even the most serious.
It is not, however, by the outward form which I have given it that
the value of my work should be alone judged, but by the quality of
the matter of which it is composed, and by its utility. For what is
there that is worthy of praise in the productions of the mind which is
not to be found in the apologue? There is something so grand in this
species of composition, that many of the ancients have attributed the
greater part of these fables to Socrates; selecting as their author
that individual amongst mortals who was most directly in communication
with the gods. I am rather surprised that they have not maintained
that these fables descended direct from heaven,[6] or that they have
not attributed their guardianship to some one special deity, as they
have done in the case of poetry and eloquence. And what I say is not
altogether without foundation, since, if I may venture to speak of that
which is most sacred in our eyes in the same breath with the errors of
the ancients, we find that Truth has spoken to men in parables; and
is the parable anything else than a fable? that is to say, a feigned
example of some truth, which has by so much the more force and effect
as it is the more common and familiar?
It is for these reasons that Plato, having banished Homer from his
Republic, has given a very honourable place in it to Æsop. He maintains
that infants suck in fables with their mothers' milk, and recommends
nurses to teach them to them, since it is impossible that children
should be accustomed at too early an age to the accents of wisdom and
virtue. If we would not have to endure the pain of correcting our
habits, we should take care to render them good whilst as yet they are
neither good nor bad. And what better aids can we have in this work
than fables? Tell a child that Crassus, when he waged war against the
Parthians, entered their country without considering how he should
be able to get out of it again, and that this was the cause of the
destruction of himself and his whole army, and how great an effort will
the infant have to make to remember the fact! But tell the same child
that the fox and the he-goat descended to the bottom of a well for the
purpose of quenching their thirst, and that the fox got out of it by
making use of the shoulders and horns of his companion as a ladder, but
that the goat remained there in consequence of not having had so much
foresight, and that, consequently, we should always consider what is
likely to be the result of what we do,--tell a child these two stories,
I say, and which will make the most impression on his mind? Is it not
certain that he will cling to the latter version as more conformable
and less disproportioned than the other to the tenderness of his brain?
It is useless for you to reply that the ideas of childhood are in
themselves sufficiently infantine, without filling them with a heap of
fresh trifles. These trifles, as you may please to call them, are only
trifles in appearance; in reality, they are full of solid sense. And as
by the definition of the point, the line, the surface, and the other
well-known elements of form, we obtain a knowledge which enables us to
measure not only the earth but the universe, in the same manner, by
the aid of the truths involved in fables, we finally become enabled to
form correct opinions of what is right and what is wrong, and to take a
foremost place in the ranks of life.
The fables which are included in this collection are not merely moral,
but are, to a certain extent, an encyclopædia of the qualities and
characteristics of animals, and, consequently, of our own; since we men
are, in fact, but a summary of all that is good and bad in the lower
ranks of creatures. When Prometheus determined upon creating man, he
took the dominant characteristic of each beast, and of these various
characteristics composed the human species. It follows, therefore,
that in these fables, in which beasts play so great a part, we may
each of us find some feature which we may recognise as our own. The
old may find in them a confirmation of their experiences, and the
young may learn from them that which they ought to know. As the latter
are but strangers in the world, they are as yet unacquainted with its
inhabitants; they are even unacquainted with themselves. They ought
not to be left in this ignorance, but should be instructed as to the
qualities of the lion, the fox, and so forth, and as to the why and
the wherefore a man is sometimes compared to the said lion and fox. To
effect this instruction is the object of these fables.
I have already overstepped the ordinary limits of a Preface, but I have
still a few remarks to make on the principles on which the present work
has been constructed.
The fable proper is composed of two parts, of which one may be termed
the body, and the other the soul. The body is the subject-matter of
the fable, and the soul is the moral. Aristotle will admit none but
animals into the domain of fabledom, and rigorously excludes from it
both men and plants. This rule, however, cannot be strictly necessary,
since neither Æsop, Phædrus, nor any of the fabulists[7] have observed
it; but, on the other hand, a moral is to a fable an indispensable
adjunct, and if I have in any instances omitted it, it is only in those
cases in which it could not be gracefully introduced, or in which it
was so obvious that the reader could deduce it for himself. The great
rule in France is to value only that which pleases, and I have thought
it no crime, therefore, to cancel ancient customs when they would not
harmonise with modern ones. In Æsop's time the fable was first related
as a simple story, and then supplemented by a moral which was distinct
in itself. Next Phædrus came, who was so far from complying with this
rule, that he sometimes transposed the moral from the end to the
commencement. For my own part, I have never failed to follow Æsop's
rule, except when it was necessary to observe a no less important one
laid down by Horace, to the effect that no writer should obstinately
struggle against the natural bent of his mind or the capabilities of
his subject. A man, he asserts, who wishes to succeed will never pursue
such a course, but will at once abandon a subject when he finds that he
cannot mould it into a creditable shape:
"Et quæ
Desperat tractata intescere posse, relinquit."[8]
It only remains to speak of the life of Æsop, whose biography by
Planudes is almost universally regarded as fabulous. It is supposed
that this writer formed the design of attributing a character and
adventures to his hero which should bear some resemblance to his
fables. This criticism, at first glance, appeared to me sufficiently
specious, but I have since found that it has no solid basis. It is
partly founded on what took place between Xantus and Æsop, and the
quantities of nonsense there contrasted. To which I reply, Who is the
sage to whom such things have not happened? The whole of the life even
of Socrates was not serious; and what confirms me in my favourable
opinion is, that the character which Planudes gives to Æsop is similar
to that which Plutarch gives him in his Banquet of the Seven Wise
Men--that is, the character of a keen and all-observant man. It may
be objected, I know, that the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men is in
itself a fiction; and I admit that it is possible to be doubtful about
everything. For my own part, I cannot well see why Plutarch should have
desired to deceive posterity on this subject, when he has professed
to be truthful on every other, and to give to each of his personages
his real character. But however this may be, I would ask, Shall I be
less likely to be believed if I endorse another man's falsehoods than
if I invented some of my own? I might certainly fabricate a tissue of
conjectures, and entitle them the "Life of Æsop;" but whatever air of
genuineness it might wear, no one could rely upon such a work, and, if
he must put up with fiction, the reader would always prefer that of
Planudes to mine.
[1] Before the year 1668, when the present collection of
fables was first published. Fontaine had already published a few
separately, and others had circulated in manuscript.
[2] Patru, a celebrated lawyer, a member of the French
Academy, and one of La Fontaine's friends, who made a strange mistake
in trying to divert him from a species of composition which has
immortalised him.
[3] These fables had long been known when Socrates came into
the world, and the Father of Philosophy only took the trouble to render
them into verse during the imprisonment which preceded his death.
[4] The word Μουσιχὴ implied amongst the Greeks all the arts
to which the Muses devote themselves. It comprises the employments of
the mind in opposition to γυμναστιχὴ, which means the exercises of the
body. La Fontaine does not give Plato's meaning quite correctly. The
philosopher, at the commencement of the "Phædo," makes Socrates say
that, having been several times warned in dreams by the gods to study
music, he had only regarded it as an encouragement to persevere in
the pursuit of truth; but that, since his imprisonment, he had given
another interpretation to those warnings, and had decided that he
should better obey the wishes of the gods by making verses.
[5] The following is the passage in Quintilian to which the
poet alludes:--"Ego vero narrationem, at si ullam partem orationis,
omni qua potest gratia et venere exorundam."--<i>Quint., "Hist Orat."</i>
lib. ix., cap iv.
[6] La Fontaine has not ventured altogether to repair the
oversight of the ancients, for he has left the origin of fables a
doubtful point between heaven and earth, when he says, in a dedication
to Madame de Montespan, "The fable is a gift which comes from the
immortals; if it were the gift of man, he who gave it us would indeed
deserve a temple."
[7] The word fabulist was invented by La Fontaine, and has
no equivalent either in the Greek or Latin languages. La Motte only
ventured to use it under cover of the authority of our poet; and the
French Academy, having declined to admit it into the first edition of
its Dictionary, which was published after La Fontaine's death, only did
so when it had been sanctioned by usage and public admiration.
[8] <i>Hor.</i>, "<i>Ars Poet.</i>," v. 150.
TO
MONSEIGNEUR THE DAUPHIN.
I sing the heroes who call Æsop father,
Whose history, although deceitful rather,
Some truths and useful lessons, too, contains.
Everything finds a tongue in these my strains;
And what they say is wholesome: now and then
My animals I use as texts for men.
Illustrious branch of one the gods hold dear,
And by the whole world held in love and fear,
He who the proudest chiefs at once defies,
And counts the days by glorious victories,
Others will better tell, and higher soar,
To sing your mighty ancestors of yore;
But I would please thee in a humbler way,
And trace in verse the sketches I essay;
Yet if to please thee I do not succeed,
At least the fame of trying be my meed.
[Illustration: THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANT.]
FABLE I.
THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE ANT.
The Grasshopper, so blithe and gay,
Sang the summer time away.
Pinched and poor the spendthrift grew,
When the sour north-easter blew.
In her larder not a scrap,
Bread to taste, nor drink to lap.
To the Ant, her neighbour, she
Went to moan her penury,
Praying for a loan of wheat,
Just to make a loaf to eat,
Till the sunshine came again.
"All I say is fair and plain,
I will pay you every grain,
Principal and interest too,
Before harvest, I tell you,
On my honour--every pound,
Ere a single sheaf is bound."
The Ant's a very prudent friend,
Never much disposed to lend;
Virtues great and failings small,
This her failing least of all.
Quoth she, "How spent you the summer?"
"Night and day, to each new comer
I sang gaily, by your leave;
Singing, singing, morn and eve."
"You sang? I see it at a glance.
Well, then, now's the time to dance."
FABLE II.
THE RAVEN AND THE FOX.