evinced a great predilection for that species of literary composition ordinarily called apologue, who possessed in his library almost all the fabulists, and who read La Fontaine day and night. I gladly accepted the offer of my friend. We visited his uncle together.

I found him a little, old man, of some fourscore years, but with his mental faculties as fresh and active as ever. His countenance was sweet and mirthful; his eyes lively and spiritual; his face, his smile, his manner, all indicated an enviable peace of mind, and that habit of finding happiness in one's self, which, by contact, is so readily communicated to others. One felt sure, at the outset, that he saw in the octogenarian an excellent man. He received me with a frank and polite air, made me sit near him, begged me to raise my voice a trifle-only a trifle, because, as he phrased it, he had the happiness of being but slightly deaf; and, having been already advertised by his nephew that I made some pretensions of being a fabulist, he asked me if I would do him the honor to read some of my fables.

He did not need to press the request. I promptly chose those of my fables which I regarded as the best. I recited them in my best style, setting them off, as I supposed, with all the magical power of a good utterance; I even graced them with some of the airs of the stage-player; seeking, as I proceeded, to divine from the eyes of my judge, whether he was satisfied.

He listened to me with benevolence; laughed from time to time, at certain passages, and drew down his eyebrows at some others, which I noted, for the purpose of correcting them. After having listened to some dozen of my apologues, he gave me the tribute of eulogy which authors always regard as the price of their labor, and which is frequently, perhaps too frequently, all the reward they receive for their pains. I thanked him, as he praised me, after which we commenced an earnest and cordial conversation.

'I recognise in your fables,' said the old gentleman, 'several subjects treated of in ancient or foreign efforts of the kind.'

'Yes,' I replied, 'all are not of my invention. I have read a great many fabulists; and whenever I have found subjects which pleased me, and which had not been treated by La Fontaine, I have appropriated them, without hesitation. I have borrowed from Æsop, from Bidpai, from Gay, from the German fabulists, and, more frequently than from all the rest, from a Spaniard, named Yriarte, a poet whom I greatly esteem, and who has furnished me with the ideas embraced in the happiest of my apologues: I intend to anticipate the public in the preface to my fables, so that they cannot reproach.'

'Oh! that will make it all very smooth to the public,' interrupted he, laughing. 'Of what consequence is it to your readers, that the subject of one of your fables has been first elicited by a Greek, a Spaniard, or yourself? The main thing, of course, is that your fable is well made. La Bruyère says, The selection of thoughts is invention.' Beside, you have La Fontaine for your example. There are scarcely any of his apologues that I have not found in authors more ancient than he. But if anything could add to his glory, it would be this comparison. Give yourself no uneasiness on this point. In poetry, as in war, that

which one takes from his brothers is theft; but what he takes from foreigners is conquest. Let us speak of something more important. What are your ideas respecting apologues in general?'

At this question I was taken by surprise; I turned red, stammered, and-I know not what. But seeing plainly enough, from the old man's good-natured air, that the best way was to avow my ignorance, I answered, with a tone of voice so weak that it was necessary to repeat the answer, that I had not yet sufficiently reflected on this question; but that I intended to grapple with it when I undertook my preliminary essay.

'I understand,' said he, 'you have begun to compose fables, and when your collection is finished, you will reflect on the fable. This method of proceeding is commnon enough, even in respect of more important matters. Moreover, if you had taken the contrary course, which surely would have been more in accordance with reason, I doubt if your fables would have gained by it. This is perhaps the only species of composition in which the technical poetic art is nearly useless in which study adds nothing to talent-in which, to use a comparison of your own, one labors, by a kind of instinct, as really as the swallow and the sparrow build their nests. However, I doubt not that you have read in many prefaces to collections to fables, that the apologue is an instruction disguised under the allegory of an act- - a definition which, by the way, suits the epic poem, the comedy, the romance, and which does not apply to many fables, as, for example, Philomel and Progné,'The Bird wounded by an Arrow,' 'The Peacock complaining to Juno,' The Fox and Portrait,' &c.-which cannot properly be said to have any act, and all the sense of which is shut up in one word at the end. Nor does the usually received definition of the schools apply to such fables as these: The Drunkard and his Wife,' 'The Joker and the Fishes,' Thyrsis and Amaranth'—which have only the merit of being simple narratives, and which, since they convey no moral, one would not be vastly sorry to see suppressed. Thus this definition, so universally adopted, does not appear to me to be always just.

'You have also read, doubtless, in the very ingenious essay which La Motte has placed at the head of his fables, that 'to make a good apologue, it is necessary, first, to propose to one's self a moral truth, to hide it under the allegory of an image which offends neither against justice, unity, nor nature; then to lead the actors which are introduced to speak in a style familiar but elegant, simple but ingenious, animated by what there is most pleasing as well as what there is most elegant, and distinguishing well the shades of the pleasing and the elegant, of the natural and the artless.'

All this is very learned, I agree; but let a man adopt this theory, and reduce it to practice, and he will only be in a condition to prove, as La Motte has done, that the fable of the Two Pigeons' is an imperfect one, because it offends against unity; that the fable of the 'Amorous Lion' is still worse, because the entire image is vicious. But, notwithstanding these definitions and rules, the world knows no less by

heart the admirable fable of the Two Pigeons;' the world repeats not less frequently these lines of the Amorous Lion :'

'Amour, amour, quand tu nous tiens,

On peut bien dire, adieu, Prudence."

'Oh love! oh love, when thou dost weave thy spell,

One may at once to Prudence bid farewell.'

and nobody would care to be informed that these two fables could very easily be demonstrated to be formed contrary to the rules.

'Perhaps you will require of me, seeing I criticize so severely the definitions and precepts laid down respecting the fable, that I should point out something better; but I shall excuse myself from undertaking any such task, for I am convinced that this species of composition cannot be defined, and cannot be governed imperiously by precept. Boileau has said nothing of it in his Art Poetique, and I incline to think that his silence results from his having felt that he could not reduce it to his laws. This Boileau, who was unquestionably a poet, wrote the fable of Death and the Unfortunate,' in competition with La Fontaine. J. B. Rousseau, who was also a poet, treated the same subject. Read in d'Alembert these two apologues, compared with that of La Fontaine. You will find the same moral, the same image, the same order, almost the same expressions; yet the two fables of Boileau and Rousseau are very indifferent, while that of La Fontaine is a master-piece. The reason of this difference is very clearly developed in an excellent morceau or fable by Marmontel. He does not give the means by which a good fable may be written, for those cannot be given; he does not lay down principles, rules by which the metre must be governed, forI repeat it-in this department of the fine arts there are no rules; but he is the first, it seems to me, who has explained to us why it is that we find so great a charm in reading La Fontaine-whence comes the illusion which this inimitable writer creates. 'La Fontaine,' I quote from Marmontel, 'has not simply heard what he relates; he has seen it; he expects to see it again. He is not a poet who imagines; he is not a story-teller, who deals in pleasantry. He is a witness, present at the act, and who can render you present there yourself. His erudition, his eloquence, his philosophy, his politics, all he possesses of imagination, of memory, of sentiment - he sets them all at work, with the best faith in the world, to persuade you; and it is this air of good faith-it is the seriousness with which he mingles the greatest things with the smallest things-it is the importance which he attaches to the efforts of children it is the interest which he takes in a rabbit and a weasel, which so tempts one to exclaim, every instant, 'Oh, the good man!''

'Marmontel is right. When that word is said, one is ready to pardon every thing in an author; he is no more offended with the lessons which he gives us, the truths which he teaches us; he permits him to pretend to teach us wisdom, a pretension which one excuses with so ill a grace in an equal. But a good man is not our equal. His credulous simplicity, which amuses us, which makes us laugh, invests him with superiority in our eyes; so that we can feel the more strongly the

pleasure which he gives us ; we can thus admire him and love him, without compromising ourselves.

Here is the great secret of La Fontaine, a secret which was his secret only because he was ignorant of it himself.'

'You prove to me,' I replied, sorrowfully enough, that to be a La Fontaine, it is not necessary to write fables; and you know that the only response to this painful truth which I can make, is to throw my apologues into the fire. You have excited in me a strong temptation to do that very thing; and as, in sacrifices which are somewhat painful, it is wise always to take advantage of the moment when one finds himself in power, I intend, when I return home,'

To play the fool,' interrupted the old man — 'to do a thing for which you would have no temptation, if, on the one hand, you had less pride, and on the other, you had more true admiration for La Fontaine.'

How is that!' replied I, rather petulantly, 'what greater proof of my modesty could I give than to burn a work which has cost me long years of labor? and what greater homage could I accord to that admirable model which I am not able to approach ?'

'Monsieur Fabulist,' said the old man, smiling, our conversation is capable of furnishing you with the material for two good fables: one on self-love, the other on anger. In the mean time, allow me to ask you one question, which I wish also to clothe in apologue: If the most beautiful of women, Helen, for example, reigned still in Lacedæmon, and all the Greeks and foreigners were ravished with admiration, as they saw her appear at the public games, adorned, as formerly, with all her enchanting attractions, her grace, her extraordinary beauty, and attended with all the eclat of royalty, what would you think of a little peasant Helot, who, I will suppose, is young, with black eyes, and who, seeing the Queen appear, considers herself obliged to go and hide? You would say to her, My dear child, why do you deprive yourself of the pleasure of seeing the games? No one, I assure you, dreams of comparing you with the Queen of Sparta. There is only one Helen in the world. What put it into your head that any one could suppose it possible there were two? Keep your peace. The Greeks, for the most part, do not notice you, for the Queen is far above you; and should any of them notice you, it would be all the same. Go, and with them admire the beauty of this Queen of the world.' When you had said this, if the little girl wished still to go and hide herself, would you not counsel her to have less pride, on the one hand, and more genuine admiration for Helen, on the other?'

'You understand me, and I cannot believe it necessary to follow the rule of the imperious La Motte, and to place the moral at the end of your apologue. Do not burn your fables, and make yourself sure that La Fontaine is so high, that there are many places far below his which are still elevated. If you can attain to one of them, I shall pay you the compliment you deserve. To do this, however, you need at least two things, which I will endeavor to explain to you:

'Although I have said that I know no just and precise definition of the apologue, I will adopt, in general, that which La Fontaine himself has chosen, when, in speaking of his collection of fables, he calls it

In effect, an apologue is a kind of little drama. It has its proposition, its plot, its dénouement. Let the actors be animals, gods, trees, men, it is necessary that they commence by telling me what is to be done, that they interest me by a circumstance, an event of some kind, and that they finish by leaving me satisfied, whether it be with that event, or, as the case may be, with a simple word, which is the moral result of what has been said or done. It would be easy for me, were I not afraid of being too tedious, to take, at a venture, a fable of La Fontaine, and to show you the grouping of the dramatis persona, the proposition, often in the form of a soliloquy, as in the fable of the 'Shepherd and his Flock;' the interest excited at the outset, as in the Dove and the Ant;' the danger increasing from act to act for there are several acts—as in the fable of the Lark and her Young;' and the dénouement, in fine, sometimes placed en spectacle, as in the Wolf become Shepherd,' but more commonly effected by simple narration.

This premised, as the fabulist cannot bring to his aid veritable actors, or the prestige of the theatre, and as, nevertheless, he must give me a comedy, it follows, that his first great desideratum, the talent which is one of the most necessary of all others, is that of painting; for he must exhibit the spectacle before the eyes; he must supply the actors which are denied him; he must make his own decorations and costumes; he must not only write his rôles, but he must play them, while he writes them, and he must give, at the same time, the gestures, the attitudes, the expressions of countenance, which add so much to the effect of the scenes.

'But this talent of painting does not suffice for the writer of fable. He must unite with it that of telling a story good-humoredly, (gaiement,) an art very difficult and extremely rare-for the good humor (gaieté) I mean to indicate is at once that of the intellect and of the disposition. It is this gift (the most desirable, unquestionably, since it always springs from innocence) which makes us love others, because we are able, in loving them, to love ourselves; changes at pleasure all our actions, and often all our motives; which, without giving us the trouble of intense and wearisome application, relieves us of a multitude of faults, to adorn us with a thousand virtues that cost us nothing. In a word, this faculty, or trait of character, in my estimation, is the true philosophy, which is contented with little, without reflecting that it is a merit to be thus contented; which supports with resignation the inevitable ills of life, without being reminded that impatience is incapable of changing anything; and is able, moreover, while adding to the happiness of those who are around us, to contribute an equal amount to the happiness of oneself. That is the element which I plead for, in the author who deals in story-telling; it brings with it naturalness, grace, raciness. I maintain, therefore, that every fabulist who unites these two qualities, may flatter himself, not that he is an equal of La Fontaine, but that he can be tolerated after him.'