See Sainte-Beuve,Portraits de femmes; the comte d’Haussonville,Madame de La Fayette(1891), in the series ofGrands écrivains français; M. de Lescure’s notice prefixed to an edition of thePrincesse de Clèves(1881); and a critical edition of the historical memoirs by Eugène Asse (1890). See also L. Rea,Marie Madeleine, comtesse de La Fayette(1908).
See Sainte-Beuve,Portraits de femmes; the comte d’Haussonville,Madame de La Fayette(1891), in the series ofGrands écrivains français; M. de Lescure’s notice prefixed to an edition of thePrincesse de Clèves(1881); and a critical edition of the historical memoirs by Eugène Asse (1890). See also L. Rea,Marie Madeleine, comtesse de La Fayette(1908).
LAFAYETTE, a city and the county-seat of Tippecanoe county, Indiana, U.S.A., situated at the former head of navigation on the Wabash river, about 64 m. N.W. of Indianapolis. Pop. (1900) 18,116, of whom 2266 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 20,081. It is served by the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Lake Erie & Western, and the Wabash railways, and by the Terre Haute, Indianapolis & Eastern (electric), and the Fort Wayne & Wabash Valley (electric) railways. The river is not now navigable at this point. Lafayette is in the valley of the Wabash river, which is sunk below the normal level of the plain, the surrounding heights being the walls of the Wabash basin. The city has an excellent system of public schools, a good public library, two hospitals, the Wabash Valley Sanitarium (Seventh Day Adventist), St Anthony’s Home for old people and two orphan asylums. It is the seat of Purdue University, a co-educational, technical and agricultural institution, opened in 1874 and named in honour of John Purdue (1802-1876), who gave it $150,000. This university is under state control, and received the proceeds of the Federal agricultural college grant of 1862 and of the second Morrill Act of 1890; in connexion with it there is an agricultural experiment station. It had in 1908-1909 180 instructors, 1900 students, and a library of 25,000 volumes and pamphlets. Just outside the city is the State Soldiers’ Home, where provision is also made for the wives and widows of soldiers; in 1908 it contained 553 men and 700 women. The city lies in the heart of a rich agricultural region, and is an important market for grain, produce and horses. Among its manufactures are beer, foundry and machine shop products (the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville railway has shops here), straw board, telephone apparatus, paper, wagons, packed meats, canned goods, flour and carpets; the value of the factory product increased from $3,514,276 in 1900 to $4,631,415 in 1905, or 31.8%. The municipality owns its water works.
Lafayette is about 5 m. N.E. of the site of the ancient Wea (Miami) Indian village known as Ouiatanon, where the French established a post about 1720. The French garrison gave way to the English about 1760; the stockade fort was destroyed during the conspiracy of Pontiac, and was never rebuilt. The headquarters of Tecumseh and his brother, the “Prophet,” were established 7 m. N. of Lafayette near the mouth of the Tippecanoe river, and the settlement there was known as the “Prophet’s Town.” Near this place, and near the site of the present village of Battle Ground (where the Indiana Methodists now have a summer encampment and a camp meeting in August), was fought on the 7th of November 1811 the battle of Tippecanoe, in which the Indians were decisively defeated by Governor William Henry Harrison, the whites losing 188 in killed and wounded and the Indians about an equal number. The battle ground is owned by the state; in 1907 the state legislature and the United States Congress each appropriated $12,500 for a monument, which took the form of a granite shaft 90 ft. high. The first American settlers on the site of Lafayette appeared about 1820, and the town was laid out in 1825, but for many years its growth was slow. The completion of the Wabash and Erie canal marked a new era in its development, and in 1854 Lafayette was incorporated.
LA FERTÉ, the name of a number of localities in France, differentiated by agnomens. La Ferté Imbault (department of Loir-et-Cher) was in the possession of Jacques d’Étampes (1590-1668), marshal of France and ambassador in England,who was known as the marquis of La Ferté Imbault. La Ferté Nabert (the modern La Ferté Saint Aubin, department of Loiret) was acquired in the 16th century by the house of Saint Nectaire (corrupted to Senneterre), and erected into a duchy in the peerage of France (duché-pairie) in 1665 for Henri de Saint Nectaire, marshal of France. It was called La Ferté Lowendal after it had been acquired by Marshal Lowendal in 1748.
LA FERTÉ-BERNARD, a town of western France, in the department of Sarthe, on the Huisne, 27 m. N.E. of Le Mans, on the railway from Paris to that town. Pop. (1906) 4358. La Ferté carries on cloth manufacture and flour-milling and has trade in horses and cattle. Its church of Nôtre Dame has a choir (16th century) with graceful apse-chapels of Renaissance architecture and remarkable windows of the same period; the remainder of the church is in the Flamboyant Gothic style. The town hall occupies the superstructure and flanking towers of a fortified gateway of the 15th century.
La Ferté-Bernard owes its origin and name to a stronghold (fermeté) built about the 11th century and afterwards held by the family of Bernard. In 1424 it did not succumb to the English troops till after a four months’ siege. It belonged in the 16th century to the family of Guise and supported the League, but was captured by the royal forces in 1590.
LA FERTÉ-MILON, a town of northern France in the department of Aisne on the Ourcq, 47 m. W. by S. of Reims by rail. Pop. (1906) 1563. The town has imposing remains comprising one side flanked by four towers of an unfinished castle built about the beginning of the 15th century by Louis of Orleans, brother of Charles VI. The churches of St Nicholas and Notre-Dame, chiefly of the 16th century, both contain fine old stained glass. Jean Racine, the poet, was born in the town, and a statue by David d’Augers has been erected to him.
LAFFITTE, JACQUES(1767-1844), French banker and politician, was born at Bayonne on the 24th of October 1767, one of the ten children of a carpenter. He became clerk in the banking house of Perregaux in Paris, was made a partner in the business in 1800, and in 1804 succeeded Perregaux as head of the firm. The house of Perregaux, Laffitte et Cie. became one of the greatest in Europe, and Laffitte became regent (1809), then governor (1814) of the Bank of France and president of the Chamber of Commerce (1814). He raised large sums of money for the provisional government in 1814 and for Louis XVIII. during the Hundred Days, and it was with him that Napoleon deposited five million francs in gold before leaving France for the last time. Rather than permit the government to appropriate the money from the Bank he supplied two million from his own pocket for the arrears of the imperial troops after Waterloo. He was returned by the department of the Seine to the Chamber of Deputies in 1816, and took his seat on the Left. He spoke chiefly on financial questions; his known Liberal views did not prevent Louis XVIII. from insisting on his inclusion on the commission on the public finances. In 1818 he saved Paris from a financial crisis by buying a large amount of stock, but next year, in consequence of his heated defence of the liberty of the press and the electoral law of 1867, the governorship of the Bank was taken from him. One of the earliest and most determined of the partisans of a constitutional monarchy under the duke of Orleans, he was deputy for Bayonne in July 1830, when his house in Paris became the headquarters of the revolutionary party. When Charles X., after retracting the hated ordinances, sent the comte d’Argout1to Laffitte to negotiate a change of ministry, the banker replied, “It is too late. There is no longer a Charles X.,” and it was he who secured the nomination of Louis Philippe as lieutenant-general of the kingdom. On the 3rd of August he became president of the Chamber of Deputies, and on the 9th he received in this capacity Louis Philippe’s oath to the new constitution. The clamour of the Paris mob for the death of the imprisoned ministers of Charles X., which in October culminated in riots, induced the more moderate members of the government—including Guizot, the duc de Broglie and Casimir-Périer—to hand over the administration to a ministry which, possessing the confidence of the revolutionary Parisians, should be in a better position to save the ministers from their fury. On the 5th of November, accordingly, Laffitte became minister-president of a government pledged to progress (mouvement), holding at the same time the portfolio of finance. The government was torn between the necessity for preserving order and the no less pressing necessity (for the moment) of conciliating the Parisian populace; with the result that it succeeded in doing neither one nor the other. The impeached ministers were, indeed, saved by the courage of the Chamber of Peers and the attitude of the National Guard; but their safety was bought at the price of Laffitte’s popularity. His policy of a French intervention in favour of the Italian revolutionists, by which he might have regained his popularity, was thwarted by the diplomatic policy of Louis Philippe. The resignation of Lafayette and Dupont de l’Eure still further undermined the government, which, incapable even of keeping order in the streets of Paris, ended by being discredited with all parties. At length Louis Philippe, anxious to free himself from the hampering control of the agents of his fortune, thought it safe to parade his want of confidence in the man who had made him king. Thereupon, in March 1831, Laffitte resigned, begging pardon of God and man for the part he had played in raising Louis Philippe to the throne. He left office politically and financially a ruined man. His affairs were wound up in 1836, and next year he created a credit bank, which prospered as long as he lived, but failed in 1848. He died in Paris on the 26th of May 1844.
See P. Thureau-Dangin,La Monarchie de Juillet(vol. i. 1884).
See P. Thureau-Dangin,La Monarchie de Juillet(vol. i. 1884).
1Apollinaire Antoine Maurice, comte d’Argout (1782-1858), afterwards reconciled to the July monarchy, and a member of the Laffitte Casimir-Périer and Thiers cabinets.
1Apollinaire Antoine Maurice, comte d’Argout (1782-1858), afterwards reconciled to the July monarchy, and a member of the Laffitte Casimir-Périer and Thiers cabinets.
LAFFITTE, PIERRE(1823-1903), French Positivist, was born on the 21st of February 1823 at Béguey (Gironde). Residing at Paris as a teacher of mathematics, he became a disciple of Comte, who appointed him his literary executor. On the schism of the Positivist body which followed Comte’s death, he was recognized as head of the section which accepted the full Comtian doctrine; the other section adhering to Littré, who rejected the religion of humanity as inconsistent with the materialism of Comte’s earlier period. From 1853 Laffitte delivered Positivist lectures in the room formerly occupied by Comte in the rue Monsieur le Prince. He publishedLes Grands Types de l’humanité(1875) andCours de philosophie première(1889). In 1893 he was appointed to the new chair founded at the Collège de France for the exposition of the general history of science, and it was largely due to his inspiration that a statue to Comte was erected in the Place de la Sorbonne in 1902. He died on the 4th of January 1903.
LA FLÈCHE, a town of western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Sarthe on the Loire, 31 m. S.S.W. of Le Mans by rail. Pop. (1906) town 7800; commune 10,663. The chief interest of the town lies in the Prytanée, a famous school for the sons of officers, originally a college founded for the Jesuits in 1607 by Henry IV. The buildings, including a fine chapel, were erected from 1620 to 1653 and are surrounded by a park. A bronze statue of Henry IV. stands in the marketplace. La Flèche is the seat of a sub-prefect and of a tribunal of first instance, and carries on tanning, flour-milling, and the manufacture of paper, starch, wooden shoes and gloves. It is an agricultural market.
The lords of La Flèche became counts of Maine about 1100, but the lordship became separate from the county and passed in the 16th century to the family of Bourbon and thus to Henry IV.
LAFONT, PIERRE CHÉRI(1797-1873), French actor, was born at Bordeaux on the 15th of May 1797. Abandoning his profession as assistant ship’s doctor in the navy, he went to Paris to study singing and acting. He had some experience at a small theatre, and was preparing to appear at the Opéra Comique when the director of the Vaudeville offered him an engagement. Here he made hisdébutin 1821 inLa Somnambule, and his good looks and excellent voice soon brought him intopublic favour. After several years at the Nouveautés and the Vaudeville, on the burning of the latter in 1838 he went to England, and married, at Gretna Green, Jenny Colon, from whom he was soon divorced. On his return to Paris he joined the Variétés, where he acted for fifteen years in such plays asLe Chevalier de Saint Georges,Le Lion empaillé,Une dernière conquête, &c. Another engagement at the Vaudeville followed, and one at the Gaiété, and he ended his brilliant career at the Gymnase in the part of the noble father in such plays as LesVieux GarçonsandNos bons villageois. He died in Paris on the 19th of April 1873.
LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE(1621-1695), French poet, was born at Château Thierry in Champagne, probably on the 8th of July 1621. His father was Charles de La Fontaine, “maître des eaux et forêts”—a kind of deputy-ranger—of the duchy of Château Thierry; his mother was Françoise Pidoux. On both sides his family was of the highest provincial middle class, but was not noble; his father was also fairly wealthy. Jean, the eldest child, was educated at thecollège(grammar-school) of Reims, and at the end of his school days he entered the Oratory in May 1641, and the seminary of Saint-Magloire in October of the same year; but a very short sojourn proved to him that he had mistaken his vocation. He then apparently studied law, and is said to have been admitted asavocat, though there does not seem to be actual proof of this. He was, however, settled in life, or at least might have been so, somewhat early. In 1647 his father resigned his rangership in his favour, and arranged a marriage for him with Marie Héricart, a girl of sixteen, who brought him twenty thousand livres, and expectations. She seems to have been both handsome and intelligent, but the two did not get on well together. There appears to be absolutely no ground for the vague scandal as to her conduct, which was, for the most part long afterwards, raised by gossips or personal enemies of La Fontaine. All that is positively said against her is that she was a negligent housewife and an inveterate novel reader; La Fontaine himself was constantly away from home, was certainly not strict in point of conjugal fidelity, and was so bad a man of business that his affairs became involved in hopeless difficulty, and aséparation de bienshad to take place in 1658. This was a perfectly amicable transaction for the benefit of the family; by degrees, however, the pair, still without any actual quarrel, ceased to live together, and for the greater part of the last forty years of La Fontaine’s life he lived in Paris while his wife dwelt at Château Thierry, which, however, he frequently visited. One son was born to them in 1653, and was educated and taken care of wholly by his mother.
Even in the earlier years of his marriage La Fontaine seems to have been much at Paris, but it was not till about 1656 that he became a regular visitor to the capital. The duties of his office, which were only occasional, were compatible with this non-residence. It was not till he was past thirty that his literary career began. The reading of Malherbe, it is said, first awoke poetical fancies in him, but for some time he attempted nothing but trifles in the fashion of the time—epigrams, ballades, rondeaux, &c. His first serious work was a translation or adaptation of theEunuchus of Terence(1654). At this time the Maecenas of French letters was the Superintendant Fouquet, to whom La Fontaine was introduced by Jacques Jannart, a connexion of his wife’s. Few people who paid their court to Fouquet went away empty-handed, and La Fontaine soon received a pension of 1000 livres (1659), on the easy terms of a copy of verses for each quarter’s receipt. He began too a medley of prose and poetry, entitledLe Songe de Vaux, on Fouquet’s famous country house. It was about this time that his wife’s property had to be separately secured to her, and he seems by degrees to have had to sell everything of his own; but, as he never lacked powerful and generous patrons, this was of small importance to him. In the same year he wrote a ballad,Les Rieurs du Beau-Richard, and this was followed by many small pieces of occasional poetry addressed to various personages from the king downwards. Fouquet soon incurred the royal displeasure, but La Fontaine, like most of his literary protégés, was not unfaithful to him, the well-known elegyPleurez, nymphes de Vaux, being by no means the only proof of his devotion. Indeed it is thought not improbable that a journey to Limoges in 1663 in company with Jannart, and of which we have an account written to his wife, was not wholly spontaneous, as it certainly was not on Jannart’s part. Just at this time his affairs did not look promising. His father and himself had assumed the title of esquire, to which they were not strictly entitled, and, some old edicts on the subject having been put in force, an informer procured a sentence against the poet fining him 2000 livres. He found, however, a new protector in the duke and still more in the duchess of Bouillon, his feudal superiors at Château Thierry, and nothing more is heard of the fine. Some of La Fontaine’s liveliest verses are addressed to the duchess, Anne Mancini, the youngest of Mazarin’s nieces, and it is even probable that the taste of the duke and duchess for Ariosto had something to do with the writing of his first work of real importance, the first book of theContes, which appeared in 1664. He was then forty-three years old, and his previous printed productions had been comparatively trivial, though much of his work was handed about in manuscript long before it was regularly published. It was about this time that the quartette of the Rue du Vieux Colombier, so famous in French literary history, was formed. It consisted of La Fontaine, Racine, Boileau and Molière, the last of whom was almost of the same age as La Fontaine, the other two considerably younger. Chapelle was also a kind of outsider in the coterie. There are many anecdotes, some pretty obviously apocryphal, about these meetings. The most characteristic is perhaps that which asserts that a copy of Chapelain’s unluckyPucellealways lay on the table, a certain number of lines of which was the appointed punishment for offences against the company. The coterie furnished under feigned names the personages of La Fontaine’s version of the Cupid and Psyche story, which, however, withAdonis, 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 the same year appeared the second book of theContes, and in 1668 the first six books of theFables, with more of both kinds in 1671. In this latter year a curious instance of the docility with which the poet lent himself to any influence was afforded by his officiating, at the instance of the Port-Royalists, as editor of a volume of sacred poetry dedicated to the prince de Conti. A year afterwards his situation, which had for some time been decidedly flourishing, showed signs of changing very much for the worse. The duchess of Orleans died, and he apparently had to give up his rangership, probably selling it to pay debts. But there was always a providence for La Fontaine. Madame de la Sablière, a woman of great beauty, of considerable intellectual power and of high character, invited him to make his home in her house, where he lived for some twenty years. He seems to have had no trouble whatever about his affairs thenceforward; and could devote himself to his two different lines of poetry, as well as to that of theatrical composition.
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 ofFablespublished in the winter of 1678 as divine; and it is pretty certain that this was the general opinion. It was not unreasonable, therefore, that he should present himself to the Academy, and, though the subjects of hisConteswere scarcely calculated to propitiate that decorous assembly, while his attachment to Fouquet and to more than one representative of the old Frondeur party made him suspect to Colbert and the king, most of the members were his personal friends. He was first proposed in 1682, but was rejected for Dangeau. The next year Colbert died and La Fontaine was again nominated. Boileau was also a candidate, but the first ballot gave the fabulistsixteen votes against seven only for the critic. The king, whose assent was necessary, not merely for election but for a second ballot in case of the failure of an absolute majority, was ill-pleased, and the election was left pending. Another vacancy occurred, however, some months later, and to this Boileau was elected. The king hastened to approve the choice effusively, adding, “Vous pouvez incessamment recevoir La Fontaine, il a promis d’être sage.” His admission was indirectly the cause of the only serious literary quarrel of his life. A dispute took place between the Academy and one of its members, Antoine Furetière, on the subject of the latter’s French dictionary, which was decided to be a breach of the Academy’s corporate privileges. Furetière, a man of no small ability, bitterly assailed those whom he considered to be his enemies, and among them La Fontaine, whose unluckyContesmade him peculiarly vulnerable, his second collection of these tales having been the subject of a police condemnation. The death of the author of theRoman Bourgeois, however, put an end to this quarrel. Shortly afterwards La Fontaine had a share in a still more famous affair, the celebrated Ancient-and-Modern squabble in which Boileau and Perrault were the chiefs, and in which La Fontaine (though he had been specially singled out by Perrault for favourable comparison with Aesop and Phaedrus) took the Ancient side. About the same time (1685-1687) he made the acquaintance of the last of his many hosts and protectors, Monsieur and Madame d’Hervart, and fell in love with a certain Madame Ulrich, a lady of some position but of doubtful character. This acquaintance was accompanied by a great familiarity with Vendôme, Chaulieu and the rest of the libertine coterie of the Temple; but, though Madame de la Sablière had long given herself up almost entirely to good works and religious exercises, La Fontaine continued an inmate of her house until her death in 1693. What followed is told in one of the best known of the many stories bearing on his childlike nature. Hervart on hearing of the death, had set out at once to find La Fontaine. He met him in the street in great sorrow, and begged him to make his home at his house. “J’y allais” was La Fontaine’s answer. He had already undergone the process of conversion during a severe illness the year before. An energetic young priest, M. Poucet, had brought him, not indeed to understand, but to acknowledge the impropriety of theContes, and it is said that the destruction of a new play of some merit was demanded and submitted to as a proof of repentance. A pleasant story is told of the young duke of Burgundy, Fénelon’s pupil, who was then only eleven years old, sending 50 louis to La Fontaine as a present of his own motion. But, though La Fontaine recovered for the time, he was broken by age and infirmity, and his new hosts had to nurse rather than to entertain him, which they did very carefully and kindly. He did a little more work, completing hisFablesamong other things; but he did not survive Madame de la Sablière much more than two years, dying on the 13th of April 1695, at the age of seventy-three. He was buried in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents. His wife survived him nearly fifteen years.
The curious personal character of La Fontaine, like that of some other men of letters, has been enshrined in a kind of legend by literary tradition. At an early age his absence of mind and indifference to business gave a subject to Tallemant des Réaux. His later contemporaries helped to swell the tale, and the 18th century finally accepted it, including the anecdotes of his meeting his son, being told who he was, and remarking, “Ah, yes, I thought I had seen him somewhere!” of his insisting on fighting a duel with a supposed admirer of his wife, and then imploring him to visit at his house just as before; of his going into company with his stockings wrong side out, &c., with, for a contrast, those of his awkwardness and silence, if not positive rudeness, in company. It ought to be remembered, as a comment on the unfavourable description by La Bruyère, that La Fontaine was a special friend and ally of Benserade, La Bruyère’s chief literary enemy. But after all deductions much will remain, especially when it is remembered that one of the chief authorities for these anecdotes is Louis Racine, a man who possessed intelligence and moral worth, and who received them from his father, La Fontaine’s attached friend for more than thirty years. 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, theFables, theContesand the miscellaneous works. 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 theŒuvres Diverses, but their excellence is only occasional, and it is not at the best equal to that of theFablesor theContes. 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. His dramatic efforts are especially weak. The best pieces usually published under his name—Ragotin,Le Florentin,La Coupe enchantée, were originally fathered not by him but by Champmeslé, the husband of the famous actress who captivated Racine and Charles de Sévigné. His avowed work was chiefly in the form of opera, a form of no great value at its best.Psychehas 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 mingled prose and verse of theSonge de Vauxis not uninteresting, but its best things, such as the description of night—“Laissant tomber les fleurs et ne les semant pas,”which has enchanted French critics, are little more than conceits, though as in this case sometimes very beautiful conceits. The elegies, the epistles, the epigrams, the ballades, contain many things which would be very creditable to a minor poet or a writer of vers de société, but even if they be taken according to the wise rule of modern criticism, each in its kind, and judged simply according to their rank in that kind, they fall far below the merits of the two great collections of verse narratives which have assured La Fontaine’s immortality.Between the actual literary merits of the two there is not much to choose, but the change of manners and the altered standard of literary decency have thrown theContesinto the shade. These tales are identical in general character with those which amused Europe from the days of the earlyfabliauwriters. 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. No one who followed him in the style can claim this excuse; he can, and the way in which contemporaries of stainless virtue such as Madame de Sévigné speak of his work shows that, though the new public opinion was growing up, it was not finally accepted. In theContesLa Fontaine for the most part attempts little originality of theme. He takes his stories (varying them, it is true, in detail not a little) from Boccaccio, from Marguerite, from theCent Nouvelles Nouvelles, &c. He applies to them his marvellous power of easy sparkling narration, and his hardly less marvellous faculty of saying more or less outrageous things in the most polite and gentlemanly manner. TheseConteshave indeed certain drawbacks. They are not penetrated by the half pagan ardour for physical beauty and the delights of sense which animates and excuses the early Italian Renaissance. They have not the subtle mixture of passion and sensuality, of poetry and appetite, which distinguishes the work of Marguerite and of the Pléiade. They are emphaticallycontes pour rire, a genuine expression of theesprit gauloisof the fabliau writers and of Rabelais, destitute of the grossness of envelope which had formerly covered that spirit. A comparison of “La Fiancée du roi de Garbe” with its original in Boccaccio (especially if the reader takes M. Émile Montégut’s admirable essay as a commentary) will illustrate better than anything else what they have and what they have not. Some writers have pleaded hard for the admission of actual passion of the poetical sort in such pieces as “La Courtisane amoureuse,” but as a whole it must be admitted to be absent.TheFables, with hardly less animation and narrative art than theContes, 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. In his first issue, comprising what are now called the first six books, he adhered to the path of these predecessors with some closeness; but in the later collections he allowed himself far more liberty, and it is in these parts that his genius is most fully manifested. The boldness of the politics is as much to be considered as the ingenuity of the moralizing, as the intimate knowledge of human nature displayed in the substance ofthe narratives, or as the artistic mastery shown in their form. It has sometimes been objected that the view of human character which La Fontaine expresses is unduly dark, and resembles too much that of La Rochefoucauld, for whom the poet certainly had a profound admiration. The discussion of this point would lead us too far here. 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-ethicalschool of criticism. Its last overt expression was made by Lamartine, excellently answered by Sainte-Beuve. Exception has also been taken to theFableson more purely literary, but hardly less purely arbitrary grounds by Lessing. Perhaps the best criticism ever passed upon La Fontaine’sFablesis that of Silvestre de Sacy, to the effect that they supply three several delights to three several ages: the child rejoices in the freshness and vividness of the story, the eager student of literature in the consummate art with which it is told, the experienced man of the world in the subtle reflections on character and life which it conveys. Nor has any one, with the exception of a few paradoxers like Rousseau and a few sentimentalists like Lamartine, denied that the moral tone of the whole is as fresh and healthy as its literary interest is vivid. The book has therefore naturally become the standard reading book of French both at home and abroad, a position which it shares in verse with theTélémaqueof Fénelon in prose. It is no small testimony to its merit that not even this use or misuse has interfered with its popularity.The general literary character of La Fontaine is, with allowance made for the difference of subject, visible equally in theFablesand in theContes. Perhaps one of the hardest sayings in French literature for an English student is the dictum of Joubert to the effect that “Il y a dans La Fontaine une plénitude de poésie qu’on ne trouve nulle part dans les autres auteurs français.” The difficulty arises from the ambiguity of the terms. For inventiveness of fancy and for diligent observation of the rules of art La Fontaine deserves, if not the first, almost the first place among French poets. In his hands the oldest story becomes novel, the most hackneyed moral piquant, the most commonplace details fresh and appropriate. As to the second point there has not been such unanimous agreement. It used to be considered that La Fontaine’s ceaseless diversity of metre, his archaisms, his licences in rhyme and orthography, were merely ingenious devices for the sake of easy writing, intended to evade the trammels of the stately couplet andrimes difficilesenjoined by Boileau. Lamartine in the attack already mentioned affects contempt of the “vers boiteux, disloqués, inégaux, sans symmétrie ni dans l’oreille ni sur la page.” This opinion may be said to have been finally exploded by the most accurate metrical critic and one of the most skilful metrical practitioners that France has ever had, Théodore de Banville; and it is only surprising that it should ever have been entertained by any professional maker of verse. La Fontaine’s irregularities are strictly regulated, his cadences carefully arranged, and the whole effect may be said to be (though, of course, in a light and tripping measure instead of a stately one) similar to that of the stanzas of the English pindaric ode in the hands of Dryden or Collins. There is therefore nothing against La Fontaine on the score of invention and nothing on the score of art. But something more, at least according to English standards, is wanted to make up a “plenitude of poesy,” and this something more La Fontaine seldom or never exhibits. In words used by Joubert himself elsewhere, he never “transports.” The faculty of transporting is possessed and used in very different manners by different poets. In some it takes the form of passion, in some of half mystical enthusiasm for nature, in some of commanding eloquence, in some of moral fervour. La Fontaine has none of these things: he is always amusing, always sensible, always clever, sometimes even affecting, but at the same time always more or less prosaic, were it not for his admirable versification. 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. Others were thePoëme de la captivité de St Malc(1673), one of the pieces inspired by the Port-Royalists, thePoëme du Quinquina(1692), a piece of task work also, though of a very different kind, and a number of pieces published either in small pamphlets or with the works of other men. Among the latter may be singled out the pieces published by the poet with the works of his friend Maucroix (1685). The year after his death some posthumous works appeared, and some years after his son’s death the scattered poems, letters, &c., with the addition of some unpublished work bought from the family in manuscript, were carefully edited and published asŒuvres diverses(1729). During the 18th century two of the most magnificent illustrated editions ever published of any poet reproduced the two chief works of La Fontaine. TheFableswere illustrated by Oudry (1755-1759), theContesby Eisen (1762). This latter under the title of “Edition des Fermiers-Généraux” fetches a high price. During the first thirty years of the 19th century Walckenaer, a great student of French 17th-century classics, published for the house of Didot three successive editions of La Fontaine, the last (1826-1827) being perhaps entitled to the rank of the standard edition, as hisHistoire de la vie et des ouvrages de La Fontaineis the standard biography and bibliography. The later editions of M. Marty-Laveaux in theBibliothèque elzévirienne, A. Pauly in theCollection des classiques françaisesof M. Lemerre and L. Moland in that of M. Garnier supply in different forms all that can be wished. The second is the handsomest, the third, which is complete, perhaps the most generally useful. Editions, selections, translations, &c., of theFables, especially for school use, are innumerable; but an illustrated edition published by theLibrairie des Bibliophiles(1874) deserves to be mentioned as not unworthy of its 18th-century predecessors. The works of M. Grouchy,Documents inédits sur La Fontaine(1893); of G. Lafenestre,Jean de La Fontaine(1895); and of Émile Faguet,Jean de La Fontaine(1900), should be mentioned.
The works of La Fontaine, the total bulk of which is considerable, fall no less naturally than traditionally into three divisions, theFables, theContesand the miscellaneous works. 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 theŒuvres Diverses, but their excellence is only occasional, and it is not at the best equal to that of theFablesor theContes. 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. His dramatic efforts are especially weak. The best pieces usually published under his name—Ragotin,Le Florentin,La Coupe enchantée, were originally fathered not by him but by Champmeslé, the husband of the famous actress who captivated Racine and Charles de Sévigné. His avowed work was chiefly in the form of opera, a form of no great value at its best.Psychehas 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 mingled prose and verse of theSonge de Vauxis not uninteresting, but its best things, such as the description of night—
“Laissant tomber les fleurs et ne les semant pas,”
which has enchanted French critics, are little more than conceits, though as in this case sometimes very beautiful conceits. The elegies, the epistles, the epigrams, the ballades, contain many things which would be very creditable to a minor poet or a writer of vers de société, but even if they be taken according to the wise rule of modern criticism, each in its kind, and judged simply according to their rank in that kind, they fall far below the merits of the two great collections of verse narratives which have assured La Fontaine’s immortality.
Between the actual literary merits of the two there is not much to choose, but the change of manners and the altered standard of literary decency have thrown theContesinto the shade. These tales are identical in general character with those which amused Europe from the days of the earlyfabliauwriters. 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. No one who followed him in the style can claim this excuse; he can, and the way in which contemporaries of stainless virtue such as Madame de Sévigné speak of his work shows that, though the new public opinion was growing up, it was not finally accepted. In theContesLa Fontaine for the most part attempts little originality of theme. He takes his stories (varying them, it is true, in detail not a little) from Boccaccio, from Marguerite, from theCent Nouvelles Nouvelles, &c. He applies to them his marvellous power of easy sparkling narration, and his hardly less marvellous faculty of saying more or less outrageous things in the most polite and gentlemanly manner. TheseConteshave indeed certain drawbacks. They are not penetrated by the half pagan ardour for physical beauty and the delights of sense which animates and excuses the early Italian Renaissance. They have not the subtle mixture of passion and sensuality, of poetry and appetite, which distinguishes the work of Marguerite and of the Pléiade. They are emphaticallycontes pour rire, a genuine expression of theesprit gauloisof the fabliau writers and of Rabelais, destitute of the grossness of envelope which had formerly covered that spirit. A comparison of “La Fiancée du roi de Garbe” with its original in Boccaccio (especially if the reader takes M. Émile Montégut’s admirable essay as a commentary) will illustrate better than anything else what they have and what they have not. Some writers have pleaded hard for the admission of actual passion of the poetical sort in such pieces as “La Courtisane amoureuse,” but as a whole it must be admitted to be absent.
TheFables, with hardly less animation and narrative art than theContes, 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. In his first issue, comprising what are now called the first six books, he adhered to the path of these predecessors with some closeness; but in the later collections he allowed himself far more liberty, and it is in these parts that his genius is most fully manifested. The boldness of the politics is as much to be considered as the ingenuity of the moralizing, as the intimate knowledge of human nature displayed in the substance ofthe narratives, or as the artistic mastery shown in their form. It has sometimes been objected that the view of human character which La Fontaine expresses is unduly dark, and resembles too much that of La Rochefoucauld, for whom the poet certainly had a profound admiration. The discussion of this point would lead us too far here. 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-ethicalschool of criticism. Its last overt expression was made by Lamartine, excellently answered by Sainte-Beuve. Exception has also been taken to theFableson more purely literary, but hardly less purely arbitrary grounds by Lessing. Perhaps the best criticism ever passed upon La Fontaine’sFablesis that of Silvestre de Sacy, to the effect that they supply three several delights to three several ages: the child rejoices in the freshness and vividness of the story, the eager student of literature in the consummate art with which it is told, the experienced man of the world in the subtle reflections on character and life which it conveys. Nor has any one, with the exception of a few paradoxers like Rousseau and a few sentimentalists like Lamartine, denied that the moral tone of the whole is as fresh and healthy as its literary interest is vivid. The book has therefore naturally become the standard reading book of French both at home and abroad, a position which it shares in verse with theTélémaqueof Fénelon in prose. It is no small testimony to its merit that not even this use or misuse has interfered with its popularity.
The general literary character of La Fontaine is, with allowance made for the difference of subject, visible equally in theFablesand in theContes. Perhaps one of the hardest sayings in French literature for an English student is the dictum of Joubert to the effect that “Il y a dans La Fontaine une plénitude de poésie qu’on ne trouve nulle part dans les autres auteurs français.” The difficulty arises from the ambiguity of the terms. For inventiveness of fancy and for diligent observation of the rules of art La Fontaine deserves, if not the first, almost the first place among French poets. In his hands the oldest story becomes novel, the most hackneyed moral piquant, the most commonplace details fresh and appropriate. As to the second point there has not been such unanimous agreement. It used to be considered that La Fontaine’s ceaseless diversity of metre, his archaisms, his licences in rhyme and orthography, were merely ingenious devices for the sake of easy writing, intended to evade the trammels of the stately couplet andrimes difficilesenjoined by Boileau. Lamartine in the attack already mentioned affects contempt of the “vers boiteux, disloqués, inégaux, sans symmétrie ni dans l’oreille ni sur la page.” This opinion may be said to have been finally exploded by the most accurate metrical critic and one of the most skilful metrical practitioners that France has ever had, Théodore de Banville; and it is only surprising that it should ever have been entertained by any professional maker of verse. La Fontaine’s irregularities are strictly regulated, his cadences carefully arranged, and the whole effect may be said to be (though, of course, in a light and tripping measure instead of a stately one) similar to that of the stanzas of the English pindaric ode in the hands of Dryden or Collins. There is therefore nothing against La Fontaine on the score of invention and nothing on the score of art. But something more, at least according to English standards, is wanted to make up a “plenitude of poesy,” and this something more La Fontaine seldom or never exhibits. In words used by Joubert himself elsewhere, he never “transports.” The faculty of transporting is possessed and used in very different manners by different poets. In some it takes the form of passion, in some of half mystical enthusiasm for nature, in some of commanding eloquence, in some of moral fervour. La Fontaine has none of these things: he is always amusing, always sensible, always clever, sometimes even affecting, but at the same time always more or less prosaic, were it not for his admirable versification. 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. Others were thePoëme de la captivité de St Malc(1673), one of the pieces inspired by the Port-Royalists, thePoëme du Quinquina(1692), a piece of task work also, though of a very different kind, and a number of pieces published either in small pamphlets or with the works of other men. Among the latter may be singled out the pieces published by the poet with the works of his friend Maucroix (1685). The year after his death some posthumous works appeared, and some years after his son’s death the scattered poems, letters, &c., with the addition of some unpublished work bought from the family in manuscript, were carefully edited and published asŒuvres diverses(1729). During the 18th century two of the most magnificent illustrated editions ever published of any poet reproduced the two chief works of La Fontaine. TheFableswere illustrated by Oudry (1755-1759), theContesby Eisen (1762). This latter under the title of “Edition des Fermiers-Généraux” fetches a high price. During the first thirty years of the 19th century Walckenaer, a great student of French 17th-century classics, published for the house of Didot three successive editions of La Fontaine, the last (1826-1827) being perhaps entitled to the rank of the standard edition, as hisHistoire de la vie et des ouvrages de La Fontaineis the standard biography and bibliography. The later editions of M. Marty-Laveaux in theBibliothèque elzévirienne, A. Pauly in theCollection des classiques françaisesof M. Lemerre and L. Moland in that of M. Garnier supply in different forms all that can be wished. The second is the handsomest, the third, which is complete, perhaps the most generally useful. Editions, selections, translations, &c., of theFables, especially for school use, are innumerable; but an illustrated edition published by theLibrairie des Bibliophiles(1874) deserves to be mentioned as not unworthy of its 18th-century predecessors. The works of M. Grouchy,Documents inédits sur La Fontaine(1893); of G. Lafenestre,Jean de La Fontaine(1895); and of Émile Faguet,Jean de La Fontaine(1900), should be mentioned.
(G. Sa.)
LAFONTAINE, SIR LOUIS HIPPOLYTE,Bart.(1807-1864), Canadian statesman and judge, third son of Antoine Ménard LaFontaine (1772-1813) and Marie-J-Fontaine Bienvenue, was born at Boucherville in the province of Quebec on the 4th of October 1807. LaFontaine was educated at the Collège de Montréal under the direction of the Sulpicians, and was called to the bar of the province of Lower Canada on the 18th of August 1829. He married firstly Adèle, daughter of A. Berthelot of Quebec; and, secondly, Jane, daughter of Charles Morrison, of Berthier, by whom he had two sons. In 1830 he was elected a member of the House of Assembly for the county of Terrebonne, and became an ardent supporter of Louis Joseph Papineau in opposing the administration of the governor-in-chief, which led to the rebellion of 1837. LaFontaine, however, did not approve the violent methods of his leader, and after the hostilities at Saint Denis he presented a petition to Lord Gosford requesting him to summon the assembly and to adopt measures to stem the revolutionary course of events in Lower Canada. The rebellion broke out afresh in the autumn of 1838; the constitution of 1791 was suspended; LaFontaine was imprisoned for a brief period; and Papineau, who favoured annexation by the United States, was in exile. At this crisis in Lower Canada the French Canadians turned to LaFontaine as their leader, and under his direction maintained their opposition to the special council, composed of nominees of the crown. In 1839 Lord Sydenham, the governor-general, offered the solicitor generalship to LaFontaine, which he refused; and after the Union of 1841 LaFontaine was defeated in the county of Terrebonne through the governor’s influence. During the next year he obtained a seat in the assembly of the province of Canada, and on the death of Sydenham he was called by Sir Charles Bagot to form an administration with Robert Baldwin. The ministry resigned in November 1843, as a protest against the actions of Lord Metcalfe, who had succeeded Bagot. In 1848 LaFontaine formed a new administration with Baldwin, and remained in office until 1851, when he retired from public life. It was during the ministry of LaFontaine-Baldwin that the Amnesty Bill was passed, which occasioned grave riots in Montreal, personal violence to Lord Elgin and the destruction of the parliament buildings. After the death of Sir James Stuart in 1853 LaFontaine was appointed chief justice of Lower Canada and president of the seigneurial court, which settled the vexed question of land tenure in Canada; and in 1854 he was created a baronet. He died at Montreal on the 26th of February 1864.
LaFontaine was well versed in constitutional history and French law; he reasoned closely and presented his conclusions with directness. He was upright in his conduct, sincerely attached to the traditions of his race, and laboured conscientiously to establish responsible government in Canada. His principal works are:L’Analyse de l’ordonnance du conseil spécial sur les bureaux d’hypothèques(Montreal, 1842);Observations sur les questions seigneuriales(Montreal, 1854); seeLaFontaine, by A. DeCelles (Toronto, 1906).
LaFontaine was well versed in constitutional history and French law; he reasoned closely and presented his conclusions with directness. He was upright in his conduct, sincerely attached to the traditions of his race, and laboured conscientiously to establish responsible government in Canada. His principal works are:L’Analyse de l’ordonnance du conseil spécial sur les bureaux d’hypothèques(Montreal, 1842);Observations sur les questions seigneuriales(Montreal, 1854); seeLaFontaine, by A. DeCelles (Toronto, 1906).
(A. G. D.)
LAFOSSE, CHARLES DE(1640-1716), French painter, was born in Paris. He was one of the most noted and least servile pupils of Le Brun, under whose direction he shared in the chief of the great decorative works undertaken in the reign of Louis XIV. Leaving France in 1662, he spent two years in Rome and three in Venice, and the influence of his prolonged studies of Veronese is evident in his “Finding of Moses” (Louvre), and in his “Rape of Proserpine” (Louvre), which he presented to the Royal Academy as his diploma picture in 1673. He wasat once named assistant professor, and in 1674 the full responsibilities of the office devolved on him, but his engagements did not prevent his accepting in 1689 the invitation of Lord Montagu to decorate Montagu House. He visited London twice, remaining on the second occasion—together with Rousseau and Monnoyer—more than two years. William III. vainly strove to detain him in England by the proposal that he should decorate Hampton Court, for Le Brun was dead, and Mansart pressed Lafosse to return to Paris to take in hand the cupola of the Invalides. The decorations of Montagu House are destroyed, those of Versailles are restored, and the dome of the Invalides (engraved, Picart and Cochin) is now the only work existing which gives a full measure of his talent. During his latter years Lafosse executed many other important decorations in public buildings and private houses, notably in that of Crozat, under whose roof he died on the 13th of December 1716.
LAGARDE, PAUL ANTON DE(1827-1891), German biblical scholar and orientalist, was born at Berlin on the 2nd of November 1827. His real name was Bötticher, Lagarde being his mother’s name. At Berlin (1844-1846) and Halle (1846-1847) he studied theology, philosophy and oriental languages. In 1852 his studies took him to London and Paris. In 1854 he became a teacher at a Berlin public school, but this did not interrupt his biblical studies. He edited theDidascalia apostolorum syriace(1854), and other Syriac texts collected in the British Museum and in Paris. In 1866 he received three years’ leave of absence to collect fresh materials, and in 1869 succeeded Heinrich Ewald as professor of oriental languages at Göttingen. Like Ewald, Lagarde was an active worker in a variety of subjects and languages; but his chief aim, the elucidation of the Bible, was almost always kept in view. He edited the Aramaic translation (known as the Targum) of the Prophets according to the Codex Reuchlinianus preserved at Carlsruhe,Prophetae chaldaice(1872), theHagiographa chaldaice(1874), an Arabic translation of the Gospels,Die vier Evangelien, arabisch aus der Wiener Handschrift herausgegeben(1864), a Syriac translation of the Old Testament Apocrypha,Libri V. T. apocryphi syriace(1861), a Coptic translation of the Pentateuch,Der Pentateuch koptisch(1867), and a part of the Lucianic text of the Septuagint, which he was able to reconstruct from manuscripts for nearly half the Old Testament. He devoted himself ardently to oriental scholarship, and publishedZur Urgeschichte der Armenier(1854) andArmenische Studien(1877). He was also a student of Persian, publishingIsaias persice(1883) andPersische Studien(1884). He followed up his Coptic studies withAegyptiaca(1883), and published many minor contributions to the study of oriental languages inGesammelte Abhandlungen(1866),Symmicta(i. 1877, ii. 1880),Semitica(i. 1878, ii. 1879),Orientalia(1879-1880) andMittheilungen(1884). Mention should also be made of the valuableOnomastica sacra(1870; 2nd ed., 1887). Lagarde also took some part in politics. He belonged to the Prussian Conservative party, and was a violent anti-Semite. The bitterness which he felt appeared in his writings. He died at Göttingen on the 22nd of December 1891.