In vain a thousand authors laud him high,-
The book comes forth and gives them all the lie.
Since, then, he lives the mark of scorn and glee
To the whole town,-pray, without chiding me,
Let him accuse his own unhappy verse,
Whereon Apollo has pronounced a curse;
Yes, blame that Muse that led his steps astray,
His German Muse, tricked out in French array.
Chapelain farewell, forever and for aye!"

Satire, they tell us, is a dangerous thing;
Some smile, but most are outraged at its sting;
It gives its author everything to fear,

And more than once made sorrow for Régnier.
Quit, then, a path, whose wily power decoys
The thoughtless soul to too ill-natured joys;
To themes more gentle be your Muse confined,
And leave poor Feuillet to reform mankind.

"What! give up satire? thwart my darling drift?
How shall I then employ my rhyming gift?
Pray, would you have me daintily explode
My inspiration in a pretty ode;

And, vexing Danube in his course superb,
Invoke his reeds with pilferings from Malherbe?
Save groaning Zion from the oppressor's rod,
Make Memphis tremble and the crescent nod;
And, passing Jordan, clad in dread alarms,
Snatch (undeserved!) the Idumean palms?
Or, coming with an eclogue from the rocks,
Pipe, in the midst of Paris, to my flocks,
And sitting (at my desk), beneath a beech,
Make Echo with my rustic nonsense screech?
Or, in cold blood, without one spark of love,
Burn to embrace some Iris from above;
Lavish upon her every brilliant name,
Sun, Moon, Aurora,-to relieve my flame;
And while on good round fare I daily dine,
Die in a trope, or languish in a line?

Let whining fools such affectation keep,

Whose driveling minds in luscious dulness sleep.
"No, no! Dame Satire, chide her as you will,
Charms by her novelties and lessons still.
She only knows, in fair proportions meet,

Nicely to blend the useful with the sweet;
And, as good sense illuminates her rhymes,
Unmasks and routs the errors of the times;-
Dares e'en within the altar's bound to tread,
And strikes injustice, vice and pride with dread.
Her fearless tongue deals caustic vengeance back,
When reason suffers from a fool's attack."

THE LAMENT OF SLOTH.

BOILEAU'S mock epic of "Le Lutrin" (The Lectern) was the model which Pope imitated in his " Rape of the Lock." It consists of six cantos, and originated in a petty quarrel in a church in Paris between the choir-master and the treasurer. The former had removed a large lectern, and the latter undertook to set it up again in the choir. Three partisans of the treasurer set out by night on this errand.

The Moon, who spied from heaven their haughty mien,
Withdrew on their behalf her peaceful light,

Then Discord smiled, and when they caught her sight,
Uttered a cry of joy which pierced the skies.

The air, which groaned at the dread goddess' shriek,
Speeds far as Citeaux there to waken Sloth.
There she within a dormitory dwells;
The careless Pleasures gambol all around:
One, in a corner, kneads the Canon's fat;
Another, laughing, grinds the monks' vermilion:
Indulgence serves her with devoted looks,
And on her Sleep her poppies ever pours.

That evening twice as much-yet all in vain;

Sloth at the noise awakens in alarm:

When Night, e'er her dark mantle wraps the world,
Wounds her anew with a disastrous tale,
Tells of the treasurer's recent enterprise,
How, 'neath the holy Chapel's sacred walls,
She saw three warriors, enemies to peace,
March 'neath the shelter of her sable cloak;
And Discord threatens there more vast to grow;
To-morrow dawn will see a desk appear,
Raised by a crowd of restive mutineers;
Thus Heaven wrote it in the Book of Fate.
At this sad tale, closed by a deep-drawn sigh,
Sloth, all in tears, half-raised upon her arm,

Opens a languid eye, and with faint voice

Lets fall these words, broke off a score of times:
"O Night! what hast thou said? what fiend on earth
Breathes into all hearts fatigue and war?

Ah! where has fled that time, that happy time,
When kings the style of 'slothful' highly prized,
Slept on their throne and served me unabashed,
Trusting their sceptre to some mayor or count?
No busy care approached their peaceful court;
By night they rested, all the day they slept;
Only in spring, when Flora in the plains
Silenced the noisy breathings of the winds,
Four harnessed oxen with slow tranquil pace,
Through streets of Paris dragged the lazy king.
That pleasant age is gone. The unpitying Heaven
Has set upon the throne an ever-active prince...
When by that prince to distant exile driven,

The Church, at least, I thought would shelter me;
E'en there my hope to reign unscared was vain:
Monks, abbés, priors, arm themselves against me..
And now a desk will turn all upside down,
And drives me forth from this loved home again!
Thou kind and sombre comrade of my rest,
To such black forfeits wilt thou lend thy shade?
Ah Night! if in the arms of love so oft

I taught thee pleasures, which I hide from Day,
At least allow not." At this word o'ercome,
Sloth feels her tongue lie frozen in her mouth,
And, tired of talking, 'neath the effort sank,

Sighed, stretched her arms, and shut her eyes and slept.

JEAN DE LA FONTAINE.

THE great fabulist of France, the most famous of beast fabulists after Esop, was Jean de La Fontaine. He was born in 1621. With Molière, Racine, and Boileau he enjoyed the happiness of a little select club, the memories of which he has immortalized in his romance, "Les Amours de Cupidon et de Psyché." In this tale Molière figures as Gélaste, Racine as Acante, Boileau as Ariste, and La Fontaine himself as Polyphile. Of these friends Molière, perhaps, apprized La Fontaine most at his true value, while La Fontaine would enthusiastically declare: "Molière, c'est mon homme" (Give me Molière every time). La Fontaine's own deepest ambition was to become a great playwright like his comrade Poquelin, and his first endeavor was a play, "The Eunuch," adapted from Terence. But, although he figured extensively in his own day as a dramatist, and even opera-librettist, it is unnecessary to record here that phase of his career. It may be noted, however, that one of his plays, "The Enchanted Cup,” has been played within comparatively recent times at the Théâtre Français. It was by his "Tales" and by his "Fables" that La Fontaine charmed his own generation, and it is as the fabulist alone that he still survives in the memory of this generation.

Throughout his long life La Fontaine was so childlike and personally irresponsible that he reminds one of Goldsmith, and the French writer deserves even more the sobriquet of "Inspired Idiot." However mythical many of the anecdotes of La Fontaine's absent-mindedness, improvidence, and naïveté may be, it is certain that he never fully realized his position

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as husband and father, his moral obligations even to his contemporaries, his responsibilities as author or man. Nevertheless he was a faithful friend, a tender-hearted, well-meaning fellow, and an outspoken poet according to his own moral lights. Born the son of a "ranger of streams and forests" of the duchy of Château Thierry in Champagne, La Fontaine might have been an independently comfortable, quietly domestic poet all his life. But he practically deserted wife and child, allowed his money matters to go to the dogs, lived in a curious mixture of libertinism and sobriety in Paris, and died at the age of seventy-four regretted rather than esteemed. He was lucky enough to have shelter throughout his unique career. Fouquet pensioned him, in return for the dedication of poems. The Duchess of Bouillon, Anne Mancini, youngest of Mazarin's nieces, became his protectress, and it was for her that he wrote (at the age of forty-three) his "Contes" so scandalously lascivious. While enjoying the delights of comradeship of the quartet of the Rue du Vieux Colombier, he was housed beneath the roof of the Duchess Dowager of Orleans at Luxembourg. On her death he was "adopted" by Madame de Sablière, who declared, on her retirement from the pleasures of society: "I have dismissed all my people, except my dog, my cat, and La Fontaine." She it was who secured the poet's election to the Academy, even over Boileau. On her death another of his old friends, Hewart, hastened to condole with the houseless bard. He found La Fontaine walking with a sorrowful mien along the street. "Come to my home," he exclaimed with a generous outburst of sympathy. "I was just going there," was La Fontaine's unabashed answer. When he died he was probably laid to rest in the cemetery of Holy Innocents. The nurse at his deathbed exclaimed: "Dieu n'aura jamais le courage de le damner" (God will not have the heart to damn him).

La Fontaine awoke to literature only in his manhood. It was Malherbe who proved the happy inspiration, and his new disciple's first effusions were a lot of trivial ballades, epigrams and rondeaux. At the age of thirty-three he imitated Terence. Champmeslé fathered his early plays. Ten years later appeared his first series of "Tales," and he was forty-seven