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of Fate. His earlier play, Andromaque, illustrates Racine's power to contrive dramatic effects with the smallest number of characters and incidents. There are only four characters in the play, two men and two women. Mr. Lytton Strachey has very deftly summarised the story:

Andromaque, the still youthful widow of Hector, cares for only two things in the world with passionate devotion, her young son Astyanax and the memory of her husband. Both are the captives of Pyrrhus, the conqueror of Troy, a straightforward, chivalrous, but somewhat barbarous prince, who, though he is affianced to Hermione, is desperately in love with Andromaque. Hermione is a splendid tigress, consumed by her desire for Pyrrhus; and Oreste is a melancholy, almost morbid man, whose passion for Hermione is the dominating principle of his life. These are the ingredients of the tragedy, ready to explode like gunpowder with the slightest spark. The spark is lighted when Pyrrhus declares to Andromaque that if she will not marry him he will execute her son.

Andromaque consents, but decides secretly to kill herself immediately after the marriage, and thus ensure both the safety of Astyanax and the honour of Hector's wife. Hermione, in a fury of jealousy, declares that she will fly with Oreste, on one condition-that he kills Pyrrhus. Oreste, putting aside all considerations of honour and friendship, consents; he kills Pyrrhus, and then returns to his mistress to claim his reward.

There follows one of the most violent scenes that Racine ever wrote-in which Hermione, in an anger of remorse and horror, turns upon her wretched lover and denounces his crime. Forgetful of her own instigation, she demands who it was that suggested to him the horrible deed -"Qui te l'a dit?" she shrieks: one of those astounding phrases which, once heard, can never be forgotten. She rushes out to commit suicide, and the play ends with Oreste upon the stage.

In character Racine was the antithesis of Molière. He was jealous, arrogant, and irritable, with a bitter tongue, and the unfortunate habit of preferring a biting epigram to a friend. Thanks to the intrigue of one of the ladies at Court, Phèdre was a comparative failure, and this was the reason why Racine abandoned playwriting at the height of his power. He lacked the humour necessary to accept criticism with amusement.

§ 4

JEAN DE LA FONTAINE AND CHARLES PERRAULT

Jean de La Fontaine was born in 1621 at Château Thierry in Champagne. His father was a well-to-do deputy ranger, and Jean was his eldest child. He was educated at the college of his native town, and thought of taking Holy Orders; but before it was too late, found that he had mistaken his vocation. He then studied Law, until, in 1647, his father resigned his rangership in his son's favour, and arranged also a profitable marriage for him, with a young girl of sixteen, who brought him a dowry of 20,000 livres. Spiritually the marriage was not a success. We gather that Madame de la Fontaine read too many novels and neglected her housework, and after ten years they were separated.

La Fontaine was over thirty years of age before he began to write, and then he did not at once discover himself as a fabulist, but after the fashion of the period, wrote epigrams and ballads, and sought for patrons to whom he could flatteringly dedicate his poems, receiving in return worldly protection and financial benefits.

The fables of La Fontaine are, first of all, striking for their easy grace. He was poet and philosopher, as well as fabulist. La Fontaine's animals are never real animals. Unlike Fabre, he has no secrets to tell us of the inner life of the dumb creation. But he has a genius for describing the essential

exteriors of each animal, and, as has been well said, La Fontaine's animals are real animals with human minds.

Something of the charm of La Fontaine's writing may be gathered from the following translation of one of the fables:

THE JAY IN THE FEATHERS OF THE PEACOCK

A peacock moulted: soon a jay was seen
Bedeck'd with Argus tail of gold and green.
High strutting, with elated crest,

As much a peacock as the rest.

His trick was recognised and bruited,
His person jeer'd at, hiss'd, and hooted.
The peacock gentry flocked together,
And pluck'd the fool of every feather.
Nay more, when back he sneak'd to join his race,
They shut their portals in his face.

There is another sort of jay,

The number of its legs the same,

Which makes of borrowed plumes display,

And plagiary is its name.

But hush! the tribe I'll not offend;

"Tis not my work their ways to mend.

Perrault's Fairy Tales

§ 5

If La Fontaine developed the bald fable into a little human story, instead of merely an anecdote of beasts, his contemporary Charles Perrault gave it yet another lift into popularity by his introduction of the fairy element. Perrault realised that there are some human wishes so far beyond realisation that only magic can bring them about.

It has been said that there are only half-a-dozen plots in the whole realm of fiction; at least one of them is the story of the ragged girl who sits in the chimney-corner, and wishes she could go to the ball and dance with the Prince. And it was Perrault

who first created Cinderella. These are the titles of his familiar stories, which are legendary folk-tales, collected by him and retold in his own vivid and charming style: Le Petit Chaperon Rouge (Little Red Riding-hood); La Belle au Bois Dormant (The Sleeping Beauty); La Barbe-Bleue (Bluebeard); Le Maistre Chat, ou Le Chat Botté (Puss in Boots); Les Fées (The Fairy); Ceudrion, ou La Petite Pantoufle de Vair (Cinderella); Riquet à la Houppe (Riquet of the Tuft); Le Petit Poucet (Hop-o'-my-Thumb); and La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast).

These, as everybody knows, have become the fairy-tales of the world. It is difficult to realise that they were definitely the leisure products of a seventeenth-century French nobleman, who rated them far below his more ponderous publications, which have long ago been forgotten.

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The later writers of the Louis XIV era included Boileau, who did much to create a French classic tradition; Madame de Sévigné, author of a series of letters that reveal the age of Louis XIV, something in the same way as such a book as Evelyn's Diary reveals the time of Charles II; and La Bruyère, moralist and pessimist, who anticipated the social criticism of the eighteenth century and who has left us an ironic picture of the celebration of Mass at Versailles, in which the courtiers turned their faces to the King and their backs to God.

La Rochefoucauld, author of the famous book of Maximes, was an aristocrat. In this respect he differed from every other distinguished writer of the age of Louis XIV. Cold, disillusioned, as worldly in his philosophy as Chesterfield, the following extracts from the Maximes are characteristic of the man, and characteristic of the age, the splendour, and glory, which were the preparation of the horrors of the Revolution.

The simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it.

We have all of us sufficient fortitude to bear the misfortunes of others.

Philosophy triumphs easily over past and over future evils, but present evils triumph easily over philosophy.

Old men are fond of giving good advice, to console themselves for being no longer in a position to give bad examples.

Hypocrisy is the homage which vice renders to virtue.

Gratitude is like the good faith of traders, it maintains commerce; and we often pay, not because it is just to discharge our debts, but that we may more readily find people to trust.

We should often be ashamed of our best actions, if the world were witness to the motives which produce them.

None but the contemptible are apprehensive of contempt.

We are often more agreeable through our faults than through our good qualities.

Fortune breaks us of many faults which reason cannot.
None are either so happy or so unhappy as they imagine.
The head is always the dupe of the heart.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Professor Saintsbury's Short History of French Literature.
Molière's Dramatic Works, translated by C. H. Wall, 3 vols.

Brander Matthews' Molière.

Racine's Dramatic Works, a Metrical English Version by R. Bruce Boswell, 2 vols.

See the excellent paraphrases of Racine's Esther and Bérénice by John Masefield.

La Fontaine's Fables, translated by E. Wright.

Fénelon's Spiritual Letters to Men and Spiritual Letters to Women.
Pascal's Thoughts, translated and edited by C. S. Jerram.

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