29 April 1812
adams-john10 Neal Millikan
371

29. I finished reading this morning with Charles, the Fables of La Fontaine, which have furnished his regular daily reading lesson, exactly five Months— Notwithstanding the frequent interruptions occasioned by his occasional illness and my own his progress has been as favourable as I could expect, and he now reads with facility, though not yet correctly— When we returned from into the City last October he scarcely knew the letters of the Alphabet.— It was then however nearly two years since I began to teach him— I shall now begin to teach him English reading, of which he knows nothing; and resumed Berquin’s Ami des Enfans; which he can at present read with ease, and whose Stories he begins to understand— La Fontaine’s fables have served the purpose of teaching him to read, better than any other book I had, because the Edition I have used has a wooden Cut, before every Fable which has proved a lure to his curiosity and attention. But there are very few of them, which he could understand at all, and the less he has understood the more difficult I have found it to fix his attention. I had never regularly read through myself before, the twelve Books of this Fabulist, whom the French Critics extol as the most perfect writer of Fables, of any age or Nation— There is a mixture of careless simplicity, and shrewd sagacity, of indulgent good-humour and sly severity, of vulgar phraseology; and elevated poetical beauty 372which perhaps no other fabulist possesses in so high a degree, and which are peculiarly adapted to this particular species of writing— His versification is negligent and seldom harmonious— But that also is excusable for these popular unpretending Stories, written for children, and for the ignorant— He has no merit of invention; for he took his subjects from any body; even from the Duke de Bourgogne, a child, of eight years old— The point in which he appears most deficient is precisely that which I deem the most essential— I mean the morality— It is either the old, and hacknied moral of his predecessors from whom he takes the story; or a half-indulged and half-suppressed Satire upon kings, nobles and Priests (which I believe more than everything else has contributed to his excessive reputation in France;) or frequent repetition of common place axioms—or inconsistencies with himself—or finally and worst of all, questionable or false principles— Examples of all these defects might easily be adduced; nor would the number be small of feeble and insignificant conclusions, not worthy of a story built upon them.— La Fontaine in short teaches very little virtue of any kind; and perhaps more vice than virtue—of elevated or heroic Virtue, he seems not to have had a conception— His great merit is as a story-teller and not as a moralist— The two Pigeons for instance has a false moral— Its doctrine is; never travel for improvement; because you may meet with disasters and may be separated from your friend or lover— But it is full of charming strokes of tenderness and affection— Not conjugal affection; for the pigeons are brothers— Nor yet fraternal affection, for the Poet applies himself his moral to happy lovers—boasts how much he has loved once; and laments that he is too old to love again— It is therefore licentious love that he substantially recommends; and he has expressly and unnaturally avoided to make his pigeons mates, lest it should be mistaken for a case of marriage— He was tormented it is said with a termagant wife— And he expressly disavows all respect for marriage— He disavows too paternal affection; and according to an anecdote related of him, did not know his own son, when introduced to him, at twenty-five years of age.— He is said to have died profoundly penitent for his tales, which are indeed much more grossly licentious than his fables, but which perhaps do not shew more moral laxity of mind— His flattery of Louis XIV. of the Dauphin; the Duke de Bourgogne, the Prince de Conti, and even of Madame de Montespan, may be excused; for when you are obliged to say “let Horace blush, and Virgil too,” it would be requiring too much of La Fontaine, not to let him pass in the throng— On the whole therefore La Fontaine is the first of Story-tellers, but not of fabulists— As to his famous two Pigeons; Moores “Sparrow and Dove[”] may be placed in opposition to it, and in my estimation would bear the palm from it in every respect— I walked morning and Evening— Catherine spent the Eve at Madame Colombi’s. I received from Count Soltikoff a packet brought by a Courier from Paris— Only a short letter from Mr Barlow.

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