ugh, the artless graces, and the sweet Muses!"

La Fontaine's earliest works were _Contes_, so styled; that is, stories,
tales, or romances. These are in character such that the subsequent
happy change in manners, if not in morals, has made them
unreadable,--for their indecency. We need concern ourselves only with
the Fables, for it is on these that La Fontaine's fame securely rests.
The basis of story in them was not generally original with La Fontaine.
He took whatever fittest came to his hand. With much modesty, he
attributed all to AEsop and Phaedrus. But invention of his own is not
altogether wanting to his books of fables. Still, it is chiefly the
consummate artful artlessness of the form that constitutes the
individual merit of La Fontaine's productions. With something, too, of
the air of real poetry, he has undoubtedly invested his verse.

We give, first, the brief fable which is said to have been the prime
favorite of the author himself. It is the fable of "The Oak and the
Reed." Of this fable, French critics have not scrupled to speak in terms
of almost the very highest praise. Chamfort says, "Let one consider,
that, within the limit of thirty lines, La Fontaine, doing nothing but
yield himself to the current of his story, has taken on every tone,
that of poetry the most graceful, that of poetry the most lofty, and one
will not hesitate to affirm, that, at the epoch at which this fable
appeared, there was nothing comparable to it in the French language."
There are, to speak precisely, thirty-two lines in the fable. In this
one case, let us try representing La Fontaine's compression by our
English form. For the rest of our specimens, we shall use Elizur
Wright's translation,--a meritorious one, still master of the field
which, near fifty years ago, it entered as pioneer. Mr. Wright here
expands La Fontaine's thirty-two verses to forty-four. The additions are
not ungraceful, but they encumber somewhat the Attic neatness and
simplicity of the original. We ought to say, that La Fontaine boldly
broke with the tradition which had been making Alexandrines--lines of
six feet--obligatory in French verse. He rhymes irregularly, at choice,
and makes his verses long or short, as pleases him. The closing verse of
the present piece is, in accordance with the intended majesty of the
representation, an Alexandrine.

The Oak one day said to the Reed,
"Justly might you dame Nature blame:
A wren's weight