This, however, is the fanaticism of pedantry. The French _conteurs_ of the last century, following in the track of Hop o' my Thumb, made and narrated many pleasing discoveries, if they also wrote much that was feeble and is faded. To admit this is but common fairness; literary fairy tales may legitimately amuse both old and young, though 'it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.' The _conteurs_, like every one who does not always stretch the bow of Apollo till it breaks, had, of course, their severe censors. To listen to some persons, one might think that gaiety was a crime. You scribble light verses, and you are solemnly told that this is not high poetry, told it by worthy creatures whose rhymes could be uncommonly elevated, if mere owl-like solemnity could make poetry and secure elevation. You make a fairy tale, and you are told that the incidents border on the impossible, that analysis of character, and the discussion of grave social and theological problems are conspicuously absent. The old _conteurs_ were met by those ponderous objections. Madame d'Aulnoy, in _Ponce de Léon_, makes one of her characters defend the literary _Märchen_ in its place. 'I am persuaded that, in spite of serious critics, there is an art in the simplicity of the stories, and I have known persons of taste who sometimes found in them an hour's amusement.... He would be ridiculous who wanted to hear and read nothing but such legends, and he who should write them in a pompous and inflated style, would rob them of their proper character, but I am persuaded that, after some serious occupation, _l'on peut badiner avec_.' 'I hold,' said Melanie, 'that such stories should be neither trivial nor bombastic, that they should hold a middle course, rather gay than serious, not without a shade of moral, above all, they should be offered as trifles, which the listener alone has a right to put his price upon.' This is very just criticism of literary fairy tales, made in an age when we read of a professional _faiseur des contes des fées vieux et modernes_. _Little Johannes_ is very modern, and, as Juana says in _Ponce de Léon_: 'Vous y mettrez le prix qu'il vous plaira, mais je ne peux m'empêcher de dire que celui qui le compose est capable de choses plus importantes, quand il veut s'en donner la peine.' ANDREW LANG. [Footnote 1: Part of what follows I have already stated in a reprint of _Perrault's Popular Tales_, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1888.] [Footnote 2: In forty-one volumes, Paris, 1785-89.] [Footnote 3: There are complete English translations of the eighteenth century. Many of the stories have been retold by Miss M. Wright, in the _Red_ and _Blue Fairy Books_.] [Footnote 4: I am unacquainted with the date of composition of this story about a Ring more potent than that of Gyges. (It is printed in the second volume of _Dialogues des Morts_ Paris, 1718).]