The life of this celebrated fabulist is marked by fewer incidents than the generality even of literary lives. Unambitious, indolent, "simple," it has been said, "as the heroes of his own fables," and subject to the most whimsical lapses of thought and memory, his habitual state was a sort of abstracted ruminating quietism, roused from which, he amused by his singularities, or delighted by his inspirations. He lived almost a stranger to the literary disputes of his time. Personal resentment or dislike was a feeling too uncongenial, and an effort too fatiguing, for him to sustain, beyond the excitement of the moment, even on two occasions when he was wantonly ill used. His designation of "bon homme," first applied to him by Boileau and Racine, then by the public, and since by posterity, paints him very happily. The particulars recorded of him are what would naturally be expected--traits of character rather than events. Jean de la Fontaine was born on the 8th day of July, 1621, at Château Thierry. Some of his biographers have maintained his pretensions to nobility with a silly zeal. His father, Jean de la Fontaine, was master or keeper of the royal domains in his district, which appears to have been an honourable charge. The youth of the poet gave no promise of his future success. He was remarkable only for his dulness, and a certain easy tractable good nature. His teachers pronounced him a well disposed but hopeless dunce; but his father, a very zealous and still more undiscerning admirer of poetry, resolved that he should cultivate the muses,--and poor La Fontaine laboured with all the complaisance of filial duty. His efforts were vain. He could not produce a rhyme,--he who afterwards rhymed with so much felicity and abundance,--and who alone, of all the poets of his country, before and since his time, has, by the disposition of his rhymes and the structure of his verses, completely vanquished the monotony of French versification.