Charles Perrault, as he tells us in his _Memoires_ (1769, Patte, Paris; 1 vol. in 12), was born at Paris, on January 12, 1628. At the age of nine he was sent to the College de Beauvais, and was aided in his studies by his father, at home. He was always at the head of his form, after leaving the Sixth (the lowest) which he entered before he had quite learned to read. He was not a prodigy of precocious instruction, happily for himself. He preferred exercises in verse, and excelled in these, though the gods had not made him poetical. In the class of Philosophy he was deeply interested, wrangling with his teacher, and maintaining, characteristically, that his arguments were better than the stock themes, 'because they were new.' Thus the rebel against the Ancients raised his banner at school, where one recruit flocked to it, a boy called Beaurin. Young Perrault and his friend took a formal farewell of their master, and solemnly seceded to the garden of the Luxembourg, where they contrived a plan of study for themselves. For three or four years they read together as chance or taste directed: this course had not in it the making of a scholar. Perrault's first literary effort was a burlesque of the Sixth book of the AEneid, a thing rather too sacred for parody in Scarron's manner. His brother the doctor took a hand in this labour, and Perrault says 'the MS. is on the shelf where there are no books but those written by members of the Family.' The funniest thing was held to be the couplet on the charioteer Tydacus, in the shades, Qui, tenant l'ombre d'une brosse, Nettoyait l'ombre d'un carrosse. Perrault, as a young man, was moderately interested in the fashionable controversy about Grace, _pouvoir prochain et pouvoir eloigne_, and the jargon of the quarrel between Port Royal and the Jesuits. His brother, a doctor of the Sorbonne, explained the question, 'and we saw there was nothing in it to justify the noise it made.' He persuaded himself, however, that this little conference was the occasion of the _Lettres Provinciales_. The new Editor will doubtless deal with this pretension when he comes to publish Pascal's Life in the series of _Grands Ecrivains de la France_. Unlike Perrault, Pascal thought 'que le sujet des disputes de Sorbonne etoit bien important et d'une extreme consequence pour la religion.'