Charles Perrault was a good man, a good father, a good Christian, and a good fellow. He was astonishingly clever and versatile in little things, honest, courteous, and witty, and an undaunted amateur. The little thing in which he excelled most was telling fairy tales. Every generation listens in its turn to this old family friend of all the world. No nation owes him so much as we of England, who, south of the Scottish, and east of the Welsh marches, have scarce any popular tales of our own save Jack the Giant Killer, and who have given the full fairy citizenship to Perrault's _Petit Poucet_ and _La Barbe Bleue_. [Footnote 1: _Registre de La Grange_, p. 11.] [Footnote 2: 'Exquis' is good.] [Footnote 3: _L'Oublieux_ was written in 1691. It was printed from the MS. by M. Hippolyte Lucas. _Academie des Bibliophiles_, Paris, 1868.] PERRAULT'S POPULAR TALES. 'Madame Coulanges, who is with me till to-morrow, was good enough to tell us some of the stories that they amuse the ladies with at Versailles. They call this _mitonner_, so she _mitonned_ us, and spoke to us about a Green Island, where a Princess was brought up, as bright as the day! The Fairies were her companions, and the Prince of Pleasure was her lover, and they both came to the King's court, one day, in a ball of glass. The story lasted a good hour, and I spare you much of it, the rather as this Green Isle is in the midst of Ocean, not in the Mediterranean, where M. de Grignan might be pleased to hear of its discovery.' So Madame de Sevigne writes to her daughter, on the 6th of August, 1676.