Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 92, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 May 1917 — His Fables Were Classics. [ARTICLE]

His Fables Were Classics.

Jean de la Fontaine, the seventeenth century French genius, who ranks among the greatest fabulists of all time, died 222 years ago, at the age of seventy-four, and to the last he was ‘as naive, improvident, reckless and goodhearted as a child. He was the son of a magistrate, and in his youth proposed to become a priest, but abandoned that project after eighteen months in a seminary, and thereafter, for several years, led an idle and dissipated life. His early es? forts as poet and dramatist were of little worth, and it was not until he was forty-four that he gained fame with his “Contes pour Hire”—tales for laughter. La Fontaine’s masterpiece, his “Fables,” were published between 1668 and 1694, the last book having been completed shortly before his death. In these he satirized the whole range of human nature in its animal counterparts, and produced a work that will always rank as a great classic.