together in good-humour.

It was not, as we have said, till his twenty-second year, that La
Fontaine showed any taste for poetry. The occasion was this:--An officer,
in winter-quarters at Chateau-Thierry, one day read to him, with great
spirit, an ode of Malherbe, beginning thus--



Que direz-vous, races futures,
Si quelquefois un vrai discours
Vous recite les aventures
De nos abominables jours?

Or, as we might paraphrase it,--

What will ye say, ye future days,
If I, for once, in honest rhymes,
Recount to you the deeds and ways
Of our abominable times?

La Fontaine listened with involuntary transports of joy, admiration, and
astonishment, as if a man born with a genius for music, but brought up in
a desert, had for the first time heard a well-played instrument. He set
himself immediately to reading Malherbe, passed his nights in learning
his verses by heart, and his days in declaiming them in solitary places.
He also read Voiture, and began to write verses in imitation. Happily, at
this period, a relative named Pintrel directed his attention to ancient
literature, and advised him to make himself familiar with Horace, Homer,
Virgil, Terence, and Quinctilian. He accepted this counsel. M. de