Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/94

82 RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. It has often been remarked that French litera- ture has produced few, if any, great literary bio- graphies that would rank with Boswell's 'Johnson' and Lockhart's c Scott.' Big volumes containing the Life and Letters of distinguished men and women are almost unknown in France. There are a profusion of memoirs, confessions, diaries of all sorts, collections of letters, generally between or from lovers, short biographies in which criticism of the man's work, whatever it be, takes a larger place than the events of his life. Thus we have reason to be grateful to M. Louis Roche, who in his book, c La Vie de Jean de la Fontaine,' has given us a veritable biography, the works only figuring there as illustrating the life, and as form- ing the chief part of ' La Fontaine's ' activities. Roche does not lay claim to any new discoveries, but contends that in his book his readers c verront Thornine, ils pourront s'approcher de lui> le suivre a travers les mondes les plus diffrents, au cours d'une existence qui fut, en somme, assez diverse.' We follow La Fontaine through his childhood and boyhood at Chateau-Thierry, and his eighteen months' experience as an ' oratorien,' which showed him plainly that ' le serieux n'etait pas son fait.' Then came five years spent at home, reading, amusing himself, observing nature and his neigh- bours. Visits were, however, paid to Paris, where La Fontaine met some of the men of letters of the day. Roche gives an admirable picSlure of the Paris of the time, reconstructs its life in all the various c quartiers,' as indeed he does contemporary