ot merely a
free liver, but a member of the small but influential free-thinking sect
which preceded and gave birth to the _Philosophes_ of the next century.
This time, moreover, was the period of a curious literary trick, the
resuscitation or forging of the convivial poems of Oliver Basselin by a
Norman lawyer of the name of Jean le Houx. A genuine and contemporary
Basselin, in the person of a carpenter named Adam Billaut, produced some
notable work of the same kind. Unfortunately the Anacreontic poetry of
this time suffers from the too frequent coarseness of its language; a
fault which indeed was not fully corrected until Beranger's days.

[Sidenote: La Fontaine.]

The members, however, of all these schools have long lost their hold on
all but students of literature, and, with the exception of La Fontaine
and Boileau, it is not easy to mention any non-dramatic poet of the
seventeenth century who has kept a place in the general memory. Jean la
Fontaine[229] was born at Chateau Thierry in Champagne in the year 1621,
and died at Paris in 1695. His father held a considerable post as ranger
of the neighbouring forests, an office which passed to his son. La
Fontaine seems to have been carelessly educated, but after a certain
time literature attracted him, and he began to study in a desultory
fashion, without however, as it would appear, being himself tempted to
write. At the age of six-and-twenty he married Marie Hericart, a girl of
sixteen, who is said to have been both amiable and beautiful, and not
long afterwards he was left his own master by his father's death. He was
suited very ill by nature either to fill a responsible office or to be
head of a house. The well-known stories of his absence of mind, his
simplicity, his indifference to outward affairs, have no doubt been
exaggerated, but there is, equally without doubt, a foundation of fact
in them. On the other hand, though the most serious charges against his
wife seem to rest on no foundation, it is certain that she had little
aptitude for housewifery. After a time the household was broken up,
though there was offspring of the marriage. A division of goods was
effected, and husband and wife separated, not to meet again except on
visits and for brief spaces of time, though they seem to have remained
on perfectly friendly terms. La Fontaine went to Paris, and very soon
attracted the notice of Fouquet, the magnificent superintendent of the
finances, who gave him a pens