¹ Lettres de Clément à Voltaire, i (Le Havre et Paris, 1773), p. 37.

² The edition of Montaigne's Essais used in preparing this study is a reprint of the text of 1595 as corrected by the author.

³ In the 1588 edition of Montaigne's Essais this essay appears as xx.

⁴ G. Michaut, La Fontaine, ii, 130, mentions both Abstemius and Guillaume Haudent in that order. To them is attributed the subject only and both are classified as imitators of Aesop. As the moralizing of La Fontaine is not derived from the Greek fabulist and as Haudent is mentioned after Abstemius, no special comparison is made with his version of the fable.

⁵ Les Grands Ecrivains de la France, ii, 205.

⁶ i, 15.

⁷ Premier Recueil de Fables.

⁸ i, 19.

⁹ The only ones found are Boase, Fortunes de Montaigne (Methuen & Co London, 1935), Chap xxvi, and Lanson, Les Essais de Montaigne (Librairie Mellottée, Paris), p. 305 and p. 337.

¹⁰ Œuvres, ix, 435.

¹¹ The Fortunes de Montaigne, pp. 396–409.

¹² Les Essais de Montaigne, p. 337.

¹³ Ibid., p. 305.

¹⁴ (a) In a recent article in the Revue de la Philosophie, N.S. ii (1934), 218–242, bearing the title: “Sur la Philosophie de La Fontaine dans les Livres vii à xii des Fables,” René Jasinski points to the Abrégé de la Philosophie de Gassendi by Bernier as a primary influence upon the philosophic side of La Fontaine. He states that Gassendi proclaims the right of man to happiness, and sees this thought reflected in the fable, La Mort et le Mourant, by the fact that La Fontaine “enseigne le détachement, l'affermissement contre la mort.” Jasinski then proceeds to make six quotations from the fable in order to demonstrate the similarity between them and certain quotations from Latin authors, Lucretius in particular. In a footnote he states concerning the latter: “La Fontaine a certainement revu de très près cette partie du Chant ii. D'une façon générale les souvenirs de Lucrèce sont dans les Fables plus nombreux et précis qu'on ne l'a cru.” In another footnote this statement appears: “Tous ces passages sont cités par Gassendi, Opera Omnia, ii, 670 sqq. même lorsqu'ils ne figurent pas dans l'Abrégé.” It would seem that Jasinski is not entirely consistent in his argument when he confines his attention to this fable. He starts out to make a connection between the philosophy of La Fontaine and that of Gassendi, and then rather abruptly diverts attention to Lucretius, who thus must appear as the ultimate source of influence. La Fontaine doubtless read the Latin poet. Gassendi and Bernier could have influenced him to no greater degree than the author of De Rerum Natura. Montaigne at least repeats the thought of Lucretius, and in his essay are found, along with this thought, practically all the elements that go to make up the story part of La Fontaine's fable. Without attempting to argue away the possibility of an influence from Lucretius, Gassendi, or Bernier, I find nothing in Jasinski's article which could eliminate the possibility of an influence from Montaigne. (b) The suggestion has been made that Charron in Chap. xi of De La Sagesse had given La Fontaine his ideas upon the subject of death. The title of the chapter is: “Se tenir tousiours prest à la mort, fruict de Sagesse.” It can not be denied that this book was just as available to the fabulist as were the essays of Montaigne, nor can it be denied that the thought contained therein is essentially the same as that presented in the La Mort et le Mourant. Nevertheless, much of Charron's chapter is but a paraphrase of Montaigne's essay. Several passages have been taken from the latter word for word and incorporated into Charron's argument. Aside from this, a close examination of the three compositions reveals that La Fontaine's arrangement suggests Montaine directly rather than Charron, or than Montaigne through Charron. The claim for the latter is confronted likewise with the fact that the elements that go to make up the story part of the fable can be found in Montaigne's essay, while they form no part of Charron's chapter on the same subject.

¹⁵ Montaigne mentions sudden deaths, some noble and some cruel, of high personages. He speaks also of slow deaths due to fiebvres and pleurisies. These passages are not quoted because they are too long. The significance of them has been discussed earlier in the article.

¹⁶ See note 15: This passage is quoted a second time, but La Fontaine repeats his thought in a like manner.

¹⁷ All lines of the fable have been covered in this arrangement except ll. 38–42. These lines undoubtedly were inspired by Abstemius.