The French regard La F ontaine as one of their greatest poets. He is certam the most popular, and French litera ture is so penetrated with his fables that an intimate acquaint ance with them is necessary in order to understand it. For this reason alone all students of French literature should read these fables, which have, however, a decided linguistic and literary value of their own, aside from their in?uence on modern literature. The present edition contains a larger number of these fables than most other editions with English notes, thus not only furnishing more reading-matter for interested stu dents, but also allowing a larger range of choice in case it is not deemed advisable to read the entire collection. All of the most popular fables are here included, and all, or nearly all, that have any distinct literary value. A few unimportant ones have been added merely because they were easy or amusing. Standard editions contain two hundred and thirty eight fables. A few of these are too 'long for an edition of this kind, and a few otherwise excellent fables contain passages inappropriate for reading in class. Some attempt has been made to arrange the fables in the order of their difficulty, and consequently no long or difficult one has been placed near the.
