Jean de La, the celebrated French fabulist, and one of the greatest of French poets, was born in 1621 at Château-Thierry in Champagne. His father was Maître des Eaux et des Forêts in that town, and had little time to bestow on the education of his son, who did not exhibit a spark of intelligence till he had reached his twenty-second year. At Rheims, where he got all the education he ever received, he devoted himself more to pleasure than to study, and in after days described in flowing and melodious verse the gallantries of which he had then been guilty. In 1641 he entered the monastery of the Oratoire, but finding the monkish way of life extremely distasteful, he left it and returned home. Soon after this he married and succeeded his father in his office, performed his duties extremely ill, and finally abandoned his wife (with whom he had lived on very indifferent terms) to go to Paris in the train of the Duchess de Bouillon, niece of Cardinal Mazarin. Before this time, however, his mind had begun to awaken to a consciousness of its strength. An ode of Malherbe, which was once read in his hearing, is said to have elicited from him the expression, "I too am a poet," and to have first stimulated him to literary enterprise. He began a systematic study of the writers of his own country and of the ancient classics, and the first-fruits of his labours was a translation of the "Eunuchus" of Terence. This work had very poor success, and was in many respects so unsatisfactory as not to deserve much. In the French metropolis La Fontaine was kindly received, and spent much of his time and far more money than he could afford in the pursuit of those pleasures for which that city affords unrivalled facilities; but none of the reverses of fortune by which he was overtaken ever altered his disposition in the least. His indifference to his worldly affairs compelled him to sell year by year a portion of his patrimonial estate, and it is not known to what straits he might have been reduced had not a charitable lady, Mme. de la Sablière, received him into her house, and taken care of him for twenty years. When driven by her own necessities to reduce her establishment, this lady used to talk to her friends of having retained only her three animals—her dog, her cat, and La Fontaine. In 1684 La Fontaine was admitted into the French Academy, but Louis XIV., indignant that he should have been preferred to Boileau, refused to sanction his appointment. Another vacancy occurring soon after gave an opportunity for Boileau's election, and both candidates were admitted without any opposition from the king. On the death of Mme. de la Sablière, La Fontaine was reduced to great extremities, and had seriously thought himself of going to England on the invitation of St Evremond. Luckily, the kind intervention of the Duke of Burgundy in his behalf enabled Fontaine, him to remain at home. His health at this time became very bad, and was not much improved by his squabbles with the clergy, who, believing him to be dying, threatened him with the terrors of the church unless he made a public apology for his licentious tales, and burned a comedy which he was preparing for the stage. After a good deal of hesitation, he complied with both these demands. In 1693 his health became rapidly worse, and he spent the most of his time in translating hymns for the church and in other literary exercises, chiefly of a religious character. His last days were cared for by the kindness of his friend D'Hervart, who received him into his house and tended him with almost filial care till his death in 1695.

The character of La Fontaine is a curious medley of strength and weakness. His acute perception of what was right, and his inability to practise it, remind us of Richard Steele. His invincible laziness and good-humour are only to be paralleled by the similar qualities in the author of The Seasons. His shrewd yet childlike simplicity, his vanity, his tenderness of heart, his awkwardness, and his absence of mind, are all qualities which he had in common with our own Goldsmith; and indeed, the epithet of "inspired idiot," unjustly applied to that author, might with much propriety have been given to the French fabulist. His weaknesses were all of a kind that made him at once the pet and the laughing-stock of his friends. With Racine, Moléire, and Boileau he lived on terms of the most intimate friendship. They often rallied him, and sometimes with good reason, on his many failings; but as Moléire said on one of these occasions, "Il est beau se trémousser, ils n'effacent pas le bonhomme." The sobriquet of "Le Bonhomme" was so pat that it stuck to him through life, and has been confirmed by posterity. He often exhibited the strangest want of interest in matters of the deepest concern, and a dreamy absorption in trifles, such as seemed to argue some unaccountable intellectual weakness. Possessed as he undoubtedly was of rare and remarkable literary powers, his range both of sympathy and knowledge in literary affairs was astonishingly limited. On one occasion hearing Racine read some extracts from Plato, he suddenly broke out into a rhapsody of admiration for the Greek philosopher, whom he praised as one of the most amusing of writers. At another time, being present at a theological debate that was carried on with much spirit, he fell asleep, and on awakening asked the company whether they thought that St Augustine was as witty a writer as Rabelais. Racine once took him to the "Tenebrae," and seeing that he was wearied by the length of the performance, put a Bible into his hands. La Fontaine opened it at the book of Baruch, and was so much struck with what he there read that he could not help crying out to his companion, "This Baruch is a very fine writer; do you know anything of him?" And for several days after he asked everybody that he met, "Have you ever read Baruch? He's a man of first-rate genius. Do you know who he was?" One day he met his own son, whom he did not recognise, and remarked to him that he was a lad of parts and spirit. Being told that the youth was his own son, he merely observed that "he was very glad to hear it." In 1693, when he was believed to be dying, Poujet, vicar of St Roch, brought him the New Testament. He read it, and assured his friends "Je vous assure que c'est un fort bon livre; oui, par ma foi, c'est un fort bon livre."

As an author, La Fontaine will be best known to posterity by his Fables. He published other works, of which the best known are his "Contes" or Tales, the first volume of which appeared in 1664, the second in 1671. These abound in fine touches of his genius, but are polluted with such a taint of gross license and indecency that they are now seldom read even by his own countrymen. As a Fontaine-fabulist, however, La Fontaine has never had his equal either in ancient or modern times. He has, indeed, little or no originality of invention, for most of his tales are taken from Boccaccio, Ariosto, Machiavelli, and others; and Esop has suggested the idea of the great majority of his fables. His reflections are not remarkable either for depth or novelty, and he displays an almost total incapacity for continuous thinking; but his manner of telling his stories is quite inimitable, and in that lies the principal charm of his writings. 'His narrative,' as has been remarked by Laharpe, 'is distinguished by that ease and grace which are to be perceived, not described; for if after a profound philosophical investigation we arrived at the ultimate causes of excellence, and referred the matter to La Fontaine himself, the "bourhomme" would say "I know nothing about all this; I wrote as my humour dictated, and that was all."'

The rapidity of his transitions from the most sparkling wit to the most touching pathos, his occasional gleams of the finest humour and fancy, and his delicate touches of observation, are all enhanced by a diction simple and refined, and presenting in almost every line some happy turn of expression, or some graceful naïveté of sentiment. (For a detailed analysis of La Fontaine's fables, see art. FABLE.)

There have been many editions of the Fables, of which the most sumptuous is that of 1755–59, in 4 vols. fol. La Fontaine's other works are Les Amours de Psyché, a romance; Le Florentin, a comedy; L'Enuque, a translation from Terence; Anacréontiques, Lettres, and some pièces d'occasion, published collectively in Les Œuvres diverses de La Fontaine.