There are some writers the facts about whom can never be entirely told, because they are inexhaustible, and speaking of whom we do not fear to be blamed for repetition, because, though well known, they furnish topics which never weary. La Fontaine is one of this class. No poet has been praised oftener, or by more able critics, and of no poet has the biography been so frequently written, and with such affectionate minuteness.

The noble and majestic statues of the sculptured gods of ancient Greece were overthrown and buried in the ground, their glowing and pictured figures were swept from the walls of temples and dwellings, and in their stead only a crouching, timid race of bloodless saints were seen, not glad to be men, and fearful of God. Humanity dared no longer to stand erect, but groveled in superstitious fear, and lashed its flesh in penance, and was ashamed and afraid of all its natural instincts. How then was it possible for Art to live?

A strange and beautiful life—with its cloistered maidenhood, its pathetic wavering between Death and Love, to fall at last into Love’s most gracious hands, its sequel of perfect wifehood. “She was like the insect that weaves itself a shroud, yet by some inward force, after a season, is impelled to break through its covering, and come out a winged tiger-moth, emblem of spirituality in its birth, and of passion in the splendor of its tawny dyes.”

Accident has frequently occasioned the most eminent geniuses to display their powers. "It was at Rome," says Gibbon, "on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City first started to my mind."

These first showed themselves in the love of dress and the selection of ornaments. From the early ages of the world, too, spinning and weaving were feminine employments, in which undying germs of art were hidden; for it belongs to human nature never to be satisfied with what merely ministers to necessity.

I found her in her dressing gown, smoking an after-dinner cigar, beside the fire in an immense room. She wore very pretty yellow slippers, coquettish stockings, and red trousers. Physically, she has acquired a double chin, like a well-fed priest. She has not a single white hair, in spite of her terrible misfortunes. Her beautiful eyes are as sparkling as ever.

For vast stretches of À la recherche du temps perdu, there is scarcely a page unadorned by vibrant colour. To commemorate the centenary of Marcel Proust’s death, Christopher Prendergast celebrates his use of pink, how its tone shifts from innocence to themes of sexual need, before finally fading out to grey at the novel’s close.