looks on the serious side of life and considers it thoughtfully, as in "Le Jour des Morts.” In "L'Orage" the disposition to be gay when one can, in spite of adverse and threatening circumstances, is well exhibited: "Chers enfants, dansez, dansez ! Echappe à l'orage; Par l'espoir gaiement bercés. Dansez, chantez, dansez !"* Popular superstitions he respects, and employs where he can render them poetical, as in "Les Etoiles qui Filent." His delight in song is well expressed in his poem entitled "Ma Vocation:" "Jeté sur cette boule, Laid, chétif, et souffrant: Faute d'être assez grand; Un plainte touchante De ma bouche sortit: Le bon Dieu me dit: Chante, It is next to impossible to transfuse the spirit of Béranger into a foreign language. As well undertake to preserve the foam, and sparkle, and aroma of the richest champagne when turning that liquor into brandy, as to render our poet's best songs into anything like literal English. The English translator of Béranger must accept this proposition: given a poem in one language which produces a certain effect, to write a poem in another language which shall produce the same or a similar effect. To accomplish this the movement in the two languages must often be quite different. No one but a person of fine poetical instincts and thoroughly practised in the *Euvres, t. i. p. 369. "Squalid, faint, and suffering, hurled That spoke my spirit's misery; Some God that heard suggested, 'Sing, And song shall consolation bring.'"-Ib. t. i. p. 183. versifying art can properly translate Béranger; consequently we have few good renderings of his lyrics-few that give us their spirit, which is as evanescent as the morning dew. That eccentric but delightful genius, "Father Prout," was well fitted to appreciate Béranger, and has given us some excellent translations of his lyrics. As a specimen, we give a stanza or two from Here was the board where kindred hearts would blend: The Jew can tell How oft I pawned my watch, to feast a friend In attic cell! "Oh! my Lisette's fair form could I recall With fairy wand, There she would blind the window with her shawl Bashful, yet fond! What though from whom she got her dress I've since Still, in those days, I envied not a prince, In attic cell!" Another piece, much admired in the original, but by no means so attractive in its English dress, is "The Shooting-Stars," from which, however, we can only snatch a fragment: Say, what betides yon falling light, Which shoots and shoots, and fades away?' "My child, some mortal breathes his last; His star shoots downward from its sphere: That being's latest hours were past Mid jovial friends and festive cheer. Which shoots and shoots, and fades away.'" Béranger's style is remarkably pure and simple. There are no forced expressions, no attempts at grandiloquence--hardly a useless epithet. It is said that he acquired much of his simplicity of style and purity of diction from a careful study of the Greek and Roman classics in translations. He composed in general very laboriously, and was assiduous in correcting and polishing his pieces. He says that he never wrote more than fifteen or sixteen songs in a year. Some of these would be written in two or three hours, but the majority were the product of much patient labor. Béranger is a social poet. All the moods of ordinary humanity are his; but the highest aspirations of the soul and the profoundest feelings of the heart do not belong to him. Yet who can help loving the vivacious, genial, sympathetic, earnest-hearted Frenchman? We take him to our hearts, but there are depths in it which he does not fathom; we admire him, but do not bow in adoration as in the presence of the loftiest spirits. Concerning the deepest social problems he gives us no new light. He considered human manifestations. mostly in their external aspects, not attempting to understand or to reach the main-springs of feeling and action. He belonged to the period of childhood and youth in poetry; its manhood and ripe age have few representatives. It is well to set the ages of infancy right before attempting to deal with maturity, and here Béranger did a great work. To a high order of genius a certain reserve and dignity are native. It is very difficult to sensitive natures to display their inmost hearts to the gaze of the public. Yet to do this constitutes the highest order of literary excellence. A genius like Shakespeare reveals himself in representing others. There is an imaginable order of excellence where the possessor shall have the finest and the deepest emotions and shall completely unveil them to the world without reserve or fiction. Such a poet we believe the world has not yet seen, nor, perhaps, is it worthy of it. In the poet's age of love and the Christian's millennium, all will so reveal themselves. Could some loftystatured soul conquer self so far as to do this, he would greatly contribute to "Lead up the golden year." Béranger has little of this poetic dignity. Such as he is he gives himself to us unreservedly. Yet he is not one of the highest-statured for whose coming we look as for a new evangel. For what he was, of which he so frankly gives us the benefit, we owe him gratitude. For the man Béranger we have even a higher admiration than for the poet. Among men, indeed, there have been few who so excite our esteem and love. His autobiography is a charming piece of writing, exhibiting the naïve simplicity of the man. He is sufficiently egotistical, but not at all too much so. He wishes us to know him as he is, and we are quite willing to take his account of himself and his motives. It would, indeed, be quite impossible to disbelieve a word he says of himself, which at all affects his character. We feel that he knows himself better than any one else could know him, and that he is thoroughly honest. Béranger early became interested in politics, and watched the varied and momentous events of his day with the keenest interest. By nature a republican, he yet had considerable enthusiasm for Napoleon. Yet he early perceived the tendency of the Corsican's ambition, and refused to blindly follow him, thus showing his great superiority to the majority of his countrymen. “The patriotic love of country," he says, "was the great, I might almost say the only passion of my life."* He contributed to the Revolution of July, 1830, and showed his wonderful power of divination in a letter to Lucien Bonaparte * Ma Biographie, p. 22. in which he predicted the events that followed. His friends urged him to accept a place in the ministry. "What place shall I take?" he asked. That of Public Instruction was suggested. He feigned acquiescence, and declared that he should insist upon the adoption of his songs as a text-book in the schools for young ladies. The absurdity of the proposition was thus made apparent.* Independence was one of Béranger's most marked characteristics. And this quality was not at all affected, nor does it seem to have been at any time assumed for the purpose of exciting admiration and receiving greater favors than those first declined. He respected himself, and compelled others to respect him. He was always content to be valued at his true worth, and preferred his own estimate to that of others regarding himself. This was true not only as respected his writings -wherein he had his reward-but, what was more extraordinary, he refused to be placed higher than what he thought proper in the social and political scale. During much of his youth and manhood he was very poor, and he learned to bear the yoke of poverty with contentment and dignity. It was doubtless fortunate that his reputation did not come sooner, as when he began to be courted his character and his sympathies were immovably fixed. "Thrown into the midst of the most opulent society," he says, "my poverty was the cause of no embarrassment to me,for it cost me no effort to say, 'I am poor. '"+ And further, that, when first admitted into opulent society, "Already a man of experience, I kept fast hold of my cradle and the friends of my infancy. How often, also, after being present at sumptuous banquets, in the midst of new acquaintances, I have gone to dine the following day in a back shop or a garret, in order to retemper myself among the companions of my poverty !" He was always very fond of the society of young men, even in his ripe age, and declares that he learned more from them than they could do from him. He was much courted during his latter years by the distinguished and the powerful, yet not always successfully. Chateaubriand sought his acquaintance, yet never gained it. Lafayette had be *Ma Biographie, p. 246. † Ib. p. 185. ‡ Ib. p. 127. |
