adopt had been worn thread-bare in France. Read, however, the song entitled Octavie, which is aimed at the Countess du Cayla. This lady, while still young and agreeable, submitted, for money, (about forty thousand a year) to the loathsome caresses of the most disgusting man in France.

There are two men of considerable merit who will suffer greatly from the publication of this little volume. The old amateurs of poetry had a very distinct perception of what was wanting to M. de la Martine and M. Casimir de la Vigne to entitle them to be classed with Lafontaine, Voltaire, Boileau, &c. But many judge only by facts. Now, two years ago, the works of Messrs. de la Martine and de la Vigne delighted the public as much as the first collection of M. de Béranger's songs. The public was, of course, perfectly willing to believe that France could actually boast three great poets.

Do you recollect, my dear friend, that in one of the greatest works which modern literature has produced, Tom Jones, when Partridge is asked, after the play, which of the actors he liked best, he is somewhat indignant at the question which appears to him affronting to his judgment. "The King for my money," says he; "he speaks all his words distinctly, half as loud again as the other. Any body may see he is an actor.'

Well, the French public set out with vehemently admiring Messrs. de la Martine and de la Vigne, because they talked about melancholy, glory, liberty, death, in the most pompous and tragical style, and this taste lasted for two years. Like Partridge, they admired the man who was dressed fine, and who spoke loud. What sort of popularity then was to be expected for a poet who does not deal in exaggeration,-who lets his pen follow the unaffected promptings. of his heart and fancy. This extraordinary man was so little indebted to education, that faults of spelling and of quantity are to be found in his earliest poems. This is not astonishing when we consider that he is the grandson of a poor tailor, and that he began the world as waiter at an inn.

Even now, if you talk to certain pedants about De Béranger, they ask you what he has done? A song of a page long seems to them a most insignificant production, compared with a fine long poem, printed in quarto, with a large margin, and beautiful vignettes, and treating of life, death, melancholy, glory, &c. &c. with that pompous emphasis, without which, a stupid man thinks nothing serious or impressive.

M. de la Vigne and M. de la Martine, the one from the beginning of his career, the other from the time he acquired a reputation, are men of great talent, who deliberately seat themselves at their desks, and say Lord Byron and Greece are in fashion. Now, then, we will write about Greece and liberty, and let us be sure not to forget the shade of Leonidas. We cannot be too emphatic and grandiloquent on such subjects.

M. de Béranger, far different from his noble rivals, has from his

earliest youth been exposed to the most painful anxieties and sufferings he was extremely poor. As soon as the manual labour by which he gained his daily subsistence was over, he sat down and wrote a song. This was his way of fixing things in his memory, of writing his journal. His life, like his genius, has a considerable resemblance to that of the sublime Robert Burns, whom your Edinburgh pedants suffered to die of poverty. The public of Paris, who are rather more civilized, did not wait for influential people and good judges to point out to them De Béranger's merits. Under Napoleon he obtained a place of about seventy pounds a-year, which to him was affluence, and enabled him to leave off working as journeyman in a printing office. The Bourbons, who are enemies of all true merit, of course, dismissed him. His friends then encouraged him to publish the two first volumes of his songs. They brought him in upwards of eleven hundred pounds, an enormous sum for our philosopher. The third volume, which is just published, and which the Bourbons instantly seized, has produced above nine hundred. De Béranger will probably be condemned to four or five months confinement in Sainte Pelagie, or, at any rate, his printer, M. Plassan, will be ruined. De Béranger suffers dreadfully from the tedium of confinement, and every thing he writes in prison is tinctured by it.

The third volume contains several songs composed in Sainte Pelagie, during his first imprisonment; they are deficient in vigour and spirit. The sight of the country, the influences of nature, and of a cheering sun, are necessary to the health of M. de Béranger, who, unfortunately, has a complaint in the chest.

The volume which has just been seized was greatly reduced in bulk, in consequence of the suggestion of M. de Béranger's prudence, which, however, was not prudent enough. He has written above two hundred songs which he calls his Chansonnier noir, and which will not appear till after his death, or that of the despotism. Several of the songs in this Black Book are very much in the style of Horace's " Integer vitæ scelerisque purus." This same prudence which, as it appears, has not yet acquired the requisite degree of timidity, withheld M. de Béranger from giving us more than fifty-three songs, of which, only ten appear to be worthy of the author of the celebrated song Du Bon Dieu.

I have already told you that when the poor little muse of De Béranger made her début in the world, it did not enter the head of any body, except perhaps of two or three old dreamers, that there could be any competition between these slight and frivolous songs and the noble Messenians of Casimir de la Vigne, or the sublime Meditations of Alphonse de la Martine, who was at that time puffed by the ultra party as worthy to touch the harp of David, and as the inspired successor of J. B. Rousseau, and so forth. It is no small gratification to my pride to tell you, that I was one of these two or three dreamers. I wrote an article on De Béranger's songs for a journal, the editors of which were induced to insert it merely

out of civility to me. M. de Béranger's style was perfectly new, and novelty is always ill received in this country. People are afraid of committing themselves by admiring it.

The history of our poets for the last two years is this. The liberal party has incessantly proné M. de la Vigne, who has not been inattentive to the interests of his own reputation, and whenever any event, the death of Lord Byron for instance, has arrested the public attention, that event was sure to be celebrated by M. de la Vigne within a fortnight. M. de la Martine's works, on the other hand, have sold best, for the ultras are at least twice as rich as their opponents. The ultras are the landholders, and buy books to assist them in killing time at their country houses. The rich liberals are manufacturers, bankers, &c. and are certainly not so favourably situated for reading. In the midst of all this apparent success, the fame of these two poets has certainly diminished. After repeated experiments, the public at length feels the distance which separates the man of genius from the man of talent, however great that talent may be. But before my pen is at the end of this sentence, I feel my injustice towards M. de la Martine. The fame of this young poet would be much more brilliant, if he had published nothing since his first volume of Meditations. They were, like De Béranger's best songs, the voice of his soul. From that time, elated by the reputation which the ultra party conferred upon him, M. de la Martine has chosen to write. He has thus revealed the fact that, combined with great sensibility and the talent of describing objects in humorous verse, he has an empty and sterile brain. The total absence of the faculty of thought is incredibly felt in the poem of the Death of Socrates, four thousand copies of which were sold in two days. There is not a single drawing-room in the Faubourg St. Germain, of itself a large town, in which the poems of M. de la Martine are not a necessary piece of furniture. He is patronised by M. de Genoude, the editor of the Etoile, a paper at once ministerial and jesuitical, which you must allow is not bad management.

Our young men of fortune who do nothing, and of course are dying of ennui, and who decorate their spleen with the title of sensibility, discovered in the first Meditations of M. de la Martine a faithful picture of the languor and tedium of which they are the victims. This class of young men were shocked at the gay and voluptuous spirit which breathes through the early songs of M. de Béranger. They are now excessively scandalized at the song of Octavie, which certainly does a little exceed the strict bounds of decorum. Béranger has this misfortune in common with La Fontaine, to whom I must persist in comparing him;-he offends prudery.

The first volume of M. de la Martine's Meditations were composed when he also was suffering under poverty and ill health. He was at that time nursed by his friends in a furnished lodginghouse at Paris (the hôtel de Richelieu). M. de la Vigne's career

He

has, as I have been told, been marked by uniform success. first distinguished himself by carrying off all the prizes in the colleges at Paris, and by gaining the especial favour of all the professors. The object of constant admiration and of constant applause, his labours, if we may judge by their results, have all been directed to his own personal advantage. His has been regular, counting-house-like work; work of four hours a day, producing a net profit of eighty pounds per month.

Do not conclude from this long exposition of my particular opinions concerning our three great poets, that I am insensible to the great merits of De la Vigne and De la Martine. All I contend is, that De Béranger is the first of living French poets; the one whose works have the greatest chance of seeing the twentieth century. After the songs Le Bon Dieu, Le vieux Sergent, and a few others, I rank M. de la Martine's first volume of Meditations. I adjudge the third rank to M. de la Vigne. In 1820, the greater number of the readers of poetry would have regarded the sentence as preposterous blasphemy; now they condescend to discuss it, and in two or three years, I have little doubt that it will be the common expression of public opinion.

I must, however, make an exception in favour of a case as little to be expected, as it is much to be desired, viz. that M. de la Martine, or M. de la Vigne, should publish works in a style entirely different from those they have hitherto given to the world. M. de la Vigne is at this moment preparing a tragedy founded on the history of Louis XI. suggested by Walter Scott's Quentin Durward. The first scene represents Philip de Comines employed in writing his Memoirs. This is perfectly in the absurd style of our Vaudevilles Anecdotiques. It reminds us of Guillaume Helvetius, La Maison de Molière, and other pieces, in which an attempt has been made to bring the illustrious men of France on the stage. Our great writers are invariably introduced to the audience, manuscript in hand. M. de la Vigne will certainly produce some good verses in the style of Dryden or of Delille. Will he ever rise to the lofty energy of tragedy? This is a question which I shall be delighted to answer in the affirmative.

I have heard a few pages of a new poem, by M. de la Martine, called the Last Canto of Childe Harold. Your English vanity must be flattered at seeing two of the most distinguished poets of France avow that they draw inspiration from Walter Scott and Lord Byron. The truth is, that the influence of our present form of government is daily felt in the growing resemblance we are acquiring to the English manner of thinking and feeling. Frivolity is losing, melancholy and gravity are gaining, ground. Canals are finding their way through our fields, and melancholy into our drawingrooms. Whether this be the fact or not, M. de la Martine, being the poet of the rich and powerful party, a bookseller ventured to give him four hundred pounds for this poem, consisting of two thousand lines. (This is an enormous sum in France). The speVOL. VII. No. 38.-Museum.

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culation was very successful, for he sold the right of publishing second and third editions for four hundred and eighty pounds, so that the first edition will be clear profit.

Many of the lines I heard appeared to me negligently written. The same word is frequently repeated in two following lines, or even in the same line; faults of this kind, however, are not faults to me. The construction of French verse is become so mere a mechanical art, that M. de la Martine has very likely left these marks of negligence in order to distinguish himself from the two or three hundred poets who swarm in the drawing-rooms of Paris;-all perfectly correct and perfectly dull. There probably is not one of this tuneful band who has not ten thousand lines of French verse by heart, or who cannot command for instant use thirty or forty different tournures to express the most trifling and ordinary sentiment. But having them all, they could not produce one original thought or feeling.

The Last Canto of Childe Harold, is the history of the latter years of Lord Byron's life. We in France think that, from aristocratical pride, and from a lack of dramatic genius, Lord Byron could never describe any other personage than himself.

I think this prevailing idea suggested to M. de la Martine the title of his poem. The sentiment with which the poem opens is nearly this; there are only two things in the world worthy to occupy great spirits, love and liberty. I have felt the power of love, I have attempted to sing it. Now I turn to thee-divine liberty! If M. de Genoude, who has created two-thirds of M. de la Martine's reputation, by puffing him to the rich ultra-party, does not strike out this invocation to liberty, M. de la Martine will come into the enjoyment of a great stock of ideas, which he will find ready cut and dried in all the pamphlets in favour of liberty. This will be an inestimable advantage to a poet, whose grand defect is a painful sterility of ideas. M. de Béranger, on the other hand, if he were not a great poet, would be distinguished as a profound thinker. It is said that scarcely any man in Paris evinces such depth and originality of thought on politics, literature, &c.; in a word, on all that now engages the attention of the French people, if you will condescend to give the name of a people to such a collection of timid and sprightly egotists.

If there are any persons in England who perfectly understand the hundred beautiful fables of La Fontaine, you would do well to insert one or two of Béranger's songs every month.

But all the English reviews print such strange blunders, whenever they pretend to quote French, that we are led to conclude that the refinements of our language are entirely lost upon you. The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, which are here thought to be full of wit and cleverness, are ridiculous as soon as they meddle with French; as for instance, when they say à la distance, instead of à distance. These expressions convey ideas perfectly different. What will be your astonishment, and probably your virtuous in