All for Greed,

Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly,

TALES.

778

THE THREE LYRISTS; HORACE,

BURNS, AND BERANGER.

THE mystical fascination which the Number Three used to exercise over the human mind, receives some excuse from interesting facts in the history of literature. Thus, there are three supreme epic poets, Homer, Virgil, and Milton. There are three masters of Greek tragedy, Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. There are three unrivalled satirists, Aristophanes, Rabelais, and Swift. And there are three lyrists, who stand out in the annals of song, enjoying a popularity beyond all competition, Horace, Burns, and Béranger. It is with the last triad that our business lies at present. It seems to us that each of them may be better understood if all three be compared together; and that whatever essential similarity can be shown to exist between them, will tend to throw light on the lyrical character and the lyrical genius.

The points of coincidence in the condition and temperament of these men of different nations, are curious, to begin with. They were all of humble degree by birth, yet more or less fortunate in some circumstances of their training. They were all, for parts of their career, in Government employment. They all early found patrons among men of rank. They all held a kind of mixed politics, the result of the fluctuations of the ages in which they lived. They all enjoyed popularity during their lifetimes. All three were strongly susceptible of religious impressions, but hostile to prevailing dogmatism and superstition; keenly alive to the love of friends, and the charm of women; deeply tinged with melancholy, though cheerful at ordinary times, and hilarious on festal occasions. All were patriotic to a degree exceeding the zeal of common men. And though the basis of their genius in each case was a gift of creative spontaneity which defies analysis, they all alike worked on traditionary material, literary and musical; and worked on it in the true artistic spirit, with much love of form, finish, symmetry, and grace. Finally, what is profoundly significant, these three song-writers all began with satire, a thoroughly humorous vein of satire being common to the group.

It is a strange thing to reflect upon, that Horace, who died one winter's day just eighteen hundred and seventy-five years ago, should have more readers even yet, than either Burns or Béranger. We apprehend, however, that this admits of no doubt. It is another piquant fact of the kind, that even these evergreen classical reputations have their good and bad seasons, - their periods of fashion and of neglect. In the eighteenth century, we hear of Horace everywhere, from the pulpit to the ballroom. But for many years after our own century opened, he was no longer the mode. He ceased, as Niebuhr says, to have justice done him; and in the lectures which Niebuhr delivered at Bonn in 1828-9, that great scholar protested against the reaction. Since then, there has been a highly active Horatian movement in literature. Hofman Peerlkamp, a Dutch professor of great distinction, gave an impulse to this, in an unusual way. He issued, in 1833, a work, the object of which was to show that a good deal of the present text of Horace is spurious and supposititious. Such audacity roused the Germans, and the subject can hardly be said to have gone to sleep again yet. But the revival extended beyond the province of criticism, strictly so-called. Canon Tate, and Dean Milman in England, Baron Valckenaer and others in France, conducted excellent investigations of the poet's whole life and genius, — and, indeed, his life had been treated with injustice as well as his genius. Translations, too, have multiplied, till a certain impatience of them has become manifest. Some are spirited and sympathetic paraphrases, like those of Father Prout and Lord Derby; some are more severe, but equally able, like those of Professor Conington. Others, again, repeating the error of Francis in new shapes, are loose in style, and modern in character, echoes of Moore rather than of Horace.