Burns imitated the old Scotch song-writers, and Béranger the chansonniers of the eighteenth century. Tradition is essential to the popular lyrist, who must also avail himself, in order to seize the popular heart, of known and familiar artistic forms, just as of known and familiar airs or tunes. But through imitation Horace learned to be original. The charming odes addressed to his friends Septimius, Pompeius, Varus, and others, are not fancy-pieces, but fresh from life; while such noble passages as the description of Regulus in the Colo tonantem are thoroughly Roman. Scholars who insist too much on the imitative side of Horace's labours, seem to forget that the Greek lyrists Alcæus, Sappho, and others, continued to exist alongside him for many ages, and that, if he had been anything like a mere echo of them, his works would have been allowed to fall into oblivion. As it was, he appears to have been as popular through the whole Roman empire as Béran essential parts of the Cæsarean policy. But he could still sing the praise of "the noble death of Cato." Nor was there anything servile in his attitude towards Augustus, whose services to the State he celebrated in a manly and independent kind of way. Augustus chid him playfully for not courting him more. Compared with the attitude of Boileau to such a ruler as Louis Quatorze, that of Horace towards Augustus-who, whatever else we may think of him, was one of the ablest sovereigns that ever lived stands out with something of a classical dignity. With regard to his private life, what writer has shown more filial piety, or shown it with a finer disregard of all the mean social fears which beset low natures in unexpected prosperity? What man has ever been more familiar with the rarer and sweeter natures of his time? As for his morals, he would not have understood what is held on some branches of morals by the modern world, which has no right to measure him by its own standards. And Butt-ger in France, or Burns in Great Britain. mann did a good deal to put people right on one matter at least, when he subjected the heroines of the love-songs to a critical inquiry. There are some eighteen of them, but they vanish away when looked at closely. The Pyrrhas and Glyceras are mere Greek statuettes. The Lalage of one lyric is not the Lalage of another; and Lydia dissolves into two figures, one as shadowy as its sister. Mr. Newman contends for the historical reality of Cinara, and is a little annoyed with Horace for not having married her. But even Cinara proves to have been a mere name on investigation. These houris of literature, with yellow and myrrhscented hair, and crowns of ivy or rose leaves, were just as much Greek ornaments of Horace's library as the figures which Atticus bought in Athens for the library of his friend Cicero's Tusculan villa. The fact is, that in one whole class of his Odes, our friend the Venusian simply used the Latin language as an ivory on which to paint Greek subjects. This is so indisputable, that he has often been treated within the last half century or so as a mere imitator, whose satires and epistles alone deserve much admiration. But to talk in this way, is to talk just as great nonsense as those gentlemen who pretend to know all about the family of Tyndaris; or who believe Horace to be in downright earnest when he relates how, having fallen asleep in his childhood on Mount Vultur in Apulia, doves came and covered him with leaves of laurel We cannot say, indeed, how far it was possi- O love, they die, in yon rich sky, They faint on hill, and field, and river; and myrtle. He imitated the Greek lyrists Who can even imagine a stanza like this undoubtedly; and there is a sense in which | being sung by a country girl, while spread ing her webs to bleach near a running stream? shire farmers, who seem to have been people of some superiority, for his grandfather is found joining his brother agriculturists in setting up a school. His reading, from boyhood upwards, was what would have been thought respectable in almost any class of life at that time; for, with all the talk about Scotch education, it is the diffusion, rather than the degree of knowledge of any kind, that makes the Northern kingdom remarkable. But though in reality no vulgar portent, Burns was too much treated as such; and he left Edinburgh with stings lurking in his breast, for which the hospitality that curiosity about him had excited did not compensate. His drinking-bouts with what he calls "the stately patricians" of Edinburgh, produced not only headaches, but heartaches, which were much worse to bear. This illustration of a poet's popularity is taken from Allan Cunningham, who records it as his own experience in the matter of the popularity of the songs of Burns. Burns, like Horace, has been differently estimated at different periods, since his death in 1796, ten years after his poems burst upon the world. His first biographers, including even Dr. Currie, obviously underrated him; and Walker especially (of whom the world would never have heard but for his acquaintance with the great man) writes in an intolerable and contemptible strain of patronage. It was the misfortune of Burns to be born in an age when Scotland had ceased to be a kingdom, without having reconciled herself to the condition of a province. In an earlier time he would have been happier, for That Burns's poems should have been whatever his circumstances his heart would admired, can hardly be claimed as a credit have been more at peace. In a later time, for that generation. Their power is so he would have emigrated young, risen to glaringly undeniable; they are so superior fame and fortune, and left, probably, great- to any Scottish poems that the country had er contributions to literature than any of seen for centuries; that to overlook them those for the sake of which the world cher- would have been simple barbarism. Yet ishes his memory. As it was, he fell up- they only reached two editions in Burns's on a generation whose society and litera- life-time, though he lived ten years after ture were both eminently artificial, and achieving his fame. Nor are those apolowrote his best things in a language the gists more successful who would extenuate doom of which was already sealed. His the meanness of the sordid patronage whole life was thus a moral struggle, as which placed him in an employment of well as a physical and social one; a strug- seventy pounds a year. Scotland, through gle between a loyal romantic Scots heart, the influence of Dundas, had a large share and a society fallen into narrow divisions, of crown patronage at that time, but it was with their class prejudices and local mean- bestowed on those who had no claims but nesses; between the consciousness of original relationship, or who made up for the want power, and the check imposed by the over- of that, by the qualities so admirably porvaluing of mere formal education on the trayed in Sir Pertinax Macsycophant. Lord part of an age which had forgotten what Brougham and the late Mr. McCulloch are poetic originality really was. We hear not unnaturally surprised that Adam Smith much of Burns's flattering reception, in the should have been fobbed off with a commiswinter of 1786, by the Edinburgh men of sionership of customs. But this was a joke letters. But they were after all mere me- to making Burns a gauger. And it is no diocrities; for the era of Hume had passed excuse to say that he was " a poet, and as away, and the era of Scott had not opened. a poet unfit for business." There are, inHume was dead; Adam Smith was in de- deed, some morbid modern poets of pecuclining health, and suffering from the de- liar schools who shrink even from critipression of spirits which overtook him after cism; who are afraid of being looked at; the loss of his mother. Those whose names and who are capable of nothing but proone hears as receiving Burns - let us say ducing their highly artificial stuff in a reBlair and Mackenzie, for instance-want-tirement cheered by the occasional comed a relish for real genius, and evidently pany of toadies. But the type of poet we regarded the poor bard as a miraculous are investigating just now is quite a differAyrshire ploughman who thought much too highly of himself. Indeed, gross exaggeration long prevailed on the subject of Burns's actual position and attainments. He was not a peasant at all, to begin with, but came of an old stock of Kincardine ent kind of man. Whether it be the strong vein of humour which seems an essential part of him, that widens the lyrist of this class, or not, certainly he has always sound common-sense, and tact, and a practical faculty for affairs. Burns astonished people as much by the judgment with which he behaved in a society quite new to him, as by his genius. His talk and correspondence were admirable, and the extant papers of the excise show that he quickly learned, and excellently discharged, all kinds of business that came in his way. The similar qualities of Horace, whose lot was cast among a more generous people, were chiefly displayed in the mixture of taste and discretion with which he filled his place in the high Imperial society. As for Béranger, some of the ablest men in France loved to illustrate his good worldly wisdom by comparing it to that of Franklin. Burns was undoubtedly the least fortunate man of our group, from every point of view. The best friend that his genius got for him, the Earl of Glencairn, who might perhaps have been to the poet something of what Maecenas was to Horace, or Prince Lucien Bonaparte to Béranger, was cut off by death. Yet his name will last if only in these beautiful lines: The bridegroom may forget the bride, Was made his wedded wife yestreen; The monarch may forget the crown That on his head an hour has been ; The mother may forget the child, That smiles sae sweetly on her knee; But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, And a' that thou hast done for me. For this "Lament" promises to live as long as the Tyrrhena regum progenies on the one hand; or the dédicace of the Chansons published in 1833, on the other.. There was a strong romantic element a feudal feeling akin to that of Sir Walter- in the original attitude of Burns towards the ancient Scotch families. It is seen very clearly in his curious Jacobite letter to Lady Winifred Maxwell, the heiress of the Earl of Nithsdale; in his correspondence with Mrs. Dunlop, who came of the Wallace blood; in the dedication of his second edition to the Caledonian Hunt; and in the high-spirited, heart-stirring "Address to Edinburgh." We are reminded in the last poem of the Quid debeas, O Roma, Neronibus, Testis Metaurum flumen and not a few similar passages, of Horace. But the stern experience of life taught Burns that the time for generous illusions was gone by. The Jacobite became a Jacobin, or something like it. The poet That name should he willingly slight it— lived to sing " A Man's a Man for a' that," and to welcome the French Revolution. If, at one end of his career, he could, like rian grandees, and of the Claudii, and the Roman poet, think kindly of the EtruLamiæ, of his Northern land, at the other end of it, he handed over his torch to one who cared little indeed for such recolRevolution destined to pepetuate its glories, lections and associations, a child of the and to continue its work. Fate seems to have curiously linked together these lyrists; and Béranger, who knew neither the language of Rome, nor of Great Britain, lived to be repeatedly entitled Horace," and "the Robert Burns," of France, by men well competent to judge of both. "the Burns, like Horace, had enjoyed the advantage of being the son of a good and wise father; and of receiving that sound domestic training which books cannot give, and which the want of books does not necessarily impair. It is curious to compare the Roman poet's grateful record of the excellent old freedman who kept his youth pure from all corruption, Servavit ab omni Non solum facto, verum opprobrio quoque turpi, — with the Scotch poet's similar testimony to the equally humble and admirable cotter of Ayrshire: doned by his father, who re-married in England, and whose name and designation were Béranger de Formentel. But in spite of their condition, the father and grandfather of the poet resolutely maintained a claim to belong to the noblesse, and bequeathed him (their only legacy) a genealogy in which they asserted themselves to be descended from the great house of the Counts of Béranger in Provence. The poet was described as De Béranger in his acte de naissance, and through life adhered to the particle;" that famous particle, the right to bear which is so fertile a theme for pleasantry among the wits of Paris, and about which Balzac was so persistently tormented. Béranger, we need not say, became as fervent a democrat as his father was a royalist, and made the "de" the occasion for a celebrated song: 66 Et quoi! j'apprends que l'on critique, * Je suis vilain et très-vilain... He tells us, however, that he could have passed for a noble if he had liked; though it is no wonder that he never cared for the October of the same year, 1789, while walking with one of his aunts, they found themselves surrounded by a crowd of men, and of women of dreadful appearance. They were carrying the bloody heads of the gardes-du-corps, massacred at Versailles, on pikes; and one of these heads passed quite close to the shuddering boy. When thinking of it, adds he long afterwards, I can see it yet; and he thanked Heaven that he had been away from Paris during the Terror. He escaped the scenes of that worst period of the Revolution (which, Republican as he was, he always deplored,) by having been sent to an aunt at Péronne. The good poor woman looked at the lad of nine years and a half, whose grandfather could no longer maintain him; whose father freed himself from him as a burden; whose very mother gave herself no thought about his fate; and who had been sent to her by the diligence as a kind of worthless parcel of humanity to be stowed away as she best could. "It is impossible for me to charge myself with him," said she, in her perplexity; and Béranger never forgot that moment. "Scenes like these," he remarks, "quickly ripen reason the honest kindly aunt, a moment afterin her eyes, and exclaimed," Pauvre abanwards, clasped little Pierre Jean, with tears donné! I will be to you a mother!" "Never," writes the grateful poet, “never membered in literary history, in her turn, was promise better kept!" She will be rewith the libertinus of Venusia, and the grave kindly Scots father, who sleeps in Alloway kirkyard. Béranger calls her his real mother; and describes her as a woman of superior mind, who had made up for a defective education by serious and select read in those who are born to a little of it!" But. subject, bred among the people as he was, and making of the ideas of the Revolution a life-long worship. His youthful training was of a vague and various kind. His father, after having been a lawyer's clerk in the provinces, came to Paris, where he fell in love with the lively and attractive daughter of a tailor, in whose house the song-writer was born. The father and mother separated in six months. The father wandered away to Anjou and elsewhere in search of employment, and the mother went to live by herself, while young Pierre Jeaning. He was still unable to read aloud when continued under the roof of the good old she received him, though he had already contrived to get through the Henriade. She took him in hand, with the aid of a Racine, a Télémaque, and Voltaire's dramas; and an old schoolmaster taught him to write and cipher. tailor. Sometimes he went to see her, and she would take him to the theatres in the Boulevards, or to little dances in the country; so that he learned something of the strange drama of human life in Paris even before learning to read. This excellent aunt's position was that of And what a drama life in Paris was during the boyhood of Bé-keeper of a small inn; and, as may be supposed, she could not bestow on her nephew, ranger, who grew up in a Revolution, as Horace had done before! At nine years of anything like a high education. He reage he saw the taking of the Bastille from mained through life, in his own words, unathe roof of a house in the Faubourg St. An-ble to decline musa, a muse, or rosa, a rose ; toine, where he had been sent to school, but where he got no other lesson, he says, than the lesson of that spectacle. In the Ma Biographie a posthumous work, and an admirable contribution to autobiographical liters ture. The prose of Beranger is scarcely, if at all, his own land. We all know the attitude and ignorant of every language but that of less excellent than his verse. In the satires and epistles of Horace we can see the capacity for a prose style, if need be; while that of Burns (though occasionally turgid) is full of vigour and animation. me, 66 towards the ancient masters which a misfortune of this kind would have caused a narrow-minded mediocrity to assume. Such a man would have gone through life protesting that the Falernian grapes were sour; would have sneered at classical scholars; and made hazardous jests about Greek particles" without any distinct idea of the place occupied by the particles in the structure of the language. But Béranger was a man of genius, and an honest man. Circumstances did not enable him to teach himself Latin, as Rousseau had done. But he always deplored his want of such knowledge as a misfortune; and he has expressed the feeling in remarkable passages of his letters. His ignorance of Latin gave him more pain, he declares, than all that he suffered from the poverty of his youth. "Horace is to ," he writes, "the Unknown God!"* "The happiness I most envy is that of knowing Greek." But perhaps he exaggerated his disadvantages after all. For he was a great student of the best translations, to begin with; especially those of Aristophanes, who had a perfect fascination for him. And then there were the best models of his own brilliant and graceful literature, which he studied thoroughly. From a very early period he loved the standard old French models, in spite of his sympathy with the Revolution, and its influence on literature. He had no respect for the extravagance and eccentricities to which the Romantic movement led; or with the "easy writing" of later times. "If this sort of thing goes on," When Béranger returned to Paris, not are his words," Racine, and La Fontaine long before the time of Burns's death at will soon be in want of translators."—" We Dumfries, he found his father and mother shall soon have people writing," observes he living together again, and his father enelsewhere," who have not learned to read." gaged in operations on the Bourse, and RoyHe did not belong, he protests, to the crea-alist intrigues. Béranger's mother, whom, tors of what is called la littérature facile, "the mortal foe of that other literature which has been the joy of my life, and was once the pride of France!" In precisely the same spirit, Horace toiled lovingly at the exemplaria Græca; and Burns compared, sifted, analysed, the old Scotch ballads and songs, and the poems of Thomson, Collins, Shenstone, and the Queen Anne men. the Revolution itself, and its results, were giving him an education of their own, which blended strangely with the charm of the sonorous elegance, or exquisite and delicate playfulness, of the writers of Louis Quatorze. He attended a club where republican songs were sung, and republican speeches made, an influence to which he attributed the birth in him of le goût de la chanson. His aunt herself was full of the enthusiasm of the hour, with which the whole moral air of France was hot. The boom of the cannon of the English and Austrian forces besieging Valenciennes reached Péronne at the distance of sixteen leagues across the plains of Picardy, and woke an echo of hatred of the foreigner in young Béranger's sensitive heart. When a salute announced to the town that Toulon had been retaken, he was on the ramparts, and at every gun his heart throbbed with such violence that he was obliged to sit down to recover his breath. If young Burns, some twenty-five years before, had glowed with patriotic passion on reading of Wallace, what must have been the emotions of a French youngster of kindred soul, with the enemy on the frontier? The love of the national flag, and a certain jealousy of the foreigner, lasted with Beranger through the whole of his long life. In spite of all his admiration for Voltaire, both as genius and reformer, he scarcely ever forgave him his zeal for foreigners, and he never forgave him his outrage to the memory of Joan of Arc. Béranger remained in Péronne till he had reached the age of fifteen, having passed two years of the time in a printing-officea part of his experience to which he always looked back with interest. He had also attended, during a small portion of this period, a gratuitous primary school, one of the thousand new. schemes which the ferment of revolution had inspired. Meanwhile, Correspondance de Branger, vol. ii. p. 137–212. Ib. vol. iii. 410. as he relates, he nowise resembled, either physically or morally, died soon afterwards her life having been shortened by her imprudences”· at the age of thirty-seven. The young Béranger joined his father in his money dealings, and became a clever financier; and he got some near glimpses of the kind of men who were plotting for the return of the Bourbons. But in 1798 the house broke down, and the growing poetfor he had already written much verse found himself plunged in poverty. This period of his life corresponds to the period which intervened in the life of Horace between the battle of Philippi and the gift from Mæcenas of the Sabine farm. Among the earliest of Horace's writings were his Archilochian Iambics against upstarts like drines against Barras and his adherents; Vedius Rufus; Béranger wrote Alexan |