ART. VII.-1. Dernières Chansons de 1834 à 1851. 1857. Par P. Paris: 2. Ma Biographie. Ouvrage posthume de P. J. DE Béranger, avec un appendice. Paris: 1858. 3. Quarante-cing Lettres de Béranger et détails sur sa Vie. Publiés par Madame LOUISE COLET. Paris: 1858. 4. Mémoires de Béranger, Souvenirs, &c. Par SAVINIEN LAPOINTE. Paris: 1858. 5. Cours Familier de Littérature. Béranger. Par M. DE LAMARTINE: 1857. 6. Béranger, et ses Dernières Chansons. Par M. EMILE MONTÉGUT. (Revue des Deux Mondes.) 1858. 7. Béranger et ses Chansons. Par JOSEPH BERNARD. Paris. THIRTY-SIX years have elapsed since the author of Le Roi 'd'Yvetot' was installed in a place among the poets of Europe; and as he himself, in his autobiography, has commemorated the fact, we may justifiably repeat that the title of enrolment was first made out by the Edinburgh Review.' It is a quarter of a century since we took leave of him,-on his taking leave of public life, by the publication of his Last Songs,' in 1833. Literature and manners have hardly ever run through more rapid and strongly-marked changes, in one country, than those which have marked the social and intellectual life of France, during the same period. Hardly ever has a brilliancy so specious as some of the phases of change possessed, faded so suddenly away into that which resembles annihilation rather than pause. But throughout the whole series of cameleon metamorphoses, surviving the decay of many things fondly in their hour presumed to be progressive and imperishable,-a voice, a name, a poet, and a verse have lived on -grown, not decayed, in the midst of all the confusions around them, retaining, perhaps for all time, a lustre which many greater things have lost for ever. We can recall in art only one instance parallel to the position which Béranger has held during this quarter of a century,-the steadfast curiosity and interest which during five and twenty years have attached themselves to the perversely mute Signor Rossini. But the parallel holds good only in part; the composer of Guillaume Tell' vanished behind the curtain while yet he was a young man; the singer of 'Roger Bontemps' had reached maturity ere he withdrew. and The musician had enriched the stores of Opera by many large and important works; the chansonnier's claim to remembrance is confined within a single pocket volume of lyrics; some of which being prompted by the suffering or sarcasm of the moment, might fairly be deemed altogether ephemeral. If Béranger was solicitously watched and singularly flattered during his silent life, he has not been forgotten on his death. The volumes enumerated at the head of this article, which have been published in rapid succession since his death, indicate, by their diversity of parentage and character as much as by their number, the depth and width of interest belonging to their subject. Some months, however, have now elapsed since the last of them appeared; so that for the present we may assume the revelation to be complete,-the book of anecdote closed; and out of the memorials before us we proceed to trace an outline of the character of the Poet. In order to do this, it may be as well briefly to describe the nature of these materials. The body of the Poet, buried ere it was well cold, with the peremptory glories of a state funeral, had been laid in its grave only a few days, when an enthusiastic second-hand Corinne rushed (as it were) into the cemetery to fling a tawdry wreath of stage amaranths on the songster's simple tomb-telling the world that she had a right to be the chief-mourner among chief-mourners; that she was the woman who had best appreciated the poet, the muse' whom he had the most admired, -the spoiled child of genius, whom he had most delighted to spoil. Thus to fit theatrical phrase to theatrical things-may be described the tribute paid to Béranger by Madame Louise Colet, the southern poetess; yet, in spite of all the tawdriness and conceit of her little book, there is a touch of sincerity in its grief and its homage; and among the anecdotes and fragments of correspondence may be found a trait or two to which we have been indebted. Next, and not long after Madame Colet, arrived at Béranger's tomb another mourner, more substantial and sadder, with more to tell, and a better right to speak- M. Savinien Lapointe. No common cause has M. Lapointe to conceive the spot where Béranger lies hallowed ground. The chansonnier kept to the last hour of his life a very warm corner of his heart for poets of the people. He thought for them, he fought for them, he helped them against their own weakness-whether it took the form of vanity or melancholy. He did his best to direct their studies, to advance their fortunes, to obtain for their attempts a fair hearing. There are few things more pure, more abiding, more deep, than the affection which considerate notice such as his is calculated to engender in those who have worth or merit. The shoemaker-poet whom Béranger sought out at an early period of his career, whom he delicately assisted, discreetly counselled, and admitted to his confidence,--whose services he accepted at that time of sickness, when a man can only bear real ministry, may be forgiven for some exaggeration, for some want of delicacy, for some assumption. M. Lapointe is, doubtless, too gratefully garrulous regarding the active, but delicately secret charities of his idol: One should be modest,' said Charles Lamb, for a modest man.' He is too positive again, in speculating on those opinions and convictions which every sincere man keeps locked within his bosom. The extent to which Béranger was orthodox or heterodox in his creed, was not to be measured by his disciple. Over-confidence, some coarseness, and not a little indiscretion, mark M. Lapointe's book; yet it contains many interesting anecdotes, and a few to which no future biographer can avoid referring. The enthusiastic panegyric of M. de Lamartine is, again, in quality, entirely different from those of Madame Colet or M. Lapointe. The sonorous and poetical egotism of the author of 'Jocelyn' and 'Geneviève' flows through its periods. The appreciation is not without a certain tone and flavour of equality,nay more, of condescension. Kindred minds mingle,' said Sir Charles Grandison to some new acquaintance, whom he desired to encourage. Courtly, rhapsodical, chivalrous, cherishing the bounteous sympathies of a grand seigneur belonging to the court of genius, M. de Lamartine sweeps round the simple grave of the chansonnier-with the air of one who fancies he leads a procession and a dirge; paints his deceased friend, faithfully it may be, but from a palette of florid colours places him on a conspicuous pedestal, but decorates him with an Arcadian profusion of inscription, urn, and garland. Lest we be thought to have forced a description for the purposes of effect, let us attempt to present, in free paraphrase, the portrait of one poet taken by another: 'Who was the man,' says M. de Lamartine, speaking of the poet's strange and sudden funeral, so immense that an entire nation became too small to follow and to do honour to his burial procession? Something like this. A little old man, without distinction at the first sight, unless one could penetrate his countenance with the divining glance of genius ;--so much of simplicity was there, with all its subtlety. He wore the dress of a rustic Alcinous, beneath which it was next to impossible to suspect his divinity in the midst of a crowd; shoes tied with a thong,-and with thick soles, of which I loved the heavy sound (ah me! I shall hear it no more on the steps of my VOL. CVIII. NO. CCXIX. N stairs); coarse silk stockings, blue or grey, often splashed betwixt shoes and trowsers, the latter turned up to keep them out of the dust of the street; a clean cotton waistcoat, but a common one, rather open above his large chest, showing a shirt of linen, milk white but coarse, such as country wives spin from their own hemp for the village wearer; a wrapper of greyish cloth, the elbows of which showed the cord, while the unequal skirts let his legs be seen, as he went along the road;—and lastly, a wide-brimmed beaver, also grey, with no form or worse than none, sometimes stuck across his head, sometimes heavily thrust forward on his brow, which gave play to some locks unkempt, but still fair, that fell about his face, or on his coat collar, completed his dress. He used to go about with a white wood stick, without head or ferule; not an old man's stick,-'twas a habit his hand had; he rarely leaned on it, but, with the end of this holly branch, would trace capricious figures on the floor, on the pavement, or on the sand. . . . . As to his features, they might have been made out with big strokes of the thumb in clay, as in the rude but faithful little statue of him which the young sculptor, Adam Salomon, has moulded. There is the forehead large and beetling, the blue protruding eyes, the coarse arched nose, the cheeks in strong relief, the thick lips, the chin with a dimple in it, the visage more round than oval, the short but muscular neck, well set on the massive shoulders, the square-cut figure, the short legs, the frame apparently heavy, in reality supple (so strong was the spring, physical and moral, within it). But, then, that forehead was so thoughtful, those eyes were at once so transparent and so penetrating, those nostrils breathed such enthusiasm,--those cheeks were so modelled and their hollows furrowed by incessant thought and feeling, that mouth was so fine and loving, that smile was so kindly, those lips on which irony and tenderness met, that chin so marked, were so sarcastic.-The shadows which fell from his hair . . . . the sound itself of his words-sometimes grave and tremulous (as Time is), sometimes serene and impassive (as is Eternity), sometimes plaintive, broken as the tone of age, sometimes playful, and with the mixed sound of the light evening breeze, which touches, trifling, the careless chords of the soul -and all these traits, all these expressions, -all these different intonations, had in them so much of charm, that one felt enthralled, fascinated, raptured in contemplation by that face. One said within one's-self, that which Alcibiades said of Socrates after he had heard the sage speak of things human and divine: "Something divine, while we knew it not, must have diffused itself over that countenance. Ugly as the man is, he is still the most beautiful of mortals.” ' Here, allowing for a romancer's tinting, dimly represented by an attempt to reproduce it in the lights and shades of another language, is a lively picture of Béranger's outer man. We have already hinted the rock on which M. de Lamartine may have split, in his essay to characterise the genius of one so different in ambition and in conversation from himself. The author who has always desired to achieve greatness, could hardly, by dra matic possibility, fairly appreciate the other, who was determined on principle not to have greatness thrust upon him. The epic poet perpetually fanning the flame of enthusiasm, could hardly appreciate the songster, to whose guidance the tiny, clear taper of common sense sufficed, let the path be ever so entangled, — let the fairy voices through the mist be ever so seductive. But the attempt of M. de Lamartine to judge and to attach himself to a man like Béranger, bears within itself no mean testimony to the warmth of the one poet, and to the value of the other. These reminiscences or memorials of the Poet are more or less biographical. Next in order we come to the elaborate and skilful dissection of the genius of Béranger by M. Montégut. This, with all its skill and elaboration, seems to us in some degree to rank among the exercises of perverse industry,'— to borrow one of Moore's graphic phrases. The predetermined spirit of depreciation in which the task has been entered on is ill concealed by an academical balance of periods - by a show of logic in the reasonings- and by concessions, which amount to little more than what all the thinking and feeling world had agreed to grant as a matter of course. There is a super-exquisite justice, as well as a super-refined caution: both belong to infallibility, neither to humanity. To these contemporary or posthumous criticisms of the character and writings of Béranger, one remains to be added, which bears the stamp of a more penetrating and comprehensive intellect. The single page which M. Guizot has devoted to this poet of the people, in the first volume of his own historical Memoirs, is, in our judgment, the most correct estimate of Béranger's powers, and one of the most remarkable tributes to his eminence. At the same period, a man of the people, born a poet, but grown yet more a poet by art, sang, delighted, kindled, and propagated by his songs the popular instincts and passions against every thing that recalled the former monarchy of France, and especially against the claims and the domination of the clergy. Béranger was not, at bottom, a revolutionist or a blasphemer; he was better and wiser than his songs; but he was a democrat by conviction as well as by taste, and rendered, by this democratic spirit, more prone to licence and to want of foresight, he assailed at hazard whatever the people disliked, caring nothing for the range of his fire, taking the success of his songs for a victory of France, loving the Revolution and the Empire far more than liberty, and forgetting, with common levity, that faith and veneration are nowhere more indispensable than in free democratic communities. He found this out, I think, at last, though rather late, when he saw himself in presence of the passions which his songs had fomented, and of the shapes which his dreams had assumed. Upon this he hastened, with characteristic caution, to |