A GLANCE AT OUR PARISIAN CONTEMPORARIES. 477 



encounter. He has thrice, we believe, been incarcerated by the Bour- 

 bons for his political satires ; but each successive imprisonment has 

 served no other purpose than to increase his popularity. A merry life 

 he led in prson, though condemned to the meagre fare of bread and 

 water for scarcely an hour passed, during his confinement, that the 

 doors of St. Pelagie were not besieged by his admiring friends, laden 

 with good things, and the sparkling wine he had loved so well, to 

 eheer his heart in his narrow dungeon. Many were the bribes held 

 out to him if he would turn traitor to the cause of the people, and 

 wield his formidable pen in the service of despotism and the Bour- 

 bons ; but he has ever been proof to them all, and has preferred ho- 

 nourable poverty to such despicable wealth. Like a true philoso- 

 pher, he loved his independence : and, like Diogenes of old, he only 

 wishes the great to get out of his sunshine, and asks no further favors 

 from them. When all France was dazzled by the splendour of Na- 

 poleon's victories, and kings and nations were crouching at his feet, 

 and tamely paying court to their master, the poet dared to satirize 

 the faults of his government in so, masterly a burlesque, " Le roi 

 d'lvetot," that the mighty Emperor winced upon his throne before 

 the unsparing lash of the obscure chansonnier. The same noble feeling 

 which made him ridicule the monarch's faults in the zenith of his 

 glory and splendour, made him look with a weeping eye and a bleed- 

 ing heart upon his sad reverses and unhappy fate, and France contains 

 no heart which beats with more reverential feeling at the name of 

 Napoleon than Beranger's. 



Beranger is licentious very much so but when we examine more 

 closely, pieces which at first sight may have offended our delicacy, we 

 find that they are not so much the expression of his individual feelings, 

 as they are able satires of the licentiousness and debauchery of the 

 times ; he first draws a glowing picture of the vices of the great city, 

 and then he loosens the flood-gates of ridicule upon them, and among 

 the French ridicule is more potent than execration ; or, as some author 

 observes " un ridicule est pire qu'un crime." The songs of Be- 

 ranger are the mirror of his times the very epitome of Paris ; with 

 the eye of an artist and the heart of a poet, he walked through the 

 crowded city; he accommodated his genius to the spirit of the 

 people with the chivalrous workman and the enthusiastic journalist. 

 He raised the hymn of Liberty ; with the gay philosopher he sang of 

 wine and beauty, and with all he raised his voice against the preten- 

 sions of the priesthood, and the insolence of the aristocracy. All 

 " La jeune France" exists in his pages. La jenne France is gay, 

 thoughtless, often enthusiastic, and ever moved to noble daring by 

 the cry of freedom, and so is Beranger. Hence his popularity is not 

 posthumous he enjoys it now because he has so completely identified 

 himself with the extraordinary and changeful age in which he lives. 

 He is a man of the people he speaks their language, and sustains 

 their interests. But what perhaps contributes to his popularity as 

 much as any other circumstance is, that he is poor this to an English- 

 man, who considers poverty on a par with crime, may appear para- 

 doxical, but the respect for wealth is not carried to such an extreme 

 on the Continent as it is with us ; and I would venture to assert, that 



