250 De Be ranger. 



Pourquoi faut-il, dans un sifccle de gloire, 

 Mes vers et moi, que nous mourrions obscurs. 

 Jamais, heUas ! d'une noble harmonic, 

 L'antiquite ne m'apprit les secrets. 

 L'instruction, nourrice du gnie, 

 De son lait pur ne m'abreuva jamais. 

 Que demander a qui n'eut point de maitre ? 

 Du malheur seul les lemons m'ont forme, 

 Et ces epis que mon printemps vit naitre 

 Sont ceux d'un champ ou ne fut rien sem. 



Addressing himself at another part of the poem to M. Lucien 

 Bonaparte, then an exile at Rome, he thus concludes : 



Vous qui vivez dans le sejour antique 

 Ou triomphaient les rois de 1'univers ; 

 Que reste-t-il de leur pompe heroique ? 

 De vains debris et des tombeaux deserts. 

 La, pour les grands quelle legon profonde ! 

 Ah ! puissiez-vous, attentif a ma voix, 

 Plein des vertus que le calme feconde, 

 Aimer les champs, la retraite et les bois ! 

 Oui, fier du sort dont vous avez fait choix, 

 Restez, restez, malgre' les voeux du monde, 

 Libre de Tor qui pese au front des rois. 



An academician, a poet, to whom Beranger (then quite unknown 

 to the public) was one day talking of his Idylles, and of the pains he 

 had taken to speak of every object by its name, without having the 

 least recourse to fable or circumlocution, was astonished at his hardi- 

 hood. " How would you, for instance," said the academician, "how 

 would you deal with the sea the sea?" " I would," answered Be- 

 ranger, " call it simply and plainly the sea." " And Neptune, 

 Tethys, Amphitrite, Nereus, you would, without the least compunc- 

 tion, lop off all that at a blow ?" " The whole of it." The acade- 

 mician was astonished. How, indeed, could an academician admit 

 that it would be possible to compose a modern epic without the con- 

 ventional machinery of the Heathen Deities ! 



About this time, having been recommended to Landon, the editor 

 of the " Annales du Musee," Beranger was employed during a year 

 or two (1805-1806) in the preparation of the literary pnrt of that 

 publication. The articles he contributed are distinguished by a pictu- 

 resque accuracy of description, by a just feeling and appreciation of 

 the natural beauty and simplicity of the paintings, and above all by 

 the pains taken to bring forward the moral views, the profound 

 thoughts, and the emotions of sensibility which inspired the great 

 artists whose works he was reviewing. 



By the friendly assistance of M. Arnault,* Beranger was admitted 

 as a copying-clerk into the office of the university ; a place he re- 



* Antoine Arnault, Member of the Institute, a distinguished writer of the time, and 

 author of the tragedies of "Marius," "The Venetians," a Collection of Fables, 

 &c., &c. ; he was exiled by the Bourbons on their restoration. Beranger was greatly 

 attached to him. 



