254 De Be ranger. 



Je vois briller chapes, mitres et crosses, 

 Chapeaux pourpre's, vases d'argent et d'or ; 

 Couvents, hotels, valets, blasons, caresses. 

 Ah ! saint Ignace a pille* le tresor. 

 De mes refrains 1'un des siens qui le venge, 

 Proraet mon ame aux gouftres devorants. 

 Deja le diable a plume mon bon ange, 

 Pour le clerge comptons trois mille francs. 



Verifions, la somme en vaut la peine : 



Deux et deux quatre ; et trois, sept ; et trois, dix. 



C'est bien leur compte. Ah ! du moins La Fontaine, 



Sans rien payer, fut exile' jadis. 



Le ficr Louis eftt biife la sentence 



Qui m'appauvrit pour quelques vers trop francs. 



Monsieur Loyal, delivrez-moi quittance ; 



Vive le roi ! voila dix mille francs. 



De Beranger's works have been brought out successively in five 

 divisions ; the first at the end of the year 1815 ; the second at the 

 end of 1821 ; the third in 1825; the fourth in 1828 ; and the fifth 

 in 1833. The publication of 1821 caused him his first imprisonment, 

 and that of 1828 his second and more severe one. While the poet 

 himself was fast secured behind the iron bars of a prison, his popu- 

 larity was extending its range to every town, village, and hamlet in 

 the kingdom: thus deeply mortifying the susceptibilities of power, 

 and making known to the people at the same time, that it was not in 

 palaces or mansions only, that their truest and most disinterested 

 defenders were to be found. 



In a very able and spirited address prefixed to his last series, he 

 takes his final leave of the public as a chansonnier. Though this 

 address, from its nature, must necessarily be egotistical, yet the 

 vanity of the author and who of the] " genus irritabile vatum" is 

 without it? the vanity of the author is rendered, perhaps, more con- 

 spicuous by the assumption of that most transparent of all coverings 

 (except to the individual himself), a veil of extreme modesty and self- 

 disqualification. It has, however, considerable interest, notwithstand- 

 ing this trifling drawback, if indeed it be one at all. The public are 

 given to understand that they have received the last of his chansons, 

 though he does not intend to abandon his literary labours altogether. 

 He hints, indeed, at the possibility of his occupying himself in his 

 retreat, by marking down his recollections and experiences of the 

 distinguished men of his time a sort of biographical catalogue 

 raisonne of eminent persons which should at least have truth, im- 

 partiality, and plain sense to recommend it. De Beranger has 

 retired to Passy, in the neighbourhood of Paris, upon a small com- 

 petence we believe a very small one but sufficient for his mode- 

 rate wants, and which, we sincerely hope, he may live many years to 

 enjoy, in comfort and tranquillity. 



We began our extracts with a chanson, in which his good fairy 

 forms one of the dramatis personae; we close them with his last one, 

 in which this kind protectress re-appears ; and with a few lines that 

 he addresses to his present retreat, we take our leave of De Beranger. 



