ing at once his sense of his own defects, his veneration for letters, and the noble turn of his ambition, is his having conceived the idea of an epic poem, of which Clovis was to be the hero, and which he resolved not to begin until he should have reached his thirtieth year; he devoting the intervening twelve to preparation for his work. As young poets generally begin by imitation of the writers who manifestly influence their time, so Beranger feeling the power of Chateaubriand, then in the ascendant, wrote a semi-pastoral, semi-religious poem, "The Pilgrimage;" but his own true vein had yet to be opened. Disappointed and poor, he had half resolved upon following Napoleon to Egypt, but was dissuaded by the advice of some friends who had returned home, stripped of illusions by the realities of hardships. It was during the miseries of early poverty, that the poet threw off those pieces abounding in animal spirits and rich melody, such as "La Gaudriole;" "Les Gueux;" "Lisette," &c. The enthusiasm which tempted him to follow Buonaparte, probably induced him to turn to the hero's more literary brother, Lucien, and to him he inclosed his poems. Contrary almost to his expectations, the poet received a kind encouraging letter from the prince, advising him against hasty composition, and pointing out the necessity of paying attention to style. But as Lucien set out immediately for Rome, the poet fancied there was an end to the correspondence. Happily he was mistaken. A letter came from Rome, with an inclosure the most satisfactory ever offered to a sensitive child of song; it was a transfer of Lucien's salary, as a member of the Institut, a gift which, implying that Beranger was worthy of sitting in his place, raised him to an equality of literary rank. Soon afterwards he was employed upon the Annales du Musée, and in 1809, received an under-clerkship in the office of the secretary of the university, at the low salary of 1200 francs. Hitherto the songs of Beranger had been the outpourings of a full nature; but when, about 1814, the excesses of Napoleon's ambition were exhausting France, and exciting the tremendous passions of countries he had so ruthlessly violated, the poet chimed in his playful remonstrance, and set his laughing countrymen a-wishing that their superbly extravagant ruler would put on the cotton nightcap of Le Roi d'Yvetot. That the emperor could not have taken the poet's wit and humour in bad part, may be considered proved, by the offer to become censor made during the Hundred Days. Of course he refused it, and with the more determination, as his own political feelings had undergone a serious change. Democratic as he was by temper and principle, yet the anarchy occasioned by the Republic had for a while reconciled him to the order decorated with glory, established by Buonaparte. The emperor had, in turn, abused his power, and Beranger thought the time arrived for the experiment of a constitutional monarchy. As it was the principle of national liberty he desired, he entertained no illusion as to names, and his first volume of poems, published in 1815, was so little flattering to those in power, that the author received a warning, which he understood to be a hint that his situation depended on the will of the government. When in 1821 he published his second volume, with the old warning in his mind he resigned office. The new poems contained some lively satires on the old regime reinstalled at court, and glowed with patriotic appeals to the love of glory and patriotism of the people. A prosecution followed, and the writer was condemned to three months' imprisonment, and a fine of 500 francs. On the day of his condemnation, 8th December, 1821, was circulated in court his "Adieux a la Campagne," ending with a vow to sing in his prison the glorious hymn of liberty, and he kept his word. His confinement could not have been a sorrowful one, if we may judge from his poetical acknowledgments of the presents of choice wines, fruit, and game, which poured in on him from his admirers; and probably for the first time the French Anacreon celebrated the realities of feasts which before were not unfrequently dreams of the imagination. Upon his liberation, Jacques Lafitte, afterwards prime minister of the king of the barricades, offered him a post in his banking-house, which the poet, fearing to compromise his friend, delicately declined. The ministry of Villele, having sunk under the weight of its unpopularity, the king, Charles X., created the quasi-liberal ministry of M. de Martignac, but so far from the change bringing good fortune to Beranger, he was prosecuted for his new volume, containing, amongst other offensive songs, his "Sacre de Charles le Simple," the "Infiniment Petits," and condemned, 10th December, 1828, to nine months' imprisonment, and to pay, for him, the enormous fine of 10,000 francs. So great was the anger of the court and the priesthood, that it broke out in allusions introduced into a speech from the throne, and in direct references in a mandement of the archbishop of Toulouse. The revolution of July, 1830, which followed so soon after Beranger's liberation, opened to him the freest choice of office, but he would accept nothing. True to his own genuine simplicity of truthfulness, he affected no surly independence, and put on no grandly-affected airs. He pleaded love of ease, and indisposition to labour, but yet would not accept a sinecure against the dictates of conscience. On the declaration of the republic in 1848, the people of Paris elected the national poet to a seat in the constituent assembly; but finding the noise and confusion not suited to the easy intercourse in which he loved to indulge, he, after a few visits to that short-lived body, sent in his resignation, which was at first refused, and only on his resolute persistence accepted. Napoleon III., on his advent to the throne, tried to succeed where Napoleon I., and Lords Philippe, and the Republic, had successively failed. His majesty, with his usual ability, determined upon assailing the hitherto unconquered citadel of the poet's independence, through the weak points of a heart susceptible to grace and loveliness. The attack was not openly conducted against a hero so watchful of his honour. The beautiful and graceful Empress Eugenie engaged Beranger's publisher to pay him a clandestine pension, in the form of a pretended increase of profits of sale. The respectable publisher proved as jealous of the poet's character as if he felt himself a trusted guardian, and the imperial design only elicited a beautiful and characteristic letter from the unconquerable worshipper of independence. When Beranger yielded at length to the infirmities of age, and his last sickness grew heavy upon him, the empress was unceasing in her attentions to the dear old dying poet; and when he at length died in July, 1857, the crown assumed to itself the right of ordering and directing a public funeral. Had the poet's own wishes been consulted, he would have been privately interred, surrounded only by the few whom he loved. Such was his written request; and who, after a consideration of his pertinacious avoidance through life of public honour, can doubt of the sincerity of his will regarding the disposal of his remains? As each song of Beranger's might be called an act of his life—for the greater number at least were suggested by public or private circumstances affecting his feelings—so have we explained the earnestness of purpose, which, under a surface whether playful or serious, sent them home to the hearts of his countrymen. His songs became in this way notes of his own life's history. His sincerity and conscientiousness appear in his very style, which is laboured and polished to that high degree which ends in the appearance of spontaneous ease. His fine taste and truth would not allow of his putting anything imperfect from his hand. The most warm and impassioned is the most melodious of poets. To translate Beranger into English would, perhaps, be about as easy as to render Burns into French. There are locutions in both which cannot be transplanted from the racy soil of the peculiar population to which they were given, and which depend for effect upon associations altogether their own. The French and Scottish national poets have the like character, that with the freest use of popular dialect, they are never vulgar. Perhaps the advantage belongs to Beranger, because of the greater difficulty of raising the corrupt jargon of the lower orders of a city, which is not always, like that of the acquired tongue of the country people, a well-adapted instrument to their own genuine feelings. From the command exercised by Beranger over classical literature, how few could believe that his education was so scanty; but here, again, we have the same man, who owed everything to himself, and would receive nothing from prince, or potentate, or power, determined as he was to supply his needs by his own honest exertion; and this is the more admirable, when we consider that he had to bend luxurious tastes to contentment with small means, and to preserve his independence by reducing his temptations to few wants. Beranger is thus not only the first of national poets, but of great characters.—J. F. C.
BERARD, Pierre Clement. Soon after the revolution of 1830, a periodical appeared, which, under the title of Cancans, levelled the most ferocious abuse against the king of the barricades, his family, and government. In order to evade the control exercised over periodicals, the author would vary the title by the addition of an ever-changing epithet, as well as shift the day of
