Part 27

‘Vous, pauvres pleins d’envie, Vous, riches désireux, Vous, dont le char dévie Après un cours heureux; Vous, qui perdrez peut-être Des titres éclatants, Eh gai! prenez pour maître Le gros Roger Bontemps.’

At the same time, in Béranger the scepticism is not extreme. The skeleton is not paraded. That the world is a passing show, a painted scene, is admitted; you seem to know that it is all acting and rouge and illusion: still the pleasantness of the acting is dwelt on, the rouge is never rubbed off, the dream runs lightly and easily. No nightmare haunts you, you have no uneasy sense that you are about to awaken. Persons who require a sense of reality may complain; pain is perhaps necessary to sharpen their nerves, a tough effort to harden their consciousness: but if you pass by this objection of the threshold, if you admit the possibility of a superficial and fleeting world, you will not find a better one than Béranger’s world. Suppose all the world were a _restaurant_, his is a good _restaurant_; admit that life is an effervescing champagne, his is the best for the moment.

In several respects Béranger contrasts with Horace, the poet whom in general he most resembles. The song of _Roger Bontemps_ suggests one of the most obvious differences. It is essentially democratic. As we have said before, Béranger is the poet of the people; he himself says, _Le peuple c’est ma muse_. Throughout Horace’s writings, however much he may speak, and speak justly, of the simplicity of his tastes, you are always conscious that his position is exceptional. Everybody cannot be the friend of Mæcenas; every cheerful man of the world cannot see the springs of the great world. The intellect of most self-indulgent men must satisfy itself with small indulgences. Without a hard ascent you can rarely see a great view. Horace had the almost unequalled felicity of watching the characters and thoughts and tendencies of the governors of the world, the nicest manipulation of the most ingenious statesmen, the inner tastes and predilections which are the origin of the most important transactions; and yet had the ease and pleasantness of the common and effortless life. So rare a fortune cannot be a general model; the gospel of Epicureanism must not ask a close imitation of one who had such very special advantages. Béranger gives the acceptors of that creed a commoner type. Out of nothing but the most ordinary advantages—the garret, the almost empty purse, the not over-attired _grisette_—he has given them a model of the sparkling and quick existence for which their fancy is longing. You cannot imagine commoner materials. In another respect Horace and Béranger are remarkably contrasted. Béranger, sceptical and indifferent as he is, has a faith in, and zeal for, liberty. It seems odd that he should care for that sort of thing; but he does care for it. Horace probably had a little personal shame attaching to such ideas. No regimental officer of our own time can have ‘joined’ in a state of more crass ignorance, than did the stout little student from Athens in all probability join the army of Brutus; the legionaries must have taken the measure of him, as the sergeants of our living friends. Anyhow he was not partial to such reflections; zeal for political institutions is quite as foreign to him as any other zeal. A certain hope in the future is characteristic of Béranger—

‘Qui découvrit un nouveau monde? Un fou qu’on raillait en tout lieu.’

Modern faith colours even bystanding scepticism. Though probably with no very accurate ideas of the nature of liberty, Béranger believes that it is a great good, and that France will have it.

The point in which Béranger most resembles Horace is that which is the most essential in the characters of them both—their geniality. This is the very essence of the poems of society; it springs in the verses of amusement, it harmonises with acquiescing sympathy the poems of indifference. And yet few qualities in writing are so rare. A certain malevolence enters into literary ink; the point of the pen pricks. Pope is the very best example of this. With every desire to imitate Horace, he cannot touch any of his subjects, or any kindred subjects, without infusing a bitter ingredient. It is not given to the children of men to be philosophers without envy. Lookers-on can hardly bear the spectacle of the great world. If you watch the carriages rolling down to the House of Lords, you will try to depreciate the House of Lords. Idleness is cynical. Both Béranger and Horace are exceptions to this. Both enjoy the roll of the wheels; both love the glitter of the carriages; neither is angry at the sun. Each knows that he is as happy as he can be—that he is all that he can be in his contemplative philosophy. In his means of expression for the purpose in hand, the Frenchman has the advantage. The Latin language is clumsy. Light pleasure was an exotic in the Roman world; the terms in which you strive to describe it suit rather the shrill camp and droning law-court. In English, as we hinted just now, we have this too. Business is in our words; a too heavy sense clogs our literature; even in a writer so apt as Pope at the _finesse_ of words, you feel that the solid Gothic roots impede him. It is difficult not to be cumbrous. The horse may be fleet and light, but the wheels are ponderous and the road goes heavily. Béranger certainly has not this difficulty; nobody ever denied that a Frenchman could be light, that the French language was adapted for levity.

When we ascribed an absence of bitterness and malevolence to Béranger, we were far from meaning that he is not a satirist. Every light writer in a measure must be so. Mirth is the imagery of society; and mirth must make fun of somebody. The nineteenth century has not had many shrewder critics than its easy natured poet. Its intense dulness particularly strikes him. He dreads the dreariness of the Academy; pomposity bores him; formalism tires him; he thinks, and may well think, it dreary to have

‘Pour grands hommes des journalistes, Pour amusement l’Opéra.’

But skilful as is the mirth, its spirit is genial and good-natured. ‘You have been making fun of me, Sydney, for twenty years,’ said a friend to the late Canon of St. Paul’s, ‘and I do not think you have said a single thing I should have wished you not to say.’ So far as its essential features are concerned, the nineteenth century may say the same of its musical satirist. Perhaps, however, the Bourbons might a little object. Clever people have always a _little_ malice against the stupid.

There is no more striking example of the degree in which the gospel of good works has penetrated our modern society, than that Béranger has talked of ‘utilising his talent.’ The epicurean poet considers that he has been a political missionary. Well may others be condemned to the penal servitude of industry, if the lightest and idlest of skilful men boasts of being subjected to it. If Béranger thinks it necessary to think that he has been useful, others may well think so too; let us accept the heavy doctrine of hard labour; there is no other way to heave off the rubbish of this world. The mode in which Béranger is anxious to prove that he made his genius of use, is by diffusing a taste for liberty, and expressing an enthusiasm for it; and also, as we suppose, by quizzing those rulers of France who have not shared either the taste or the enthusiasm. Although, however, such may be the idea of the poet himself, posterity will scarcely confirm it. Political satire is the most ephemeral kind of literature. The circumstances to which it applies are local and temporary; the persons to whom it applies die. A very few months will make unintelligible what was at first strikingly plain. Béranger has illustrated this by an admission. There was a delay in publishing the last volume of his poems, many of which relate to the years or months immediately preceding the Revolution of 1830; the delay was not long, as the volume appeared in the first month of 1833, yet he says that many of the songs relate to the passing occurrences of a period ‘_déjà loin de nous_.’ On so shifting a scene as that of French political life, the jests of each act are forgotten with the act itself; the eager interest of each moment withdraws the mind from thinking of or dwelling on anything past. And in all countries administration is ephemeral; what relates to it is transitory. Satires on its detail are like the jests of a public office; the clerks change, oblivion covers their peculiarities; the point of the joke is forgotten. There are some considerable exceptions to the saying that foreign literary opinion is a ‘contemporary posterity’; but in relation to satires on transitory transactions it is exactly expressive. No Englishman will now care for many of Béranger’s songs which were once in the mouths of all his countrymen, which coloured the manners of revolutions, perhaps influenced their course. The fame of a poet may have a reference to politics; but it will be only to the wider species, to those social questions which never die, the elements of that active human nature which is the same age after age. Béranger can hardly hope for this. Even the songs which relate to liberty can hardly hope for this immortality. They have the vagueness which has made French aspirations for freedom futile. So far as they express distinct feeling, their tendency is rather anti-aristocratic than in favour of simple real liberty. And an objection to mere rank, though a potent, is neither a very agreeable nor a very poetical sentiment. Moreover, when the love of liberty is to be imaginatively expressed, it requires to an Englishman’s ear a sound bigger and more trumpet-tongued than the voice of Béranger.

On a deeper view, however, an attentive student will discover a great deal that is most instructive in the political career of the not very business-like poet. His life has been contemporaneous with the course of a great change; and throughout it the view which he has taken of the current events is that which sensible men took at the time, and which a sensible posterity (and these events will from their size attract attention enough to insure their being viewed sensibly) is likely to take. Béranger was present at the taking of the Bastille, but he was then only nine years old; the accuracy of opinion which we are claiming for him did not commence so early. His mature judgment begins with the career of Napoleon; and no one of the thousands who have written on that subject has viewed it perhaps more justly. He had no love for the despotism of the Empire, was alive to the harshness of its administration, did not care too much for its glory, must have felt more than once the social exhaustion. At the same time, no man was penetrated more profoundly, no literary man half so profoundly, with the popular admiration for the genius of the Empire. His own verse has given the truest and most lasting expression of it:

‘_Les Souvenirs du Peuple._

‘On parlera de sa gloire Sous le chaume bien longtemps. L’humble toit, dans cinquante ans, Ne connaîtra plus d’autre histoire. Là viendront les villageois, Dire alors à quelque vieille: “Par des récits d’autrefois, Mère, abrégez notre veille. Bien, dit-on, qu’il nous ait nui, Le peuple encor le révère, Oui, le révère. Parlez-nous de lui, grand’mère; Parlez-nous de lui.” (_bis._)

‘“Mes enfants, dans ce village, Suivi de rois, il passa. Voilà bien longtemps de ça: Je venais d’entrer en ménage. A pied grimpant le coteau Où pour voir je m’étais mise, Il avait petit chapeau Avec redingote grise. Près de lui je me troublai; Il me dit: ‘Bonjour, ma chère, Bonjour, ma chère.’” —“Il vous a parlé, grand’mère! Il vous a parlé!”

‘“L’an d’après, moi, pauvre femme, A Paris étant un jour, Je le vis avec sa cour: Il se rendait à Notre-Dame. Tous les cœurs étaient contents; On admirait son cortége. Chacun disait: ‘Quel beau temps! Le ciel toujours le protége.’ Son sourire était bien doux, D’un fils Dieu le rendait père, Le rendait père.” —“Quel beau jour pour vous, grand’mère! Quel beau jour pour vous!”

‘“Mais, quand la pauvre Champagne Fut en proie aux étrangers, Lui, bravant tous les dangers, Semblait seul tenir la campagne. Un soir, tout comme aujourd’hui, J’entends frapper à la porte. J’ouvre. Bon Dieu! c’était lui, Suivi d’une faible escorte. Il s’asseoit où me voilà, S’écriant: ‘Oh! quelle guerre! Oh! quelle guerre!” —“Il s’est assis là, grand’mère! Il s’est assis là!”

‘“‘J’ai faim,’ dit-il; et bien vite Je sers piquette et pain bis; Puis il sèche ses habits, Même à dormir le feu l’invite. Au réveil, voyant mes pleurs, Il me dit: ‘Bonne espérance! Je cours, de tous ses malheurs, Sous Paris, venger la France.’ Il part; et, comme un trésor, J’ai depuis gardé son verre, Gardé son verre.” “Vous l’avez encor, grand’mère! Vous l’avez encor!”

‘“Le voici. Mais à sa perte Le héros fut entraîné. Lui, qu’un pape a couronné, Est mort dans une île déserte. Longtemps aucun ne l’a cru; On disait: ‘Il va paraître; Par mer il est accouru; L’étranger va voir son maître.’ Quand d’erreur on nous tira, Ma douleur fut bien amère! Fut bien amère!” —“Dieu vous bénira, grand’mère; Dieu vous bénira.”’

This is a great exception to the transitoriness of political poetry. Such a character as that of Napoleon displayed on so large a stage, so great a genius amid such scenery of action, insures an immortality. ‘The page of universal history’ which he was always coveting, he has attained; and it is a page which, from its singularity and its errors, its shame and its glory, will distract the attention from other pages. No one who has ever had in his mind the idea of Napoleon’s character can forget it. Nothing too can be more natural than that the French should remember it. His character possessed the primary imagination, the elementary conceiving power, in which they are deficient. So far from being restricted to the poetry of society, he would not have even appreciated it. A certain bareness marks his mind; his style is curt; the imaginative product is left rude; there is the distinct abstraction of the military diagram. The tact of light and passing talk, the detective imagination which is akin to that tact, and discovers the quick essence of social things,—he never had. In speaking of his power over popular fancies, Béranger has called him ‘the greatest poet of modern times.’ No genius can be more unlike his own, and therefore perhaps it is that he admires it so much. During the Hundred Days, Béranger says he was never under the illusion, then not rare, that the Emperor could become a constitutional monarch. The lion, he felt, would not change his skin. After the return of the Bourbons, he says, doubtless with truth, that his ‘_instinct du peuple_’ told him they could never ally themselves with liberal principles, or unite with that new order of society which, though dating from the Revolution, had acquired in five-and-twenty years a half-prescriptive right. They and their followers came in to _take_ possession, and it was impossible they could unite with what _was_ in possession. During the whole reign of the hereditary Bourbon dynasty, Béranger was in opposition. Representing the natural sentiments of the new Frenchman, he could not bear the natural tendency of the ruling power to the half-forgotten practices of old France. The legitimate Bourbons were by their position the chieftains of the party advocating their right by birth; they could not be the kings of a people; and the poet of the people was against them. After the genius of Napoleon, all other governing minds would seem tame and contracted; and Charles X. was not a man to diminish the inevitable feeling. Béranger despised him. As the poet warred with the weapons of poetry, the Government retorted with the penalties of State. He was turned out of his petty clerkship, he was twice imprisoned; but these things only increased his popularity; and a firm and genial mind, so far from being moved, sang songs at La Force itself. The Revolution of 1830 was willing to make his fortune.

‘Je l’ai traitée,’ he says, ‘comme une puissance qui peut avoir des caprices auxquels il faut être en mesure de résister. Tous ou presque tous mes amis ont passé au ministère: j’en ai même encore un ou deux qui restent suspendus à ce mât de cocagne. Je me plais à croire qu’ils y sont accrochés par la basque, malgré les efforts qu’ils font pour descendre. J’aurais donc pu avoir part à la distribution des emplois. Malheureusement je n’ai pas l’amour des sinécures, et tout travail obligé m’est devenu insupportable, hors peut-être encore celui d’expéditionnaire. Des médisants out prétendu que je faisais de la vertu. Fi donc! je faisais de la paresse. Ce défaut m’a tenu lieu de bien des qualités; aussi je le recommande à beaucoup de nos honnêtes gens. Il expose pourtant à de singuliers reproches. C’est à cette paresse si douce, que des censeurs rigides ont attribué l’éloignement où je me suis tenu de ceux de mes honorables amis qui ont eu le malheur d’arriver au pouvoir. Faisant trop d’honneur à ce qu’ils veulent bien appeler ma bonne tête, et oubliant trop combien il y a loin du simple bon sens à la science des grandes affaires, ces censeurs prétendent que mes conseils eussent éclairé plus d’un ministre. A les croire, tapi derrière le fauteuil de velours de nos hommes d’état, j’aurais conjuré les vents, dissipé les orages, et fait nager la France dans un océan de délices. Nous aurions tous de la liberté à revendre ou plutôt à donner, car nous n’en savons pas bien encore le prix. Eh! messieurs mes deux ou trois amis, qui prenez un chansonnier pour un magicien, on ne vous a donc pas dit que le pouvoir est une cloche qui empêche ceux qui la mettent en branle d’entendre aucun autre son? Sans doute des ministres consultent quelquefois ceux qu’ils ont sous la main: consulter est un moyen de parler de soi qu’on néglige rarement. Mais il ne suffirait pas de consulter de bonne foi des gens qui conseilleraient de même. Il faudrait encore exécuter: ceci est la part du caractère. Les intentions les plus pures, le patriotisme le plus éclairé ne le donnent pas toujours. Qui n’a vu de hauts personnages quitter un donneur d’avis avec une pensée courageuse, et, l’instant d’après, revenir vers lui, de je ne sais quel lieu de fascination, avec l’embarras d’un démenti donné aux résolutions les plus sages? “Oh!” disent-ils, “nous n’y serons plus repris! quelle galère!” Le plus honteux ajoute: “Je voudrais bien vous voir à ma place!” Quand un ministre dit cela, soyez sûr qu’il n’a plus la tête à lui. Cependant il en est un, mais un seul, qui, sans avoir perdu la tête, a répété souvent ce mot de la meilleure foi du monde; aussi ne l’adressait-il jamais à un ami.’

The statesman alluded to in the last paragraph is Manuel, his intimate friend, from whom he declares he could never have been separated, but whose death prevented his obtaining political honours. Nobody can read the above passage without feeling its tone of political sense. An enthusiasm for, yet half distrust of, the Revolution of July seems as sound a sentiment as could be looked for even in the most sensible contemporary. What he has thought of the present dynasty we do not know. He probably has as little concurred in the silly encomiums of its mere partisans as in the wild execrations of its disappointed enemies. His opinion could not have been either that of the English who _fêted_ Louis Napoleon in 1855, or of those who despised him in 1851. The political fortunes of France during the last ten years must have been a painful scene of observation to one who remembered the taking of the Bastille. If there be such a thing as failure in the world, this looks like it.

Although we are very far from thinking that Béranger’s claims on posterity are founded on his having utilised his talent in favour of liberty, it is very natural that he should think or half-think himself that it is so. His power over the multitude must have given him great pleasure; it is something to be able to write mottoes for a revolution; to write words for people to use, and hear people use those words. The same sort of pleasure which Horace derived from his nearness to the centre of great action, Béranger has derived from the power which his thorough sympathy with his countrymen has given him over them. A political satire may be ephemeral from the rapid oblivion of its circumstances; but it is not unnatural that the author, inevitably proud of its effect, may consider it of higher worth than mere verses of society.