Beranger: Two Hundred of His Lyrical Poems

BERANGER: TWO HUNDRED LYRICAL POEMS, DONE INTO ENGLISH YEESE. BT WILLIAM YOUNG. NEW-YORK: GBOKGB P PUTNAM. 1860. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by WILLIAM YOUNG, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New-York. John F. Tjiow, Printer and Stereotyp&r, 49, 51 <& 53 Ann-st. PREFACE. Readers of books have little inclination to trouble themselves with an author's views and motives, when he volunteers to come before them. It is, therefore, for reasons in which he himself is personally concerned, and which will be appreciated by those whom the fact may chance to interest, that the translator of the following collection of Beranger's lyrics disavows, at the outset, any sympathy whatever with the political doctrines that they so broadly inculcate. Were the writer in his own country, it would be absurdly egotistical to couple any such declaration with a purely literary effort. Place, however, and peculiar circumstances render it pardonable, that an Englishman, strongly and steadily attached to the monarchical institutions of his native land, should make this reservation, when aspiring to lay before the Citi- zens of a Republic a work that breathes the very essence of Re- publicanism. Beranger, the darling poet of his countrymen and the admiration of the lettered world, is a master of song, not the founder of a creed. One half of these versions—herein very carefully revised, and in some instances re-written—were published in London, three years ago. Of the second hundred, a dozen have appeared in the columns of the New-York Albion. The remainder are now ! IV FliEFACE. printed for the first time. The whole form a selection ; nor can the entire works of Beranger ever be translated into our tongue —at least with a due regard for decency. Some are too licen- tious, and some treat things sacred with a levity that would be deemed intolerable. The exact boundary line, indeed, between the fit and the unfit must be an arbitrary one. Notions of delicacy and pro- priety will diflTer, from a variety of causes : but it should be borne in mind, that there is a wide distinction between those writings, which are designedly ofiensive to a refined taste, and those that are only so incidentally. The ultra-squeamish censors, who pounce upon every objectionable thought or phrase in pages of surpassing merit, remind us of those poor-hearted travellers who spend days amidst the sublimest or the most lovely scenery, and yet can but concentrate their attention on the mud that has ga- thered on their boots ! With such readers we have no fellow feel- ing ; and pass on to remark, with further reference to the incom- pleteness of this volume, that France herself has not yet seen all the outpourings of Beranger's fertile genius. In the latest French edition of his songs, are to be found a few extracts from the unpublished manuscripts of his latter days ; while he therein states distinctly that a set of odes on Napoleon is to form a por- tion of his posthumous works. Would that this determination might be changed We believe that Beranger can only be popular with foreign- ers, when they are accustomed to note the characteristics of other countries—moral, social, or political—without judging them by the immediate standard of their own. Furthermore, to relish him fully, the reader should be somewhat familiar with the history of France, during the forty years which have elapsed since 1810. ; PKEFACE. V France, during this period of time, has seen many events, and experienced many changes. She has seen her darling hero over- thrown, and her foes in possession of her capital. The Hundred Days exhibited the star of her Emperor's glory flickering forth with dying lustre and a ; second time was she compelled to see the legions of her enemies, encamped, as victors, upon her soil. For fifteen years did she tolerate, with indignation, the combined imbe- cility and despotism of the twice-restored Bourbons. The Revolu- tion of July swept them ignominiously from their estate : whilst their successor, Louis Philippe, unlike them, inasmuch as he was largely endowed with the sagacity and manfulness which they lacked, did but pursue his own selfish and unprincipled purposes, lengthening out a somewhat longer career, but closing it, in Febru- ary, 1848, by a precisely similar fate. Beranger has hailed the new and nominal Republic : we trust he has not chanted its progress. Ample matter was there in all the previous mutations of fortune, for his serious and satirical muse. Subjects for his lighter and more pathetic effusions were around him, in French characters and French habits—through all their political phases so true to themselves—^under any circumstances so different from our own. It seems to us, moreover, that France, in her political course, travels so completely in a circle, that in looking at Beranger's vivid sketches of her bygone days, we are not unlikely to stumble upon some, which might illustrate her, to-day or to-morrow. Critics are courteously invited to bear in mind the excessive difficulty of translating such an author. The writer, well aware of his infinite short-comings, does but lay claim to a conscientious fidelity to his original text. He may have often missed Beran- ger's meaning, and presented generally the feeblest of transcripts but he has neither presumed to omit, nor to interpolate. He ven- Vi PREFACE. tured, indeed, in his hundred versions published in London, to print the French on opposite pages ; and would have done the same, on here doubling their number, had not his publisher pro- tested against it, on the ground of inconvenient bulk. This would not have been done in a spirit of presumption, nor in weakly flattering himself that he had succeeded in establishing an entente cordiale between Beranger and himself, but for the simple facility of reference. If this attempt should tend in the smallest degree to make the great poet of France better known or more admired ; should it even stimulate abler hands to render him into an English garb, the translator's main object will have been accomplished. New-York, lUh September, 1860. CONTENTS. • • • PAas Notice of ths Life and Writings of Pierre Jean De B^ranger 1 Translated Songs 13 Appendix— B^ranger's Preface to his Edition of 1833 . .367 Dedication 386 Letter to his Publisher 388 Letters to President of the National Assembly • • . 390 Letter to the Translator 393 Index to Songs • . • . 395 ; LIFE AND WRITINGS OF PIEEEE JEAN DE BfiEANaER. Newspapers, reviews, and magazines, have given to the pub- lic numerous, if not copious biographies of this illustrious poet whilst those who are familiar with his works have found in them almost every event detailed, and, if read aright, the fullest and truest index to his character. Drawing so largely on the reader's attention in the main matter of this volume, and purporting to subjoin a few samples of Beranger's own prose writings, wherein his course and manner of life are portrayed by his own hand, we shall be brief in our present sketch. It is compiled from various sources, French and English, and will not probably mislead as to fact, since there is scarcely a discrepancy amongst his bio- graphers. Pierre Jean De Beranger comes of very humble parentage ; nor is any record of his father and mother extant, save that the former was a bit of a wit and doffed care aside, believing, on the faith of the de prefixed to his name, that he came of gentle blood, and looking hopefully forward to fortune, at some indefinite period and through some undefined means. The subject of this memoir was born in Paris, on the 19th of August, 1780, and has consequently 2 LIFE AND WRITINGS. only just entered his seventy-first year. The early period at which, in his songs, he dubbed himself old, and his frequent harpings on the apparently sore point of his age, have contri- buted to make the world set him down as an octogenarian, long before his time. His birth-place, a house in the Rue Montor- gueil, exists no longer, having been demolished in a recent wide- ning and improvement of streets. It was the residence of hiss maternal grandfather, a tailor, whose poverty had not soured him, and who was the boy's indulgent and beloved guardian, during the first nine years of his life. Ere he quitted Paris, Beranger witnessed the storming of the Bastille, but was shortly after- wards transferred to Peronne, where a sister of his father kept a small inn. An amiable and worthy woman was this aunt, under the shelter of whose roof he remained until he was seventeen. Treated with the most considerate kindness, and allowed at will to lounge, to loiter, and to dream, whilst imbibing such know- ledge as she could give him, it is not improbable that at this early period, his naturally affectionate and grateful turn of mind became fully developed, a characteristic which it has preserved and displayed alike in evil and in happier days, in obscurity and in the zenith of his fame. His good and pious aunt must, however, have been often scandalized by his levity and wit. On one occasion, on the approach of a thunderstorm, she had sprinkled the threshold of her house with holy water, whereat the young scapegrace fell a laughing, but was, himself, soon struck senseless by a flash of lightning. He could not resist exclaiming, when recovered, " And pray, aunt, what good has all your holy water done us ?" The books that first fell in the boy's way were Telemachus, Voltaire's Letters, and Eacine's Tragedies—perfect and varied ;; LIFE AND WRITINGS.

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