This Roi d'Yvelot was one of the first of Béranger's published satires. It was directed at Napoleon, who, however, with great discretion, took it in good part, and rather increased than lessened the favour he showed to the venturesome poet. Our next specimen shall be the first of Béranger's songs in honour of the great General, whom, it is curious to note, he never once mentions by name in the whole of his chansons, Béranger seemed to labour under a reverent awe, which hindered him from freely handling his name, as though it were a god's.

I blushed; he said, "Be of good cheer!
Courage, my dear!"
That was his very word.

Mother! O then this really occurred,
And you his voice could hear!

A year rolled on, when next at Paris I,
Lone woman that I am,

Saw him pass by,

Girt with his peers, to kneel at Notre Dame. I knew by merry chime and signal gun, God granted him a son,

And, O! I wept for joy!

For why not weep when warrior men did,
Who gorged upon that sight so splendid,
And blessed th' imperial boy?

Never did noonday sun shine out so bright!
O what a sight!

Mother! for you that must have been
A glorious scene.

But when all Europe's gathered strength
Burst o'er the French frontier at length,
'Twill scarcely be believed

What wonders, single-handed, he achieved.
Such general ne'er lived!

Que evening on my threshold stood
A guest-'TWAS HE! of warriors few
He had a toil-worn retinue,

He flung himself into this chair of wood,
Muttering, meantime, with fearful air
"Quelle guerre! oh quelle guerre."
Mother! and did our Emperor sit there
Upon that very chair?

He said "Give me some food."

Brown loaf I gave and homely wine,
And made the kindling fire-blocks shine,

To dry his cloak with wet bedewed.

Soon by the bonny blaze he slept, He, waking, chid me (for I wept); "Courage!" he cried, "I'll strike for all Under the sacred wall

Of France's noble capital!"

Those were his words; I've treasured up
With pride that same wine-cup;

And for its weight in gold

It never shall be sold!

Mother! on that proud relic let us gaze.
O keep that cup always!

But through some fatal witchery,

He whom A POPE had crowned and blest,
Perished, my sons! by foulest treachery,
Lost on an isle far in the lonely west.
Long time sad rumours were afloat-
The fatal tidings we would spurn,
Still hoping, from the isle remote,

Once more our hero would return.

But when the dark announcement drew
Tears from the virtuous and the brave,
When the sad whisper proved too true,

A flood of grief I to his memory gave.
Peace to the glorious dead!

Mother! may God his fullest blessing shed
Upon your aged head!

We wish we had room for one or two more pieces which equally deserve presentation with those we have already given. Our space forbids us doing so; but we shall be glad indeed if those we have reproduced, and the few hasty words we have prefaced them with, may be the means of directing the attention of any reader to this abundant store of noble poetry-tender, stirring, and witty. The French of Béranger is by no means difficult to read; it has none of the striking affectations and peculiarities, which some of his countrymen so indulge in, to embarrass the student. The language is simple and easy; the rythme so marked and flowing that of itself it partly aids the fostering of the Muse.

SCOTTISH POETS-RAMSAY AND FERGUSON.

THE Reformation, which gave such a powerful impulse to literature in England, seems to have produced less favourable results in our own northern land. Subsequent to that important epoch there was a period of poetical barrenness, when the voice of song was unheard among our sires, and when the profession of the bard was reckoned profane and deserving of all reprobation. After the struggle between Prelacy and Presbyterianism, also, a morose and fanatical spirit largely prevailed, which was adverse to the progress of the poetic art. Even the few who cultivated the acquaintance of the muses wrote in the Latin tongue, which the pedantry of James VI. had rendered a somewhat fashionable medium of literary expression. It is to Allan Ramsay that his country is mainly indebted for the restoration of a more healthy and natural taste. This individual was born in 1686, at Leadhills, in the parish of Crawfordjohn in Lanarkshire. Describing the place of his birth in one of his poems, he says it was—

"Where mineral springs Glengoner fill
Which joins sweet flowing Clyde,
Between auld Crawford Lindsay's towers,
And where Deneetne rapid pours

His stream through Glotta's side."

After receiving a scanty education at the parish school, he was first engaged as a herd among the bleak moors of the Upper Ward of Clydesdale, and subsequently at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to a wigmaker in Edinburgh. At this humble occupation he continued for many years of his life, employing his leisure hours in the study and composition of poetry. In 1712, the first of his effusions of which we have any trace, was given to the public. This was an address to the members of the "Easy Club," an association of good fellows to which Ramsay had become attached. There is but little of the energy divine

in this production, although it seems to have obtained the approbation of the Easy brotherhood to whom it was addressed. After the suppression of the Rebellion in 1715, Ramsay endeavoured to gain a name and interest in the world, by the composition of occasional pieces, and by a cautious and prudent avoidance of the party questions which then agitated society. Honest Allan, indeed, never neglected an opportunity of advancing himself in the social scale. He won the friendship of the great by the most fulsome panegyrics, and seldom offended any one by an unprofitable satire. His flattery was generally well directed. He says of himself—

"Lucky for me I never sang

Fause praises to a worthless wight,
And still took pleasure in the thrang
Of those wha in good sense delight."

As his pieces were successively written, he sent them to the world in the form of single sheets or half sheets, which were sold at a penny each. His name thus became famous in Edinburgh and the neighbouring country, and some of the old people remembered in comparatively recent times, that when children they had frequently been sent out by their parents to buy "Allan's last piece." Among the productions of this period there is a considerable portion which consist of the merest doggerel, yet such was the avidity with which they were received that the author was encouraged to publish a collection of his poems in 1720. The lists of his subscribers are said to have comprised "all who were either eminent or fair in Scotland." By this publication Ramsay cleared about four hundred guineas, a sum sufficient at that period to have purchased as much land as would now produce a comfortable income. Prefixed to the volume were a number of commendatory verses by various individuals, and it closed with a complacent address to the book from the author's own pen. In this he gives unbounded evidence of his vanity. He says:—

"gae spread my fame

And fix me an immortal name-
Ages to come shall thee revive

And gar thee with new honours live.

The future critics, I foresee,

Shall have their notes on notes on thee,
And wits unborn shall beauties find

Which never entered in my mind."

Ramsay now left off wigmaking, and set up a bookseller's shop, opposite Niddry's Wynd, Edinburgh. Shortly thereafter he published the "Tea-table Miscellany," a collection of songs partly old and partly of his own composition and that of several ingenious young gentlemen who assisted him in the work. This was followed by the "Evergreen," a collection of Scottish poems written before the year 1600. For the task of editing such works Ramsay was not well qualified, as he had neither the requisite knowledge nor a sufficiently subtle taste. In the Evergreen" " he gave, under a fictitious signature, two of his own productions, one of which, "The Vision," is characterised by a higher style of poetical excellence than any other effusion which his genius

K

ever produced. There are few things in poetry, indeed, more beautiful than his delineation of the genius of Scotland. It is as follows:

"Grit daring darted frae his ee,

A braidsword shugled at his thie,
On his left arm a targe,

A shynard spear filled his richt hand;
Of stalwart mak in bane and brawn'd,
Of just proportions large;

A various rainbow-coloured plaid

Ower his left spaul he threw,

Doun his braid back frae his white head

The silver wimplers grew;

Amaisit I gazit

To see led at command,

A stampant and rampant

Ferss lyon in his hand."

:

His description of a Heavenly Palace is also finely touched off"Frae the sun's rising to his set,

All the prime rait of wardens met
In solemn bricht array;

With vehicles of aither clear,
Sic we put on when we appear
To souls rowed up in clay;

There in a wide and splendid hall

Reared up with shynard beams,
Whase rufe-trees were of rainbows all,
And paved with starry gleams

Quilk prinkled and twinkled

Brichtly beyond compare,

Much famed and named

A castle in the air."

The

In 1725 the inimitable pastoral of the "Gentle Shepherd" was given to the world, and at once received the well-deserved meed of public approbation. In a short time it was republished in London and Dublin, in both of which cities it was hailed with rapture. production of this work brought its author not only a large measure of fame but added materially to his wealth. It also secured for him the friendship and correspondence of the English poets Pope, Somerville, and Gay; the latter of whom visited Ramsay at his shop in Edinburgh, and gratified the author by requesting explanations of Scotch words in the drama, which he did not understand. So superior was the "Gentle Shepherd" to the other works of Ramsay that for some time it was doubted whether he was actually the author. Suspicion fell upon Sir John Clerk of Pennycuik as having aided in the production. This gentleman was a zealous patron of Ramsay's, and it is in the neighbourhood of his residence that the scene of the piece is laid. We need hardly say that there are no valid grounds for the supposition that Ramsay was not the sole author of the work. As has been well remarked by Lord Hailes, "those who attempt to depreciate the fame of Ramsay by insinuating that his friends and patrons composed the 'Gentle Shepherd,' ought first to prove that either friends or patrons were capable of such excellence."