After the
Restoration, Beranger, whose political creed was an odd compound of
Bonapartism and Republicanism, got into trouble with the government for
his political songs. He was repeatedly fined and imprisoned, but each
sentence made him more popular. After the Revolution of July, however,
he refused to accept any favours from the Orleanist dynasty, and lived
quietly, publishing nothing after 1833. In 1848 he was elected to the
Assembly, but immediately resigned his seat. He behaved to the Second
Empire as he had behaved to the July monarchy, refusing all honours and
appointments. He died in 1857. Beranger's poetical works consist
entirely of _Chansons_, political, amatory, bacchanalian, satirical,
philosophical after a fashion, and of almost every other complexion that
the song can possibly take. Their form is exactly that of the
eighteenth-century _Chanson_, the frivolity and licence of language
being considerably curtailed, and the range of subjects proportionately
extended. The popularity of Beranger with ordinary readers, both in and
out of his own country, has always been immense; but a somewhat singular
reluctance to admit his merits has been shown by successive generations
of purely literary critics. In France his early contemporaries found
fault with him on the one hand for being a mere _chansonnier,_ and on
the other, for dealing with the _chanson_ in a graver tone than that of
his masters, Panard, Colle, Gouffe, and his immediate predecessor and in
part contemporary, Desaugiers. The sentimental school of the Restoration
thought him vulgar and unromantic. The Romantics proper disdained his
pedestrian and conventional style, his classic vocabulary. The
neo-Catholics disliked his Voltairianism. The Royalists and the
Republicans detested, and detest equally, though from the most opposite
sides, his devotion to the Napoleonic legend. Yet Beranger deserves his
popularity, and does not deserve the grudging appreciation of critics.
His one serious fault is the retention of the conventional mannerism of
the eighteenth century in point of poetic diction, and he might argue
that time had almost irrevocably associated this with the _chanson_
style. His versification, careless as it looks, is really studied with a
great deal of care and success. As to his matter, only prejudice against
his political, religious, and ethical attitude, can obscure the lively
wit of his best work; its remarkable pathos; its sound common sense;