its
hearty, if somewhat narrow and mistaken, patriotism; its freedom from
self-seeking and personal vanity, spite, or greed; its thorough humanity
and wholesome natural feeling. Nor can it be fairly said that his range
is narrow. _Le Grenier_, _Le Roi d'Yvetot_, _Roger Bontemps_, _Les
Souvenirs du Peuple_, _Les Fous_, _Les Gueux_, cover a considerable
variety of tones and subjects, all of which are happily treated.
Beranger indeed was not in the least a literary poet. But there is room
in literature for other than merely literary poets, and among these
Beranger will always hold a very high place. The common comparison of
him to Burns is in this erroneous, that the element of passion, which is
the most prominent in Burns, is almost absent from Beranger, and that
the unliterary character which was an accident with Burns was with
Beranger essential. The point of contact is, that both were among the
most admirable of song writers, and that both hit infallibly the tastes
of the masses among their countrymen.

[Sidenote: Lamartine.]

Alphonse Prat de Lamartine was in almost every conceivable respect the
exact opposite to Beranger. He was born at Macon, on the 21st of
October, 1791, of a good family of Franche Comte, which, though never
very rich, had long devoted itself to arms and agriculture only. His
father was a strong royalist, was imprisoned during the Terror, and
escaped narrowly. Lamartine was educated principally by the Peres de la
Foi, and, after leaving school, spent some time first at home and then
in Italy. The Restoration gave him entrance to the royal bodyguard; but
he soon exchanged soldiering for diplomacy, and was appointed attache in
Italy. He had already (1820) published the _Meditations_, his first
volume of verse, which had a great success. Lamartine married an English
lady in 1822, and spent some years in the French legations at Naples and
Florence. He was elected to the Academy in 1829. After the revolution of
July he set out for the East, but, being elected by a constituency to
the Chamber of Deputies, returned. He acquired much fame as an orator,
contributed not a little to the overthrow of Louis Philippe, and in 1848
enjoyed for a brief space something not unlike a dictatorship. Power,
however, soon slipped through his hands, and he retired into private
life. His later days were troubled by money difficulties, though he
wrote incessantly. In 1867 he received a large grant from the government
of N