riety and melody of their rhythm. Colle,
author of amusing but spiteful memoirs, and, like Piron and Panard, a
writer of comic operettas, excelled rather in the political chanson.
Gentil Bernard, the Cardinal de Bernis, the Abbe Boufflers, and Dorat,
were all writers of _vers de societe_, the last being much the best.
Their style of writing was frivolous and conventional in the extreme,
but long practice and the vogue which it enjoyed in French society had
brought it to something like the condition of a fine art. Dorat was
surnamed by a contemporary the 'glowworm of Parnassus.' The expression
was not an unhappy one, and may be fairly applied to the other authors
who have been mentioned in his company. He himself was a rather
voluminous author in different styles. The literary baggage of the
others is not heavy. Vade, a writer of light and trifling verse, who
died comparatively young, devoted himself to composing poems in the
'poissard' dialect of Paris, which are among the best of such things. At
the close of the century, and deserving more particular notice, appeared
Desaugiers, the best light song-writer of France, with the single
exception of Beranger, and preferred to him by some critics. Desaugiers
escaped the revolution by good fortune, had a short but rather
adventurous career of foreign travel, and then settled down to
vaudeville-writing, song-making, and jovial living in Paris. He was a
great frequenter of the Caveau, a kind of irregular club of men of
letters which had been instituted by Piron and his friends, and which
long continued to be a literary and social rendezvous. Desaugiers was
the last of the older class of _Chansonniers_, who relied chiefly on
love and wine for their subjects, and who, if they touched on politics
at all, touched on them merely from the personal and satirical point of
view, with occasional indulgence in cheap patriotism. His songs have
great sweetness and ease, but they contain nothing that can compare with
Beranger in his more serious and pathetic mood[286].

This is a sketch, necessarily and designedly rapid, of the poetical
history of the eighteenth century in France. The matter thus rapidly
treated is of no small interest to professed students of literature; it
abounds in curious social indications; it gives frequent instances of
the extremest ingenuity applied to somewhat unworthy use. But in the
history of the literature as a whole, and to those who have to regard it
not as a