nd came back gladly to the garret and the street
corner. Thus it was, also, that he came to acknowledge obligations to
Emile Debraux, who had often stood between him and the masses as
interpreter, and given him the key-note of the popular humour. Now, he had
observed in the songs of sailors, and all who labour, a prevailing tone of
sadness; and so, as he grew more masterful in this sort of expression, he
sought more and more after what is deep, serious, and constant in the
thoughts of common men. The evolution was slow; and we can see in his own
works examples of every stage, from that of witty indifference in fifty
pieces of the first collection, to that of grave and even tragic feeling
in _Les Souvenirs du Peuple_ or _Le Vieux Vagabond_. And this innovation
involved another, which was as a sort of prelude to the great romantic
movement. For the _chanson_, as he says himself, opened up to him a path
in which his genius could develop itself at ease; he escaped, by this
literary postern, from strict academical requirements, and had at his
disposal the whole dictionary, four-fifths of which, according to La
Harpe, were forbidden to the use of more regular and pretentious poetry.
If he still kept some of the old vocabulary, some of the old imagery, he
was yet accustoming people to hear moving subjects treated in a manner
more free and simple than heretofore; so that his was a sort of
conservative reform, preceding the violent revolution of Victor Hugo and
his army of uncompromising romantics. He seems himself to have had
glimmerings of some such idea; but he withheld his full approval from the
new movement on two grounds:--first, because the romantic school misused
somewhat brutally the delicate organism of the French language; and
second, as he wrote to Sainte-Beuve in 1832, because they adopted the
motto of "Art for art," and set no object of public usefulness before them
as they wrote. For himself (and this is the third point of importance) he
had a strong sense of political responsibility. Public interest took a far
higher place in his estimation than any private passion or favour. He had
little toleration for those erotic poets who sing their own loves and not
the common sorrows of mankind, "who forget," to quote his own words,
"forget beside their mistress those who labour before the Lord."...

STEVENSON OF THE LETTERS.

Long, hatchet face, black hair, and haunting gaze,
That follows, as you move about