His poems, of which I am tempted to give some specimens, must speak for him, although they necessarily lose greatly by transmission into a language so different to the Gascon as English. The last volume he published we brought away with us. It is called _Los Papillotos[20] de Jasmin, coïffeur_, and contains a great many poems, all remarkable in their way, even including those complimentary verses addressed to certain "_Moussus," (Messieurs_.) [Footnote 20: The curl-papers.] The history of this singular person is told by himself in a series of poems called "His recollections," which present a sad and curious picture of his life in its different stages. It appears that Jacques Jasmin, or as he writes it in Gascon, _Jaquou Jansemin_, was born in 1797 or 1798. "The last century, old and worn out," (says his eulogist, M. Sainte-Beuve,) "had only two or three more years to pass on earth, when, at the corner of an antique street, in a ruined building peopled by a colony of rats, on the Thursday of Carnival week, at the hour when pancakes are being tossed, of a hump-backed father and a lame mother was born a child, a droll little object; and this child was the poet, Jasmin. When a prince is born into the world, the event is celebrated by the report of cannon; but he, the son of a poor tailor, had not even a pop-gun to announce his birth. Nevertheless, he did not appear without _éclat_, for at the moment he made his appearance, a _charivari_ was given to a neighbour, and the music of marrowbones and cleavers accompanied a song of thirty-stanzas, composed for the occasion by his father. This father of his, who could not read, was a poet in his way, and made most of the burlesque couplets for salutations of this description, so frequent in the country. Behold, then, a poetical parentage, as well established as that of the two Marots." The infant born under so auspicious an aspect, grew and throve in spite of the poverty to which he was heir. He was allowed, when a few years had passed over his head, to accompany his father in those concerts of rough music to which he contributed his poetical powers; but the chief delight of the future troubadour was to go, with his young associates, into the willow islands of the Garonne to gather wood. "Twenty or thirty together, we used to set out, with naked feet and bareheaded, singing together the favourite song of the south, 'The lamb, that you gave me.' Oh! the recollection of this pleasure even now enchants me."