Three words explained the nature of my visit; and Jasmin received me with a species of warm courtesy, which was very peculiar and very charming--dashing at once, with the most clattering volubility and fiery speed of tongue, into a sort of rhapsodical discourse upon poetry in general, and his own in particular--upon the French language in general, and the _patois_ of it spoken in Languedoc, Provence, and Gascony in particular. Jasmin is a well-built and strongly limbed man, of about fifty, with a large, massive head, and a broad pile of forehead, overhanging two piercingly bright black eyes, and features which would be heavy were they allowed a moment's repose from the continual play of the facial muscles, which were continually sending a series of varying expressions across the swarthy visage. Two sentences of his conversation were quite sufficient to stamp his individuality. The first thing which struck me was the utter absence of all the mock-modesty, and the pretended self-underrating, conventionally assumed by persons expecting to be complimented upon their sayings or doings. Jasmin seemed thoroughly to despise all such flimsy hypocrisy. "God only made four Frenchmen poets!" he burst out with; "and their names are Corneille, Lafontaine, Beranger, and Jasmin!" Talking with the most impassioned vehemence, and the most redundant energy of gesture, he went on to declaim against the influences of civilization upon language and manners as being fatal to all real poetry. If the true inspiration yet existed upon earth, it burned in the hearts and brains of men far removed from cities, _salons_, and the clash and din of social influences. Your only true poets were the unlettered peasants, who poured forth their hearts in song, not because they wished to make poetry, but because they were joyous and true. Colleges, academies, schools of learning, schools of literature, and all such institutions, Jasmin denounced as the curse and the bane of true poetry. They had spoiled, he said, the very French language. You could no more write poetry in French now, than you could in arithmetical figures. The language had been licked, and kneaded, and tricked out, and plumed, and dandified, and scented, and minced, and ruled square, and chipped--(I am trying to give an idea of the strange flood of epithets he used)--and pranked out, and polished, and muscadined, until, for all honest purposes of true high poetry, it was mere unavailable and contemptible jargon. It might do for cheating _agents de change_ on the Bourse--for squabbling politicians in the Chambers--for mincing dandies in the _salons_--for the sarcasm of Scribeish comedies, or the coarse drolleries of Palais Royal farces; but for poetry the French language was extinct. All modern poets who used it were mere _faiseurs de phrase_--thinking about words, and not feelings. "No, no," my Troubadour continued; "to write poetry, you must get the language of a rural