"But when at length our poor Champagne By foes was overrun, He seemed alone to hold his ground; Nor dangers would he shun. One night--as might be now--I heard A knock--the door unbarred-- And saw--good God! 'twas he, himself, With but a scanty guard. 'O what a war is this!' he cried, Taking this very chair." "What! Granny, Granny, there he sat? What! Granny, he sat there?" "'I'm hungry,' said he: quick I served Thin wine and hard brown bread; He dried his clothes, and by the fire In sleep drooped down his head. Waking, he saw my tears--'Cheer up, Good dame!' says he, 'I go 'Neath Paris' walls to strike for France One last avenging blow.' He went; but on the cup he used Such value did I set-- It has been treasured." "What! till now? You have it, Granny, yet?" "Here 'tis; but 'twas the hero's fate To ruin to be led; He, whom a pope had crowned, alas! In a lone isle lies dead. 'Twas long denied: 'No, no,' said they, 'Soon shall he re-appear; O'er ocean comes he, and the foe Shall find his master here.' Ah, what a bitter pang I felt, When forced to own 'twas true!" "Poor Granny! Heaven for this will look, Will kindly look on you." There was not in Beranger's genius much innate and irrepressible buoyancy toward poetry, as we English-speakers conceive poetry. But he practiced a severely self-tasking art of verse, which at last yielded a product sufficiently consummate in form to command the admiration of qualified critics. He became unquestionably first among the song-writers of France; he even elevated song-writing, popular song-writing, to the rank of acknowledged literature. His fashion, and, with his fashion, his currency, are rapidly becoming things of the past; but the real merit of his achievement, and, more than that, the fact of his extraordinary influence make his name securely immortal in the literary history, and in the literature, of France. XXII. LAMARTINE. 1791-1869. Lamartine, the man, was an image incongruously molded of gold and of clay. Take him at his best, and what is there better? Take him at his worst, and you would not wish worse. The same contrast holds, but not in the same degree, in Lamartine the author. He is at once one of the most admirable, and one of the least admirable, of writers. There are few figures in history worthier to command the homage of generous hearts than the figure of Lamartine in 1848, calming and quelling the mob of Paris by the simple ascendant of genius and of bravery. There are few figures in history more abject than the figure of Lamartine, toward the close of his life, in the garb of a beggar holding out his hat to mankind for the pence and half-pence of wonder, of sympathy, and of sympathetic shame. Perhaps we instinctively fall into some contagious conformity to Lamartine's own exaggerating rhetoric in expressing ourselves as we do.