Nothing is more odd than to contrast the luxurious and voluptuous nature of much of Béranger’s poetry with the circumstances of his life. He never in all his productive time had more than 80_l._ a year; the smallest party of pleasure made him live, he tells us himself, most ascetically for a week; so far from leading the life of a Sybarite, his youth was one of anxiety and privation. A more worldly poet has probably never written, but no poet has shown in life so philosophic an estimate of this world’s goods. His origin is very unaristocratic. He was born in August 1780, at the house of his grandfather, a poor old tailor. Of his mother we hear nothing. His father was a speculative, sanguine man, who never succeeded. His principal education was given him by an aunt, who taught him to read and to write, and perhaps generally incited his mind. His school-teaching tells of the philosophy of the revolutionary time. By way of primary school for the town of Péronne, a patriotic member of the National Assembly had founded an _institut d’enfants_. ‘It offered,’ we are told, ‘at once the image of a club and that of a camp; the boys wore a military uniform; at every public event they named deputations, delivered orations, voted addresses: letters were written to the citizen Robespierre and the citizen Tallien.’ Naturally, amid such great affairs there was no time for mere grammar; they did not teach _Latin_. Nor did Béranger ever acquire any knowledge of that language; and he may be said to be destitute of what is in the usual sense called culture. Accordingly it has in these days been made a matter of wonder by critics, whom we may think pedantic, that one so destitute should be able to produce such works. But a far keener judge has pronounced the contrary. Goethe, who certainly did not undervalue the most elaborate and artful cultivation, at once pronounced Béranger to have ‘a nature most happily endowed, firmly grounded in himself, purely developed from himself, and quite in harmony with himself.’ In fact, as these words mean, Béranger, by happiness of nature or self-attention, has that _centrality_ of mind, which is the really valuable result of colleges and teaching. He puts things together; he refers things to a principle; rather, they group themselves in his intelligence insensibly round a principle. There is nothing _distrait_ in his genius; the man has attained to be himself; a cool oneness, a poised personality pervades him. ‘The unlearned,’ it has been said, ‘judge at random.’ Béranger is not unlearned in this sense. There is no one who judges more simply, smoothly, and uniformly. His ideas refer to an exact measure. He has mastered what comes before him. And though doubtless unacquainted with foreign and incongruous literatures, he has mastered his own literature, which was shaped by kindred persons, and has been the expression of analogous natures; and this has helped him in expressing himself.