第22章 MISCELLANEOUS VERSES--BERANGER--'MES SOUVENIRS'--P

Nor did he long remain unknown beyond the district in which he lived.When his second volume appeared in 1835,with a preface by M.Baze,an advocate of the Royal Court of Agen,it created considerable excitement,not only at Bordeaux and Toulouse,but also at Paris,the centre of the literature,science,and fine arts of France.There,men of the highest distinction welcomed the work with enthusiasm.

M.Baze,in his preface,was very eulogistic."We have the pleasure,"he said,"of seeing united in one collection the sweet Romanic tongue which the South of France has adopted,like the privileged children of her lovely sky and voluptuous climate;and her lyrical songs,whose masculine vigour and energetic sentiments have more than once excited patriotic transports and awakened popular enthusiasm.For Jasmin is above all a poet of the people.He is not ashamed of his origin.

He was born in the midst of them,and though a poet,still belongs to them.For genius is of all stations and ranks of life.He is but a hairdresser at Agen,and more than that,he wishes to remain so.His ambition is to unite the razor to the poet's pen."At Paris the work was welcomed with applause,first by his poetic sponsor,Charles Nodier,in the Temps,where he congratulated Jasmin on using the Gascon patois,though still under the ban of literature."It is a veritable Saint Bartholomew of innocent and beautiful idioms,which can scarcely be employed even in the hours of recreation."He pronounced Jasmin to be a Gascon Beranger,and quoted several of his lines from the Charivari,but apologised for their translation into French,fearing that they might lose much of their rustic artlessness and soft harmony.

What was a still greater honour,Jasmin was reviewed by the first critic of France--Sainte-Beuve in the leading critical journal,the Revue des deux Mondes.The article was afterwards republished in his Contemporary Portraits.[5]He there gives a general account of his poems;compares him with the English and Scotch poets of the working class;and contrasts him with Reboul,the baker of Nimes,who writes in classical French,after the manner of the 'Meditations of Lamartine.'He proceeds to give a brief account of Jasmin's life,taken from the Souvenirs,which he regards as a beautiful work,written with much artlessness and simplicity.

Various other reviews of Jasmin's poems appeared,in Agen,Bordeaux,Toulouse,and Paris,by men of literary mark--by Leonce de Lavergne,and De Mazude in the Revue des deux Mondes --by Charles Labitte,M.Ducuing,and M.de Pontmartin.

The latter classed Jasmin with Theocritus,Horace,and La Fontaine,and paid him the singular tribute,"that he had made Goodness as attractive as other French writers had made Badness."Such criticisms as these made Jasmin popular,not only in his own district,but throughout France.

We cannot withhold the interesting statement of Paul de Musset as to his interview with Jasmin in 1836,after the publication of his second volume of poems.Paul de Musset was the author of several novels,as well as of Lui et Elle,apropos of his brother's connection with George Sand.Paul de Musset thus describes his visit to the poet at Agen.[6]

"Let no one return northward by the direct road from Toulouse.

Nothing can be more dreary than the Lot,the Limousin,and the interminable Dordogne;but make for Bordeaux by the plains of Gascony,and do not forget the steamboat from Marmande.You will then find yourself on the Garonne,in the midst of a beautiful country,where the air is vigorous and healthy.The roads are bordered with vines,arranged in arches,lovely to the eyes of travellers.The poets,who delight in making the union of the vine with the trees which support it an emblem of marriage,can verify their comparisons only in Gascony or Italy.It is usually pear trees that are used to support them.