The Sun.
London, England, 1847-05-03 00:00:00

writings; or as an author of a bounded gehins from his own.
To see him in a true light they must neither regard all the
incense offered to him by Tories, nor credit all the oppro-
brium cast on him by Whigs. They must see hint com-
pounded of all those vices and virtues that so often enter into
the nature of a great genius, who is not one of the greatest.
" Was it being muster of no talents to have acted the
second part, when little more than a youth, in overturning
such a Ministry, and stemming Buell a tide of glory as Lord
Godolphin's and the Duke of Marlborough's? Were there
no abilities, after his return from banishment, in holding
such a power as Sir Robert Walpole's at bay for so many
years, even when excluded from the favourable opportunity
of exerting his eloquence in either House of Parliament)
Was there no triumph in having chiefly contributed to the
fall-of that Minister? Was there no glory in directing the
councils and operations of such men as Sir William Wind-
ham, Lord Bath, and Lord Granville? And was there no art
in persuading the self-fondest and greatest of poets, that the
writer of the Craftsman was a more exalted genius than the
author of the Dunciad? Has he shown no address in pal-
liating the exploded treaty of Utrecht? Has he not, in his
letters on that event, contrived to make assertions and
hypothesis almost balance stubborn facts? To cover hisowh
guilt, has he not diverted our attention towards pity for the I
great enemy, in whose service he betrayed his own country? I
"On the other hand, what il,famy to have sold the con-
queror to the conquered ! What ingratitude in labouring the
ruin of a Minister, who had repealed his sentence of banish-
ment! What repeated treasons to the Queen, whom he
served; to the Pretender, who bad received and countenanced
him ; to the late King, who had recalled him I What in-
effectual arts to acquire the confidence of the late King, by
means of the Duchess of Kendal, and of the present King, by
Lady Suffolk I What unwearied ambition, even at seventy
years of age, in laving a plan of future power in the favour
of the Prince of Wales!"
He (if-includes by contrasting him with his own father.
Sir Robert Walpole—his rival—his successful rival
and the object of his vehement hate. Mr. Smythe
has very forcibly depicted both the cause and the
extent of Belingbroke's hatred, when, in his. Op-
position Scene," he imagines him bitterly pointing out
the " two words which mean one thing—St. John and
Disappointment!" and seeking for any refuge, s' where,'
as he passionately exclaims—
" Where I might never meet the accursed thought,
That I—l—Bolingbroke, should be remembered
As one who could de all things but succeed
And then you ask me not to hate this thing—
This lackereti sham, this mediocrity—
This cowiterfeit that does! Youth, wealth, and beauty,
And courage and high thoughts and genius
I have had all—and what have they availed?
Men say he might hare been, but Walpole is !"
The following is Horace's account of their rival
, careers :
- -

fie conceive that the bay of Banger is indigenous, that
it is impossible to transplant it, or, in other words, that
it is hopeless to attempt the translation of his "songs into
any foreign idiom. As well might sculptor expect to
adapt himself to the lovers of fashion by clothing a classi-
cal statuette of Eurydice in some one of the costumes de-
picted in the last number of the Belle Assemblee. Unless
the verses of Pierre Jean are studied in the original--
unless the foreign reader can surround himself, as it
were, with all the accessories of French tastes—unless
he can fill his imagination and animate his heart With
the memories inspired by French history-e-unkeas tti
deed, he can virtually become, for the time being, *
Frenchman—he can never appreciate Beranger; he
cau never recognise those inimitable graces of el*
prcesion which defy even the plastic idiom of Ger-
many to copy ; be can never comprehend those
subtleties of fancy ; he can never feel his cheek
blanch, and his bosom thrill, and his eyes
swim with emotion at those deep and passionate out-
bursts of enthusiasm which- throw a golden light over the
pages of this great poet, and render .him the idol of
II thirty millions of his countrymen. Without a foreigner
transplant and alienate himself, as it were, during the
perusal of Beranger. he can never hope to behold the
beauty of his muse. Mr. Young Las done everything
that ingenuity, Exactitude, and contrivance could well
effect, towards the translation of the illustrious French-
man, but his compositions are absolutely unstranslatable.
Word may be given for word, dactyle for dactyle, spon-
dee for spondee, hit the tranteript be as unlike the
original as a faithful plaister cast and the Port-
land Vase. The original song may be filtered
through grammar and dictionary with the most
scrupulous nicety,
but in the very process of
filtration the essence will have evaporated—the flavour
' will have departed—the aroma will have become utterly
dissipated. The bloom will have becomelost—there
e
will be the pulp. The beautiful flesh tints will
k faded—there will be the skeleton, or at best the corpse.
It is no poverty in the English language, it is no inca•
picky in the English translator, it is no obtuseness in the
English reader which thus renders the Chansons of Pierre-
Jean de Beranger untranslateable ; it is the. difference of
the idiosyncrasies of the two nations; and not merely.the
difference of their idiosyncrasies, but of their social
habits, their pastimes, their joys, their sorrows, their
household and historical associations. In this manner
&Tenger is to the French people what the orator of the
prairies is, or was, to the redmen. The words of the
Indian orator spoke to the very core of the
redman's heart,
.they made the blood burn on
his tawny visage, they called at one time the
gushing tears from his eyes, and at another maddened
him to the clank of the gong and the scream of the war-
whoop. But to the European ear the eloquence of the
Redskins sounded only as bombast and hyperbole. The
songs of Beranger, again, act like the national reveillie
to the citizens of France ; even Chateaubriand, the
loyalist and Bourbonist Chateaubriand. was moved with
the supreme pathos of the Vieux Caporal when he heard
ono of the old guard of Nap leen singing it one day
among a party of vine.. dressers—

Conserits, au pas;
Ne pleurez pas;
Ne pleurez pas;
Marehez au pas,
Au pas, pas, au pas, au pas!

. -
And how profound are the sensibilities of the ♦eterans
of the empire, when they listen to the -daunt of the
Vieux Drapeau—
Chargé de hurlers et de fienrs,
Il brilla sar I'Europe entiere.
Qnand secArai-je la poussiere,
Qui ternit ses nobles couleurs I
Intense, however, as is the enthusiasm inspired by
those lays of military glory, it is as nothing to the
Pea tas with which one song of Beranger is hearkened to in
the home of the artizan, of the merchant, of the peasant,
ill, the rustic merry making under the trees, among the
fishermen, the hedgers, the ditchers, the ploughmen, the
carriers, among all orders and classes of the people.
" Les Souvenirs du Peuple"—it is the masterpiece of the
immortal lyrist. His translator has here done him little
,justice, no justice, worse than no justice. Besides the
want of all euphony in the appellative " Granny,"
the refrain of each stanza is diluted down to the merest
insipidity.
II oozes a park; grandmere !
I! vows a pad E!

O Granny, Granny, did he speak ?
What, Granny ! speak to you?
•

Quel beau jour pour sous, grandmere !
Quel beau jour pour vous !

Oh, how much joy you must have felt,
0 Granny, how much joy !
• • •

Dieu onus benira, grandmere,
Dieu vows Unita.
Poor granny 1 God will kindly look,
Will kindly look on youl
Mr. Young piques himself on being a literal translator,
yet the above strikes us as being the very loosest para-
phrase, as Carlyle would say, the baldest, wretchedest
paraphrase. We question the propriety or utility of
placing the French original and the English version
cheek-by-jowl in opposite 'pages. .It savours of honesty
and candour it is true, but it utterly annihilates whatever
little beauty there is in the English. Phallus shines, and
the stars arc invisible; so is it with Beranger and his
interpreter. It is some satisfaction to those who admire
the greatest lyrist of this, or perhaps any other age (and
among such admirers we acknowledge ourselves to be
enthusiasts), to knew that the heart of Pierre-Jean
de Beranger still beats to the measure of
the old songs which he used to sing o yore. Nay,
more than this, that. Beranger can still, notstandwith-
ing the pressure of many years, ehaunt new chansons
equal in melody, if not in philosophy. to those com-
posed in his adolesence. Here is one —" Notre Coq '---.
baginning like a flourish of trumpets.
"Notre coq, d'humeur active.
Les d'Alger, s'ecrie : 11 Taut
Que jusqu'au bon Dieu j'arrive,
Pour voir s'it s'endort 11 naut.
J'ai response a tout qui viva,
Co, co, coquerico,
France, remets ton Flask°.
Coquerico, coquetico."
The song—manitestly in sentiment a war sung—of
which this is the opening verse, has only very teceritly
made its appearance in a new edition of Beranger, now
publishing in Paris. Who cannot recoanise the voice of
the great master in the music of the refrain ?
co, co, coquirico,
France, remets ton schako
Coqu erico, coque rice."
We trembled lest Mr. William Young might have seen
this chanson in time for his seriez: of translations, es in
that case we should infallibly have bad some such literal
burthen as this:—

"Co, co, cockadoodledo,
France, resume thy scbako
Cockadoodledo, cockadoodledo."
Having Oven the commemement of Beranger's latest
composition, we oannot resist transcribing the conclu-
sion, premising that the Gallic cock visits Heaven, being
conducted thither by the imperial eagle of the Emperor
(Napoleon).

" Sous le drapean tricolore
Vu echauffer emus et bras,
De vous j'ai besoin encore.
Coq, bientot to chanteras
Le reveil avaunt I'surore.
Co, co, coquerico,
France remets ton schako
Coquerico, coquerico.
L'oiseau, prompt comme la foudre.
Rentre au qsartier general,
Disant L'ou en va decoudre ;
Dieu fait seller son cheval ;
Les anges font de la poudre.
Co, co, coquerico,
France, remets ton schako.
Coquerico, coquerico.
Having presented our readers with this fragment of the
last poetical production of the great French lyrist, we
cannot do better than commend the little volume just
published by Chapman and Hall, to the notice of the
public, seeing that it contains not merely the translations
by Mr. Young, but the matchless originals of the im-
mortal poet, In this respect the book is a literary jewel.

THE LITTLE NAILER.—At a c.onversazione, at
Newcastle, Elihu Burritt told an anecdote, which, we
think, cannot but prove interesting to our readers.
When he first came to this country, on his pedestrian
tour through it, he was overtaken one day by a heavy
shower, and took refuge in a nailer's shop. A man snd
little boy were the sole inmates of the place, and during
an hour's conversation he had with the man, he learned
that he had never been able to send his boy to school, as
he could only earn 6d. per day, and his own miserable
pittance was unable to support himself and family.
When he wrote home to America he casually mentioned
the circumstance, not thinking much about the matter,
and by next letters he received, he was agreeably stir-
)l.iseil to learn that the Sunday-school children had
clubbed together their pence to enable the little fellow
to go to school, and every American post brings him
further donations,
gut him to sch 01,
an
and io,ooo childrenadrehaenxhiaosunsloywwsiting on the other
side of the Atlantic till they have a letter in the hand-
writing of Little Jemmy Stubbins, the Nailer Boy.—
Neurcastk Guardian.
SUPERSTITION IN THE NINETERNTH CENTURY.—
A few days since an unusual circumstance was observed at
pingwenlly, which caused no small degree of astonishment
to one or two enlightened beholders. A patient ass stood
ar
onudpaedfamariolyunodf into: Am. ifcallt la ir
ov,re.aspassingrational
nearmals awheorueseg,
Ha
little son under the donkey, and lifting him over its back, a
certain number of times, with as much solemnity and pre-
cision as if engaged in the performance of a sacred 'uty.
This done the father took_ apiece
untested loaf; which he offered the animal ofbread,to cutbite from a
at. No-
thing loath, the Jerusalem pony laid bold of the bread with
his teeth, and instantly the father severed the
outerportion
of the slice from that in the donkey's
mouth. He next
clipped off some hairs from the neck of the animal, which he
cut up into minute particles, and then mixed them with the
bread, which he had crumbled. This very tasty food was
then offered to the boy who had been passed round the donkey
so mysteriously, and the little fellow having eaten thereof,
the donkey was removed by his owners. The father, his
sou, and other members of his family were moving oft, when a
bystander inquired what all these "goings on" had been
adopted for ? The father stared at the ignorance of the in-
quirer, and then, in a half-contemptuous, half-condescend-
ing, tone, informed him that " it was to cure his poor son's
hooping-cough, to he sure l" Extraordinary as this may
appear, in days when the schoolmaster in so much in request,
it is nevertheless true.—Monmouthshire Merlin.
Loss OF A STEAMER.—ESCAPE or EIGHTY HUMAN
13E/1/Ga.—The General Steam Navigation Company's at,eam-
ibip Clarence arrived at the company's wharf, Popla,, Fri-
day afternoon, from Edinburgh. Commander Lake 4. reports
that about one o'clock on Friday morning, cif Al.dborough,
he saw the screw-steamer Experiment on tire, He bore
down upon • her and succeeded in saving e,assengers and
crew (80 in number), and after having the, Experiment in
tow for six hours she sunk.
GRAY'S INN, MAY I.—Edward Kenealy, Esq.,
was this day called to the degree of linristar.at-Law by the
Honourable Society of Gray's