"I hasten,"said Beranger,"to express my thanks for the kindness of your address.Believe in my sincerity,as I believe in your praises.Your exaggeration of my poetical merits makes me repeat the first words of your address,in which you assume the title of a Gascon[2]poet.It would please me much better if you would be a French poet,as you prove by your epistle,which is written with taste and harmony.The sympathy of our sentiments has inspired you to praise me in a manner which I am far from meriting,Nevertheless,sir,I am proud of your sympathy.
"You have been born and brought up in the same condition as myself.Like me,you appear to have triumphed over the absence of scholastic instruction,and,like me too,you love your country.You reproach me,sir,with the silence which I have for some time preserved.At the end of this year I intend to publish my last volume;I will then take my leave of the public.
I am now fifty-two years old.I am tired of the world.
My little mission is fulfilled,and the public has had enough of me.I am therefore making arrangements for retiring.Without the desire for living longer,I have broken silence too soon.
At least you must pardon the silence of one who has never demanded anything of his country.I care nothing about power,and have now merely the ambition of a morsel of bread and repose.
"I ask your pardon for submitting to you these personal details.
But your epistle makes it my duty.I thank you again for the pleasure you have given me.I do not understand the language of Languedoc,but,if you speak this language as you write French,I dare to prophecy a true success in the further publication of your works.--BERANGER."[3]
Notwithstanding this advice of Beranger and other critics,Jasmin continued to write his poems in the Gascon dialect.
He had very little time to spare for the study of classical French;he was occupied with the trade by which he earned his living,and his business was increasing.His customers were always happy to hear him recite his poetry while he shaved their beards or dressed their hair.
He was equally unfortunate with M.Minier of Bordeaux.
Jasmin addressed him in a Gascon letter full of bright poetry,not unlike Burns's Vision,when he dreamt of becoming a song-writer.The only consolation that Jasmin received from M.Minier was a poetical letter,in which the poet was implored to retain his position and not to frequent the society of distinguished persons.
Perhaps the finest work which Jasmin composed at this period of his life was that which he entitled Mous Soubenis,or 'My Recollections.'In none of his poems did he display more of the characteristic qualities of his mind,his candour,his pathos,and his humour,than in these verses.He used the rustic dialect,from which he never afterwards departed.He showed that the Gascon was not yet a dead language;and he lifted it to the level of the most serious themes.His verses have all the greater charm because of their artless gaiety,their delicate taste,and the sweetness of their cadence.
Jasmin began to compose his 'Recollections'in 1830,but the two first cantos were not completed until two years later.
The third canto was added in 1835,when the poem was published in the first volume of his 'Curl-Papers'(Papillotes).These recollections,in fact,constitute Jasmin's autobiography,and we are indebted to them for the deion we have already given of the poet's early life.
Many years later Jasmin wrote his Mous noubels Soubenis--'My New Recollections';but in that work he returned to the trials and the enjoyments of his youth,and described few of the events of his later life."What a pity,"says M.Rodiere,"that Jasmin did not continue to write his impressions until the end of his life!What trouble he would have saved his biographers!
For how can one speak when Jasmin ceases to sing?"It is unnecessary to return to the autobiography and repeat the confessions of Jasmin's youth.His joys and sorrows are all described there--his birth in the poverty-stricken dwelling in the Rue Fon de Rache,his love for his parents,his sports with his playfellows on the banks of the Garonne,his blowing the horn in his father's Charivaris,his enjoyment of the tit-bits which old Boe brought home from his begging-tours,the decay of the old man,and his conveyance to the hospital,"where all the Jasmins die;"then his education at the Academy,his toying with the house-maid,his stealing the preserves,his expulsion from the seminary,and the sale of his mother's wedding-ring to buy bread for her family.
While composing the first two cantos of the Souvenirs he seemed half ashamed of the homeliness of the tale he had undertaken to relate.Should he soften and brighten it?Should he dress it up with false lights and colours?For there are times when falsehood in silk and gold are acceptable,and the naked new-born truth is unwelcome.But he repudiated the thought,and added:-"Myself,nor less,nor more,I'll draw for you,And if not bright,the likeness shall be true."The third canto of the poem was composed at intervals.It took him two more years to finish it.It commences with his apprenticeship to the barber;describes his first visit to the theatre,his reading of Florian's romances and poems,his solitary meditations,and the birth and growth of his imagination.Then he falls in love,and a new era opens in his life.He writes verses and sings them.He opens a barber's shop of his own,marries,and brings his young bride home.
"Two angels,"he says,"took up their abode with me."His newly-wedded wife was one,and the other was his rustic Muse--the angel of homely pastoral poetry:
"Who,fluttering softly from on high,Raised on his wing and bore me far,Where fields of balmiest ether are;There,in the shepherd lassie's speech I sang a song,or shaped a rhyme;There learned I stronger love than I can teach.
Oh,mystic lessons!Happy time!