from it. It is said that a fatal passion for gambling has scarcely left him free to choose between independence and servility. The poet, whose vigorous and patriotic verses had been applauded by France, and whom the fear of imprisonment had not dismayed, was overcome by the golden temptations of the court; the late government purchased his silence, if not his voice, by engaging him, at the price of, 80,000 francs, to prepare a French version of the Æneid.

It is agreeable to turn from the venal muse of Barthélemy,* and contemplate the pure and lofty independence of the muse of BERANGer. Although this greatest of political poets bade adieu to poetry in 1833, by his Chansons nouvelles et dernières, yet more than one occasional song, an arrow out of the full quiver, has since winged its way to the public mind and heart from his retreat on the banks of the Loire, or amidst the stillness of Passy. Since the Revolution, the bard has strung his lyre anew, and, invoking the shade of Manuel, the republican orator who was expelled from the Chamber in 1823, and who afterward died in his arms, has sung an ode replete with pathos and patriotic inspiration.†

Extended criticisms upon poets whose names are comparatively unknown in this country, cannot possess much interest for American readers. None, however, could fail to be interested by translations from CHATEAUBRIAND, MILLEVOYE, BERANGER, LAMARTINE, DELAVIGNE, VICTOR HUGO, and BARBIER, which had been selected for this place, with the permission of Professor Longfellow, from his elegant anthology of the Poets and Poetry of Europe; but our limits will not admit of their insertion.

* Barthélemy, last year, wrote some fine lines in honor of the great American discovery of the virtue of Ether in preventing pain; and he has recently addressed to President Polk a poem on America, marked by his characteristic nervous strength. This latter production has been admirably translated by F. A. DURivage, Esq.

ELIZUR WRIGHT, Esq., to whom the lovers of French poetry are indebted for an excellent translation of the fables of that Lafontaine to whom Châteaubriand once compared Béranger, (see p. 370 of the present volume,) has paraphrased this inimitable song. Mr. Wright truly remarks that 'the delicacy and tenderness of the aged poet's address to his friend are quite inexpressible in English.'

LIST OF CONTEMPORANEOUS FRENCH WRITERS.

THE following Table of Contemporaneous French Authors, most of whom are yet living. is extracted from Esquisses Littéraires, ou Précis Méthodique de l'histoire ancienne et moderne des Ļittératures Européencs et Orientales, par ·D. Lévi (Alvarez).

The names of the Academicians are given as they stood in 1846.

WRITERS OF COMEDIES AND VAUDEVILLES.

Etienne et Emanuel Casimir Bonjour

A notice, in the proper place, was undesignedly omitted of the great bibliographical work of M. JACQUES CHARLES BRUNET, entitled, Manuel du libraire et de l'amateur des livres. This is unquestionably the most complete, exact, and useful work of the kind ever published.

Another work of a different class, but the best of its class, is the handsome and well arranged Catalogue Général of M. HECTOR BOSSANGE, who, if we do not err, was a journalist of considerable distinction before he engaged in his present extensive business as "libraire et commissionaire pour l'étranger at 21 bis Quai Voltaire, Paris. M. Bossange is a Member of the American National Institute. No public library in this country should fail to have his Catalogue.

END.