Beranger's songs and Thiers' History
probably did more than anything else to reestablish the Napoleonic
dynasty in France. But that was a small evil compared with the
moral mischief which many of Beranger's songs are calculated to
produce; for, circulating freely as they do in French households,
they exhibit pictures of nastiness and vice, which are enough to
pollute and destroy a nation.
One of Burns's finest poems, written, in his twenty-eighth year,
is entitled 'A Bard's Epitaph.' It is a description, by
anticipation, of his own life. Wordsworth has said of it: "Here
is a sincere and solemn avowal; a public declaration from his own
will; a confession at once devout, poetical and human; a history
in the shape of a prophecy." It concludes with these lines:-
"Reader, attend--whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole
In low pursuit;
Know--prudent, cautious self-control,
Is Wisdom's root."
One of the vices before which Burns fell--and it may be said to
be a master-vice, because it is productive of so many other vices
--was drinking. Not that he was a drunkard, but because he
yielded to the temptations of drink, with its degrading
associations, and thereby lowered and depraved his whole nature.
(13) But poor Burns did not stand alone; for, alas! of all vices,
the unrestrained appetite for drink was in his time, as it
continues to be now, the most prevalent, popular, degrading,
and destructive.
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