Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist. Samuel Smiles
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received with as much enthusiasm at Nimes, Aries, and Marseilles, as at Toulouse, Agen, and Bordeaux.
Mezzofanti, a very Tower of Babel in dialects and languages, said of the Provencal, that it was the only patois of the Middle Ages, with its numerous derivations from the Greek, the Arabic, and the Latin, which has survived the various revolutions of language. The others have been altered and modified. They have suffered from the caprices of victory or of fortune. Of all the dialects of the Roman tongue, this patois alone preserves its purity and life. It still remains the sonorous and harmonious language of the Troubadours. The patois has the suppleness of the Italian, the sombre majesty of the Spanish, the energy and preciseness of the Latin, with the "Molle atque facetum, le dolce de, l'Ionic;" which still lives among the Phoceens of Marseilles. The imagination and genius of Gascony have preserved the copious richness of the language.
M. de Lavergne, in his notice of Jasmin's works, frankly admits the local jealousy which existed between the Troubadours of Gascony and Provence. There seemed, he said, to be nothing disingenuous in the silence of the Provencals as to Jasmin's poems. They did not allow that he borrowed from them, any more than that they borrowed from him. These men of Southern France are born in the land of poetry. It breathes in their native air. It echoes round them in its varied measures. Nay, the rhymes which are its distinguishing features, pervade their daily talk.
The seeds lie dormant in their native soil, and when trodden under foot, they burst through the ground and evolve their odour in the open air. Gascon and Provencal alike preserve the same relation to the classic romance—that lovely but short-lived eldest daughter of the Latin—the language of the Troubadours.
We have said that the Gascon dialect was gradually expiring when Jasmin undertook its revival. His success in recovering and restoring it, and presenting it in a written form, was the result of laborious investigation. He did not at first realize the perfect comprehension of the idiom, but he eventually succeeded by patient perseverance, When we read his poems, we are enabled to follow, step by step, his lexicological progress.
At first, he clung to the measures most approved in French poetry, especially to Alexandrines and Iambic tetrameters, and to their irregular association in a sort of ballad metre, which in England has been best handled by Robert Browning in his fine ballad of 'Harve; Riel.'
Jasmin's first rhymes were written upon curl papers, and then used on the heads of his lady customers. When the spirit of original poetry within him awoke, his style changed. Genius brought sweet music from his heart and mind. Imagination spiritualised his nature, lifted his soul above the cares of ordinary life, and awakened the consciousness of his affinity with what is pure and noble. Jasmin sang as a bird sings; at first in weak notes, then in louder, until at length his voice filled the skies. Near the end of his life he was styled the Saint Vincent de Paul of poetry.
Jasmin might be classed among the Uneducated Poets. But what poet is not uneducated at the beginning of his career? The essential education of the poet is not taught in the schools.
The lowly man, against whom the asperities of his lot have closed the doors of worldly academies, may nevertheless have some special vocation for the poetic life. Academies cannot shut him out from the odour of the violet or the song of the nightingale. He hears the lark's song filling the heavens, as the happy bird fans the milk-white cloud with its wings. He listens to the purling of the brook, the bleating of the lamb, the song of the milkmaid, and the joyous cry of the reaper. Thus his mind is daily fed with the choicest influences of nature. He cannot but appreciate the joy, the glory, the unconscious delight of living. "The beautiful is master of a star." This feeling of beauty is the nurse of civilisation and true refinement. Have we not our Burns, who
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