Beranger’s first volume of songs appeared at the beginning of the second Restoration; and although it was hostile to the Bourbons, the author was not prosecuted.  In 1821, when his second volume was published, he resigned his position as clerk at the University, and was brought to trial for having written immoral and seditious songs.  He was condemned, after exciting scenes in court, to three months’ imprisonment and a fine of five hundred francs, and in 1828 to nine months’ imprisonment and a fine of ten thousand francs, which was paid by public subscription.

No doubt he contributed to the Revolution of July, 1830; but although he was a republican, he favored the monarchy of Louis Philippe, saying that “it was a plank to cross over the gutter, a preparation for the republic.”  The king wished to see him and thank him, but Beranger replied that “he was too old to make new acquaintances.”  He was invited to apply for a seat in the French Academy, and refused that honor as he had refused political honors and positions.  He said that he “wished to be nothing”; and when in 1848 he was elected to the Constitutional Assembly, he resigned his seat almost immediately.  He has been accused of affectation, and of exaggeration in his disinterestedness; but he was naturally timid in public, and preferred to exert an influence over his countrymen by his songs rather than by his voice in public assemblies.

Beranger was kind and generous, and ever ready to help all who applied to him.  He had a pension given to Rouget de l’Isle, the famous author of the ‘Marseillaise,’ who was reduced to poverty, and in 1835 he took into his house his good aunt from Peronne, and gave hospitality also to his friend Mlle. Judith Frere.  In 1834 he sold all his works to his publisher, Perrotin, for an annuity of eight hundred francs, which was increased to four thousand by the publisher.  On this small income Beranger lived content till his death on July 16th, 1857.  The government of Napoleon III. took charge of his funeral, which was solemnized with great pomp.  Although Beranger was essentially the poet of the middle classes, and was extremely popular, care was taken to exclude the people from the funeral procession.  While he never denied that he was the grandson of a tailor, he signed de Beranger, to be distinguished from other writers of the same name.  The de, however, had always been claimed by his father, who had left him nothing but that pretense of nobility.

For forty years, from 1815 to his death, Beranger was perhaps the most popular French writer of his time, and he was ranked amongst the greatest French poets.  There has been a reaction against that enthusiasm, and he is now severely judged by the critics.  They say that he lacked inspiration, and was vulgar, bombastic, and grandiloquent.  Little attention is paid to him, therefore, in general histories of French literature.  But if he is not entitled to stand on the high pedestal given to him by his contemporaries, we yet cannot deny genius to the man who for more than a generation swayed the hearts of the people at his will, and exerted on his countrymen and on his epoch an immense influence.