à la Foire. See note to

1. 14. Panard ( 1694-17 65), a writer of vaudevilles and songs, composed about eighty pieces for the Théâtres de la Foire. He was a member of the first Cai<eau, and his drinking-songs passed for the best of their kind in the eighteenth century.

1. 15. Vad'e (1720-1757), a writer of plays, parodies, and drinking-songs, and the creator of the genre poissard, in which he imitated the language of the poissardes or fish-wives of the Halles.

1. 17. Tabarin, a celebrated French ' farceur' and charlatan who died in 1634. He settled in Paris in 1618, giving with two or three compeers open-air performances on a small platform in the Place Dauphine. His constant flow of jokes, puns, and extravagances won him enormous popularity, and he retired in 1630 with a fortune. His name occurs frequently in seventeenth-century literature, and his Fantaisies, dialogues, paradoxes et farces were published in 1622, and again in 1858.

1. 24. gaillard, lively and gay, and somewhat free in expression and thought.

Voici de nouveau quelque conte gaillard.

(Molière, Ecole des Femmes, I. iv.)

1. 25. Collé ( 1 709-1 783), a cousin of Regnard and member of the Caveau, was secretary to the Duke of Orleans. He wrote numerous plays, chiefly farcical, and songs of the 'grivois' order, one of which, La Vérité dans le Vin, has remained famous.

1. 26. un fort honnête égrillard might perhaps be translated by 'a very worthy blade'. Egrillard has somewhat the same

meaning as gaillard, but with the additional idea of irreverence and pertness.

1. 27. La gaudriole, as used by Béranger, always denotes a jolly song of very broad and pungent humour. Probably derived from the old verb se gaudir (Lat. gaudere).

qu'on exile. Cf. Béranger's note to Vieux Habits ! Vieux Galons ! : ' on sait que déjà l'hypocrisie reprenait son masque.'

I. 35. frondeur, 'satirical,' with special reference to political satire. The Fronde, or rebellion against the authority of Mazarin and of the Queen Regent during the minority of Louis XIV, has remained famous for its Mazarinades, the satirical pamphlets and verses directed against Mazarin.

II. 38, 39. Dénonce tout flatteur . . . souverain. The sentence is obscure. Perhaps it is to be interpreted as a sarcasm on an elderly monarch who had no cause to be, and never was, particularly gay.

1. 46. Momus, the god of Irony ; according to Lucian the buffoon of the gods. He is represented sometimes as an old man, sometimes as a youth wearing the mask of a satyr.

1. 48. A la barbe de l'étranger. Cf. note to Vieux Habits ! Vieux Galons ! 1. 53.

1. 58. Il nous faut consoler la gloire, ' The glory of France, lately saddened by our reverses.'

Ma Vocation. (Page 17.)

Written in 1809, for the poet writes to his friend Quénescourt in September of that year : ' J'avais dit que j'attendais notre réunion pour vous faire connaître les nouvelles chansons que j'ai faites ... ; mais cependant je cède au désir de vous en envoyer une très sage sur ma vocation ; vous la chanterez entre vous, et elle vous rappellera un ami qui, dans les sociétés où de pareilles futilités le font applaudir, n'est nulle part aussi content ni aussi joyeux qu'il l'a été avec vous tous.'

On the many trying circumstances which oppressed the poet at this time (his father had just died), cf. Introd., § 7.