Indeed, notwithstanding the many exquisite poems of this writer, it is not saying too much to aver that his immoral writings have done far more harm than his purer writings have done good; and that it would be better that all his writings should be destroyed and forgotten provided his indecent songs could be destroyed with them.
The remark applies alike to Beranger, who has been styled "The Burns of France." Beranger was of the same bright incisive genius; he had the same love of pleasure, the same love of popularity; and while he flattered French vanity to the top of its bent, he also painted the vices most loved by his countrymen with the pen of a master.

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.