- Performer Name:
- Pradel; Beranger; Gay
- Performance Venue:
- Paris
- Performance Date:
- 1825
- Author:
- Date Written:
- 1825
- Language:
- English
- Publication Title:
- Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
- Article Title:
- French Literature of the Day
- Page Numbers:
- 18:715-19
- Additional Info:
- December 1825 issue
- Publisher:
- William Blackwood and T. Cadell
- Place of Publication:
- Edinburgh and London
- Date Published:
- 1825
Text:
[719]:Delavigne has either been idle, or is else brooding o’er a drama, and Beranger now and then improvises a chanson, too bold for the press, which he commits, however, to the kind echoes of his friends, through whom it soon reaches every ear, that a chanson of Beranger could delight. There are minor poets, of whom gallantry obliges me to notice Mademoiselle Delphine Gay, the Sappho of the Parisians. She very sillily improvises an Ode to Gros, who was then painting the Cupola of St Genevieve, which provoked much laughter. There is, however, much prettiness in her verse at times, as she has lately besought Christians for the Greeks in very spirited couplets for so young a lady. I must not forget a Frenchman, M. Eugene de Pradel, who has attempted to rival the Italian improvisatori in delivering himself of rhymes on any given subject extempore. He gathered a very respectable audience, which, as well as himself, he put into tortures indescribable. Not one returned from the improvisations with a whole nail or a sound head, so quickly contagious was the biting and scratching, by which the poet sought in vain to facilitate his delivery.
Notes:
- Collected by:
- EW