Celui qui a gagné ma place
Ne vous peut aimer tant que moi;
Et celle que j’aime vous passe
De beauté, d’amour et de foi.
Gardé bien votre amitié neuve;
La mienne plus ne variera;
Et puis nous verrons à l’épreuve
Qui premier s’en repentira!’
Later, Desportes had other moods, more befitting his cloth, and under their influence he wrote devotional poems of considerable merit and somewhat feeble versions of the Psalms. Malherbe was quite justified in his criticism;—‘Your soup is better than your Psalms.’ For the table of the rich and sensual Abbot of Tiron, Bonport, Aurillac and other places was excellent, whilst the more edifying verses of his old age failed to acquire the bouquet of his wines.
Mathurin Régnier was born at Chartres in 1573. His mother was the sister of Desportes, and Mathurin, in spite of his father’s protests, determined to follow in the footsteps of his uncle and to be a poet. So great was his natural talent that, notwithstanding his idleness and such indulgence in debauchery that his life was shortened by his excesses, he certainly succeeded. He holds a place unique in French literature. For he is, perhaps, the only French poet before the so-called classical period who has had the good fortune continuously to maintain his position. He attacked Malherbe, yet was praised by him. He was an ardent supporter of the Pléiade, that group of men who, with Ronsard, ‘the prince of poets,’ at their head, aimed at the reformation of the French language and literature by means of the study and imitation of ancient, classical models. His defence of the Ronsardising tradition secured him, later, the approval of the first Romantics. But he earned also the admiration of Boileau. And the praise of Boileau, who said that he was the French writer, before Molière, who best knew human nature, made his reputation safe during the eighteenth century.
Of his life we do not know much: what we do know is chiefly discreditable. His father was a citizen of position, and he wisely desired for his son the ecclesiastical but not the poetical eminence of his brother-in-law, Desportes. Mathurin, therefore, was tonsured at the age of eleven. For himself he had no hesitation. His uncle’s example was too alluring. He began to write early, and he never wholly shook off the tradition of the school which his uncle represented and Malherbe with excessive bitterness and pedantry attacked. As he says himself in his Ninth Satire, wherein he so vigorously criticises the critics of the Pléiade:—
‘Je vais le grand chemin que mon oncle m’apprit
Laissant là ces Docteurs que les Muses instruisent
En des arts tout nouveaux; et s’ils font, comme ils disent,
De ses fautes un livre aussi gros que le sien,
Telles je les croirai quand ils auront du bien,
Et que leur belle muse, à mordre si cuisante,
Leur donra, comme à lui, dix mil écus de rente.’
His father, so he tells us, had endeavoured to keep him from following the paths of poetry by instancing the present troubles of the country and the troubles that threatened. Poetry, he said, like many another father since, with as good reason and with as little effect, would not pay. His uncle’s good fortune was exceptional and misleading.
‘La muse est inutile, et si ton oncle a su
S’avancer par cet art, tu t’y verras deçu.
Un même astre toujours n’éclaire en cette terre;
Mars tout ardent de feu nous menace de guerre,
Tout le monde fremit et ces grande mouvements
Couvent en leurs fureurs de piteux changements;
Penses-tu que le luth et la lyre des poëtes
S’accordent d’harmonie avec les trompettes,
Les fifres, les tambours, le canon et le fer
Concert extravagant des musiques d’enfer.’
Sat. IV.
The clatter of drums and cannons, however, was destined soon to cease, and the voice of Régnier’s muse was before long to be heard in the land. Régnier was a true child of the Renaissance in that he not only imitated, like his uncle, the Italian poets of his day, but he also based his satire on a close study of the classical writers. For he knew his Ovid thoroughly; like Ronsard, he modelled himself on Juvenal, and, like Joachim du Bellay, he recalls the manner of Horace. But apart from the knowledge and appreciation of great models, Régnier enjoyed also the genuine inspiration of a poet. He tells us how, in his youth, he would wander in the woods dreaming of fame and fortune, and learning the mysteries of the Muse:—
‘Rêveur je m’égarai tout seul par les détours
Des antres et des bois affreux et solitaires,
Où la Muse, en dormant, m’enseignait ses mystères,
M’apprenait des secrets, et m’échauffant le sein
De gloire et de renom relevait mon dessein.’
Sat. IV.