Or, again, he marks down a courtier with a vigour and point which Molière could not surpass:—
‘Laissons-le discourir,
Dire cent et cent fois: Il en faudrait mourir;
Sa barbe pinçoter, cageoller la science,
Relever ses cheveux, dire; En ma conscience;
Faire la belle main, mordre un bout de ses gants,
Rire hors de propos, monstrer ses belles dents,
Se carrer sur un pied, faire arser son épée,
Et s’adoucir les yeux ainsi qu’une poupée.’
Sat. VIII.
A dozen other examples might be quoted to show with what satiric acid he can etch a portrait. Régnier can paint a scene, too, with same unerring detail and bitter accuracy, as, for instance, ‘Le Souper Ridicule’ and the less savoury ‘Mauvais Gîte.’ The latter poem is indeed the only one which deserves the imputation conveyed by Boileau’s phrase about the author’s rimes cyniques. Régnier is essentially a moral writer, for he makes vice, even when he describes it openly, the reverse of attractive. The worst that can and may be said of him is that, like Juvenal, he attacks vice with arms that make virtue blush. He says himself:—
‘Je croirai qu’il n’est rien au monde qui guarisse
Un homme vicieux comme son propre vice,’
and certainly the sincere and vigorous pictures he draws will prove a temptation to no one, though they may inspire, like his habit of calling a spade a spade, feelings of repugnance and disgust. But this is the aim, as these are the means of all genuine satirists. Régnier’s comment on his own failings is pathetic, but does not condone them. It reminds one of Ovid’s words, ‘Video meliora proboque. Deteriora sequor.’
‘Étant homme, on ne peut
Ni vivre comme on doit, ni vivre comme on veut.’
For, happily, the consequences of his loose living had wrought in him a tardy repentance. His conversion was as late and as sincere as that of La Fontaine—and not less needed. As he left politics alone, and attacked not individuals but social types, he made no enemies. For most men group others in classes but not themselves, or at any rate suppose themselves to be free from the vices of the class to which they belong. So they called our satirist Bon Régnier, as later they spoke of Bon la Fontaine, and the bonhomie implied by their nickname had the same seasoning of malice. But it was not rewarded with any great share in the goods of this world. His uncle, dying in 1606, left him only a legacy of 2000 livres on the Abbey des Vaus de Cernay. Henry IV., by conferring this request, gained the friendship of the poet, who expressed his gratitude in the admirable verses of his first satire. In 1608, the year in which his works were first published, he was presented with a stall in the Cathedral of Chartres. But only five years later he left Royaumont, the abbey of the Bishop of Chartres, who always made him welcome, and found his way to Rouen. There he consulted a quack doctor, a famous empiric, Le Sonneur by name, who promised to heal him of all his diseases. But he died after dining with this too encouraging physician.
I have spoken of Régnier as the creator of French satire, and so, in a sense, he was. But the phrase requires qualification. His satires are not indeed absolutely the first of their kind in France. They had been preceded by the terrific invectives of D’Aubigné, the vigorous outbursts of Jean de la Taille, and the less vehement but more polished satirical portraits of Vauquelin de Fresnaye. But in breadth and technical merit he far surpassed all his predecessors, and, in force, all except D’Aubigné. The longest, the best known, and undoubtedly the best of his sixteen satires, is the thirteenth. There, under the title of Macette, he describes an old woman who hides vice under a mask of hypocrisy, and corrupts youth with her evil philosophy of the world and its ways. The type is not new, but Régnier’s description of it is original and vigorous in the extreme. His Macette, in fact, is the grandmother of Molière’s Tartuffe.
‘Loin du monde elle fait sa demeure et son giste
Son œil tout penitent ne pleure qu’eau beniste.
Enfin c’est un exemple, en ce siècle tortu
D’amour, de charité, d’honneur et de vertu.
Pour beate partout le peuple la renomme,
Et la gazette même a déja dit à Rome,
La voyant aimer Dieu et la chair maîtriser
Qu’on n’attend que sa mort pour la canoniser.’