Malherbe's reform was not accepted without opposition. While he pleaded for the supremacy of order, regularity, law, the voice of MATHURIN REGNIER (1573-1613) was heard on behalf of freedom. A nephew of the poet Desportes, Regnier was loyal to his uncle's fame and to the memory of the Pleiade; if Malherbe spoke slightingly of Desportes, and cast aside the tradition of the school of Ronsard, the retort was speedy and telling against the arrogant reformer, tyrant of words and syllables, all whose achievement amounted to no more than _proser de la rime et rimer de la prose_. Unawares, indeed, Regnier, to a certain extent, co-operated with Malherbe, who recognised the genius of his younger adversary; he turned away from languid elegances to observation of life and truth of feeling; if he imitated his masters Horace and Ovid, or the Italian satiric poets, with whose writings he had become acquainted during two periods of residence in Rome, his imitations were not obsequious, like those of the Pleiade, but vigorous and original, like those of Boileau; in his sense of comedy he anticipates some of Moliere's feeling for the humorous perversities of human character; his language is vivid, plain, and popular. The classical school of later years could not reject Regnier. Boileau declared that no poet before Moliere was so well acquainted with the manners and characters of men; through his impersonal study of life he is indeed classic. But his ardent nature rebelled against formal rule; he trusted to the native force of genius, and let his ideas and passions lead him where they would. His satires are those of a painter whose eye is on his object, and who handles his brush with a vigorous discretion; they are criticisms of society and its types of folly or of vice, full of force and colour, yet general in their intention, for, except at the poet who had affronted his uncle, "le bon Regnier" struck at no individual. Most admirable, amid much that is admirable, is the picture of the old worldling Macette, whose veil of pretended piety is gradually dropped as she discourses with growing wantonness to the maiden whom she would lead in the way she should not go: Macette is no unworthy elder of the family of Tartufe. Regnier confesses freely the passions of his own irregular life; had it been wisely conducted, his genius might have carried him far; as it was, he passed away prematurely at the age of forty, the victim of his own intemperate pursuit of pleasure.