Still more unfortunate was the life of a younger poet, who, while honouring the genius of Malherbe, pronounced, like Regnier, for freedom rather than order, and maintained that each writer of genius should be a law to himself--a poet whom his contemporaries esteemed too highly, and whom Malherbe, and afterwards Boileau, unjustly depreciated--THEOPHILE DE VIAU. A Huguenot who had abjured his faith, afterwards pursued as a libertine in conduct and as a freethinker, Theophile was hunted, imprisoned, exiled, condemned to execution, and died exhausted in 1626, when only six-and-thirty years old. He has been described as the last lyrical poet of his age, and the first of the poetical exponents of the new preciosity. His dramatic _Pyrame et Thisbe_, though disfigured by those _concetti_ which the Italian Marini--an honoured guest at the French court--and the invasion of Spanish tastes had made the mode, is not without touches of genuine pathos. The odes of Theophile are of free and musical movement, his descriptions of natural beauty are graciously coloured, his judgment in literary matters was sound and original; but he lacked the patient workmanship which art demands, and in proclaiming himself on the side of freedom as against order, he was retrograding from the position which had been secured for poetry under the leadership of Malherbe. With social order came the desire for social refinement, and following the desire for refinement came the prettinesses and affectations of over-curious elegance. Peace returned to France with the monarchy of Henri IV., but the Gascon manners of his court were rude. Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet, whose mother was a great Roman lady, and whose father had been French ambassador at Rome, young, beautiful, delicately nurtured, retired in 1608 from the court, and a few years later opened her _salon_ of the Hotel de Rambouillet to such noble and cultivated persons as were willing to be the courtiers of womanly grace and wit and taste. The rooms were arranged and decorated for the purposes of pleasure; the _chambre bleue_ became the sanctuary of polite society, where Arthenice (an anagram for "Catherine") was the high priestess. To dance, to sing, to touch the lute was well; to converse with wit and refinement was something more admirable; the _salon_ became a mart for the exchange of ideas; the fashion of Spain was added to the fashion of Italy; Platonism, Petrarchism, Marinism, Gongorism, the spirit of romance and the daintinesses of learning and of pedantry met and mingled. Hither came Malherbe, Racan, Chapelain, Vaugelas; at a later time Balzac, Segrais, Voiture, Godeau; and again, towards the mid-years of the century, Saint-Evremond and La Rochefoucauld. Here Corneille read his plays from the _Cid_ to _Rodogune_; here Bossuet, a marvellous boy, improvised a midnight discourse, and Voiture declared he had never heard one preach so early or so late.