It would be difficult to find a sharper contrast than is shown between the long restless life of D’Aubigné and the career of Mathurin Regnier. He was born at Chartres in 1573, in a family of the middle class, and was nephew to the prosperous court poet Desportes. His family destined him to the Church, and he was tonsured at the age of eleven. By the influence, in all probability, of his uncle, he was appointed to a place in the suite of the Cardinal Joyeuse, French Ambassador in Italy. Later on he was provided for by a canonry in his native town, and died there in 1613. The character of Regnier may unfortunately be described nearly in the terms which the Duke of Wellington used of an English military adventurer who had served under him in the Peninsula. He was, said the Duke, “a brave fellow, but a sad drunken dog.” A considerable poet, but a sad drunken dog, is, it is to be feared, the description of Regnier. His habits rather than the quality of his verse justify the epithet of “cynical” which has been applied to him.[96] Although he wrote other verse, including some fine lyrics, Regnier is chiefly memorable as a satirist. This he was in the proper sense of the word. He attacked vices, and did not only say savage things about people whom he disliked. In the form of his verse Regnier was so far correct that he escaped the condemnation which the school of Malherbe passed on all the other poets of his century. Yet he kept much of the freedom of the earlier time, and in his ninth satire he pointed out with admirable precision exactly what were the weaknesses of the reform of Malherbe. There is an individuality and an air of sincerity in Regnier which saves his work from the too common fault of modern satire--which is to be a mere echo of Juvenal, verse written not because the author feels any indignation, but only because he thought it a distinguished action to imitate the classics and scold his contemporaries.