Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/364

Rh 346 R E G B E G Revision is made at special sessions before assistant barristers, or, in counties, before the chairman. The register, when com- pleted, is placed in the hands of the sheriff in counties and of the returning officer in boroughs. The expenses of registration are defrayed from local sources, with a contribution from imperial funds. Universities. The Reform Act of 1832 made no change in the university representation. Special provisions affect the electoral roll of universities returning members of parliament. London Freemen. There are also special provisions as to the registration of freemen in the City of London. (J. E. D.) REGNARD, JEAN FRANCOIS (1656-1709), who in general estimation ranks next to Moliere among French comic dramatists, was born at Paris in 1656, and during at least the earlier part of his life had a singularly adven- turous career considering his time, station, and country. His father was a rich shopkeeper, who educated his son carefully, and died when he was about twenty, leaving Regnard master of what was for the time a considerable fortune. Regnard, who was apparently beyond his day in affection for travelling, set off at once for Italy and there gambled perseveringly. A young tradesman's son in such circumstances ought, according to precedent and poetical justice, to have been fleeced to his last penny; but Regnard, according to the story, increased his fortune by ten thousand crowns. In Italy (on his second visit accord- ing to some authorities) he met and fell in love with a young married lady of Proven9al birth. With her and her husband (it is difficult not to believe that biographers have taken the facts of a short autobiographical romance which Regnard wrote, under the title of La Provencale, rather literally) he set out for France on board an English frigate. This was attacked by two Algerian rovers; the captain and the crew were cut to pieces, and the passengers taken to Algiers and sold. Regnard, who, being skilful in cookery, was a valuable slave, is said to have been taken by his master to Constantinople, but after about two years' cap- tivity he was ransomed with his lady love for twelve thousand livres. The husband was supposed to be dead, and Regnard was preparing to marry the widow when a proper time of mourning had elapsed, but the husband reappeared and the lover was disappointed. The disappointment set him once more on a roving life, and he journeyed by Holland, Denmark, and Sweden to Lapland, and thence by Poland, Turkey, Hungary, and Germany back to France, having commemorated what was then the somewhat extra- ordinary feat of visiting the head of the Gulf of Bothnia by a Latin inscription on the rocks, which was visible thirty years later. He returned to Paris at the end of 1683. He now appears to have entirely exhausted his roving inclina- tions, and for the second half of his life (for this date of December 1683 nearly bisects it) his existence, if not exactly sedentary, was divided between luxury and letters. He bought the place of treasurer of France in the Paris district; he had a house at Paris in the Rue Richelieu; and he acquired the small estate of Grillon near Dourdan (about equidistant between Rambouillet and Fontainebleau), where he hunted, feasted, and wrote comedies. This latter amusement he began in 1688 with a piece called Le Divorce, which was performed at the Theatre Italien, and followed it up with many other small pieces, which are not, however, his titles to fame. He gained access to the Theatre Fra^ais in 1694 with a slight piece called Attendez- moi sous I'Orme, and two years later produced there the masterly comedy of Le Joueur, in reference to which his ally Dufresny attempted to make out a charge of plagiar- ism, Le Distrait (1697), Le Retour Imprevu (1700), Les Folies Amoureuses (1704), Les Menechmes (1705), a clever following of Plautus, and, lastly, his masterpiece, Le Lfyataire Universel (1708), with one or two less meritorious pieces, were also produced at the Francois. Regnard's death, after a quarter of a century of quiet living, renews the doubtful and romantic circumstances of his earlier life. Some hint at poison ; there is a wild and wonderful story of his having deliberately made up a pre- scription of horse medicine for himself and taken it with fatal consequences ; while other more prosaic accounts give as the cause of death his having gone out hunting while under an ordinary course of treatment, and on his return, when much heated, having swallowed a large quantity of iced water. At any rate he died on the 4th September 1709. Besides the plays noticed above and others, Regnard wrote a cer- tain number of miscellaneous poems, the above-mentioned novel of La Provencale, and several short accounts in prose of his travels. He quarrelled with Boileau and was reconciled with him, owing to which fact the expressions of that critic concerning Regnard's literary merit were not wholly consistent. The saying, however, which is attributed to him when some one, thinking to curry favour, remarked that Regnard was only a mediocre pqet, "11 n'est pas mediocrement gai, " is both true and very appropriate. Regnard's verse is not particularly good (in his non-dramatic work it is some- times positively bad), and his French style, especially in his purely prose works, is not considered faultless. He is often unoriginal in his plots, and, whether Dufresny was or was not justified in his com- plaint about Le Joueur, it seems likely that Regnard owed not a little to him and to others ; but he had a thorough grasp of comic situation and incident and a most amusing faculty of dialogue. He is often not far from the verge of farce, but he certainly might plead Moliere's example in this respect. There is no trace in him of Moliere's ethical value, and he is seldom a serious critic of society and life, while in point of refinement of incident and language his drama is a distinct relapse from his master's. But there are few things in artificial comedy more amusing and more dexterously managed than the series of devices whereby the miserly uncle of Le Lfyataire Universel is brought to make his nephew rich and happy. The first edition of Reynard's complete works was published in 1731 (5 vols., Paris), one of the last in 1854 (2 vols.). There is a good selection of almost every- thing important in the Collection Didot. REGNAULT, HENRI (1843-1871), French painter, born at Paris on the 31st October 1843, was the son of Henri Victor Regnault (noticed below). On leaving school he successively entered the studios of Montfort, Lamothe, and Cabanel, was beaten for the Great Prize (1863) by Layraud and Montchablon, and in 1864 exhibited two portraits in no wise remarkable at the Salon. Nothing, in short, produced by Regnault up to 1866 led men to suspect the brilliancy of his endowments, but in that year he made a mark, carrying off the Great Prize with a work of unusual force and distinction Thetis bringing the Arms forged by Vulcan to Achilles (School of the Fine Arts). The past and the works of the past in Italy did not touch him, but his illustrations to Wey's Rome show how observant he was of actual life and manners ; even his Automedon (School of Fine Arts), executed in obedience to Academical regulations, was but a lively recollection of a carnival horse race. At Rome, moreover, Regnault came into contact with the modern Hispano-Italian school, a school highly materialistic in its aims and tendencies, and inclined to regard even the human subject only as one amongst many sources whence to obtain amusement for the eye. The vital, if narrow, energy of this school told on Regnault with ever-increasing force during the few remaining years of his life. In 1868 he had sent to the Salon a life-size portrait of a lady in which he had made one of the first attempts to render the actual character of fashionable modern life, and, on his return from a visit to the exhibition, he seized the opportunity of making a tour in Spain. There he saw Prim pass at the head of his troops, and received that lively image of a military demagogue which he afterwards put on canvas somewhat to the displeasure of his subject. But this work made an appeal to the imagination of the public, whilst all the later productions of Regnault were addressed exclusively to the eye. After a further flight to Africa, abridged by the necessities of his position as a pensioner of the school of Rome, he painted Judith, then (1870) Salome, and, as