Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/366

Rh 348 R E G R E I upsetting each others' facts without supplying fresh details of an authentic character. It is commonly said that the poet, finding Joycuse an inactive or unwilling patron, trans- ferred his services to Philippe do Bethune, Sully's brother, who went as ambassador to Rome in 1601 ; but this seems doubtful, for one of the very few positive documents con- cerning Regnier speaks of him as still in Joyeuse's service a year later. What is generally certain is that during the greater part of his youth he lived partly in Paris and partly in Italy, after a somewhat idle and very dissipated fashion. He early began the practice of satirical writing, and the enmity which existed between his uncle Desportes and the poet Malherbe gave him occasion to attack the latter in some of his very best verses. It has been generally said that Regnier obtained full possession of a canonry at Chartres, to the reversion of which he had been appointed when a child, in 1604, and a singular legend is told of the immediate circumstances ; but the formal registry of admission signed by himself is extant, and is dated 1609, a further instance of the uncertainty which prevails respecting him. In 1606 Desportes died, leaving nothing to Regnier, though they seem to have been on excellent terms to the last. The poet was even disappointed of the succession to Desportes's abbacies, but he obtained a pension (the amount as usual variously stated at 2000 and 6000 livres) chargeable upon one of them, by the influence of the Marquis de Cceuvres, afterwards Marechal d'Estrdes, the brother of Henry IV. 's Gabrielle. He also became a great favourite with his bishop, Philippe Hurault, at whose abbacy of Royaumont Regnier spent much time in the later years of his life. On the other hand the death of Henry IV. deprived him of his last hope of great preferments, and appears to have considerably soured his temper. He did not long survive the king. His life had always been one of dissipation, or, to speak frankly, debauchery, and in the autumn of 1613 he went to Rouen to put himself under the care of a quack doctor. An apparent cure was followed by a feast at which the patient drank his physician's health too freely in strong Spanish wine, and died of pleurisy or fever at his hotel, the Ecu d'Orleans, on the 13th October. His body was disembowelled and the entrails deposited in the parish church, that of St Marie Mineure, the other remains being carried to Royaumont and buried there. Such is the meagre amount of positive knowledge respecting one of the greatest poets of France. Nor can it be said that liegnier's literary history is quite accurately ascertained, though it is less dubious thaii his persoiial. The period immediately preceding and following his death was a period of numerous collections of licentious and satirical poems, some published, some still remaining in manuscript. Gathered from these there has been a floating mass of epigrams, &c., attributed to liegnier, few of which are certainly authentic, and most of which do no particular credit to his memory. On these editors of his works have exercised freely the right of acceptance or rejection, so that it is very rare to find two editions of Regnier which exactly agree in contents. His acknowledged or undoubted work, however, is that on which his fame rests, and it falls into three classes : regular satires in alexandrine couplets, serious poems in various metres, and satirical or jocular epigrams and light pieces, which often, if not always, exhibit considerable licence of language. This latter class is, however, much the least important in every way. The real greatness of liegnier consists in the vigour and polish of his satires, contrasted and heightened as that vigour is with the exquisite feeling and melancholy music of some of his minor poems. In the latter Regnier is a disciple of Ronsard (whom he defended brilliantly against Malherbe), without the occasional pedantry, the affectation, or the undue fluency of the Pleiade, but in the satires he had hardly any master (Vauquelin de la Fresnaye and Agrippa d'Aubigne, who preceded him in point of composition, did not publish their satires until later) except the ancients. He has sometimes followed Horace closely, but always in an entirely original spirit. His vocabulary is varied and picturesque, but is not marred by the maladroit classicism of some of the Ronsardists. His verse is extraordinarily forcible and nervous, but what distinguishes him especially from most satirists is the way in which he gets the better of what may be called the commonplaces of satire, and to a great extent at any rate avoids the tendency of all French poetry to run into t es. His keen and accurate knowledge of human nature and even his purely literary qualities extorted the admiration of ISoileau usually the severest of critics in regard to all poets of the j>n.rcdmg age except Malherbe. Rcgnier, moreover, in respect of ,M;i has himself displayed remarkable independence and arutt-ness of literary criticism, and the famous passugc in which he satirizes the poet of Caen contains the best denunciation of the merely " correct " theory of poetry that has ever been written. Lastly, Regnier had a most unusual descriptive faculty, and the vividness of what may bo called his narrative satires w;ts not approached in France i'l'r at least two centuries after his death. All his merits are displayed in the masterpiece entitled Maccttc ou I'Hypocrisie d&onccrUe, but hardly any one of the sixteen satires which he has left falls below even a very high standard. In general it may be said that l: is the last poet who shows the poetic faculties of the French tongue before the classical reforms of the 17th century had cramped and curtailed them, and that he shows these faculties in something like perfection. The first edition of Regnier's satires appenral in 1C08 published l>y Gabriel Bnon. Thre was another In 1K09, and another in 1612. The author had also contributed to two collection.' Les Afuses Gaillartles in 1C09 and Le Temple d'Apollon in 1611. In the year of hi* death (1613) a complete!' collection appeared, and another in IfjlC. The chief editions of the 18th C( ntury are that of lirossette (1729), which supplies the standard commentary on Hi-piTicr. and that of Lenglet Dufresnoy (1733). Recently the poet has been frequently mid carefully reprinted. The editions of Prosper Poitevin in 1SOO, of 51. de Barthe'leniy in 1862, and of .51. Courbet in 1875 may be specially mentioned. The last, printed after the original* in italic type, and well edited, is perhaps the best, as 51. de JJartlielemy's is the lullest, of recent copies. REGULUS, MARCUS ATILIUS, was consul for the second time in the ninth year of the First Punic War (256 B.C.), and so was one of the commanders in the great naval expedi- tion which shattered the Carthaginian fleet and success- fully lauded an army on Carthaginian territory at Clupea. At first the invaders had such success that half the army and the other consul Manlius could be recalled to Rome, and yet leave good hope that Regulus with the insurgent Numidiau subjects of the Phoenicians would finish the war in the second campaign. But Carthage, which had found an able general in the Spartan Xanthippus, used the winter to such good account that in the spring of 255 Regulus was decidedly inferior in strength, and, hazarding a pitched battle on ground favourable to the enemy, had his army cut to pieces and was himself taken captive. Regulus perished in captivity, and was supposed at Rome to have been done to death : according to the common story he was sent to Rome on parole to negotiate a peace or ex- change of prisoners, but on his arrival strongly urged the senate to refuse both proposals, and returning to Carthage was slain with horrid tortures. This is the story so elo- quently told by Horace (Carm. iii. 5), and which made Regulus to the later Romans the type of heroic endurance in misfortune ; but most critical historians regard it as insufficiently attested, Polybius being silent. REICHA, ANTON JOSEPH (1770-1836), musical theorist and teacher of composition, was born at Prague, February 27, 1770, and educated chiefly by his uncle, Joseph Reicha (1746-1795), a clever violoncellist, who first received him into his house at Wallerstein in Bohemia, and afterwards carried him to Bonn. He studied hard, and began to compose at a very early age, producing, during the course of a long and active life, a vast quantity of church music, five operas, a number of symphonies, oratorios, and many miscellaneous works. Though clever and ingenious, his compositions are more remarkable for their novelty than for the beauty of the ideas upon which they are based, and display but little of the divine fire which alone can render works of art immortal. His fame is, indeed, more securely based uj/on his didactic works than upon the results of his theories as exemplified in his own productions. His Traitt de Melodic (Paris, 1814), Cours de Composition Musicalc. (Paris, 1818), Traite de Haute Composition ALiisicale (Paris, 1824- 1826), and Art du Compositeur Dramatique (Paris, 1833) are valuable and instructive essays, containing much that is new and interesting ; and, though many of the theories they