REGNIER, MATHURIN (1573-1613), French satirist, was born at Chartres on Dec. 21, the son of Jacques Regnier, and Simone Desportes, sister of the poet. Little is known of his youth, except that he received the tonsure at eight years old, and it is chiefly conjecture which fixes the date of his visit to Italy in a humble position in the suite of the cardinal, Francois de Joyeuse, in 1587. Regnier found his duties irksome, and when, after many years of constant travel in the cardinal's service, he returned definitely to France about 1605, he took advantage of the hos pitality of Desportes. In 16o6 Desportes died and Regnier ob tained a pension of 2,000 livres, chargeable upon one of Desportes' benefices. He was also made in 1609 canon of Chartres through his friendship with the lax bishop, Philippe Hurault, at whose abbey of Royaumont he spent much time in the later years of his dissipated life. The death of Henry IV. deprived him of his last hope of great preferments. He died at Rouen at his hotel, the Ecu d'Orleans, on Oct. 22, 1613.
His undoubted work falls into three classes : regular satires in alexandrine couplets, serious poems in various metres, and satir ical or jocular epigrams and light pieces, which often, if not al ways, exhibit considerable licence of language. The real greatness of Regnier consists in the vigour and polish of his satires, con trasted and heightened as that vigour is with the exquisite feel ing and melancholy music of some of his minor poems. In these Regnier is a disciple of Ronsard (whom he defended brilliantly against Malherbe), without the occasional pedantry, the affecta tion or the undue fluency of the Pleiade; but in the satires he seems to have had no master except the ancients, for some of them were written before the publication of the satires of Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, and the Tragiques of D'Aubigne did not appear until 1616. Regnier was an acute critic, and the
famous passage (Satire ix., A Monsieur Rapin) in which he satirizes Malherbe contains the best denunciation of the merely "correct" theory of poetry that has ever been written. All his merits are displayed in the masterpiece entitled Macette ou l'Hypocrisie deconcertee, which does not suffer even on corn parison with Tartuffe; but hardly any one of the sixteen satires which he has left falls below a very high standard.
Les Premieres Oeuvres ou satyres de Rignier (16o8) included the Discours an roi and ten satires. There was another in 1609, and others in 1612 and 1613. The author had also contributed to two collections—Les Muses gaillardes in 5609 and Le Temple d'Apollon in 1611. In 1616 appeared Les Satyres et autres oeuvres folastres du sieur Regnier, with many additions and some poems by other hands. Two famous editions by Elzevir (Leiden, 1642 and 1652) are highly prized. The chief editions of the 18th century are that of Claude Brossette (printed by Lyon & Woodman, London, 1729), which supplies the standard commentary on Regnier, and that of Lenglet Dufresnoy (printed by J. Tonson, London, 1733). The editions of Prosper Poitevin (Paris, 186o), of Ed. de Barthelemy (Paris, 1862) , and of E. Courbet (Paris, 1875) , may be specially mentioned. The last, printed after the originals in italic type, and well edited, is perhaps the best. See also Vianey's Mathurin (1896) ; M. H. Cherrier, Bibliographie de Mathurin Rignier (1884) ; Jean-Marc Bernard, L'introducteur de in satire en France: Mathurin Regnier (1913) ; Emile Roy, Notes sur les deux poetes Jean et Mathurin Regnier (Iwo).