s, except in the case of D'Aubigne, in force, and above
all in even excellence and technical merit, he far surpassed those who
in a manner had shown him the way. His satire is exclusively social, and
thus it escapes one of the chief drawbacks of political satire, that of
dealing with matters of more or less ephemeral existence and interest.
He has indeed borrowed considerably from the ancients, but he has
almost always made his borrowings his own, and he has in some cases
improved on his originals. He has softened the exaggerated air of moral
indignation which his English contemporaries, Hall and Marston, borrowed
from Juvenal, and which sits so awkwardly on them and on many other
satirists. He has avoided such still more awkward followings as that
which made Pope upset all English literary history in order to echo
Horace's remarks about Rome and Greece. Sometimes he has fallen into the
besetting sin of his countrymen, the tendency to represent mere types or
even abstractions instead of lifelike individuals embodying the type,
but he has more often avoided it. His descriptive passages are of
extraordinary vigour and accuracy of touch, and his occasional strokes
are worthy of almost any satiric or didactic poet. He is perhaps
weakest, like all poets with the signal exception of Dryden, when he is
panegyrical. Yet his first satire--in the order of arrangement not of
writing--addressed to the King, Henri IV., has much merit. The second,
on poets, has more, and abounds in vigorous strokes, such as that of the
courtier bard who

Meditant un sonnet, medite un eveche;

and as the couplet which concludes a lively sketch of his diplomatic
experiences--

Mais instruit par le temps a la fin j'ai connu
Que la fidelite n'est pas grand revenu.

This poem, which contains some humorous descriptions of the poverty of
poets, ends with an eloquent panegyric on Ronsard. The next, on 'La Vie
de la Cour,' attacks a very favourite subject of the age, and winds up
with an extremely well-told version of the fable of the beast of prey
and the mule whose name is written on its hoof. The fourth returns to
the subject of the poverty of poets. The fifth argues at some length,
and in a spirit not very far removed from that of Montaigne, the thesis
that 'Le gout particulier decide de tout.' It contains some of Regnier's
finest passages. A subject somewhat similar in kind, 'L'honneur ennemi
de la vie,' gives further occasion, in the six