The Abbé Jacques Delille (1738–1813), perhaps the most ambitious descriptive poet who has ever lived, was treated as a Virgil by his contemporaries. He published "Les Géorgiques" in 1769, "Les Jardins" in 1782 and "L' Homme des champs" in 1803, but he went furthest in his brilliant, though artificial "Trois règnes de la nature" (1809), which French critics have called the masterpiece of this whole school of descriptive poetry. Delille, however, like Thomson before him, was unable to avoid monotony and want of coherency. Picture follows picture and no progress is made. The satire of Marie Joseph Chénier in his famous and witty "Discours sur les poèmes descriptifs", brought the vogue of this species of poetry to an end.