REMY

BELLEAU (c. 1527-1577)  , French poet, and member of the Pleiade (see DAURAT), was born at Nogent-le-Rotrou about 1527 . He studied with Ronsard and others under Jean Daurat at the College de Coqueret . He was attached to Rene de Lorraine, marquis d'Elbceuf, in the expedition against Naples in 1557, where he did good military service . On his return he was made tutor to the young Charles, marquis d'Elbceuf, who, under Belleau's training became a great patron of the muses . Belleau was an enthusiast for the new learning and joined the group of young poets with ardour . In 1556 he published the first translation of Anacreon which had appeared in French . In the next year he published his first collection of poems, the Petites inventions, in which he describes stones, insects and flowers . The Amours et nouveaux echanges des pierres precieuses . . (1576) contains perhaps his most characteristic work . Its title is quoted in the lines of Ronsard's epitaph on his tomb: " Luy mesme a basti son tombeau Dedans ses Pierres Precieuses." He wrote commentaries to Ronsard's Amours in z56o, notes which evinced delicate taste and prodigious learning . Like Ronsard and Joachim Du Bellay, he was extremely deaf . His days passed peacefully in the midst of his books and friends, and he died on the 6th of March 1577 .

He was buried in the

nave of the Grands Augustins at Paris, and was borne to the tomb on the pious shoulders of four poets, Ronsard, J . A. de Ball, Philippe Desportes and Amadis Jamyn . His most considerable work is La Bergerie (1565-1572), a pastoral in prose and verse, written in imitation of Sannazaro . The lines on April in the Bergerie are well known to all readers of French poetry . Belleau was the French Herrick, full of picturesqueness, warmth and colour . His skies drop flowers and all his air is perfumed, and this voluptuous sweetness degenerates sometimes into licence . Extremely popular in his own age, he shared the fate of his friends, and was undeservedly forgotten in the next . Regnier said: "Belleau ne parle pas comme on parle a la ville "; and his lyrical beauty was lost on the trim 17th century . His complete works were collected in 1578, and contain, besides the works already mentioned, a comedy entitled La Reconnue, in short rhymed lines, which is not without humour and life, and a comic masterpiece, a macaronic poem on the religious wars, Dictamen metrificunt de belle huguenotico et reistroruml piglamine ad sod ales (Paris, no date) . The Euvres completes (3 vols., 1867) of Remy Belleau were edited by A . Gouverneur; and his Euvres poetiques (2 vols., 1879) by M . Ch .

Marty-Laveaux in his Pleiade frangaise; see also C . A . Sainte-Beuve, Tableau historique et critique de la poesie frangaise au X

VIe siecle (ed . 1876), i. pp . 155-16o, and ii. pp . 296 seq .