AMYOT, Jacques, a famous French writer, was born, of poor parents, at Melun, October 30, 1513; found his •way—a pale-faced, bare-footed, ill-clad boy—to the “College de France” in Paris, and there picked up a knowledge of the classical languages, serving some of the richer students as valet and composer of Latin, to enable him to continue his studies. He became Μ. A. at Paris, and doctor of civil law at Bourges; obtained, through Jacques Colure (or Colin), abbot of St Ambrose in the latter city, a tutorship in the family of a secretary of state; by the secretary was recommended to the duchess of Berry, only sister of Francis I.; and, through her influence, was made professor of Greek and Latin at Bourges. Here he translated the Theagenes and Chariclea of Heliodorus (1547, fol.), for which he was rewarded by Francis I. with the abbey of Bellozane, and thereby enabled to go to Italy to study the Vatican text of Plutarch, on whose Lives he had been some time engaged. On the way he turned aside on a mission to the council of Trent. Returning home, he was selected as tutor to the sons of Henry II., by one of whom (Charles IX.) he was afterwards made grand almoner, and by the other (Henry III.) was appointed commander of the order of the Holy Ghost. Pius I. promoted him to the bishopric of Auxerre, and here he continued to live in comparative quiet, repairing his cathedral and perfecting his translations, for the rest of his days, though troubled towards the close by the insubordination and revolts of his clergy. He died February 6, 1593, bequeathing, it is said, 1200 crowns to the hospital at Orleans for the twelve “deniers” he received there when “poor and naked” on his way to Paris. His fame rests on his vigorous and idiomatic version of Plutarch’s ...