BELLEAU, Remy, French poet of the Renaissance, and member of the Pleiad, was born at Nogent-le-Rotrou in 1528. He became attached to the Elboeufs, and accompanied the head of the family 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’Elboeuf, who, under Belleau’s training, became a great patron of the muses. Belleau was extremely learned in the newly-discovered literature of Greece and Rome, and joined the young group of poets with ardour. In 1556 he published the first translation of Anacreon which appeared in French, but this work had no great success. He first became famous through his commentaries to Ronsard’s Amours in 1560, notes which evinced delicate taste and prodigious learning. Like Ronsard and Du Bellay, he was extremely deaf. His days passed peacefully in the midst of his books and friends, and terminated on the 6th of March 1577. His body was buried in the nave of the Grands Augustins de Paris, and was borne to the tomb on the pious shoulders of four illustrious poets, Ronsard, J. A. de Baif, Philippes Desportes, and Amadis Jamyn. His greatest work is La Bergerie, a pastoral in prose and verse, written in a faded rococo style, in imitation of Sannazaro, but containing, as Sainte-Beuve says, some adorable things. Belleau was the French Herrick, full of picturesqueness, warmth, and colour, but of doubtful taste and wanting in passion. His skies drop flowers and all his air is perfumed, but one becomes weary at last of this excess of sweetness. Extremely popular in his own age, he became undeservedly forgotten in the next. Regnier said, “Belleau ne parle pas comme on parle à la ville;” and his lyrical beauty was lost on the trim 17th century. His complete ...