Dictionary.net

A distinguished French poet and prose-writer; born at the Chateau de Lire, near Angers, about 1524; died in Paris, Jan. 1, 1560. Next to Ronsard the most prominent member of the famous "Pleiade". He had few of the advantages of a school education, but by his own industry became acquainted with the poets of antiquity and of France. His first volume of poems was a collection of his "Sonnets to Olive". His "Antiquities of Rome" was done into English verse by Edmund Spenser, "The Ruins of Rome" (1591). His principal work is a "Defense and Illustration of the French Language" (1549), in which he depreciates the old forms of French poetry and sets up the classic poets of antiquity as models. After his death were published more of his sonnets, also odes, and some translations.