BELLEAU, REMY (c. French poet, and mem ber of the Pleiade (see DAVRAT), was born at Nogent-le-Rotrou. He studied with Ronsard and others under Jean Daurat at the College de Coqueret. He was attached to Rene de Lorraine, mar quis d'Elboeuf, in the expedition against Naples in where he did good military service. 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 ap peared in French. In the next year he published his first collection of poems, the Petites inventions in which he describes stones, in sects, and flowers. The Amours et nouveaux echanges des pierres precieuses . . . (1576) contains perhaps his most characteristic work. Its title is quoted in Ronsard's epitaph on his tomb: Luy mesme a basti son tombeau Dedans ses Pierres Precieuses.
He wrote commentaries to Ronsard's Amours in 156o, 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. His most con siderable work is La Bergerie (1565-72), 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. 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. Belleau's other works include a comedy entitled La Reconnue, in short rhymed lines, which is not without humour and life, and a comic master piece, a macaronic poem on the religious wars, Dictamen metri ficum de bello liuguenotico et reistrorum piglamine ad sodales.
The Oeuvres completes (1867) of Remy Belleau were edited by A. Gouverneur; and his Oeuvres poetiques (1879) by M. Ch. Marty Laveaux in his Pleiade francaise; see also C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Tableau historique et critique de la poesie francaise au XVIe siecle (ed. 1876).