The French poet Joachim du Bellay (ca. 1522-1560) was second only to Ronsard in his mastery of 16th-century poetic forms and showed an arresting talent for satire and simplicity.

Joachim du Bellay was born at the Château de la Turmelière in Anjou, probably in 1522. When he was about 23, he began to study law at Poitiers, but the lure of poetry was stronger and Du Bellay soon left for Paris to study along with Pierre Ronsard and Jean Antoine de Baïf under the great Jean Dorat, who taught Latin and Greek literature at the Collège de Coqueret.

In 1549 Dorat's students published the Deffence et illustration de la langue française, written by Du Bellay. It defended French against Latin and proposed ways by which French writers could elevate their language and literature to the perfection of the classics. The work...