The name most inseparably connected with the introduction of classical metres into France in the sixteenth century is that of Jean Antoine de Baif. This young member of the Pleiade, after publishing several unsuccessful volumes of verse, visited Italy, and was present at the Council of Trent in 1563. In Italy he doubtless learnt of the metrical innovations then being employed; and upon his return, without any apparent knowledge of Jacques de la Taille's as yet unpublished treatise, he set about to make a systematic reform in French versification. His purpose was to bring about a more perfect unison between poetry and music; and in order to accomplish this, he adopted classical metres, based as they were on a musical prosody, and accepted the phonetic reforms of Ramus. He also established, no doubt in imitation of the Accademia della Nuova Poesia, the Academie de Poesie et de Musique, authorized by letters patent from Charles IX. in November, 1570.[404] The purpose of this academy was to encourage and establish the metrical and musical innovations advocated by Baif and his friends. On the death of Charles IX. the society's existence was menaced; but it was restored, with a broader purpose and function, as the Academie du Palais, by Guy du Faur de Pibrac in 1576, under the protection of Henry III., and it continued to nourish until dispersed by the turmoils of the League about 1585. But Baif's innovations were not entirely without fruit. A similar movement, and a not dissimilar society, will be found somewhat later in Elizabethan England. II. _Romantic Elements_ Some of the romantic elements in the critical theory of the Pleiade have already been indicated. The new movement started, in Du Bellay's _Defense_, with a high conception of the poet's office. It emphasized the necessity, on the part of the poet, of profound and solitary study, of a refined and ascetic life, and of entire separation from vulgar people and pleasures. Du Bellay himself is romantic in that he decides against the _traditions de regles_,[405] deeming the good judgment of the poet sufficient in matters of taste; but the reason of this was that there were no rules which he would have been willing to accept. It took more than a century for the French mind to arrive at the conclusion that reason and rules, in matters of art, proceed from one and the same cause.