The poets of the Pléiade are entitled to the respect of the historian of literature for several reasons, and to his gratitude for this, that they formed a compact body which he need be at no trouble to disentangle, because they stood deliberately apart, or to define, because they did the work for him, by publishing an exhaustive manifesto of their principles. There is nowhere a better example of that _situation nette_ which the French love. The Pléiade knew its own mind, and what it wanted to do. Moreover, if it did not always achieve its purpose, at least it knew how the work was to be done. Some slight doubt exists as to the names of the seven forming the original constellation. The most orthodox list gives Daurat, Ronsard, Du Bellay, Belleau, Baïf, Jodelle, and Pontus de Thyard, but another of less authority replaces the sixth and seventh by Scévole de Sainte Marthe and Muret. It does not matter which of the two is taken, since both include the important names. Jodelle has a notable place in French dramatic literature, but the drama is subordinate in the history of the Pléiade. Pontus de Thyard (1521-1603), though the first-born and the last survivor of the fellowship, is not an essential member, and may pass behind his leaders, Ronsard, Du Bellay, Belleau, and Baïf. [SN: _Ronsard._] All these poets were by birth gentlemen, and several of them were highly connected. Pierre de Ronsard, the master of them all, and the “Prince of Poets” of his century, not only in the opinion of his countrymen, but by the consent of many foreigners, was the son of the _maître d’hôtel_ (steward of the household) of Francis I. He was born at Vendôme in 1524, and entered the service of the Duke of Orleans as page. When James V. brought back his second wife, Mary of Lorraine, to Scotland, Ronsard followed them, and spent thirty months in their service, returning to France by way of England. When _hors de page_, he was attached to the suite of more than one ambassador. Among them was Lazare de Baïf, whose natural son, Jean Antoine de Baïf, was receiving his education under the care of the humanist, Jean Dorat, Daurat, or D’Aurat (1508-1588). Ronsard showed a taste for reading from his early years, and if he rejected the forms of Clement Marot, it was not without knowing them. An illness, which may have been the result of his sufferings during a shipwreck on the coast of Scotland, left him deaf in 1546. He now, and as it would seem not unwillingly, left the service of the Court, and betook himself to study at the college of Coqueret under the direction of Daurat, and in company of Jean Antoine de Baïf. Remi Belleau was a pupil at the same college. An accidental meeting between Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay added this latter to the fellowship. [SN: _The lesser stars._] The four, Daurat advising and approving, undertook to revolutionise French poetry, and they did it. The later dates in their biographies may be briefly noted. Ronsard