The Pléiade consisted of a group of seven men and boys who, animated by a sincere and intelligent love of their native language, banded themselves together to remodel it and its literary forms on the methods of the two great classical tongues, and to reinforce it with new words from them. They were not actuated by any desire for gain. In 1549 Jean Daurat, then 49 years of age, was professor of Greek at le Collège de Coqueret in Paris. Amongst those who attended his classes were five enthusiastic, ambitious youths whose ages varied from seventeen to twenty-four. They were Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, Remy Belleau, Antoine de Baïf, and Etienne Jodelle. They and their Professor associated themselves together and received as a colleague Pontus de Tyard, who was twenty-eight. They formed a band of seven renovators, to whom their countrymen applied the cognomen of the Pléiade, by which they will ever be known. Realising the defects and possibilities of their language, they recognised that by appropriations from the Greek and Latin languages, and from the melodious forms of the Italian poetry, they might reform its defects and develop its possibilities so completely that they could place at the service of great writers a vehicle for expression which would be the peer if not the superior of any language, classical or modern. It was a bold project for young men, some of whom were not out of their teens, to venture on. That they met with great success is beyond question; the extent of that success it is not necessary to discuss here. The main point to be emphasised is that it was a deliberate scheme, originated, directed, and matured by a group of little more than boys. The French Renaissance was not the result of a spontaneous bursting out on all sides of genius. It was wrought out with sheer hard work, entailing the mastering of foreign languages, and accompanied by devotion and without hope of pecuniary gain. The manifesto of the young band was written by Joachim de Bellay in 1549, and was entitled, "La Défense et Illustration de la langue Francaise." In the following year appeared Ronsard's Ode--the first example of the new method. Pierre de Ronsard entered Court life when ten years old. In attendance on French Ambassadors he visited Scotland and England, where he remained for some time. A severe illness resulted in permanent deafness and compelled him to abandon his profession, when he turned to literature. Although Du Bellay was the originator of the scheme, Ronsard became the director and the acknowledged leader of the band. His accomplishments place him in the first rank of the poets of the world. Reference would be out of place here to the movement which was after his death directed by Malherbe against Ronsard's reputation and fame as a poet and his eventual restoration by the disciples of Sainte Beuve and the followers of Hugo. It is desirable, however, to allude to other