JAMYN, AMADIS, a French poet of the sixteenth century, was born at Chaource, in Champagne, about the year 1540. His parents, who were respectable, neglected no means calculated to promote his education. He received instructions from Dorat, Turnebus, and other learned men, who early inspired him with a taste for letters; and he also studied philosophy and the mathematics with some success; but an invincible predilection led him to poetry, in the cultivation of which he appears to have received marked encouragement from Ronsard, who was then regarded as the greatest man in France. From a passage in one of his elegies, it has been conjectured that in his youth
Janiculum he travelled through part of Greece and of Asia Minor; it is more certain that he visited Dauphiné, Provence, and Poitou, since he cites the names of the cities where he had sojourned, and complains of the reception which he had met with at Poitiers. Ronsard procured him the situation of secretary and reader to the king, Charles IX.; but after the death of his benefactor, he quitted the court, and retired to his native city, where he died about the year 1585, at comparatively an early age. The Œuvres Poétiques of Jamyn were published at Paris in 1575, and again in 1577, in 4to. This collection is divided into five books, the first of which contains the pieces addressed to Charles IX. and the great lords of the court, and the four following, sonnets, eclogues, elegies, and other amatory pieces. Jamyn completed, in Alexandrine verses, the translation of the Iliad of Homer, which Hugues de Salel had commenced in decasyllabic measure, and which stopped at the twelfth book; and he had also the merit of perceiving that Homer could only be translated into stately and majestic verses. After having given a first edition of the thirteen last books of the Iliad (Paris, 1574, in 4to), he revised and corrected the work of Salel, which he published along with his own (Paris, 1580 and 1584); and this addition is augmented by a translation of the first three books of the Odyssey. In these translations by Jamyn, there are beautiful verses, and passages rendered in a manner truly poetical; but he has thrown ridicule on his own performance by assigning modern titles to the heroes of the Iliad, and thus giving it the air and appearance of a travesty. (A.)