DAURAT, or DORAT, in Latin Auratus, JOHN, a French poet, born in the Limousin in 1507. In the reign of Henry II. he was preceptor to the king's pages; and Charles IX. who took great delight in his conversation, honoured him with the title of his poet; but his generosity and want of management placed him among that class of learned men whose familiarity with poverty has long been proverbial. Conformably to the taste of the age, he had so much skill in making anagrams, that several illustrious persons gave him their names to be anagrammatized. He also undertook to explain the predictions of Nostradamus, whom he regarded as a man inspired by heaven; and he wrote a commentary in Latin and French on the Centuries of that pretended prophet. Making verses was a disease with him; for no book was printed, nor did any person of consequence die, but Daurat made some verses on the occasion, as if he had been poet ordinary, or his muse had been a hired mourner to the whole kingdom. Scaliger tells us that he spent the latter part of his life in endeavouring to find all the Bible in Homer. He died at Paris in 1588.