JOHN, an eminent French poet, born 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 in that class of learned men who have been very near starving. Conformable to the taste of the age, he had so much skill in making anagrams, that several illustrious persons gave him their names to anagrammatize; he also undertook to explain the Centuries of Nostradamus. Making verses was a disease in 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 in 1588.