Jean-Antoine de Baïf

Jean Antoine de Baïf (19 February 1532 – 19 September 1589) was a French poet and member of the Pléiade.

Quotes

• O Pluton, Rabelais reçoy,
  A fin que toy qui es le Roy
  De ceux qui ne rient jamais,
  Tu ais un rieur desormais.
  • Pluto, bid Rabelais welcome to thy shore,
      That thou, who art the king of woe and pain,
    Whose subjects never learned to laugh before,
      May boast a laugher in thy grim domain.
  • Epitaphe de Rabelais ('Epitaph on Rabelais'), from Passetemps, bk. 3, in Œuvres en rime (1573), ed. Ch. Marty-Laveaux (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1877) vol. 4, p. 373; tr. Louisa Stuart Costello, Specimens of the Early Poetry of France (London: William Pickering, 1835) p. 234

• Absent le chat, les souris dansent.
  • Absent the cat, the mice dance.
  • Les Mimes, enseignements et proverbes (1581), ed. Prosper Blanchemain (Paris: L. Willem, 1880), vol. 1, p. 98 [1]

External links

• When the cat's away the mice will play