A pupil of Henri Estienne, the Hellenist, at an early age he was appointed tutor to Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV, who made him his librarian.
Brought up as a Calvinist, he became a convert to Catholicism.
He was the author of many good translations from the Greek into Latin verse,amongst others, of versions of the Hero and Leander attributed to Musaeus, and of many epigrams from the Greek Anthology.
In his translations into French, among which are remarked those of George Buchanan's Jephtha (1567), and of Oppian's De Venatione (1575), he is not so happy, being rather to be praised for fidelity to his original than for excellence of style.