[Alfred Jean François]. French littérateur, educator and statesman, born in Rehon, Lorraine, on the 19th of November 1826; graduated from Sainte-Barbe College, in Paris, and from the Superior Normal School. He was professor in the Metz Lyceum in 1844; sent to the French School in Athens in 1850. Having passed his examination for the degree of doctor of letters, he was called to the Sorbonne as assistant professor of foreign literatures in 1861, and as full professor in 1865. He represented the University of France at the Shakespeare jubilee in 1864, and at the Dante jubilee in 1865. During the Franco-Prussian war he took active service in the National Guard; was elected a member of the Academy in 1874; as a deputy on the Republican list in 1881, he wrote the report of the commission on artistic and and literary property and the international agreements relating thereto. Re-elected to the Chamber in 1885, he showed himself a strong opponent of General Boulanger. At the elections of 1889 he was re-elected, and shortly afterward was appointed by his colleagues president of the commissions of the army. He wrote Shakespeare, ses Œuvres et ses Critiques (1861–82); Prédécesseurs et Contemporains de Shakespeare (1863); Contemporains et Successeurs de Shakespeare (1864); Goethe, les Œuvres Expliquées par la Vie (1872–73); Vie de Mirabeau (1891). He was a regular contributor to the Temps and the Revue des Deux Mondes.
