French philologist and classical scholar, born in Paris on the 5th of January 1846. Having undertaken studies anticipatory to the duties of a Jewish rabbi, he became deeply interested in philology, and determined to make that his life-work. His studies with Paris, the eminent French philologist, began in 1867. A few years later he had won the recognition of contemporary philologists, and had become a prominent authority upon the philology of the Romance languages. Solely to him is credit due for demonstration of the great importance of certain Old French glosses upon Hebrew words in determining the precise character of eleventh-century French. His dictionary of the French language, begun in association with M. Hatzfeld in 1871, is a monumental work of great value to philologists. In 1877 he published Concerning the Actual Creation of New Words in the French Language, and, a year later, View of French Literature in the Sixteenth Century. At the time of his death, which occurred on the 7th of November 1888, he had but just reached what promised to be the most important period of his work.
