[Abbé]. Fabulist and poet, born at Paris in 1731 and died there in 1814. He was for many years editor of Les Petites Affiches, a very popular journal, and he became immediately famous after his publication, in 1756, of a collection of fables. Voltaire regarded them the equals of the famous fables of La Fontaine. From 1773 until his death he was professor of French literature in the Collège Royal, Paris.
