French critic and man of letters, born in Paris, and after a distinguished career at the École Normale began to teach rhetoric at the Collège Stanislas. He was a contributor to the Moniteur, the Journal des Débats and the Revue bleue, but was best known as the independent and uncompromising literary critic of the Revue des Deux Mondes. His works include the following: Éléments d’histoire littéraire (1888); Portraits d’écrivains (1892); De Scribe à Ibsen (1893); Écrivains d’aujourd’hui (1894); Études sur la littérature française (5 vols., 1896–1905); Les Jeunes (1896); Essais sur le théâtre contemporain (1897); Les Hommes et les idées du XIXe siècle (1903); and an edition of the Lettres d’Elvire à Lamartine (1905). See also “Women During the Renaissance.”
