French critic, whose original name was René Gaspard Ernest Taillandier, born in Paris on the 16th of December 1817. He completed his studies at Heidelberg, and then became professor of literature successively at Strassburg, Montpellier and the Sorbonne, where he was nominated to the chair of French eloquence in 1868. Most of the articles included in his published volumes first appeared in the Revue des deux mondes. In January 1870 he became general secretary of the ministry of education, and continued in this office after the fall of the Empire. He became officer of the Legion of Honour in 1870, and was elected to the Academy in 1873. He died in Paris on the 22nd of February 1879.
His works include:—Allemagne et Russie, études historiques et littéraires (1856), Le Poéte du Caucase … Michel Lermontoff (1856), Maurice de Saxe (2 vols. 1865), Tchéques et Magyars (1869), Le Général Philippe de Ségur (1875).
