Villemain, ABEL FRANÇOIS, scholar and critic, was born at Paris, June 11, 1790, and at twenty was appointed professor of Rhetoric at the Lycée Charlemagne, shortly after at the École Normale. He filled the chair of Eloquence at the Sorbonne (1816-26), held various government offices under Louis XVIII., was made a peer in 1831, and served as minister of Public Instruction under Soult and Guizot, retiring in 1840. He was long perpetual secretary of the French Academy, and died 8th May 1870.
His principal works are the invaluable Cours de Littérature Française (1828-30), Mélanges (1823) and Nouveaux Mélanges (1827), Souvenirs Contemporains d'Histoire et de Littérature (1853), Choix d'Études sur la Littérature Contemporaine (1857), La Tribune Contemporaine, M. de Chateaubriand (1857), Essais sur le Génie de Pindare et sur la Poésie Lyrique (1859). His Histoire de Cromwell (1819) and Lascaris, ou les Grecs du XV. Siècle (1825), brought him great popularity.