Tanneguy Lefebvre

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Tanneguy Lefebvre (Tanaquillus Faber) (1615 – September 12, 1672), was a French classical scholar.

He was born at Caen. After completing his studies in Paris, he was appointed by Cardinal Richelieu inspector of the printing-press at the Louvre. After Richelieu's death he left Paris, joined the Reformed Church, and in 1651 obtained a professorship at the academy of Saumur, which he filled with great success for nearly twenty years. His increasing ill-health and a certain moral laxity (as shown in his judgment on Sappho) led to a quarrel with the consistory, as a result of which he resigned his professorship. Several universities were eager to obtain his services, and he had accepted a post offered him by the elector palatine at Heidelberg, when he died suddenly. One of his children, Anne, became famous as Madame Dacier.

Lefebvre was a highly cultivated man and a thorough classical scholar. He brought out editions of various Greek and Latin authors: Longinus, Anacreon and Sappho, Virgil, Horace, Lucretius and many others.

His most important original works are: Les Vies des poètes Grecs (1665); Méthode pour commencer les humanités Grecques et latines (2nd ed., 1731), of which several English adaptations have appeared; and Epistolae Criticae (1659).

In addition to the Mémoires pour ... la vie de Tanneguy Lefebvre, by F Graverol (1686), see the article in the Nouvelle biographie générale, based partly on the manuscript registers of the Saumur Académie.