“ All, or almost all, the clever young men of the brilliant generation of 1830 passed under his influence; and, while he pleased the Romanticists by his frank appreciation of the beauties of English, German, Italian and Spanish poetry, he had not the least inclination to decry the classics—either the classics proper of Greece and Rome or the so-called classics of France. In 1819 he published a book on Cromwell, and two years later he was elected to the Academy. ”

“ Here he delivered a series of literary lectures which had an extraordinary effect on his younger contemporaries. Villemain had the great advantage of coming just before the Romantic movement, of having a wide and catholic love of literature without being an extremist. ”