Tanneguy-Lefevre, the father of Mme. Dacier, was a savant and a type of the scholars of the sixteenth century.  He brought up his sons to be like him—­instructing them in Greek, Latin, and antiquities.  The young daughter, present at all the lessons given to her brothers, acquired, unaided, a solid education; her father, amazed at her marvellous faculty for comprehending and remembering, soon devoted most of his energy to her.  He was, at that time, professor at the College of Saumur; and he was conspicuous not only for the liberty he exhibited in his pedagogical duties, but for his general catholicity.

After the death of her father, the young daughter went to Paris where her family friends, Chapelain and Huet, encouraged her in her studies, the latter, who was assistant preceptor to the dauphin, even going so far as to request her to assist him in preparing the Greek text for the use of the dauphin.  She soon eclipsed all scholars of the time by her illuminating studies of Greek authors and of the quality of the new editions which she prepared of their works, but she was continually pestered on account of her erudition and her religion, the Protestant faith, to which she clung while realizing that it had been the cause of the failure of her father’s advancement.

From that time appeared her famous series of translations of Terence and Plautus, which were the delight of the women of the period and which gave her the reputation of being the most intellectual woman of the seventeenth century.  In 1635, when nearly thirty years of age, she married M. Dacier, the favorite pupil of her father, librarian to the king and translator of Plutarch—­a man of no means, but one who thoroughly appreciated the worth of Mlle. Lefevre.  This union was spoken of by her contemporaries as “the marriage of Greek and Latin.”

Two years after their marriage, after long and serious deliberation, both abjured Protestantism, adopted the Catholic religion, and succeeded in converting the whole town of Castres—­an act which gained them royal favor, and Louis XIV. granted them a pension of two thousand livres.  Sainte-Beuve states that their conversion was perfectly sincere and conscientious.  In all their subsequent works were seen traces of Mme. Dacier’s powerful intellect, which was much superior to that of her husband.  Boileau said:  “In their production of esprit, it is Mme. Dacier who is the father.”

Besides her translations of the plays of Plautus, all of Terence, the Clouds and Plutus of Aristophanes, she published her translation of the Iliad and Odyssey (1711-1716), which gave her a prominent place in the history of French literature, especially as it appeared at the time of the “quarrels of the ancients and moderns,” which concerned the comparative merits of ancient and modern literature.