[1] Born at Amiens, the son of an employee of the general tax farm, the Ferme générale, he received his education from the Jesuits, was admitted to their order and served as professor of rhetoric at Caen.
One of his brothers having been named abbot of Saint-André de Clermont, Legrand went to pay him a visit, and ranged through Auvergne as a naturalist, in 1787 and 1788.
A result was the Voyage dans la haute et basse Auvergne (Paris, 1788).
With the Revolution, in 1795 Legrand was named conservator of French manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale.
Having translated the Old French into modern French and published a large number of analyses of old French poets in the Notices des Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi, he enlarged his frame of reference, but have completed only some parts of his great work, when he died suddenly, in Paris, 6 December 1800.