PASCUAL DE GAYANGOS Y ARCE (18og–1897)  ,

Spanish scholar and Orientalist, was born at Seville on the 21st of June 1809 . At the age of thirteen he was sent to be educated at Pont-le-Voy near Blois, and in 1828 began the study of Arabic under Silvestre de Sacy . After a visit to England, where he married, he obtained a post in the Spanish treasury, and was transferred to the foreign office as translator in 1833 . In 1836 he returned to England, wrote extensively in English periodicals, and translated Almakkari's History of the Mahommedan Dynasties in Spain (1840–1843) for the Royal Asiatic Society . In England he also made the acquaintance of Ticknor, to whom he was very serviceable . In 1843 he returned to Spain as professor of Arabic at the university of Madrid, which post he held until 1881, when he was made director of public instruction . This office he re-signed upon being elected senator for the district of Huelva . His latter years were spent in cataloguing the Spanish manuscripts in the British Museum; he had previously continued Bergenroth's catalogue of the manuscripts relating to England in the Simancas archives . His best-known original work is his dissertation on Spanish romances of chivalry in Rivadeneyra's Biblioteca de autores espanoles . He died in London on the 4th of October 1897 .