LORENZO HERVAS Y PANDURO (1735–1809)  ,

Spanish philologist, was born at Horcajo (Cuenca) on the loth of May 1735• He joined the Jesuits on the 29th of September 1745 and in course of time became successively professor of philosophy and humanities at the seminaries of Madrid and Murcia . When the Jesuit order was banished from Spain in 1767, Hervas settled at Forli, and devoted himself to the first part of his Idea del-l' Universo (22 vols., 1778-1792) . Returning to Spain in 1798, he published his famous Catdlogo de las lenguas de las naciones conocidas (6 vols., 1800-18o5), in which he collected the philological peculiarities of three hundred languages and drew up grammars of forty languages . In 1802 be was appointed librarian of the Quirinal Palace in Rome, where he died on the 24th of August 1809 . Max Muller credits him with having anticipated Humboldt, and with making " one of the most brilliant discoveries in the history of the science of language " by establishing the relation between the Malay and Polynesian family of speech .