No prose-writer of the time rises to Isla's level. His brother Jesuit, Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro (1735-1809), is credited by Professor Max Müller with "one of the most brilliant discoveries in the history of the science of language," and may be held for the father of comparative philology; but his specimens and notices of three hundred tongues, his grammars of forty languages, his classic _Catálogo de las lenguas de las naciones conocidas_ (1800-5) appeal more to the specialist than to the lover of literature. Yet in his own department there is scarcely a more splendid name. FOOTNOTES: [29] For two singularly acute critical studies by M. E. Mérimée on Jove-Llanos and Meléndez Valdés, see the _Revue hispanique_ (Paris, 1894). vol. i. pp. 34-68, and pp. 217-235. CHAPTER XII THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Intellectual interaction between Spain and France is an inevitable outcome of geographical position. To the one or to the other must belong the headship of the Latin races; for Portugal is, so to say, but a prolongation of Galicia, while the unity of Italy dates from yesterday. This hegemony was long contested. During a century and a half, fortune declared for Spain: the balance is now redressed in France's favour. The War of the Succession, the invasion of 1808, the expedition of 1823, the contrivance of the Spanish marriages show that Louis XIV., Napoleon I., Charles X., and Louis-Philippe dared risk their kingdoms rather than loosen their grip on Spain. More recent examples are not lacking. The primary occasion of the Franco-German War in 1870-71 was the proposal to place a Hohenzollern on the Spanish throne, and the Parisian outburst against "Alfonso the Uhlan" was an expression of resentment against a Spanish King who chafed under French tutelage. Since there is no ground for believing that France will renounce a traditional diplomacy maintained, under all forms of government, for over two centuries, it is not rash to assume that in the future, as in the past, intellectual development will tend to coincide with political influence. French literary fashions affect all Europe more or less: they affect Spain more.