* Del Rio
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The celebrated Father Martin Del Rio, best known perhaps to English readers, since Sir Walter Scott's pleasant sketch, by his vast work on Demonology, was also a very distinguished linguist. Del Rio, although of Spanish parentage, was born at Antwerp in May 1551. His first university studies were made at Paris; but he received the Doctor's degree at Salamanca, and has merited a place in Baillet's Enfans Celebres, by publishing an edition of Solinus, with a learned commentary, before he was twenty years old. Del Rio's talents and reputation opened for him a splendid career; but he abandoned all his offices and all his prospects of preferment, in order to enter the Society of the Jesuits at Valladolid in 158O. According to Feyjoo, Del Rio knew ten languages; and Baillet would appear to imply even more, when he says that he was master of at least that number. Del Rio died at Louvain in 1608.
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