Lassala, Manuel

, a Spanish Ex-jesuit, was born at Valemia in 1729, and died in 1798, at Bologna, to which he had retired on the expulsion of his order. Our authority gives little of his personal history. He owed his celebrity to his knowledge of the ancient languages, and of poetry and history, which he taught in the university of Vjlentia. His works are in Spanish, Italian, and Latin; in the Spanish he wrote, 1. “An essay on general History, ancient and modern,” Valentia, 1755, 3 vols. 4to, said to be the best abridgment of the kind which the Spaniards have; at the end he gives the lives of the Spanish poets. 2. “Account of the Castillian poets,” ibid. 1757, 4to. He wrote also tragedies; 1. Joseph,“acted and printed at Valentia in 1762. 2. Don Sancho Abarva,” ibid. 1765, in Italian, and such pure and elegant Italian as to astonish the critics of Italy. He wrote three tragedies; 1. “Iphigenia in Aulis.” 2. “Ormisinda.” 3. “Lucia Miranda.” In Latin, he exhibited his talents for poetry, and is highly commended for the classical purity of style of his “Rhenus,” Bologna, 1781; the subject, the inundations of the Rhine: and his “De serificio civium bologmensium libellus singularis,” ib. 1782, composed in honour of a fête given by the merchants of Italy. He also made a good | translation from the Arabic into Hebrew of “Lokman’s Fables,” Bologna, 1781, 4to. ¹