Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo (; 3 November 1856 – 19 May 1912) was a Spanish scholar, historian and literary critic. Even though his main interest was the history of ideas, and Hispanic philology in general, he also cultivated poetry, translation and philosophy. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. Biography He was born at Santander where he showed that he was an infant prodigy. His brother said in his memoirs that at the age of twelve he translated Virgil without a dictionary and read the History of England by Oliver Goldsmith. At only 15, he studied literature under Manuel Milà i Fontanals at the University of Barcelona (1871–1872), then proceeded to the central University of Madrid. His academic success was unprecedented; a special law was passed by the Cortes to enable him to become a professor at 22. Three years later, in 1880, he was elected a member of the Real Academia Española, but he was already well known throughout Spain. His first volume, Estudios críticos sobre escritores montañeses (1876), had attracted little notice at first. He then produced his scholarly investigation Horacio en España (1877), an analysis of Horace's translations in Spanish literature, with a prologue by the prominent critic Juan Valera. He became famous through his Ciencia española (1878), a collection of essays vindicating the existence of a scientific tradition in Spain. The orthodoxy of this work is even more noticeable in the Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (1880–1886), and the writer was hailed as the champion of the Ultramontane party. As the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908–10) described his work, "Every page of his writings reveals a wealth of strong common sense, clear perception, and a vein of wonderful and ever varying erudition. Thoroughly Catholic in spirit, he found his greatest delight, he declared, in devoting all his work to the glory of God and the exaltation of the name of Jesus". His lectures (1881) on Calderón established his reputation as a literary critic. His work as an historian of Spanish literature was continued in his Historia de las ideas estéticas en España ("History of aesthetic ideas in Spain") (1883-1891), which are five volumes in which he explores, summarizes and reinterprets the existing bibliography on literary and artistic aesthetics at different times of the Spanish cultural tradition. He undertook the publication of the works of Lope de Vega (1890-1902) in 13 volumes. Another tremendous work