CHAPTER IV.[1807-1814.]
TheCatalogue Raisonnéof the Oriental and Greek manuscripts was not completed until 1807, having thus absorbed the greater part of Abate Mezzofanti’s time during two years.
A large proportion of the Oriental MSS. had never even been entered upon the ordinary library catalogue, and no attempt at all had been made to describe them accurately, much less to register their character or contents. Very many of them too, as we learn from Mezzofanti’s letters, were imperfect; and a still more considerable number wanted at least the title and the name of the author. It was no trivial labour, therefore, to examine the entire collection; to decide on the name, the age, and the authorship of each; to describe their contents; and to reduce them all into their respective classes. For most of these particulars the compiler of the catalogue was utterly without a guide. It is true that Joseph Assemani’s catalogue of the Oriental MSS. of the Vatican, and the catalogue of those of the MediceanLibrary at Florence by his nephew Stephen Evodius, were in some cases available. But many of the Bologna MSS. are not to be found in either catalogue; and for all these Mezzofanti was of course compelled to rely altogether on his own lights.
The catalogue, as drawn up by him, is still preserved, and, notwithstanding these disadvantages, is described as a highly creditable performance, and “a valuable supplement to the labours of Talmar and the Assemanis;”[345]and at all events it was to his long and laborious researches while engaged in its preparation, that he owed that minute familiarity with the whole literature of the East, ancient and modern, which, as we shall see, was a subject of wonder even to learned orientals themselves.
During the year 1807, an opportunity occurred for testing practically how far the reputation which he had acquired corresponded with his real attainments. On the outbreak of hostilities between the Porte and Russia in that year, the Russian ambassador, Italinski, withdrew (not without some risk and difficulty)[346]from Constantinople, and, being conveyed on board the British ship of war, Canopus, to Malta, afterwards made his way to Ancona. While the ambassador remained at Ancona, the chancellor of the embassy, Angelo Timoni, who was of Bolognese origin, came to visit his native city; accompanied by Matteo Pisani, the official interpreter, who was one of the best linguists of his time, and especially a perfect master of all the modern languages of the East.As they resided, during their stay at Bologna, in the house of his friend, Dr. Santagata, their visit was a severe ordeal for Mezzofanti, who was constantly in their society; but he withstood it triumphantly; and Santagata records their wonder and delight to find that, without ever having visited the East, or mixed in Oriental society, the Bolognese professor had nevertheless attained a “mastery over the many and various languages, especially Oriental ones, in which they tried him, and that the marvellous and all but inconceivable accounts which they had received regarding him, proved to be not only credible but actually true.”[347]
A great and lasting mortification nevertheless soon afterwards befel Mezzofanti, in the unexpected deprivation of his beloved professorship. The circumstances which accompanied his removal have not been fully detailed, but there is enough in the history of the period to supply an intelligible explanation. The conflict of Napoleon with the Holy See was just then approaching its crisis. From the beginning of this year the French troops had occupied Rome. Two cardinal secretaries of state had been forcibly ejected from office. The Pope was a prisoner in his own palace and his authority was completely superseded. Now upon these and the many similar outrages to which the venerable Pontiff was daily subjected, the opinions of Mezzofanti were no secret; and there can be no doubt that the determination of the Government to remove him from the university was mainly influenced by this knowledge; although in deference to public opinion, and to the universal feeling of respect with which he wasregarded, they abstained from formally depriving him of his professorship. His removal was effected indirectly by a decree, dated November 15, 1808, by which the Oriental professorship itself was suppressed.
Although a pension, and as it would seem, not a very illiberal one, was assigned to him, he felt very deeply this exclusion from a career so congenial to his tastes. He continued nevertheless, as before, to instruct pupils privately in these and other languages; and although, as to details, the history of his own studies at this time is a complete blank, yet from his known habits it may reasonably be presumed that when the first feeling of mortification had subsided, the ultimate result of his release from the duties of his chair, was to direct his untiring energies into new fields of research; and it seems to have been during this interval that he first gave his attention to the Sanscrit and other Indian languages;—a family which had till then been but little cultivated except in England, but to whose vast importance, as well as widely extended philological relations, Frederic Schlegel[348]had just awakened the attention of the learned throughout continental Europe.
From the date of this second deprivation, till the year 1812, his quiet and uniform course of life presents hardly a single interesting incident.
In June, 1810, his mother died. But her advanced age and infirm health had long prepared him for this bereavement. She died on the feast of St. Aloysius (June 21,) in her seventy-third year.
The only detail regarding his personal occupations, which I have been able to discover, is derived from a letter, dated November 30th, 1811,[349]to his friend Pezzana, at Parma, which exhibits him again engaged in the drudgery of compiling a catalogue—that of the library of Count Marescalchi. Pezzana had published, some time before, a short bibliographical essay on two very rare editions of Petrarch, which are still preserved in the Parma Collection. Mezzofanti, while engaged in cataloguing the Marescalchi library, discovered a copy of one of these editions, and at once wrote to communicate the fact to Pezzana.
I may also mention, what, in a life so uneventful, must claim to be regarded as an event—a short journey which he made to Modena and Mantua. Joseph Minarelli, the eldest of his sister’s sons, wassummoned to Modena in 1813, to ballot in the conscription which followed the terrible campaign of 1812, so fatal to the armies of France. Signora Minarelli was naturally much alarmed at the chance of her son’s being drawn in the conscription, and in consideration for her anxiety, his uncle accompanied him to Modena upon the occasion.
It becomes especially difficult henceforward to follow the history of his studies. The literary friends of this part of his career;—his colleagues in the University; Ranzani; Caturegli, the astronomer; the eminent botanist, Felippo Re; his fellow-pupil and fellow-teacher, Clotilda Tambroni; Schiassi; Magistrini; and others of less note, who could have supplied information, not only as to his habits and pursuits, but as to the actual stages of his progress, are long since dead. The letters of Pietro Giordani,[350]however, recently published, may, in some measure, fill up the blank; not, it is true, as to the details of his biography, but at least in so far as regards the opinion entertained in Bologna of his character and acquirements. Indeed the testimony of Giordani is less open to exception than any which could have emanated from the personal friends of Mezzofanti. Giordani had entered the Benedictine congregation, and had even received the order of sub-deaconship; but on theoutbreak of the Revolution, he had renounced the monastic life, cast aside the Benedictine habit, and thrown himself into the arms of the revolutionary party in Italy. Under the French rule at Bologna, he obtained as the reward of his principles, the place of Assistant Librarian, and also that of Deputy Professor of Latin and Italian Eloquence. Hence it will easily be believed that his relations with the Papal party in the University were by no means friendly; and, as he had had with the Abate Mezzofanti himself (as I learn from an interesting letter of M. Libri which shall be inserted hereafter,) some personal misunderstandings, he may be presumed to have been but little disposed to over-rate the qualifications of an antagonist. It is no mean evidence of Mezzofanti’s merit, therefore, that Giordani has specially excepted him from the very disparaging estimate which he expresses regarding the literary men of Italy at this time. “I have held but little intercourse with literary men,” he writes to his friend Lazzaro Papi, “finding them commonly possessed of but little learning and a great deal of passion. Here, however, I have met an exception to the rule—the Abate Mezzofanti—a man not only of the utmost piety, but of attainments truly wonderful and all but beyond belief. You must, of course, have heard of him; but indeed he well deserves a wider fame than he enjoys, for the number of languages which he knows most perfectly, although this is the least part of his learning. Nevertheless, such is his excessive modesty, that he lives here in obscurity, and I must add, to the disgrace of the age, in poverty.”[351]
Nor is Giordani’s report to be regarded as one of those vague panegyrics, which, when Mezzofanti’s fame was established, each new visitor was wont to re-echo. Giordani is not only well-known as one of the purest Italian writers of the century, but enjoyed the highest reputation as a critical scholar; and the subject on which, in another of his letters, he defers to the judgment of Mezzofanti—a delicate question of Greek criticism—was precisely that on which he himself was best qualified to pronounce. In a letter to the Abate Canova (Feb 3, 1812,) he mentions a conjecture that had recently interested him very much; viz., that the great Roman architect, Vitruvius, was a Greek, although he wrote in Latin. His chief argument is based upon Vitruvius’s Latinity, in which he detects traces of foreign idiom. But, lest he should yield too much to fancy, he had appealed to the judgment of some of his colleagues, and he communicates the result to his correspondent. One of the persons thus consulted was Mezzofanti. “I should not rely on my own judgment,” says Giordani, “had I not convinced Cicognara and Mezzofanti that it is right. The authority of the latter is the more important, because my argument rests chiefly on the style, in every line of which I find impressed, even where the subject is not technical, traces of halting [storpiato] and ill-translated Greek; and you know what a judge Mezzofanti is of this point.”[352]
In a letter to another friend, Count LeopoldoCicognara, (since known as the biographer of Canova)[353]Giordani reports the sequel of this discussion, which confirms in a very remarkable manner, Giordani’s judgment of Mezzofanti’s critical sagacity. Mezzofanti had at first assented to Giordani’s conjecture; but on a closer examination he discovered, that what Giordani had considered the Grecisms of Vitruvius’s style, were, in reality, buttranslations from various Greek authors, from whom Vitruvius largely borrows, and whom he actually enumerates in the preface of the seventh book. Mezzofanti further pointed out a phrase in the same preface which at once put an end to the discussion, and the discovery of which, as Giordani justly observes, in itself “indicated an inquiring and critical mind.” Vitruvius, in speaking of the Latin writers upon his art, as contradistinguished from the Greek, calls them “antiquinostri.”[354]
To the same friend, Count Cicognara, Giordani in a previous letter, dated January 30th, 1812, had written of Mezzofanti’s own peculiar faculty of languages, in terms of almost rapturous admiration. “You know Mezzofanti,” he says;—“Mezzofanti—the rarest, most unheard of, most inconceivable of living men. I call him, and he is, the man of all nations and all ages. By Jove! he appears as though he had been born in the beginning of the world, and, likeSt. Anthony, had lived in every age and in every country!”[355]
In connexion with this very remarkable testimony to the accuracy of Mezzofanti’s knowledge of Greek, I may mention (although it more properly belongs to a later period of his life) an amusing anecdote illustrative of his accomplishments as a Latinist, which is recorded by Dr. Santagata, and the hero of which was M. Bucheron, Professor of Latin Literature in the University of Turin, and one of the most celebrated classical philologists of modern Italy. M. Bucheron came to Bologna, from some cause strongly prepossessed against Mezzofanti, and disposed to regard him in the light of a mere literary charlatan, of showy but superficial acquirements. Of his Latinity—especially in all that bears upon the critical niceties of the language, and the numberless philological questions regarding it which have arisen among modern scholars, M. Bucheron entertained the lowest possible estimate;—considering it, in truth, impossible, that one whose attention had been divided over so many languages as fame ascribed to Mezzofanti,could besolidly grounded in any of them. He resolved, therefore, to put the Abate’s Latinity to a rigorous test; and came to the library prepared with a number of questions, bearing upon the niceties of the Latin language, which he proposed to introduce, as it were casually, in his expected conversation. He was presented to Mezzofanti by his friend, Michele Ferrucci, Librarian of the University of Pisa, fromwhom, I may add, Dr. Santagata received the account of their interview. The conversation, as Bucheron had pre-determined, began upon some common-place subject: but in a short time he artfully contrived to turn it upon those topics on which he desired to probe his companion. The trial was a most animated one. From a series of obscure and difficult questions of Latin philology, they passed to a variety of oriental, historical, and archæological topics. At the moment when the interest of the conversation was at its very height, Ferrucci was unfortunately called away by business; but the result may be judged from the sequel. On his return, after a somewhat lengthened absence, he met Bucheron coming from the Library.
“Well,” said he, “what do you think of Mezzofanti?”
“Per Bacco!” replied the astounded Piedmontese. “Per Bacco! é il Diavolo!”[356]
His celebrity, indeed, was by this time universally established. With all his unaffected humility; with the full consciousness (which he expressed in all simplicity and truth to his young friend, Carlino Marescalchi) that he was “best fitted for the shade”—he had insensibly grown into one of the notabilities of Bologna. He was constantly visited and consulted, especially by Oriental students, from foreign countries. What is more remarkable, more than one Jewish scholar appears in the record of his visitors. Among the papers of the Abate De Rossi is a letter of this period (March 18th, 1812,) in which Mezzofantiintroduces to him a certain “Signor Moise Ber;” and, notwithstanding the variety of orthography, (a variety quite natural in an Italian letter,) there can be no doubt that this Signor Moise Ber was no other than Rabbi Moses Beer of the Israelite University of Rome, whose Orations and Discourses have since been published.[357]
Mezzofanti’s opportunities of conversing with foreigners were much increased by his becoming permanently attached to the Library of the University (with which the Library of the Institute had been incorporated by the French) as Deputy-Librarian. This appointment he received on the 28th of March, in 1812. As the chief librarian at this time was the Abate Pozzetti, who, like Mezzofanti, was an honorary professor of the University, and one of his most valued friends, the appointment was especially agreeable to him: and, independently of its other advantages, it became for him, as I said, from the constant passing and re-passing of strangers from every country, a school in which he was able to exercise himself, almost hourly, in every department of his multilingual studies.
The late Lord Guilford, who was Chancellorof the University of Corfu, made his acquaintance during one of his visits to Bologna; and on every subsequent occasion on which he passed through that city, Mezzofanti was invariably his guest, accompanied by all the Greeks who chanced to be at the time students of the University.
As his reputation extended, the literary societies of the various cities of Italy were naturally desirous to number him among their members. He was already an associate of theSocietá Colombinaat Florence, and of the “Society of Letters, Sciences, and Arts,” at Leghorn; and he received about this time, the decoration of the Royal Order of the Two Sicilies. The only literary society, however, in whose proceedings he took an active part, was the Scientific Academy of the Institute of his native city. It has been commonly supposed that he rarely, if at all, appeared in the literary arena, and it is true that he has not left behind him anything at all commensurate with his reputation; but he frequently read papers, chiefly on philological subjects, in the Bolognese Academy. The first of these which is noticed by Dr. Santagata was read on the 22nd of July, 1813; and another, “On the Symbolic Paintings of the Mexicans,” was delivered in the following session, on the 23rd of March, 1814. Owing to his early association with several ex-Jesuit American Missionaries who had settled in Bologna, he had long felt an interest in the curious subject of Mexican Antiquities. Among his MSS., which still remain in the possession of the Cavaliere Minarelli at Bologna, is a Mexican Calendar,drawn up by Mezzofanti’s own hand, and illustrated with fac-similes of the original pictures and symbolical representations from the pencil of his niece, Signora Anna Minarelli; but of the paper read in the Academy, no trace has been found.