CHAPTER IX.[1831.]
Hitherto the Abate Mezzofanti has appeared chiefly, if not exclusively, as a linguist; and the estimate of his attainments which has long been current, assumes him to have cultivated that single accomplishment to the exclusion of all other branches of study. The report, however, of a visitor, who saw him about the time at which we have now arrived, will be found to present him in a new character.
In introducing this notice of him, a brief preliminary explanation will be necessary—perhaps, indeed, this explanation is indispensable even in itself; for, although the political history of the period does not properly fall within the scope of this biography, yet, as the most important event in the life of Mezzofanti—the transfer of his residence to Rome—arose directly out of his mission to that capital at the termination of the Revolution of 1831, it is necessary to revert, at least in outline, to the most notable occurrences of the preceding years.
The discontent and turbulence which marked the closing years of the reign of Pius VII. had in great measure subsided under the impartial but vigorous administration of Leo XII.; nor was the short pontificate of his successor, Pius VIII. who succeeded on the 31st of March, 1829, interrupted by any overt expression of popular discontent. It was well known, nevertheless, throughout this whole period, that an active secret organization was in existence, not alone in the Papal States, but in Naples, in the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, in the minor principalities of Parma, Piacenza, and Modena, and indeed throughout the entire of Italy. Everywhere throughout Italy, too, in addition to these secret associations, still subsisted a remnant of the old French or Franco-Italian party, who, while they submitted to the existing state of things, and offered no resistance to the established regime, concealing their discontent, and cautiously repressing their aspirations after the cherished vision of a “united and independent Italy,” yet were notoriously dissatisfied with the domestic governments, and lost no opportunity of embarrassing their administration. Of this, in the Papal States, Bologna had long been the centre.
The Abate Mezzofanti had never taken any part in political affairs; but his principles were well known, and his antecedents had long marked him out as an ardent and devoted adherent of the Papal rule. Personally inoffensive and amiable as he was, therefore, he was on these grounds, distasteful to certain members of the anti-papal party. But by the greatbody of his fellow-citizens he was regarded as a man of thoroughly honourable principles; and we shall see that in a crisis of great delicacy and importance he was selected as one of their delegates to the court of Gregory XVI.
It is to these political animosities that allusion is made in the following extremely interesting account of Mezzofanti. It is from the pen of the distinguished historian of the mathematical sciences in Italy, M. Libri; whose name is in itself sufficient to stamp with authority any statement bearing upon a subject in which he has proved himself a master.
For this most interesting communication I am indebted to the good offices of Mr. Watts, to whom it was addressed by M. Libri, in reply to an inquiry kindly made on my behalf by that gentleman. M. Libri’s letter is in English, and the purity of its language and elegance of its style are in themselves no slight evidence of his competence to pronounce upon Mezzofanti’s accomplishments as a linguist, no less than as a mathematician.
M. Libri’s meeting with Mezzofanti occurred at Bologna early in 1830, in the course of a literary tour in which M. Libri was then engaged.
“Among all these eminent men, the one that interested me most was unquestionably the Abbé, (afterwards Cardinal) Mezzofanti, who was then librarian at Bologna, and respecting whose astonishing power in languages I had heard the most extraordinary anecdotes. During a short excursion which I had previously made to Bologna, I had already got a glimpse of that celebrated man; but it was not until 1830 that I could be said to haveseen him. I was presented to him by one of my friends, Count Bianchetti, and I was received by him with great kindness. He made me promise to go and see him again, and offered to show me the library. I accepted his offer eagerly; but it was principally in the hope of having a long conversation with him that I repaired to the library next day.Before going farther, I ought to say that I approached him with mixed feelings. Personally, I have always been disposed to respect and admire every man who possesses an incontestible superiority in any branch of human knowledge; and in this point of view, M. Mezzofanti, whom every body acknowledges to be the man who knew and could speak more languages than any other living man, had certainly a right to boundless admiration on my part. It was popularly reported at Bologna, that M. Mezzofanti, then fifty years old, knew as many languages as he counted years; and I had heard related in respect to him, by men in whose veracity I have full confidence, so many extraordinary histories, that he became in my eyes a sort of hero of legend or romance; but a hero of flesh and blood, who realized or even surpassed all the wonders attributed to Mithridates as a linguist. On the other hand, the liberal party, who certainly had no sympathies with the Abbé Mezzofanti, spread reports against him, by no means flattering; among which the one that had most frequently reached my ears, consisted in its being ceaselessly repeated, that the celebrated librarian at Bologna was a sort of parrot, endowed with the faculty of articulating sounds which he had heard, that he was only a miracle of memory, understanding having nothing to do with it; and that, independently of this trick of getting words by heart, this extraordinary man possessed no solid information, and little philological erudition. Without blindly adopting this bare assertion, I must acknowledge that the judgment passed on Mezzofanti by persons of some consideration, had made an impression upon my mind, far from being favourable to him: but that impression was soon dissipated in the course of the interview I had with him. Before leaving Florence, I had just read andcarefully studied the treatise on Indefinite Algebra, composed several ages before by Brahmegupta, and which, translated and enriched with an admirable introduction by Colebroke, had been published in London, in 1817.[434]Being still filled with admiration for the labours of the ancient Hindoos on indeterminate analysis, I mentioned the book casually to Mezzofanti, and merely to show him that even a man almost exclusively devoted to the study of mathematics, might take a lively interest in the labours of the Orientalists. I had no intention of introducing a scientific conversation on this subject with the celebrated librarian; and I must even add, that I thought him quite incapable of engaging in one. How great then was my surprise, when I saw him immediately seize the opportunity, and speak to me during half an hour on the astronomy and mathematics of the Indian races, in a way which would have done honour to a man whose chief occupation had been tracing the history of the sciences. Deeply astonished at so specific a knowledge, which had taken me quite unexpectedly, I eagerly sought explanation from him on points which had seemed to me the most difficult in the history of India; such, for instance, as the probable epoch when certain Indian astronomers had lived, before the Mahometan conquest, and how far those astronomers might have been able, directly or indirectly, to borrow from the Greeks. On all those points Mezzofanti answered on the spot, with great modesty, and as a man who knows how to doubt; but proving to me at the same time, that those were questions on which his mind had already paused, and which he had approached with all the necessaryaccomplishment of the accessory sciences. I cannot express how much that conversation interested me; and I did not delay to testify to Mezzofanti all the admiration which knowledge at once so varied and so profound, had excited in me. No more was said of visiting the library, or of seeing books. I had before me a most extraordinary living book, and one well calculated to confound the imagination. Encouraged by his courtesy and modesty, I could not resist my desire of putting questions to him on the mode which he had employed in making himself master of so many languages. He positively assured me, but without entering into any detail, that it was a thing less difficult than was generally thought; that there is in all languages a limited number of points to which it is necessary to pay particular attention; and that, when one is once master of those points, the remainder follows with great facility. He added, that, when one has learned ten or a dozen languages essentially different from one another, one may, with a little study and attention, learn any number of them. I strenuously urged him to publish his experience on the subject and on the result of his labours; but I observed in him a great aversion to the publication of his researches. He affirmed that the more we study, the more do we understand how difficult it is to avoid falling into errors; and, in speaking to me of several writings which he had composed, he told me that they were only essays which by no means deserved to see the light. In the midst of the conversation, as I was still urging him, he rose and went to look in a box for a manuscript with coloured designs, which he showed me, and which had for its object the explanation of the Mexican hieroglyphics. Having begged him to publish at least that work, he told me that it was only an essay, still imperfect, and that his intention was to recast it completely.This excursion to America suggested to me the idea of putting a new question to him. I had collected at Florence, particularly with relation to bibliography, several translations of the whole Bible, or certain portions of the sacred books, in different foreign languages. Some of these translations were into languages spoken by North American savages; and in looking throughthem I had been struck with the measureless length[435]of most of the words of these tongues. Since the opportunity presented itself naturally, I asked M. Mezzofanti what he thought of those words, and whether the men who spoke languages apparently so calculated to put one out of breath, did not seem to be endowed with peculiar organs. Immediately taking down a book written in one of those languages, the celebrated linguist showed me practically how, in his opinion, the savages managed to pronounce these interminable words, without too much trouble. For fear of making mistakes, I cannot venture, after twenty-five years, to reproduce this explanation from memory. According to my usual practice, I had written out, on my return home, the conversation which I had just had with the celebrated linguist, and if I still possessed that part of my journal you would find there almost the exact words of the Abbé Mezzofanti; but those papers having been taken away from me by people who, under a pretext as ridiculous as odious, despoiled me, after the revolution of 1848, of all that I possessed at Paris, I must confine myself to mentioning the fact of the explanation which was given to me, without being able to tell you in what that explanation consisted.After what I have just recounted to you, I could add nothing to express to you the opinion which that long conversation with M. Mezzofanti (which during the few days that I passed at Bologna was followed by some other interviews much shorter, and as it were fugitive,) left in my mind on the subject of the erudition, as profound as it was various, of that universal linguist. As, however, I express here an opinion which certainly was not that of everybody,permit me to corroborate that opinion by the testimony of Giordani, a man not only celebrated in Italy for the admirable purity of his style, but who also enjoyed deserved reputation as a profound Grecian, and a consummate Latin scholar. The testimony of Giordani on the subject of the Abbé Mezzofanti is the more remarkable, because, besides Giordani’s having (as is generally known) a marked antipathy for the ultra-catholic party to which Mezzofanti was thought to belong, he and the Abbé had had some little personal quarrels the remembrance of which was not effaced. Notwithstanding this, I read in the letters of Giordani lately published at Milan, that, in his opinion, Mezzofanti was quite a superior man.”
“Among all these eminent men, the one that interested me most was unquestionably the Abbé, (afterwards Cardinal) Mezzofanti, who was then librarian at Bologna, and respecting whose astonishing power in languages I had heard the most extraordinary anecdotes. During a short excursion which I had previously made to Bologna, I had already got a glimpse of that celebrated man; but it was not until 1830 that I could be said to haveseen him. I was presented to him by one of my friends, Count Bianchetti, and I was received by him with great kindness. He made me promise to go and see him again, and offered to show me the library. I accepted his offer eagerly; but it was principally in the hope of having a long conversation with him that I repaired to the library next day.
Before going farther, I ought to say that I approached him with mixed feelings. Personally, I have always been disposed to respect and admire every man who possesses an incontestible superiority in any branch of human knowledge; and in this point of view, M. Mezzofanti, whom every body acknowledges to be the man who knew and could speak more languages than any other living man, had certainly a right to boundless admiration on my part. It was popularly reported at Bologna, that M. Mezzofanti, then fifty years old, knew as many languages as he counted years; and I had heard related in respect to him, by men in whose veracity I have full confidence, so many extraordinary histories, that he became in my eyes a sort of hero of legend or romance; but a hero of flesh and blood, who realized or even surpassed all the wonders attributed to Mithridates as a linguist. On the other hand, the liberal party, who certainly had no sympathies with the Abbé Mezzofanti, spread reports against him, by no means flattering; among which the one that had most frequently reached my ears, consisted in its being ceaselessly repeated, that the celebrated librarian at Bologna was a sort of parrot, endowed with the faculty of articulating sounds which he had heard, that he was only a miracle of memory, understanding having nothing to do with it; and that, independently of this trick of getting words by heart, this extraordinary man possessed no solid information, and little philological erudition. Without blindly adopting this bare assertion, I must acknowledge that the judgment passed on Mezzofanti by persons of some consideration, had made an impression upon my mind, far from being favourable to him: but that impression was soon dissipated in the course of the interview I had with him. Before leaving Florence, I had just read andcarefully studied the treatise on Indefinite Algebra, composed several ages before by Brahmegupta, and which, translated and enriched with an admirable introduction by Colebroke, had been published in London, in 1817.[434]Being still filled with admiration for the labours of the ancient Hindoos on indeterminate analysis, I mentioned the book casually to Mezzofanti, and merely to show him that even a man almost exclusively devoted to the study of mathematics, might take a lively interest in the labours of the Orientalists. I had no intention of introducing a scientific conversation on this subject with the celebrated librarian; and I must even add, that I thought him quite incapable of engaging in one. How great then was my surprise, when I saw him immediately seize the opportunity, and speak to me during half an hour on the astronomy and mathematics of the Indian races, in a way which would have done honour to a man whose chief occupation had been tracing the history of the sciences. Deeply astonished at so specific a knowledge, which had taken me quite unexpectedly, I eagerly sought explanation from him on points which had seemed to me the most difficult in the history of India; such, for instance, as the probable epoch when certain Indian astronomers had lived, before the Mahometan conquest, and how far those astronomers might have been able, directly or indirectly, to borrow from the Greeks. On all those points Mezzofanti answered on the spot, with great modesty, and as a man who knows how to doubt; but proving to me at the same time, that those were questions on which his mind had already paused, and which he had approached with all the necessaryaccomplishment of the accessory sciences. I cannot express how much that conversation interested me; and I did not delay to testify to Mezzofanti all the admiration which knowledge at once so varied and so profound, had excited in me. No more was said of visiting the library, or of seeing books. I had before me a most extraordinary living book, and one well calculated to confound the imagination. Encouraged by his courtesy and modesty, I could not resist my desire of putting questions to him on the mode which he had employed in making himself master of so many languages. He positively assured me, but without entering into any detail, that it was a thing less difficult than was generally thought; that there is in all languages a limited number of points to which it is necessary to pay particular attention; and that, when one is once master of those points, the remainder follows with great facility. He added, that, when one has learned ten or a dozen languages essentially different from one another, one may, with a little study and attention, learn any number of them. I strenuously urged him to publish his experience on the subject and on the result of his labours; but I observed in him a great aversion to the publication of his researches. He affirmed that the more we study, the more do we understand how difficult it is to avoid falling into errors; and, in speaking to me of several writings which he had composed, he told me that they were only essays which by no means deserved to see the light. In the midst of the conversation, as I was still urging him, he rose and went to look in a box for a manuscript with coloured designs, which he showed me, and which had for its object the explanation of the Mexican hieroglyphics. Having begged him to publish at least that work, he told me that it was only an essay, still imperfect, and that his intention was to recast it completely.
This excursion to America suggested to me the idea of putting a new question to him. I had collected at Florence, particularly with relation to bibliography, several translations of the whole Bible, or certain portions of the sacred books, in different foreign languages. Some of these translations were into languages spoken by North American savages; and in looking throughthem I had been struck with the measureless length[435]of most of the words of these tongues. Since the opportunity presented itself naturally, I asked M. Mezzofanti what he thought of those words, and whether the men who spoke languages apparently so calculated to put one out of breath, did not seem to be endowed with peculiar organs. Immediately taking down a book written in one of those languages, the celebrated linguist showed me practically how, in his opinion, the savages managed to pronounce these interminable words, without too much trouble. For fear of making mistakes, I cannot venture, after twenty-five years, to reproduce this explanation from memory. According to my usual practice, I had written out, on my return home, the conversation which I had just had with the celebrated linguist, and if I still possessed that part of my journal you would find there almost the exact words of the Abbé Mezzofanti; but those papers having been taken away from me by people who, under a pretext as ridiculous as odious, despoiled me, after the revolution of 1848, of all that I possessed at Paris, I must confine myself to mentioning the fact of the explanation which was given to me, without being able to tell you in what that explanation consisted.
After what I have just recounted to you, I could add nothing to express to you the opinion which that long conversation with M. Mezzofanti (which during the few days that I passed at Bologna was followed by some other interviews much shorter, and as it were fugitive,) left in my mind on the subject of the erudition, as profound as it was various, of that universal linguist. As, however, I express here an opinion which certainly was not that of everybody,permit me to corroborate that opinion by the testimony of Giordani, a man not only celebrated in Italy for the admirable purity of his style, but who also enjoyed deserved reputation as a profound Grecian, and a consummate Latin scholar. The testimony of Giordani on the subject of the Abbé Mezzofanti is the more remarkable, because, besides Giordani’s having (as is generally known) a marked antipathy for the ultra-catholic party to which Mezzofanti was thought to belong, he and the Abbé had had some little personal quarrels the remembrance of which was not effaced. Notwithstanding this, I read in the letters of Giordani lately published at Milan, that, in his opinion, Mezzofanti was quite a superior man.”
M. Libri[436]proceeds to cite several passages from Giordani’s letters, which, as I have already quoted them in their proper place, it is needless to repeat here. Indeed no additional testimony could add weight to his own authority on any of the subjects to which he refers in this most interesting letter.
Soon after this interview, the quiet of Mezzofanti’s life was interrupted for a time. The Revolution of Paris in July, 1830, and the events in Belgium and Poland by which it was rapidly followed, were not slow to provoke a response in Italy. The long repressed hopes of the republican party were thus suddenly realised, and the organization of the secret societies became at once more active and more extended. For a time the prudent and moderate policyadopted by Pius VIII. in reference to the events in France, had the effect of defeating the measures of the Italian revolutionists; but his death on the thirtieth of November in that year, appeared to afford a favourable opportunity for their attempt. During the conclave for the election of his successor, all the preparations were made. The stroke was sudden and rapid. The very day after the election of Gregory XVI., but before the news had been transmitted from Rome, an outbreak took place at Modena. It was followed, on the next day, by a similar proceeding at Bologna,—by the calling out of a national guard, and the proclamation of a provisional government. The Papal delegate was expelled from Bologna. The Duke of Modena fled to Mantua. Maria Louisa, Duchess of Parma, took refuge in France. And on the 26th of the same month, deputies from all the revolted states, by a joint instrument, proclaimed the United Republic of Italy!
This success, however, was as short-lived as it had been rapid. The duke of Modena was reinstated by the arms of Austria on the 9th of March. Order was restored about the same date at Parma: and, before the end of the month of March, all traces of the revolutionary movement had for the time disappeared throughout the States of the Church.[437]
It has been customary for the cities andcommuniof the Papal States on the accession of each new Pontiff,to send a deputation of their most notable citizens to offer their homage and present their congratulations at the foot of the throne. Many of the chief cities had already complied with the established usage.[438]Bologna, restored to a calmer mind, now hastened to follow the example. Three delegates were deputed for the purpose—the Marchese Zambeccari, Count Lewis Isolani, and the abate Mezzofanti. They arrived in Rome in the beginning of May,[439]and on the 9th of the same month, were admitted to an audience of the Pope, who received them with great kindness, and inquired anxiously into the condition of Bologna, and the grievances which had given occasion to the recent discontents.
To Mezzofanti in particular the Pope showed marked attention. It had been one of his requests to Cardinal Opizzoni, the archbishop, when returning to Bologna on the suppression of the Revolution, that he should send Professor Mezzofanti to visit him. He still remembered the disinterestedness which the professor had shewn in their first correspondence; and the time had now come when it was in his power to make some acknowledgment. A few days after Mezzofanti’s arrival he was named domestic prelate and proto-notary apostolic, and at his final audience before returning to Bologna, the pope renewed in person the invitation to settle permanently in Rome, which had formerly been made to him by CardinalConsalvi on the part of Pius VII. Mezzofanti was still as happy in his humble position as he had been in 1815. He still retained his early love for his native city and for the friends among whom he had now begun to grow old. But to persist farther would be ungracious. He could no longer be insensible to a wish so flattering and so earnestly enforced. It was not, however, until, as the Pope himself declared, “after a long siege,” (veramente un assedio) that he finally acquiesced;—overpowered, as it would seem, by that genuine and unaffected cordiality which was the great characteristic of the good Pope Gregory XVI.
“Holy Father,” was his singularly graceful acknowledgment of the kind interest which the Pope had manifested in his regard, “people say that I can speak a great many languages. In no one of them, nor in them all, can I find words to express how deeply I feel this mark of your Holiness’s regard.”
It is hardly necessary to say that one of the very first visits which he paid in Rome, was to the Propaganda. On the morning after his arrival, the feast, as it would seem, of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, he went to the sacristy with the intention of saying mass; and having, with his habitual retiringness, knelt down to say the usual preparatory prayers without making himself known, he remained for a considerable time unobserved and therefore neglected. He was at length recognised by Dr. Cullen, the present archbishop of Dublin, (at that time professor of Scripture in the Propaganda,) who at once procured for the distinguished stranger the attention which he justlydeserved in such an institution. It is a pleasing illustration, at once of the retentiveness of his memory and of the simple kindliness of his disposition, that in an interview with Dr. Cullen not very long before his death, he reminded him of this circumstance, and renewed his thanks even for so trifling a service. After mass, he made his way, unattended, to one of thecamerate, or corridors. The first room which he chanced to meet was that of a Turkish student, named Hassun, now archbishop of the United Greek Church at Constantinople. He at once entered into conversation with Hassun in Turkish. This he speedily changed to Romaic with a youth named Musabini, who is now the Catholic Greek bishop at Smyrna. From Greek he turned to English, on the approach of Dr. O’Connor, an Irish student, now bishop of Pittsburgh in the United States. As the unwonted sounds began to attract attention, the students poured in, one by one, each in succession to find himself greeted in his native tongue; till at length, the bell being rung, the entire community assembled, and gave full scope to the wonderful quickness and variety of his accomplishment. Dr. O’Connor describes it as the most extraordinary scene he has ever witnessed; and he adds a further very remarkable circumstance that, during the many new visits which Mezzofanti paid to the Propaganda afterwards, he never once forgot the language of any student with whom he had spoken on this occasion, nor once failed to address him in his native tongue.
The deputation returned to Bologna in the end ofJune. Mezzofanti accompanied it, but only for the purpose of making arrangements for his permanent change of residence.
He had accepted the commission with exceeding reluctance, and it is painful to have to record that on this, the only occasion on which he consented to leave his habitual retirement, he was not suffered to escape his share of the rude shocks and buffets which seem to be inseparable from public life.
All who were most familiar with Mezzofanti, to whatever party in Italian politics they belonged, have borne testimony to the sincerity of his convictions and the entire disinterestedness of his views—a disinterestedness which had marked the entire tenor of his life, and had been attested by long and painful sacrifices. Nevertheless, on the return of the Bolognese deputation from Rome, he had the mortification to find his conduct misrepresented and his motives maligned. The marked attention which he had experienced at the hands of the Pope, was made a crime. His simple and long-tried loyalty—the spontaneous homage which a mind such as his renders almost by instinct—was denounced as the interested subserviency of a courtier; and the favours which had been bestowed on him in Rome, were represented as the price of his treason to Bologna.
Mezzofanti felt deeply these ungenerous and unfounded criticisms. His health was seriously affected by the chagrin which they occasioned; and these memories of his last days in Bologna often clouded in after years the happier reminiscences of his native city on which his mind delighted to dwell.
Owing to the unsettled condition of Italy during this year, but few Englishmen visited Bologna. Among these were Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Canon of Westminster (who also saw Mezzofanti in the following year in Rome,) and Mr. Milnes, of Frystone Hall, Yorkshire, father of the poet, Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes. The latter was much amused by Mezzofanti’s proposing, when he heard he was a Yorkshire man, to speak Welsh with him, “as Yorkshire lay so near Wales!”
It would hardly be worth while to note this amusing blunder in English topography, (a blunder more remarkable in Mezzofanti, as in all geographical details he was ordinarily extremely accurate,) were it not that it is another testimony on the disputed question of his acquaintance with the Welsh language.
He left Bologna finally for Rome in October, 1831. The Pope afterwards used jokingly to say, that “the acquisition of Mezzofanti for Rome was the only good that came of the Revolution of Bologna in 1831.” By the kind care of the Pope, he was provided with apartments in the Quirinal Palace, nearly opposite the Church of Saint Andrew—the same apartments at the window of which the lamented Monsignor Palma was shot during the late Revolution.