CHAPTER VI.[1817-1820.]

Southey, in one of his pleasant gossiping letters to Bedford, tells that when M. de Sagrie was going to publish a French translation of Southey’s “Roderick,” his publisher, Le Bel, insisted upon having a life of the poet prefixed. M. de Sagrie objected; and at last, in order to get rid of the printer’s importunities, said that he knew nothing whatever of the life of Mr. Southey. “N’importe!” was the printer’s cool reply, “Ecrivez toujours, brodez! Brodez-la un peu; que ce soit vrai ou non, ce ne fait rien.”[371]

We have come to a part of Mezzofanti’s quiet and uniform life in which there are so few incidents to break the monotony of the uneventful narrative, that, at least in so far as its interest is concerned, his biographer is almost in the same condition with M. de Sagrie. The true purpose of this narrative, however—to exhibit the faculty rather than the man—seemsto me to depend less on the accumulation of piquant anecdotes and striking adventures, than upon a calm and truthful survey of his intellectual attainments in the successive stages of his career. Instead, therefore, of having recourse to the device suggested by De Sagrie’s enterprising publisher, and supplying, by a little ingenious “broderie,” the deficiency of exciting incident, I shall content myself with weaving together, in the order of time, the several notices of Mezzofanti, by travellers and others, which have come within my reach; interspersing such explanations, incidents, illustrations, and anecdotes, as I have been able to glean, among the scanty memorials of this period which have survived. Fortunately, from the year which we have now reached, there exists a tolerably connected series of such sketches. They are, of course, from the most various hands—from authors

of all tongues and creeds;—Some were those who counted beads,Some of mosque, and some of church,And some, or I mis-say, of neither;—

of all tongues and creeds;—

Some were those who counted beads,

Some of mosque, and some of church,

And some, or I mis-say, of neither;—

but their value, it need hardly be said, is enhanced by this very variety. Proceeding from so many independent sources, produced for the most part, too, upon the spot, and in the order of time in which they appear in the narrative;—these unconnected sketches may be believed to present, if a less minute and circumstantial, certainly a more vivid as well as more reliable, portraiture of Mezzofanti, than could be hoped even from the daily scrutiny of familiar friends, intimately conversant with his every day life,but always viewing his character from the same unvarying point, and rather submitting the result of their own matured observations of what Mezzofanti seemed to them to be, than affording materials for a calm and dispassionate estimate of what he really was. Nor must it be forgotten that no single chronicler, even had he the circumstantiality of a Boswell, could be capable of keeping a record of Mezzofanti’s life, which could be available as the foundation of a satisfactory judgment as to the real extent and nature of his linguistic accomplishment. It is only another Mezzofanti who would be a competent witness on such a question; and, in default of a single Polyglot critic of his attainments in all the languages which he is supposed to have known, we shall best consult the interests of truth and science, by considering severally, in reference to each of these languages, the judgment formed regarding his performance therein by those whose native language it was.

I have already said that the office of librarian brought him into contact with most of the strangers, especially of the literary class, who visited Bologna. In Bolognese society, too, he was more courted and sought after than his modest and retiring disposition would have desired. In the house of the Cardinal-Archbishop Opizzoni, and of the Cardinal Legates, Lanti, and Spina, he was always an honoured guest. With several of the noble families of the city, especially the Marescalchi, the Angelelli, the Amerini, and the Zambeccari, he lived on terms of the closest intimacy. The Cavaliere Pezzana mentions that when, on a visit toBologna in 1817, he was dining at the first named palace, Mezzofanti came in uninvited, and almost as one of the family. At all these houses his opportunities of meeting foreigners of every race and language may easily be believed to have been frequent, and of the most various character.

The earliest English visitor of the Abate Mezzofanti whom I have been able to discover is Mr. Harford, author of the recent “Life of Michael Angelo Buonarroti,”[372]and proprietor of the valuable gallery of Blaise Castle, which Dr. Waagen describes in his “Treasures of Art in England.”[373]

Mr. Harford visited Bologna in the autumn of 1817, at which time he first made Mezzofanti’s acquaintance. He renewed the acquaintance subsequently at Rome, and on both occasions had a full opportunity of observing and of testing his extraordinary gift of language. Mr. Harford has kindly communicated to me his recollections of Mezzofanti at both these periods of life, which, (although the latter part anticipates the order of time by nearly thirty years,) may most naturally be inserted together.

“I first made the acquaintance of the Abbé Mezzofanti,” writes Mr. Harford, “at the table of Cardinal Lanti, brother of the Duke of Lanti, then Legate of Bologna. This was in the year 1817. The Cardinal was then living at the public palace at Bologna, but I had previously known him in Rome. He was a man of highly cultivated mind, and of gentlemanly and agreeable manners. He made his guests perfectly at their ease, and I wellrecollect, after dinner, forming one of a group around Abbé Mezzofanti, and listening with deep interest to his animated conversation, which had reference, in consequence of questions put to him, to various topics, illustrating his wonderful acquaintance with the principal languages of the world. Report, at this time, gave him credit for being master of upwards of forty languages; and I recollect, among other things, his giving proof of his familiar acquaintance with the Welsh. I had some particular conversation with him upon the origin of what is called Saxon, Norman, and Lombard architecture, and I remember his entire accordance with the opinion I threw out, that it resolved itself in each case into a corruption of Roman architecture.“My next interview with him was after a long lapse of time, for I did not meet him again till the year 1846, the winter of which I passed in Rome. The Abbé was then changed into the Cardinal Mezzofanti. I found him occupying a handsome suite of apartments in a palazzo in the Piazza Santi Apostoli. He assured me he well remembered meeting Mrs. H. and myself at Cardinal Lanti’s, on the occasion above referred to; and in the course of several visits which I paid him during the winter and ensuing spring, his conversation was always animated and agreeable. He conversed with me in English, which he spoke with the utmost fluency and correctness, and only with a slight foreign accent. His familiar knowledge of our provincial dialects quite surprised me. ‘Do you know much of the Yorkshire dialect?’ he said to me: and then, with much humour, gave me various specimens of its peculiarities; ‘and yourZummersetshiredialect,’ he went on to say, laughing as he spoke, and imitating it.“On another occasion he spoke to me with high admiration of the style of Addison, preferring it to that of any English author with whom he was acquainted. He commended its ease, elegance, and grace; and then contrasted it with the grandiloquence of Johnson, whose powerful mind and copious fancy he also greatly admired, though he deemed him much inferior in real wit and taste to Addison. In all this I fully agreed with him; and then inquired whether he had ever read Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and, finding he had not, I told him he must allow me to send itto him, as I felt assured, from the interest he displayed in our English literature, it would much amuse and delight him. This promise I subsequently fulfilled.[374]“Speaking to me about an English lady with whom I was well acquainted, he eagerly inquired, ‘Is she a blue-stocking?’“He one day talked to me about the Chinese language and its difficulties, and told me that some time back a gentleman who had resided in China visited him. ‘I concluded,’ he added, ‘that I might address him in Chinese, and did so;—but, after exchanging a few sentences with me, he begged that we might pursue our conversation in French. We talked, however, long enough for me to discover that he spoke inthe Canton dialect.’“That one who had never set his foot out of Italy should be thus able in an instant to detect the little peculiarities of dialect in a man who had lived in China, did, I acknowledge, strike me with astonishment.“This sort of critical sagacity in languages enabled the Cardinal to render important services to the Propaganda College at Rome, in which he held a high office. I was not only struck with the fluency, but with the rapidity with which he spoke the English language, and, I might also add, the idiomatic correctness of his expressions.“So much of celebrity attached itself to his name that foreigners of distinction gladly sought occasions of making his acquaintance. On being ushered into his presence on one of my visits I found him surrounded by a large party of admirers, including several ladies, who all appeared highly delighted with his animated conversation.”

“My next interview with him was after a long lapse of time, for I did not meet him again till the year 1846, the winter of which I passed in Rome. The Abbé was then changed into the Cardinal Mezzofanti. I found him occupying a handsome suite of apartments in a palazzo in the Piazza Santi Apostoli. He assured me he well remembered meeting Mrs. H. and myself at Cardinal Lanti’s, on the occasion above referred to; and in the course of several visits which I paid him during the winter and ensuing spring, his conversation was always animated and agreeable. He conversed with me in English, which he spoke with the utmost fluency and correctness, and only with a slight foreign accent. His familiar knowledge of our provincial dialects quite surprised me. ‘Do you know much of the Yorkshire dialect?’ he said to me: and then, with much humour, gave me various specimens of its peculiarities; ‘and yourZummersetshiredialect,’ he went on to say, laughing as he spoke, and imitating it.

“On another occasion he spoke to me with high admiration of the style of Addison, preferring it to that of any English author with whom he was acquainted. He commended its ease, elegance, and grace; and then contrasted it with the grandiloquence of Johnson, whose powerful mind and copious fancy he also greatly admired, though he deemed him much inferior in real wit and taste to Addison. In all this I fully agreed with him; and then inquired whether he had ever read Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and, finding he had not, I told him he must allow me to send itto him, as I felt assured, from the interest he displayed in our English literature, it would much amuse and delight him. This promise I subsequently fulfilled.[374]

“Speaking to me about an English lady with whom I was well acquainted, he eagerly inquired, ‘Is she a blue-stocking?’

“He one day talked to me about the Chinese language and its difficulties, and told me that some time back a gentleman who had resided in China visited him. ‘I concluded,’ he added, ‘that I might address him in Chinese, and did so;—but, after exchanging a few sentences with me, he begged that we might pursue our conversation in French. We talked, however, long enough for me to discover that he spoke inthe Canton dialect.’

“That one who had never set his foot out of Italy should be thus able in an instant to detect the little peculiarities of dialect in a man who had lived in China, did, I acknowledge, strike me with astonishment.

“This sort of critical sagacity in languages enabled the Cardinal to render important services to the Propaganda College at Rome, in which he held a high office. I was not only struck with the fluency, but with the rapidity with which he spoke the English language, and, I might also add, the idiomatic correctness of his expressions.

“So much of celebrity attached itself to his name that foreigners of distinction gladly sought occasions of making his acquaintance. On being ushered into his presence on one of my visits I found him surrounded by a large party of admirers, including several ladies, who all appeared highly delighted with his animated conversation.”

We shall have other opportunities of adverting to his curiously minute acquaintance, not only with English literature, but even with the provincial dialects of English, by which Mr. Harford was so much struck. But, as some difference of opinion hasbeen expressed with regard to his acquaintance with Welsh, I think it right to note the circumstance that Mr. Harford distinctly remembers him, as early as 1817, to have given “proofs of familiar acquaintance” with that language.[375]

Somewhat later in the same year, November, 1817, Mr. Stewart Rose visited Mezzofanti. The ordeal to which his linguistic powers were submitted in Mr. Rose’s presence was more severe and more varied than that witnessed by Mr. Harford; the former having heard him tried in German, Greek, and Turkish, as well as in English. But as we shall have abundant independent testimony for each of these, Mr. Rose’s testimony is specially important, as recording the exceeding accuracy of Mezzofanti’s English, which he tested by “long and repeated conversations.”

“As this country,” he writes, “has been fertile in every variety of genius, from that which handles the pencil to that which sweeps the skies with the telescope; so even in this, her least favourite beat, she has produced men who, in early life, have embraced such a circle of languages, as one should hardly imagine their ages would have enabled them to obtain. Thus the wonders which are related of one of these, Pico di Mirandola, I always considered fabulous, till I was myself the witness of acquisitions which can scarcely be considered less extraordinary.

“The living lion to whom I allude is Signor Mezzofanti of Bologna, who when I saw him, though he was only thirty-six years old, read twenty and wrote eighteen languages. This is the least marvellous part of the story. He spoke all these fluently, and those of which I could judge with the most extraordinary precision. I had the pleasure of dining with him formerly in the house of a Bolognese lady, at whose table a German officer declared he could not have distinguished him from a German. He passed the whole of the next day with G—— and myself, and G— told me he should have taken him for an Englishman, who had been some time out of England. A Smyrniote servant who was with me, bore equal testimony to his skill in other languages, and declared he might pass for a Greek or a Turk in the dominions of the Grand Seignior. But what most surprised me was his accuracy; for, during long and repeated conversations in English, he never once misapplied thesignof a tense, that fearful stumblingblock to Scotch and Irish, in whose writings there is always to be found some abuse of these undefinable niceties. The marvel was, if possible, rendered more marvellous by this gentleman’s accomplishments and information, things rare in linguists, who generally mistake the means for the end. It ought also to be stated that his various acquisitions had all been made in Bologna, from which, when I saw him, he had never wandered above thirty miles.”[376]

Mr. Rose was mistaken in supposing that Mezzofanti at this time was but thirty-six years old. He was in reality forty-three; but the testimony which he bears to his “general accomplishments and information” will be found to be confirmed by very many succeeding travellers.

It was earlier in the same year, probably in June, on his return from Rome to Venice,[377]that Lord Byron first saw Mezzofanti. The extract given by Moore from his Journal, in which he describes the impressions made upon him by their intercourse has no date attached; but as he also alludes to Mezzofanti as among “the great names of Italy” in the Dedication of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold, which is dated January, 2nd, 1818, it would seem likely that he had met him at least before that date.[378]Of the particulars of their intercourse no record is preserved; but Mezzofanti always spoke with profound interest of his noble visitor. He was perfectly familiar with his poetry. The late Dr. Cox of Southampton assured me that his criticism of the several poems, and especially of Childe Harold, would do credit to our best reviews. And he often expressed the deepest regret for the early and unhappy fate, by which this gifted man was called away while he still lay in the shadow of that cold and gloomy scepticism which so often marred his better impulses, and—

Flung o’er all that’s warm and bright,The winter of an icy creed.

Flung o’er all that’s warm and bright,

The winter of an icy creed.

“Alas!” he one day said to M. Manavit, “that desolating scepticism which had long oppressed his soul, was not natural to such a mind. Sooner or later he would have awakened from it. And then it only remained for him to open the most glorious page in his Childe Harold’s adventurous Pilgrimage—that in which, reviewing all his doubts, his struggles, and his sorrows, and laying bare the deep wounds of his haughty soul, he should have sought rest from them all in the peaceful bosom of the faith of his fathers.”[379]

Such a feeling as this on the part of Mezzofanti gives a melancholy interest to the well-known passage, half laughing, half admiring, in which Byron records his recollections of the great linguist.

“In general,” he says, “I do not draw well with literary men;—not that I dislike them; but I never knew what to say to them, after I have praised their last publication. There are several exceptions, to be sure; but then they have either been men of the world, such as Scott and Moore, &c., or visionaries out of it, such as Shelley, &c.; but your literary every-day man and I never met well in company;—especially your foreigners, whom I never could abide, except Giordani, &c., &c., &c., (I really can’t name any other.) I don’t remember a man amongst them whom I ever wished to see twice, except perhaps Mezzophanti, who is a monster of languages, the Briareus of parts of speech, a walking polyglot, and more;—who ought to have existed at the time of theTower of Babel, as universal interpreter.[380]He is, indeed, a marvel—unassuming also. I tried him in all the tongues in which I knew a single oath or adjuration to the gods, against post-boys, savages, Tartars, boatmen, sailors, pilots, gondoliers, muleteers, camel-drivers, vetturini, post-masters, post-houses, post, everything; and egad! he astounded me—even to my English.”

The Abbé Gaume adds, in reference to the last of these languages, an anecdote still current in Rome, though doubtless a mere exaggeration[381]of the real story; viz., that, “when Byron had exhausted his vocabulary of English slang, Mezzofanti quietly asked: ‘And is that all?’

‘I can go no further.’ replied the noble poet, ‘unless I coin words for the purpose.’

‘Pardon me, my Lord,’ rejoined Mezzofanti; and proceeded to repeat for him a variety of the refinements of London slang, till then unknown to his visitor’s rich vocabulary!”[382]

During the winter of 1817-8, a literary society was formed in Bologna for the cultivation of poetry and the publication of literary and scientific essays, of which Mezzofanti was appointed president.

The original members of this body were twenty-one in number, and included Ranzani, Angelelli, Mezzofanti’s nephew, Giuseppe Minarelli, several professors, both of the University, and of the Academia delle Belle Arti, and some literary noblemen and gentlemen of the city. They met occasionally for readings and recitations; and printed a serial collection, calledOpuscoli Letterarj di Bologna. I had hopes of learning something from the records of this society, or from the recollections of its members, which might tend to illustrate the history of Mezzofanti’s studies at this period: but, unhappily, not a single original member of the society is now living; and their only publication available for the purposes of this biography is Mezzofanti’s ownDiscorso in Lode del P. Aponte;—his solitary publication, which was printed in theOpuscoli Letterarj, in 1820.

Mezzofanti continued, even after the formation of this society, to frequent the meetings of the Academy of the Institute. On the 3rd of December, 1818, heread a paper in this Academy, “on a remarkable Mexican MS., preserved in the Library of the Institute.” This paper was most probably the basis of the Essay upon the Mexican Calendar already alluded to. As it entered minutely into the whole subject of the hieroglyphical writings of the Mexicans, and discussed at some length the opinions of all the various writers on Mexican antiquities down to Humboldt, the paper created very considerable interest in the Academy, and was spoken of with praise by the literary journals of the day.[383]

The visit of the Emperor Francis I. of Austria to Bologna in 1819, contributed still more to establish the reputation of Mezzofanti. Having appointed an interview with him, the Emperor took the precaution of securing during the audience the presence of a number of members of his suite, carefully selected so as to represent the chief languages of the Austrian Empire. Each in turn, German, Magyar, Bohemian, Wallachian, Illyrian, and Pole, took occasion to address the astonished professor; but although naturally somewhat startled by the novelty of the scene, and perhaps abashed by the presence of royalty, he replied with such perfect fluency and correctness to each, “as to extort not merely approval but admiration and applause.”[384]

The year 1819 is further notable as the date of Mezzofanti’s only published composition, the above-named panegyric of his early friend and instructor Emanuel Aponte. The death of this excellent and venerable man had occurred more than three yearsearlier, (November 22, 1815), and his funeral oration had been pronounced by Filippo Schiassi, the professor of numismatics, as also by Pacifico Deani, whose discourse was translated into Spanish by Don Camillo Salina. Aponte’s grateful pupil, nevertheless, took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the opening of the public studies of the university, to offer his own especial tribute to the piety and learning of the good old father, and particularly to the excellence of his method of teaching the Greek language and the merits of a Grammar which he had published for the use of the higher schools.

The Discourse is chiefly occupied (after a sketch of Aponte’s life and character) with a criticism of the method pursued in this Grammar,—a criticism chiefly noticeable as embodying the method, (which we know from other sources to have been the speaker’s own,) of studying a language rather by rhythm than by rule; “by ascertaining its normal structure, the principle which governs its inflexions, and especially the dominant principle which regulates the changes of letters according to the different organs of speech.”

As a specimen of this general manner of the Discourse, I shall translate the concluding paragraphs,—the exhortation to the study of Greek literature with which the professor takes leave of his audience.

“And still shall these studies flourish, my dear young friends, perpetuated by you under the guidance of the instructions which Father Emanuel bequeathed to us. His method, which, in the acquisition of the language, rather exercises the reason thanburdens the memory, and which makes good sense the chief basis for the right interpretation of an author, will assuredly conduct to the desired end that ardour which, on this solemn occasion, you feel renewed within you: an ardour so great that, had I to-day spoken solely of the difficulties and obstacles in the path of learning, it would, nevertheless, give you strength and courage to encounter and overcome them. Well, therefore, may we have confidence in you, and believe that you will preserve to your native land the fame achieved by your forefathers in Grecian studies. These studies are the special inheritance of our countrymen. In Italy the muses of Greece sought an asylum, when they fled before the invader from their ancient glorious abode. Learned Greeks were at that period dispersed through our principal cities, where, establishing schools, they found munificent patrons and zealous pupils. In Rome Grecian literature enjoyed the generous patronage of Nicholas V.; and around Cardinal Bessarion were gathered men of vast erudition, who renewed the lustre of the old Athenian schools, cultivating a wiser philosophy, however, than the ancients employed; and, thanks to the precious volumes accumulated by those two illustrious Mæcenases and by the princes of Italy; thanks to the skill of the masters and the aptitude and excellence of Italian genius, Grecian literature, conjointly with Latin, quickly attained the highest pitch of cultivation amongst us, ushering in the golden age of Italian letters. A countless series of names distinguished in this branch of learning presents itself before me: but I delight rather to consider in prospect the future series which begins in you. Be not disturbed by any fear that the pursuit to which I am exhorting you will hinder the profounder study of the sciences. Alas, very different are the thoughts, very different, indeed, the cares which distract the mind of youth and turn its generous fervour aside, miserably disappointing the bright hopes that were formed of it. No: theologians, lawyers, philosophers, physicians, mathematicians, all men of science and learning, have ever found in the Greek literature their most agreeable solace. Many of the sciences had, in Greece, early reached a high degree of perfection; others made a noble beginning in that country; most of them are embellishedwith titles borrowed from its language; and all of them have recourse to Greek when they wish, with precision and dignity, to denominate, and thereby to define, the objects of their consideration. ‘These studies,’ says one who owed much of his eloquence to the industry with which he cultivated them, ‘furnish youth with profitable and delightful knowledge; they amuse maturer years; they adorn prosperity, and in adversity afford an asylum from care; they delight us in the quiet of home, and are no hindrance in affairs of the gravest moment; they discover for us many a useful thing; for the traveller they procure the regard of strangers, and, in the solitude of the country, they solace the mind with the purest of pleasures.’ Let your main study, then, be the sterner sciences; Greek shall follow as a faithful companion, affording you useful assistance therein as well as delightful recreation. And thus, thinking of nothing else, having nothing else at heart, than religion and learning, let the expectations of your friends and of your country be fulfilled in you. Thus shall you correspond with the paternal designs of our best of princes, His Holiness, the Sovereign Pontiff, who, in his munificence and splendour, daily enlarges the dignity of this illustrious University, promoting, by wise provisions, your education and your glory. And, whilst you vigorously prosecute the career so well begun, while your love for Greek increases with the increasing profit you derive from it, I, too, will exult in your brilliant, progress. To this I will look for a monument, truly durable and immortal, of my dear Father Emanuel, to whom I feel myself bound by eternal gratitude; since gratitude, reverence, and devotion are surely due to them who, by example and by precept, point out to us the road to virtue and to learning, inviting and exhorting us, with loving solicitude, to direct our lives to praiseworthy pursuits and to true happiness.”[385](pp. 22-26.)

Soon after the death of Father Aponte, Mezzofanti had the further grief of losing his friend, the celebrated Signora Clotilda Tambroni, who, although considerably older than he, had been, as we have seen, his fellow pupil under Father Aponte, and with whom he had ever afterwards continued upon terms of most intimate friendship. Like Mezzofanti, the Signora Tambroni was, after the publication of the concordat, reinstated in the Greek professorship from which she had been dispossessed at the occupation of Bologna by the French. She was an excellent linguist, being familiar with Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, and English,[386]and a poetess of some reputation, not only in her own, but also in the learned languages.[387]The Breslau professor, already referred to, Herr Kephalides, was much interested by her conversation; and that the interest which she created did not arise merely from the unusual circumstance of a lady’s devoting herself to such studies, but from her own unquestioned learning and ability, is attested by all who knew her. “It was a pleasant thing,” says Lady Morgan,[388]“to hear her learned coadjutor [Mezzofanti] in describing to us the good qualities of her heart, do ample justice to the profound learning which had raised her to an equality of collegiate rank with himself, without an innuendo at that erudition, which, in England, is a greater female stigma than vice itself.”

The lively but caustic authoress just named, visited Italy in 1819-20. In her account of Bologna she devotes a note to the Abate Mezzofanti, under whose escort, (which she recognises as a peculiar advantage,) she visited the library and museum of the University.

“The well-known Abate Mezzofanti, librarian to the Institute,” she writes, “was of our party. Conversing with this very learned person on the subject of his ‘forty languages,’ he smiled at the exaggeration, and said, that although he had gone over the outline of forty languages, he was not master of them, as he had dropped such as had not books worth reading. His Greek master, being a Spaniard, taught him Spanish. The German, Polish, Bohemian, and Hungarian tongues he originally acquired during the occupation of Bologna by the Austrian power; and afterwards he had learned French from the French, and English by reading and by conversing with English travellers. With all this superfluity of languages, he spoke nothing but Bolognese in his own family. With us, he always spoke English, and with scarcely any accent, though I believe he has never been out of Bologna. His tone of phrase and peculiar selection of words were those of the ‘Spectator;’ and it is probable that he was most conversant with the English works of that day. The Abate Mezzofanti was professor of the Greek and Oriental languages under the French: when Buonaparte abolished the Greek professorship, Mezzofanti was pensioned off. He was again made Greek professor by the Austrians, againset aside by the French, and again restored by the Pope.”[389]

Like most of Lady Morgan’s sketches, this account of Mezzofanti, although interesting, is not free from inaccuracies. Thus she falls into the common error already noticed, that Mezzofanti up to this time “had never been out of Bologna,” and a still more important mistake as to the cause of his first deprivation of his professorship. He was dispossessed of this professorship, (which, it may be added, was not of Greek but of Arabic,) not because the professorship was suppressed, but because he declined to take the oaths to the new government. The account of his second deprivation is also inaccurate; and the assertion that he never cultivated any languages except those which “had books worth reading,” we shall see hereafter, to be entirely without foundation.

The statement too, that “he spoke only Bolognese in his own family” is an exaggeration. With the elder members of the family—his father, his mother, and his sister, Signora Minarelli—it was so; and there was a cousin of his, named Antonia Mezzofanti, a lively and agreeable old dame, and a frequent guest at the house of his sister, to whom he was much attached, and with whom he delighted to converse in the pleasant dialect of Bologna. But the children of his sister were all well educated, and, like the educated classes throughout all the provincial cities of Italy, habitually spoke the common and classical Italian language. Even after Mezzofanti came to Rome, when questionedas to the number of languages that he spoke, he often used jestingly to reply: “fifty, and Bolognese.”[390]

Very nearly at the same time with Lady Morgan’s interview, Mezzofanti was visited by a tourist far more competent to form a just opinion of the extent of his attainments—M. Molbech, a Danish scholar, author of a Tour in Germany, France, England, and Italy. I shall close the chapter with his testimony. It is chiefly valuable, in reference to his own language, the Danish, in which he had an opportunity of fully testing Mezzofanti’s knowledge, in an interview of nearly two hours’ duration. It is clear, too, from the very tone of his narrative, that, while he carried away the highest admiration for the extraordinary man whom he had seen, he was by no means disposed to fall into that blind and indiscriminate eulogy of which other less instructed and more imaginative visitors have been accused.

“At last, in the afternoon,” he writes, “I succeeded in meeting one of the living wonders of Italy, the librarian Mezzofanti, with whom I had only spoken for a few moments in the gallery,when I passed through Bologna before: I now spent a couple of hours with him, at his lodgings in the university building, and at the library, and would willingly, for his sake alone, have prolonged my stay at Bologna for a couple of days, if I had not been bound by contract with the vetturino as far as Venice. His celebrity must be an inconvenience to him; for scarcely any educated traveller leaves Bologna without having paid him a visit, and the hired guides never omit to mention his name among the first curiosities of the town. This learned Italian, who has never been so far from his birthplace, Bologna, as to Florence or Rome, is certainly one of the world’s greatest geniuses in point of languages. I do not know the number he understands, but there is scarcely any European dialect, whether Romanic, Scandinavian, or Slavonic, that this miraculous polyglottist does not speak. It is said the total amounts to more than thirty languages; and among them is that of the gipsies, which he learned to speak from a gipsy who was quartered with an Hungarian regiment at Bologna.“I found a German with him, with whom he was conversing in fluent and well sounding German; when we were alone, and I began to speak to him in the same language, he interrupted me with a question in Danish, ‘Hvorledes har det behaget dem i Italien?’ (‘How have you been pleased with Italy?’) After this, he pursued the conversation in Danish, by his own desire, almost all the time I continued with him, as this, according to his own polite expression, was a pleasure he did not often enjoy; and he spoke the language, from want of exercise, certainly not with the same fluency and ease as English or German, but with almost entire correctness. Imagine my delight at such a conversation! Of Danish books, however, I found in his rich and excellent philological collection no more than Baden’s Grammar, and Hallage’s Norwegian Vocabulary; and in the library Haldorson’s Icelandic Dictionary, in which he made me read him a couple of pages of the preface as a lesson in pronunciation. Our conversation turned mostly on Northern and German literature. The last he is pretty minutely acquainted with; and he is very fond of German poetry, which he has succeeded in bringing intofashion with the ladies of Bologna, so that Schiller and Goethe, whom the Romans hardly know by name, are here read in the original, and their works are to be had in the library. This collection occupies a finely-built saloon, in which it is arranged in dark presses with wire gratings, and is said to contain about 120,000 volumes. Besides Mezzofanti, there are an under librarian, two assistants, and three other servants. Books are bought to the amount of about 1000 scudi, or more than 200l.sterling, a year. Mezzofanti is not merely a linguist, but is well acquainted with literary history and biography, and also with the library under his charge. As an author he is not known, so far as I am aware; and he seems at present to be no older than about forty. I must add, what perhaps would be least expected from a learned man who has been unceasingly occupied with linguistic studies, and has hardly been out of his native town, that he has the finest and most polished manners, and, at the same time, the most engaging good nature.”[391]

“I found a German with him, with whom he was conversing in fluent and well sounding German; when we were alone, and I began to speak to him in the same language, he interrupted me with a question in Danish, ‘Hvorledes har det behaget dem i Italien?’ (‘How have you been pleased with Italy?’) After this, he pursued the conversation in Danish, by his own desire, almost all the time I continued with him, as this, according to his own polite expression, was a pleasure he did not often enjoy; and he spoke the language, from want of exercise, certainly not with the same fluency and ease as English or German, but with almost entire correctness. Imagine my delight at such a conversation! Of Danish books, however, I found in his rich and excellent philological collection no more than Baden’s Grammar, and Hallage’s Norwegian Vocabulary; and in the library Haldorson’s Icelandic Dictionary, in which he made me read him a couple of pages of the preface as a lesson in pronunciation. Our conversation turned mostly on Northern and German literature. The last he is pretty minutely acquainted with; and he is very fond of German poetry, which he has succeeded in bringing intofashion with the ladies of Bologna, so that Schiller and Goethe, whom the Romans hardly know by name, are here read in the original, and their works are to be had in the library. This collection occupies a finely-built saloon, in which it is arranged in dark presses with wire gratings, and is said to contain about 120,000 volumes. Besides Mezzofanti, there are an under librarian, two assistants, and three other servants. Books are bought to the amount of about 1000 scudi, or more than 200l.sterling, a year. Mezzofanti is not merely a linguist, but is well acquainted with literary history and biography, and also with the library under his charge. As an author he is not known, so far as I am aware; and he seems at present to be no older than about forty. I must add, what perhaps would be least expected from a learned man who has been unceasingly occupied with linguistic studies, and has hardly been out of his native town, that he has the finest and most polished manners, and, at the same time, the most engaging good nature.”[391]

Herr Molbech is still the chief secretary of the Royal Library in Copenhagen. He is one of the most distinguished writers on Danish philology; his great Danish Dictionary[392]is the classical authority on the language; and, in recognition of his great literary merits, he has been created a privy councillor and a commander of the Danebrog order.

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