CHAPTER XIII.[1836-1838.]
One evening about this time, Dr. Wiseman, meeting Mezzofanti in the Piazza di Spagna, inquired where he was going.
“To the Propaganda,” he replied; “I have to give a lesson there.”
“In what language?” asked Dr. Wiseman.
“In Californian,” said Mezzofanti. “I am teaching it to the Californian youths whom we have there.”
“Californian!” exclaimed his friend, “From whom can you possibly have learned that out-of-the-way tongue?”
“From themselves,” replied Mezzofanti: “and now I am teaching it to them grammatically.”
This interesting anecdote illustrates another curious phase of Mezzofanti’s marvellous faculty—the manner in which he dealt with a language, not only new to himself, but entirely unwritten, unsystematized, and, in a word, destitute of all the ordinary aids and appliances of study.
Two native Californians, children of one of the many Indian tribes of that peninsula, were sent to Rome to be educated at the Propaganda. One of these died not very long after his arrival; the other, whose native name was Tac, and who exhibited much more talent than his companion, lived in the Propaganda for about three years, but eventually sunk under the effects of the Roman climate, and perhaps, of the confinement and unwonted habits of collegiate life. To these youths, from the day of their arrival, Mezzofanti attached himself with all the interest which a new language always possessed for him.[479]
The Indians of the Californian peninsula are broken up into several independent tribes, the principal of which are three in number, the Picos, the Waicuros, and the Laymones. Their languages are as various as their subdivisions of race. In the days of the Spanish missionaries, there could hardly be found any two or three missions in which the same dialect was spoken;[480]insomuch that the fathers of these missions have never succeeded in doing for the native language, what they have done for most of the other languages of Northern and Central America—reducing it to an intelligible grammatical system.[481]Upon Mezzofanti, therefore, in his intercourse with these youths, devolved all the trouble of discovering the grammatical structure of the Californian language, and of reducing it to rules. It was a most curious process. He began by making his pupils recite theLord’s Prayer, until he picked up first the general meaning, and afterwards the particular sounds, and what may be called the rhythm of the language. The next step was to ascertain and to classify the particles, both affixes and suffixes; to distinguish verbs from nouns, and substantives from adjectives; to discover the principal inflexions of both. Having once mastered the preliminaries, his power of generalising seemed rather to be an instinct than an exercise of the reasoning faculty. With him the knowledge of words led, almost without an effort, to the power of speaking.
I have been assured by the Rev. James Doyle, who was a student of the Propaganda at the time, and who had frequent opportunities of witnessing Mezzofanti’s conversation with these youths, that his success was complete, at least so far as could be judged from external appearance—from his fluency, his facility of speech, and all the other outward indications of familiarity.[482]Some time before the arrival of these Californians, and soon after Mezzofanti’s coming to Rome, Bishop Fenwick, of Cincinnati, hadsent for education to the Propaganda two North American Indians, youths of the Ottawa tribe, then residing near Mackinaw, at the upper end of Lake Michegan. The elder of these, named Augustine Hamelin, was a half-breed, being the son of a French father; the younger, whose Indian name wasMaccodobenesi, (“the Blackbird,”) was of pure Ottawa blood.[483]Unhappily, as almost invariably happens in similar circumstances, the Indian, although a youth of much promise and very remarkable piety, pined away in the College, and eventually died from the bursting of a blood-vessel. Augustin Hamelin, the elder, spent a considerable time in the Propaganda, where he studied with great success, but in the end, being seized with blood-spitting, the authorities of the College, apprehensive of a recurrence of the same disease which had befallen Maccodobenesi, judged it more prudent to send him back to America. In consequence, he rejoined his tribe in the year 1835, or 1836. Mrs. Jameson, who in her “Rambles among the Red Men,” speaks of the Roman Catholic Ottawa converts in general, as “in appearance, dress, intelligence, industry, and general civilization, superior to the converts of all other communions,” refers in particular to “a well-looking young man, dressed in European fashion and in black, of mixed blood, French and Indian, who had been sent, when young, to be educated at the Propaganda, and was lately come tosettle as a teacher and interpreter among his people.”[484]This youth, there can be no doubt, was Hamelin. Having come soon afterwards to Washington, as one of a deputation from his tribe to negociate a treaty with the United States Government, he produced a great sensation by his high education, his great general knowledge, and especially his skill in languages; and on a subsequent occasion, in 1840, Bishop O’Connor, of Pittsburgh, who had known him in the Propaganda, and to whom I am indebted for these particulars regarding him, encountered him in Philadelphia, engaged in a similar mission to the American Government.
The well-known Indian philologer, M. du Ponceau, met him about the same time, and speaks with much praise of his intelligence and ability. It was from Hamelin that M. du Ponceau obtained the information regarding the Ottawa language which he has used in the comparative vocabulary of Indian languages, appended to hisMemoire sur le Systeme Grammaticale des Langues Indiennes.[485]
Whether Mezzofanti learned the Ottawa dialect from these youths I have not positively ascertained. Indeed it is difficult to say at what precise time he first directed his attention to the Indian languages of North America. He certainly knew something of them before he left Bologna. He read for M. Libri, in 1830, a book in one of the Indian languages. Prince Lewis Lucian Bonaparte too, in a communication withwhich he has honoured me, mentions a conversation with him at Bologna, in which he spoke of these Indian languages, and alluded to one in particular in which the letterBis wanting; “not,” as he explained to the Prince, “on account of any peculiarity in the genius of the language which excludes this sound, but because the Indians of this tribe wear a heavy ornament suspended by a ring from the under lip, which by dragging the under lip downwards, and thus preventing its contact with the upper, renders it impossible for them to produce the sound ofBor any other labial.” It is probable therefore, that even before he first met Hamelin and his companion, Mezzofanti had already learnt something of these Indian languages; and as, in his conversation with Dr. Kip, some years later, the only languages which he mentioned as known to him are the Chippewa, the Delaware, and the Algonquin, it is most likely that it was the first of these—a variety of which is spoken by the Ottawas—that formed his medium of conversation with these youths. On this point, Dr. O’Connor is unable to speak from his own knowledge.
The Indian language which he knew best, however, was the Algonquin, the parent of a large progeny of dialects; and this he learnt not from the natives, but from Father Thavenet, of the congregation of St. Sulpice, for many years a missionary among that tribe, and perhaps more profoundly skilled in their language[486]than any European scholar before his time. Of the Algonquin Mezzofanti becamecompletely master—a success which can only be appreciated by those who understand the peculiar,[487]and to a European entirely novel structure of these languages.
But whatever uncertainty may exist as to the manner in which he acquired these particular languages, there are many others with regard to which it cannot be doubted that he turned most industriously to account, during these years, the many resources supplied by the Propaganda, and that to this noble institution he was indebted for many of his later acquisitions.
It may perhaps be remembered, that, when Dr. Tholuck saw him in 1830, and changed quite suddenly to Arabic in the midst of a conversation in German, although he replied in that language “without hesitation and quite correctly,” yet he “spoke very slowly, and, as it were, composing the words one with another.” Now Dr. O’Connor informs me, that, from the day of his first coming to the Propaganda, he “fastened upon” an Egyptian student named Sciahuan, with whom he conversed continually in Arabic; and thathe also undertook (thus enjoying an opportunity of practice in two languages at once,) to instruct in it a young Maltese, likewise a student of the college. With what success this twofold practice was attended may be inferred from the fact, already recorded, that, a few years later, when M. d’Abbadie was in Rome (in 1839,) he was told by a native Syrian that Mezzofanti’s fluency, as well as his knowledge of Arabic, were both admirable.[488]
Another language which Mezzofanti, in 1839, told Dr. Tholuck he had studied, but in which Dr. Tholuck had no means of trying him, was the Albanese. The late M. Matranga mentioned that he also spoke this language with some Albanian students who were in the Propaganda, soon after his arrival in Rome: but that, as they were from upper Albania, and spoke a corrupt half Turkish dialect of Albanese, he conversed but rarely with them. I may add, however, that Signor Agostino Ricci who came to the Propaganda in 1846, assured me, in a note written two years since,[489]that, between 1846, and the Cardinal’s death in 1849, he had “repeatedly conversed with him in Albanese, and that he spoke it very well.” (assai bene.)
For Armenian, Turkish, and Greek, the Propaganda also supplied abundant resources. The students, Hassun and Musabini—the first, it will be recollected, whom Mezzofanti chanced to meet at his earliest visit—ever afterwards continued his especial favourites and friends. With the former he always spoke in Turkish,with the latter in Greek. A youth named Tigrani, supplied him with practice in Armenian; but to this language, which he enjoyed other opportunities of cultivating, he seldom devoted much of the time which he spent in the Propaganda. It was the same for most of the European languages which he constantly met outside. In the college, for the most part, he confined himself to those which he had no means of cultivating elsewhere.
Without wearying the reader, however, with further details, I shall transcribe (although it regards a later period,) an interesting letter received from the Rev. Charles Fernando, the missionary apostolic at the Point of Galle in Ceylon, which enters briefly, but yet very fully and distinctly, into the particulars of the languages which Mezzofanti used to speak in the Propaganda, during the writer’s residence there as a student. M. Fernando is a native of Colombo in the Island of Ceylon. He came to Rome early in the year 1843, and remained until after the death of Cardinal Mezzofanti.
“When I left Ceylon for Rome,” he writes, August 29, 1855, “I knew but very little of the Cingalese language; a very small vocabulary of domestic words, and a facility in reading in Cingalese characters, without understanding the written language, was the full stock of my knowledge when I reached the college of the Propaganda. From such a master you might be disposed to augur badly of the scholar. Still it was not so.A few days after my arrival in college, I was introduced to his Eminence in his polyglot library and study room in the college itself. Cardinal Mezzofanti knew nothing of the Cingalesebefore I went to the Propaganda, yet in a few days he was able to assist me to put together a short plain discourse for our academical exhibition of the Epiphany.My own knowledge of the language, nevertheless, was not at that time such as to warrant my saying that he knew the Cingalese, or that he spoke it well. This, however, I can assert confidently, that, after a few conversations with me, (I don’t recollect having been with him above a dozen times for the purpose,) he thoroughly entered into the nature and system of the Cingalese language.Among the other languages of Hindostan, I can only speak as to one. In my time there were no students who spoke the Mahratta, Canarese, or Malayalim; but I heard him speak Hindostani with a student who is now missionary apostolic in Agra, where he was brought up, the Rev. William Keegan.The most remarkable characteristic of the Cardinal as a linguist was his power of passing from one language to another without the least effort. I recollect having often seen him speak to a wholeCamerataof the Propaganda students, addressing each in his own language or dialect in rapid succession, and with such ease, fluency, and spirit, and so much of the character and tone of each language that it used to draw a burst of merry laughter from the company; every one delighted to have heard his own language spoken by the amiable Cardinal with its characteristic precision. I may mention the names of many with whom the Cardinal thus conversed; with Moses Ngau (who died in Pegu not long ago) in the Peguan language; with Zaccaria Cohen in Abyssinian; with Gabriel, another Abyssinian, in the Amariña dialect; with Sciata, an Egyptian, in the Coptic; with Hollas in Armenian; with Churi[490]in Arabic; with Barsciu in Syriac; with Abdoin Arabico-maltese, (the Maltese speak a mixture of Arabic and Italian); in Tamulic with Pedro Royapen, (of this, however, I am not so sure); with Leang and Mong in Chinese; with Jakopski and Arabagiski in Bulgarian; with Beriscia and Baddovani in Albanian. With regard to Malay, Tibetan, and Mantchu, I cannot bear witness, as there were no students who spoke those dialects in my time. As for the European languages, I can assure you that I heard the Cardinal speak a great variety, Polish, Hungarian,[491]Rhetian, Swedish, Danish, German, Russian, &c.”
“When I left Ceylon for Rome,” he writes, August 29, 1855, “I knew but very little of the Cingalese language; a very small vocabulary of domestic words, and a facility in reading in Cingalese characters, without understanding the written language, was the full stock of my knowledge when I reached the college of the Propaganda. From such a master you might be disposed to augur badly of the scholar. Still it was not so.
A few days after my arrival in college, I was introduced to his Eminence in his polyglot library and study room in the college itself. Cardinal Mezzofanti knew nothing of the Cingalesebefore I went to the Propaganda, yet in a few days he was able to assist me to put together a short plain discourse for our academical exhibition of the Epiphany.
My own knowledge of the language, nevertheless, was not at that time such as to warrant my saying that he knew the Cingalese, or that he spoke it well. This, however, I can assert confidently, that, after a few conversations with me, (I don’t recollect having been with him above a dozen times for the purpose,) he thoroughly entered into the nature and system of the Cingalese language.
Among the other languages of Hindostan, I can only speak as to one. In my time there were no students who spoke the Mahratta, Canarese, or Malayalim; but I heard him speak Hindostani with a student who is now missionary apostolic in Agra, where he was brought up, the Rev. William Keegan.
The most remarkable characteristic of the Cardinal as a linguist was his power of passing from one language to another without the least effort. I recollect having often seen him speak to a wholeCamerataof the Propaganda students, addressing each in his own language or dialect in rapid succession, and with such ease, fluency, and spirit, and so much of the character and tone of each language that it used to draw a burst of merry laughter from the company; every one delighted to have heard his own language spoken by the amiable Cardinal with its characteristic precision. I may mention the names of many with whom the Cardinal thus conversed; with Moses Ngau (who died in Pegu not long ago) in the Peguan language; with Zaccaria Cohen in Abyssinian; with Gabriel, another Abyssinian, in the Amariña dialect; with Sciata, an Egyptian, in the Coptic; with Hollas in Armenian; with Churi[490]in Arabic; with Barsciu in Syriac; with Abdoin Arabico-maltese, (the Maltese speak a mixture of Arabic and Italian); in Tamulic with Pedro Royapen, (of this, however, I am not so sure); with Leang and Mong in Chinese; with Jakopski and Arabagiski in Bulgarian; with Beriscia and Baddovani in Albanian. With regard to Malay, Tibetan, and Mantchu, I cannot bear witness, as there were no students who spoke those dialects in my time. As for the European languages, I can assure you that I heard the Cardinal speak a great variety, Polish, Hungarian,[491]Rhetian, Swedish, Danish, German, Russian, &c.”
The caution with which M. Fernando speaks on the subject of Cingalese, as well as of the rest of the Indian languages, makes his testimony in other respects more valuable, inasmuch as I had frequently heard it said in Rome that the Cardinal spoke “Hindostani and all the dialects of India.” It needed, however, but a moment’s recollection of the number and variety of these dialects, (several of which till very recently were almost unknown even by name to Europeans,) to assure me that this was a great exaggeration. I am inclined to think that his knowledge of Indian languages lay entirely among those which are derived from the Sanscrit. The notion of Colebrook and the philologers of his time, that all the languages of India are of Sanscrit origin, is now commonly abandoned. It is found that the languages of the Deccan have but little of the Sanscrit element; and Mr. Caldwell, in his recent comparativegrammar of the South-Indian Languages,[492]has enumerated under the general designation of Dravidian, nine un-Sanscritic languages of this region of India, among which the best known are the Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, and Malayalim. There seems no reason to believe that Mezzofanti was familiarly acquainted with any one of these four, or indeed with any member of Dravidian family, unless the Guzarattee can be included therein.
M. Fernando’s hesitation regarding his knowledge of Tamil, induced me to inquire of Rev. Dr. MacAuliffe, lately a Missionary at Madras, who, after spending several years in that Presidency, had entered the Propaganda, and who knew the Cardinal at the same time with M. Fernando. Dr. MacAuliffe informs me, that his eminence did not know Tamil. The Indian languages which he knew, according to Dr. MacAuliffe, were Hindostani and Mahratta; that he was acquainted with at least the first of these there seems no possible doubt, both from M. Fernando’s testimony, and from that of Count Lackersteen of Calcutta, a native East Indian gentleman, who assures me[493]that he conversed with him in Hindostani, in 1843-4. As to the Mahratta dialect, I have not (beyond Dr. MacAuliffe’s assurance) been able to obtain any direct information; but Mr. Eyoob, an Armenian merchant of Calcutta, testifies to the Cardinal’s acquaintancewith another Indian language—the Guzarattee. Mr. Eyoob saw the Cardinal in the same year with Count Lackersteen, and writes[494]that, when he was introduced to his eminence as a native of Bombay, the Cardinal at once addressed him inGuzarattee. Mr. Eyoob adds, that the Cardinal also spoke with him in Armenian and in Portuguese, in both of which languages his accent, vocabulary, and grammatical accuracy, were beyond all exception. Count Lackersteen’s letter fully confirms so much of this statement as regards Portuguese. The Count also spoke with Mezzofanti in Persian: but, as he does not profess to be a profound Persian scholar, his testimony on this head is not of so much value.
By far the most remarkable, however, of Mezzofanti’s successes in the Propaganda was his acquisition of Chinese. The difficulty of that language for Europeans has long been proverbial,[495]and it argued no ordinary courage in a scholar now on the verge of his sixtieth year to enter regularly upon such a study. His first progress at Naples, before he was interrupted by the severe illness which there seized him, has been already described. It was not for a considerable time after his return, that he was enabled to resume the attempt systematically. A wishwas expressed by the authorities of the Propaganda that a select number of the students of the Naples college should be sent to Rome for the completion of their theological studies. Three young Chinese had already visited the Propaganda while Mezzofanti was still in Bologna, one of whom, named Pacifico Yu, offered himself to the Cardinal Prefect, as a missionary to the Corea, at a period when the attempt was almost a certain road to martyrdom: but it was not until the year 1835-6 that the design of adopting a few of the Neapolitan students into the college of the Propaganda was actually carried out. Don Raffaelle Umpierres, for many years Procurator of the mission at Macao, was soon afterwards appointed their prefect and professor; and under his auspices and with the assistance of the young Chinese, Mezzofanti resumed the study with new energy. His success is admitted on all hands to have been almost unexampled. Certainly it has never been surpassed by any European not resident in China. In the year 1843, I was myself present while he conversed with two youths, named Leang and Mong, and although my evidence cannot extend beyond these external signs, I can at least bear witness to the fluency with which he spoke, and the ease and spirit with which he seemed to sustain the conversation. But his complete success is placed beyond all doubt by an attestation forwarded to me, by the abate Umpierres, the Chinese Professor,[496]already named, who declares that he “frequently conversed with the Cardinal in Chinese, from the year 1837, up to the date ofhis death, and that he not only spoke the mandarin Chinese,[497]but understood other dialects of the language.”
Mezzofanti himself freely confessed the exceeding difficulty which he had found in mastering this language. It cost him, as he assured Father Arsenius Angiarakian, four months of uninterrupted study. Speaking once with Cardinal Wiseman of his method of linguistic study, he said that the “ear and not the eye was for him the ordinary medium through which language was conveyed;” and he added, that the true origin of the difficulty which he had felt in learning Chinese, was not so much the novelty of its words and forms, as the fact that, departing from the analogy of other languages, it disconcerted the pre-arranged system on which he had theretofore proceeded; ithas an eye-language distinct from the ear-language, which he was obliged to make an especial study.
It is worth while to mention that the Cardinal successfully accomplished in a short time what cost the missionaries in China, with all their advantages of position, many years of labour, having actually preached to the Chinese students in the Propaganda, on occasion of one of the spiritual retreats which are periodically observed in ecclesiastical seminaries.
It must not be supposed, however, that the Propaganda was his only school of languages. Not unfrequently, also, missionaries from various parts of the world, who repaired to the Propaganda on the affairs of their several missions, supplied a sort of supplement to the ordinary resources of the institution. In this way a German missionary, Father Brunner, (now, I believe, superior of a religious congregation in the United States,) initiated him in the languages of Western Africa. Father Brunner had been for a time a missionary in Congo. On his arrival in Rome, Mezzofanti placed himself in communication with him; and Cardinal Reisach, (who was at that time Rector of the Propaganda,) states that he soon progressed so far as to be able to keep up a conversation in the language. The general language of Congo comprises many distinct branches, the Loango, the Kakongo, the Mandongo, the Angolese, and the Camba.[498]Of these Mezzofanti applied himself especially to the Angolese, in which he more than once composed pieces for recitation at the academical exhibition of the Epiphany. Two of these, which will be found in the appendix, have been submitted to the criticism of Mr. Consul Brande, long a resident at Loango, who pronounces them “to exhibit a correct knowledge of the Angolese or Bunda language.”[499]
I may add to the number of those with whom he was accustomed to speak oriental languages, two others mentioned to me by Cardinal Wiseman. The first was a learned Chaldean, Paul Alkushi, who had once been a student of the Propaganda, but relinquished the intention of embracing the ecclesiastical profession. The other was a converted Jew, a native of Bagdad, and who, although otherwise illiterate, spoke fluently Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian. He was familiarly known in Rome by the sobriquet of “Shalom,” from the habitual salutation with which he used to address his friends at meeting and parting.
The only letters of this period which I have been able to procure are two, addressed to his Bolognese friends, Michael Ferrucci and Liborio Veggetti. The former (dated June 6th, 1836,) is in acknowledgment of some copies of Latin Epigrams, partly from his own pen, partly from that of the Canonico Schiassi, which Ferrucci had sent to Mezzofanti: but it is chiefly noticeable for the warm interest which it evinces in the welfare of his old friend, who had written to ask advice and assistance in his candidature for a professorship in one of the Tuscan Universities, Signor Ferrucci, some time afterwards, went to Geneva, as professor of rhetoric, but he eventually obtained an appointment in the University of Pisa, where he is now Librarian.
The letter to Veggetti, (February 17, 1838,) regards his appointment as Librarian of the Universityof Bologna, in which Mezzofanti had been much interested.
“I am delighted that my wishes have not been in vain or without effect, and that the Library, for so many years the object of my care, is confided to the direction of an old and distinguished pupil of my own. I need not give you any advice, knowing, as I do, what exactness and assiduity you have always shown in the discharge of your duties. Knowing, also, the good understanding you maintain with my nephew, Monsignor Minarelli, in whom I repose the fullest confidence, I need only say that if you consult with him in any doubt which may arise regarding your duties, it will be the same as if you were speaking with the old librarian himself.I must confess I am more gratified at your having obtained this appointment, than if you had been appointed to the chair of History, a difficult post, and more difficult the farther one advances. And while I congratulate you, I must also felicitate myself on leaving in such excellent hands the precious deposit hitherto entrusted to my own care. I will not fail to profit by your work which you have so kindly presented to me.”
“I am delighted that my wishes have not been in vain or without effect, and that the Library, for so many years the object of my care, is confided to the direction of an old and distinguished pupil of my own. I need not give you any advice, knowing, as I do, what exactness and assiduity you have always shown in the discharge of your duties. Knowing, also, the good understanding you maintain with my nephew, Monsignor Minarelli, in whom I repose the fullest confidence, I need only say that if you consult with him in any doubt which may arise regarding your duties, it will be the same as if you were speaking with the old librarian himself.
I must confess I am more gratified at your having obtained this appointment, than if you had been appointed to the chair of History, a difficult post, and more difficult the farther one advances. And while I congratulate you, I must also felicitate myself on leaving in such excellent hands the precious deposit hitherto entrusted to my own care. I will not fail to profit by your work which you have so kindly presented to me.”
Dr. Veggetti still holds the office of Librarian at Bologna. He continued to correspond occasionally with Mezzofanti, up to the period of his death.