CHAPTER XIV.[1838-1841.]

Among the offices connected with the Roman Court, there is a certain class, known asPoste Cardinalizie, the tenure of which is, in the ordinary course of affairs, a step to the Cardinalate. The chief keepership of the Vatican Library is not necessarily one of these; but it had long been known that Monsignor Mezzofanti was destined for the purple; and, in a consistory held on the 12th of February, 1838, he was “preconized” as Cardinal Priest, in company with three other prelates—Angelo Mai, (who had been “reservedin petto” from the former year,) Orioli, and Mellini.

The order of Cardinal Priests, as is well known, are the representatives, in the more modern constitution of the Roman church, of the ancientPresbyteri Cardinales—the priests of the principal churches in which Baptism was administered, (tituli Cardinales) of the ancient city. Their number, which at the end of the fifth century was twenty-five, has been gradually increased to fifty: but thememory of their primitive institution is preserved in the titles under which they are named, and which are taken from the churches over which the ancient Presbyters presided. The title of Cardinal Mezzofanti was derived from the ancient church of Saint Onuphrius, (Sant’ Onofrio,) on the Janiculum, which is probably best known to visitors of Rome as the last resting-place of the poet Tasso.

To many persons, no doubt, the office of Cardinal has but little significance, except as a part of the stately ceremonial of the Roman court—a brilliant and enviable sinecure, sometimes the reward of distinguished merit, sometimes the prize of political influence or hereditary family claims. But to well informed readers it is scarcely necessary to explain that the College of Cardinals forms, or rather supplies, the entire deliberative and executive administration of the Pope in the general management of the affairs of the Church; holding permanently and systematically the place of the council of which we so often read in the early centuries. By the ancient constitution of the Sacred College, all matters of importance were considered and discussed in the general meeting of the body, called the Consistory; but, in the multiplication of business, it became necessary to distribute the labour; and, since the latter part of the sixteenth century,[500]under the great administrative Pontiffs, Paul IV., Pius IV., Pius V., and above allSixtus V., a system of “congregations” has arisen, by which, as by a series of committees, the details of all the various departments are administered; yet under the general superintendence of the Pope himself, and subject, in all things, to his final revision. Some of these congregations, (which amount to nearly twenty in all,) consist exclusively of Cardinals; some are composed both of Cardinals and prelates; and a few of prelates only: but, in almost every case, the Prefect, at least, of the congregation is a Cardinal. Some congregations meet every week, others only once a month; but in all the leading ones, as for instance in the Propaganda, there is a weekly meeting (congresso) of the Prefect and secretary with the clerks orminutanti, for the despatch of pressing business or of affairs of routine; all the business of these meetings being submitted to the Pope for his approval.

To each Cardinal, either as Prefect, or at least as member, four of these congregations, as an ordinary rule, are assigned at his first appointment; in many cases, the number is afterwards increased; and, when it is remembered that in many of these the business is weighty and complicated, often involving much documentary matter, extensive theological or canonical research, and careful investigation of precedents, &c.; and that these congregations, after all, form but a part of the duties of a Cardinal; it will be understood that his position is very far from the sinecure which the unreflecting may suppose it to be.

In the congregations assigned to Cardinal Mezzofantiat his nomination, regard was of course paid to his peculiar qualifications. He was named Prefect of the “Congregation for the correction of the Liturgical Books of the Oriental Church,” and also of the “Congregation of Studies.” He was also, on the same grounds, appointed a member, not only of the general “Congregation of the Propaganda,” but also of the special one “On the affairs of the Chinese Mission,” and of those of “the Index,” “of Rites,” and of “the Examination of Bishops.”

With a similar consideration for his well known habits and tastes, and with a due appreciation of the charity for the sick which had always characterized him, he was named President of the great Hospital of San Salvatore, and visitor of the House of Catechumens, in which, as being chiefly destined for converted Jews and Mahomedans, his acquaintance with the Hebrew and Arabic languages and literatures rendered his services peculiarly valuable.

The official revenue assigned from the Civil List for a cardinal resident in Rome, is four thousand Roman crowns (between eight and nine hundred pounds sterling); by far the greater part of which is absorbed in the necessary expenses of his household, the payment of his chaplain, secretary, and servants, the maintenance of his state equipage, &c.; so that for those cardinals who, like Mezzofanti, possess no private fortune, the remnant available for purely personal expenditure is very trifling indeed. With Mezzofanti’s frugal and simple habits, however, it not only proved amply sufficient to supply all hisown modest wants, but also enabled him to enlarge and extend the unostentatious charities which, throughout his entire life, he had never failed to bestow, even while he was himself struggling against the disadvantages of a narrow and precarious income. So well known, indeed, were his almost prodigal charities, while in charge of the Vatican, and his consequent poverty at the time of his nomination to the Cardinalate, that the Pope, Gregory XVI., himself presented him, from the Pontifical establishment, the two state carriages[501]which form the necessary equipage of a Cardinal in all processions and other occasions of public ceremonial.

He selected for his residence the Palazzo Valentiniani, in the Piazza SS. Apostoli; where his nephew, Gaetano Minarelli, and Anna, one of his unmarried nieces, came to live with him on his nomination to the Cardinalate, and continued to reside until his death.

The news of his elevation was received with great pleasure at Bologna, and was the occasion of many public and private demonstrations. The most remarkable of these was from the Academy of theFilopieri, of which he had been the President at the time of his removal from Bologna. The Italians are singularly conservative of established forms; themembers of the Academy, in accordance with a usage which may almost be called classical, met in full assembly (with all the accompaniments of decorations, inscriptions, and music, in which Italian taste is displayed on such occasions), to congratulate their fellow-academician. The congratulatory addresses, however, which in England would have been a set of speeches and resolutions, here, as became the “Lovers of the Muses,” took a poetical form; and a series of odes, sonnets,[502]elegies,canzoni,terzine, and epigrams, in Greek, Latin, and Italian, were recited by the members. Some of them are exceedingly spirited and graceful. They were all collected into a little volume, which, with great delicacy and good taste, is dedicated not to the Cardinal himself, but to his nephew, Monsignor Joseph Minarelli, of whom I have already spoken, and who was at this time Rector of the university of Bologna.[503]

A still more characteristic tribute on his elevationwas a polyglot visit of congratulation from his young friends in the Propaganda. A party of fifty-three, comprising all the languages and nationalities at that time represented in the institution, waited upon him to offer their greetings in their various tongues. The new Cardinal was at once amused by the novel exhibition, and gratified by the compliment thus delicately implied. True, however, to his old character for readiness and dexterity, he was found fully equal to the occasion, and answered each in his own language with great spirit and precision.[504]

Cardinal Mezzofanti’s elevation, of course, brought him into closer, and, if possible, more affectionate relations with the Pope. Among his brethren of the Sacred College, too, there were many whom, even as prelate, he could call his friends. I have already spoken of his relations with the learned Cardinal Giustiniani, and the venerable Cardinal Pacca. With Cardinal Lambruschini, the Secretary of State, and Cardinal Fransoni, Prefect of the Propaganda, he had long been on a footing of most confidential intimacy. His especial friends, however, were Cardinals Mai, Polidori, Bernetti, and the amiable and learned English Cardinal Acton, who, although not proclaimed till 1842, was namedin pettoin the year after the elevation of Cardinal Mezzofanti.[505]

But, with the exception of the public and ceremonial observances which his new dignity exacted, it brought no change in his simple, and almost ascetic manner of life. The externals of his household, of course, underwent considerable alteration, but his personal habits remained the same. He continued to rise at the same hour: his morning devotions, his daily mass, his visits to the hospitals, and other private acts of charity, remained unaltered. His table, though displaying somewhat more ceremonial, continued almost as frugal, and entirely as simple, as before his elevation. He persevered, unless when prevented by his various official duties, in paying his daily visit to the Propaganda, and in assisting and directing the studies of its young inmates, with all his accustomed friendliness and familiarity. His affability to visitors, even of the humblest class, was, if possible, increased. Above all, as regarded his favourite studies, and the exercise of his wonderful talent, his elevation to the Cardinalate brought no abatement of enthusiasm, and no relaxation of energy. It is not merely that the visitors who saw him as Cardinal, concur in attesting the unaltered activity of his mind, and the undiminished interest with whichhe availed himself of every new opportunity of perfecting or exercising his favourite accomplishment. For years after his elevation, he continued to add zealously and successfully to the stores which he had already laid up. There is distinct evidence that after this period, (although he had now entered upon his sixty-fourth year,) he acquired several languages, with which he had previously had little, and perhaps no acquaintance.

A very interesting instance has been communicated to me by M. Antoine d’Abbadie,[506]who visited the Cardinal in 1839, at Rome. M. d’Abbadie had been a traveller from early manhood. Setting out in the year 1837, in company with his brother Arnauld, to explore the sources of the White Nile, he traversed the greater part of north eastern Africa. Their wanderings, however, proved a mission of religion and charity, no less than of science. During their long and varied intercourse with the several tribes of Abyssinia, they observed with painful interest that strange admixture of primitive Catholic truth with gross and revolting superstition by which all travellers have been struck; and their first care was to study carefully the condition of the country and the character of the people, with a view to the organization of a judicious and effective missionary expeditionby which their many capabilities for good might be developed. Hence, it is that, while their letters, reports, and essays, communicated to the various scientific journals and societies of France and England,[507]have added largely to our knowledge of the languages,[508]the geography, and the natural history of these imperfectly explored provinces, their services to the Church by the introduction of missionaries, by the advice and information which they have uniformly afforded them, and even by their own personal co-operation in the great work, have entitled them to the gratitude of all to whom the interests of truth and civilization are dear.

M. Antoine d’Abbadie, after two years spent in such labours, returned to Europe in 1839, for the purpose of preparing himself for a further and more systematic exploration. On arriving in Rome, he took an early opportunity of waiting upon the Cardinal, accompanied by two Abyssinians, who spoke only the Amarinna language, and by a Galla servant, whose native (and only) language was the Ilmorma, a tongue almost entirely unknown, even to the learned in this branch of philology.[509]M. d’Abbadie himselfspoke Basque, a language which was still new to Mezzofanti; and he was thus witness of what was certainly a very unwonted scene—the great Polyglottist completely at fault.

“I saw Cardinal Mezzofanti,” writes M. d’Abbadie, “in 1839. He asked me in Arabic what language I wished to speak, and I, in order to test him, proposed conversing in Basque. I am far from knowing this idiom well; but, as I transact my farmer’s business in Basque, I can easily puzzle a foreigner in it. The Cardinal waived my proposal, and asked me what African language I would speak. I now spoke Amarinna, i.e., the language namedAncharicaby Ludolf, who probably added the finalcin order to suit the word to Latin articulation. Not being able to answer in Amarinna, Mezzofanti said:Ti amirnu timhirta lisana Gi-iz(‘Have you the knowledge of the Gi-iz language?’) This was well said, and beautifully pronounced, but shewed that the Cardinal got his knowledge of Gi-iz from persons who read, but did not speak it in general. I afterwards ascertained in Abyssinia that no professor, i.e., no person accustomed to colloquial Gi-iz, had been yet in Rome, during this century at least. I may here mention that Gi-iz, generally called Ethiopic in Europe, is the liturgical language in Abyssinia, where it is looked on by the learned as a dead language, although it is still spoken by at least one of the shepherd tribes near the Red Sea. In my visit to Cardinal Mezzofanti, I had with me two Amara Abyssines, with whom he could not speak, as neither of them knew Gi-iz enough, and I had not yet learned that language. My third companion was a Galla, who had taught me his language, viz., Ilmorma, in a most tedious way, for he knew no other tongue, and I was forced to elicit every meaning by a slowly convergent series of questions, which I put every time he used a word new to me. Some of these had until then remained a mystery to me; as the wordself, and some others ofthe same abstract class. I had likewise laboured in vain to get the Ilmorma word for ‘soul’; and having mentioned all this to Mezzofanti, I added, that as a philologist and a father of the church, he could render me no better service than giving me the means of teaching my Galla barbarian that he had a soul to be saved. ‘Could not your eminence,’ said I, ‘find the means of learning from this African what is the word for soul? I have written twelve hundred words of his language, which you will certainly turn to better account than I can.’ The Cardinal made no direct answer. I saw him several times afterwards, and he always addressed me in Arabic; but, being a tyro in that language, I could not pretend to judge his knowledge or fluency. However, a native Syrian then in Rome, told me that both were admirable: this referred, I suppose now, to the Syrian dialect.”

A failure so unusual for Mezzofanti, and in so many languages, could not but prove a stimulus to the industry of this indefatigable student. He was at the moment busily engaged in the revision of the Maronite and Armenian liturgies;—a circumstance, by the way, which perhaps may account for his passing over without notice, M. d’Abbadie’s proposal about the Galla language;—but, a few months later, he addressed himself to the Amarinna with all the energy of his most youthful days. How it ended, we shall see.

In the close of July, 1841, when I first had the honour of seeing him, he was surrounded by a group of Abyssinians, who had just come to Rome under the escort of Monsignor de Jacobis, the apostolic Prefect of the Abyssinian mission. These Abyssinians were all reputed to be persons of distinction among their countrymen, and several of the number were understood to be professors and men of letters. The Cardinal was speaking to them freely and withoutembarrassment; and his whole manner, as well as theirs, appeared to me (so far as one entirely unacquainted with the language could judge) to indicate that he spoke with ease, and was understood by them without an effort. Thinking it probable, however, that M. d’Abbadie during his second sojourn in Abyssinia, must have known something of this mission, I thought it well to write to him on the subject. He informed me, in reply, that the Abyssinians whom I had thus seen were a deputation of the schismatical Christians of that country, who had been sent by the native chieftains to Alexandria, to obtain from the Patriarch (to whom they so far recognise their subjection) the consecration of the Abun, or Primate, of their national church. Father de Jacobis, who was their fellow-traveller as far as Alexandria, induced them to accompany him to Rome, where they were so much struck with all that they saw and heard, that “two out of the three professors of Gondar, who were the leaders of the deputation, have, since their return, freely and knowingly entered the one true Church—Amari, Kanfu, and the one-eyed professor, Gab’ra Mikaël.” One of these told M. d’Abbadie that “Cardinal Mezzofanti conversed very well with him in Amarinna, and that he also knew the Gi-iz language.” He had thus learned the Amarinna between 1839 and 1841.

I am indebted to M. d’Abbadie for an account of another still later acquisition of the Cardinal’s declining years. Before the summer of 1841, he hadacquired the Amarinna language. Now at that time he was actually engaged, with all the energy of his early years, in the study of the proverbially “impossible”[510]Basque, in which, as we have seen, M. d’Abbadie found him a novice in 1839.

One of my companions in Rome in 1841, the lamented Guido Görres, of Munich, son of the venerable author of that name, and himself one of the most accomplished writers of Catholic Germany, having chanced to say to the Cardinal that he was then engaged in the study of Basque, the latter proposed that they should pursue it in company. Their readings had only just commenced when I last saw Herr Görres; but M. d’Abbadie’s testimony at a later date places the Cardinal’s success in this study likewise entirely beyond question. He had not only learned before the year 1844, the general body of the language, but even mastered its various dialects so as to be able to converse both in the Labourdain and the Souletin; which, it should be observed, are not simply dialects of Basque, but minor sub-divisions of one out of the four leading dialects which prevail in the different districts of Biscay and Navarre.

“My friend M. Dassance,” says M. d’Abbadie, “who has published several works, and who, after declining a bishopric, is still a canon in the Bayonne Cathedral, told me the other day, that, on visiting the Cardinal in 1844, he was surprised to hear him speak French with that peculiar Parisian accent which pertains to the ancient nobility of the Faubourg St. Germain. This is a nice distinction of which several Frenchmen are not aware. On hearing that Dassance was a Basque, the Cardinal immediately said:Mingo zitugu?(verbatim—‘Of whence have we you’?) thus shewing that he had mastered the tremendous difficulty of our vernacular verb. The ensuing conversation took place in the pure Labourdain dialect, which is spoken here (at Urrugne,) but one of the professors of the Bayonne Seminary, Father Chilo, from Soule, avers that the Cardinal spoke to him in the Souletin dialect.”[511]

I afterwards shewed to M. d’Abbadie a short sentence in Basque which the Cardinal wrote with his own hand, and which is printed among the fac similes prefixed to this volume.

Tauna! zu servitzea da erreguiñatea;Zu maitatzea da zoriona,“Lord! to serve Thee is to reign;To love Thee, is happiness.”

Tauna! zu servitzea da erreguiñatea;

Zu maitatzea da zoriona,

“Lord! to serve Thee is to reign;

To love Thee, is happiness.”

M. d’Abbadie, as also his Highness Prince Lewis L. Bonaparte, to whom M. d’Abbadie submitted it, had some doubt as to the propriety of the form, ‘zuservitzea,’ ‘zumaitatzea’; both of them preferring to writezure. But, as the dialect in which the sentence is written is that of Guipuscoa, both his Highness and M. d’Abbadie have kindly taken the trouble to refer the question to native Guipuscoan scholars; and Ihave had the gratification to learn by a letter of M. d’Abbadie, (January 18th, 1858,) that “the construction ‘zuservitzea,’ is perfectly correct in Guipuscoan.”

M. d’Abbadie subjoins, that, in addition to the authority of his friend, M. Dassance, for the Cardinal’s knowledge of Basque, he has since been assured by a Spanish lady, a native of San Sebastian, the capital of Guipuscoa, that the Cardinal had also conversed with her in her native Guipuscoan dialect. Moreover, when M. Manavit saw him in Rome in 1846, he translated freely in his presence a newly published Basque catechism, which M. Manavit presented to him on the part of the Bishop of Astros: and several distinguished Biscayan ecclesiastics assured M. Manavit that the Cardinal spoke both the dialects of Basque with equal fluency.[512]In a word, it appears impossible to doubt the complete success of this, one of his latest essays in the acquisition of a new language.

As the object of this biography, however, is not merely to bring together such marvels as these, but to collect all the materials for a just portraiture of the linguist himself, I must place in contrast with these truly wonderful narratives, the judgments of other travellers, in order that the reader may be enabled to modify each by comparison with its pendant, and to form his own estimate from a just combination of both.

It must be confessed, as a set off against the wonders which have been just recounted, that there were others of Mezzofanti’s visitors who were unableto see in him any of these excellencies. I think, however, that these depreciatory judgments will be found for the most part to proceed from ignorant and superficial tourists, and from those who are least qualified to form an accurate estimate of the attainments of a linguist. One of the heaviest penalties of eminence is the exposure which it involves to impertinent or malevolent criticism, nor is it wonderful that one who received so great a variety of visitors as did Mezzofanti, should have had his share of this infliction.

Mrs. Paget, a Transylvanian lady, married to an English gentleman, who saw Mezzofanti a little before M. d’Abbadie, is cited by Mr. Watts.[513]Her characteristic is rather recklessness and ill-breeding than positive malevolence. But as her strictures, ill-bred as they are, contain some facts which tend to illustrate the main subject of inquiry, I shall insert them without abridgment.

“Mezzofanti entered, in conversation with two young Moors, and, turning to us, asked us to be seated. On me his first appearance produced an unfavourable impression. His age might be about seventy; he was small in stature, dry, and of a pale unhealthy look. His whole person was in monkey-like restless motion. We conversed together for some time. He speaks Hungarian well enough, and his pronunciation is not bad. I asked him from whom he had learned it; he said from the common soldiers at Milan. He had read the works of Kisfaludi and Csokonai, Pethe’s Natural History, and some other Hungarian books, but it seemed to me that he rather studies the words thanthe subject of what he reads. Some English being present, he spoke English with them very fluently and well; with me he afterwards spoke French and German, and he even addressed me in Wallachian; but to my shame I was unable to answer. He asked if I knew Slowakian. In showing us some books, he read out from them in Ancient and Modern Greek, Latin and Hebrew. To a priest who was with us, and who had travelled in Palestine, he spoke in Turkish. I asked him how many languages he knew: ‘Not many,’ he replied, ‘for I only speak forty or fifty.’ Amazing incomprehensible faculty! but not one that I should in the least be tempted to envy; for the empty unreflecting word-knowledge, and the innocently exhibited small vanity with which he was filled, reminded me rather of a monkey or a parrot, a talking machine, or a sort of organ wound up for the performance of certain tunes, than of a being endowed with reason. He can, in fact, only be looked upon as one of the curiosities of the Vatican.“At parting, I took an opportunity of asking if he would allow me to present an Hungarian book to the Vatican library. My first care at my hotel was to send a copy of M. W.’s book, ‘Balitéletekröl’ (‘On Prejudices’)[514]to the binder, and a few days afterwards I took it, handsomely bound in white leather, to Mezzofanti, whom I found in a hurry to go and baptize some Jews and Moors. As soon as he saw the book, without once looking into it, even to ascertain the name of the author, he called out, ‘Ah! igen szép, igen szép, munka. Szepen van bekötve. Aranyos, szép, szép, igen szép, igen koszönöm.’ (Ah! very fine, very fine, very finely bound. Beautiful, very fine, very fine, thank you very much;)—and put it away in a book-case. Unhappy Magyar volumes, never looked at out of their own country, but by some curious student of philology like Mezzofanti, and in their own country read by how few!”

“At parting, I took an opportunity of asking if he would allow me to present an Hungarian book to the Vatican library. My first care at my hotel was to send a copy of M. W.’s book, ‘Balitéletekröl’ (‘On Prejudices’)[514]to the binder, and a few days afterwards I took it, handsomely bound in white leather, to Mezzofanti, whom I found in a hurry to go and baptize some Jews and Moors. As soon as he saw the book, without once looking into it, even to ascertain the name of the author, he called out, ‘Ah! igen szép, igen szép, munka. Szepen van bekötve. Aranyos, szép, szép, igen szép, igen koszönöm.’ (Ah! very fine, very fine, very finely bound. Beautiful, very fine, very fine, thank you very much;)—and put it away in a book-case. Unhappy Magyar volumes, never looked at out of their own country, but by some curious student of philology like Mezzofanti, and in their own country read by how few!”

Now, in the first place, in the midst of this lady’s supercilious and depreciatory strictures, it may safelybe inferred, that Mezzofanti’s Hungarian at least must have been unexceptionable, in order to draw from one so evidently prejudiced, the admission that he “spoke it well enough,” and that “his pronunciation was not bad.” Lest, however, any doubt should be created by these grudging acknowledgments, I shall quote the testimony of a Hungarian nobleman, Baron Glucky de Stenitzer, who met the Cardinal in Rome some years later, in 1845. The Baron not only testifies to the excellence of his Magyar, but affirms “that, in the course of the interview, his Eminence spoke no less than four different dialects of that tongue—the pure Magyar of Debreczeny, that of the environs of Eperies, that of Pesth, and that of Transylvania!”

In like manner, though Madame Paget takes upon her to say, that “the Cardinal studies the words rather than the subject of what he reads,” Baron Glucky found him “profoundly versed in the laws and constitution of Hungary”; and when, in speaking of the extraordinary power enjoyed by the Primate of Hungary, the Baron chanced to allude to his privilege of coining money, his Eminence promptly reminded him that “this privilege had been withdrawn by the Emperor Ferdinand, and even quoted the year of the edict by which it was annulled!”[515]

As regards the dashing style in which this lady sets aside the Cardinal’s Magyar reading, whichonlyembraced “the works of Kisfaludi and Czokonai, Pethe’s Natural History, and some other Hungarian books,” it may be enough for the reader to know that, without reckoning the “other Hungarian books,” thethree works which she names thus slightingly, comprise no less thanseven volumesof poetry and miscellaneous literature.

For what remains of her strictures upon the character of Mezzofanti—strictures be it observed, which she has the hardihood to offer, although her entire knowledge was derived from two interviews of a few minutes, among a crowd of other visitors—her charge of love of display, “empty word-knowledge,” “monkey-like” exhibition, and the other pettinesses of “small vanity,” the best commentary that can be offered is an account of the Cardinal published at this very period, by one who knew him intimately during a residence of many months in Rome, who was actually for a time his pupil or fellow student, and who, from his position, was thoroughly conversant, not only with the sentiments of the Cardinal’s friends and admirers, but with all the variety of criticisms to which, according to the diversity of tastes and opinions, his character and his gifts were subjected in the general society of the literary circles of Rome—I mean the amiable and learned Guido Görres. I may add that I myself was Herr Görres’s companion in one of his interviews with the Cardinal.

“If any one should imagine,” he writes, (in the Historisch-Politische Blätter,[516]of which, conjointly with Dr. Phillips, he was editor,) “that all the honours which he has received have produced the slightest effect upon his character or disposition, he is grievously mistaken. Under all the insignia of the cardinalate, Mezzofanti is still the same plain, simple, almost bashful, good-natured, conscientious, indefatigable, active priest that he was, while a poor professor, struggling by the exercise of his talents,in the humblest form, to gain a livelihood for the relatives who were dependant on his exertions. Although his head is stored with so many languages, it has never, as so frequently occurs to the learned, shown the least indication of lightness. As Prefect of the House of Catechumens he is merely of course, charged with the supervision of their instruction; but he still discharges the duty in person, with all the exactness of a conscientious schoolmaster. He visits the establishment almost every day, and devotes a considerable part of his income to the support of its inmates.In like manner he still, as Cardinal, maintains with the Propaganda precisely the same relations which he held as a simple prelate. Although he is not bound thereto by any possible obligation, he devotes every day to the students of that institution, in summer an hour, in winter an hour and a half. He practises them and also himself in their several languages, and zealously avails himself of the opportunity thus afforded him, to exhort them to piety and to strengthen them in the spirit of their calling.It is scarcely necessary to say that these youths regard their disinterested friend and benefactor with the most devoted affection....When I spoke to him, one day, about his relations with the pupils, he said to me, ‘It is not as a Cardinal I go there; it is as a student—as a youth—(giovanetto.)’...He is familiar with all the European languages. And by this we understand not merely the old classical tongues and the first class modern ones; that is to say, the Greek and Latin, the Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and English; his knowledge embraces also the languages of the second class, viz. the Dutch, the Polish, Bohemian or Czechish, and Servian, the Hungarian, and Turkish; and even those of the third and fourth class—the Irish, Welsh, Albanian, Wallachian, Bulgarian, and Illyrian—are equally at his command. On my happening to mention that I had once dabbled a little in Basque, he at once proposed that we should set about it together. Even the Romani of the Alps, and the Lettish, are not unfamiliar to him; nay, he has made himself acquainted with Lappish, the languageof the wretched nomadic tribes of Lapland; although he told me he did not know whether it should be called Lappish or Laplandish. He is master of all the languages which are classed under the Indo-German family—the Sanscrit and Persian, the Koordish, the Armenian, and the Georgian; he is familiar with all the members of the Semitic family, the Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Samaritan, Chaldee, Sabaic, and even the Chinese, which he not only reads but speaks. As regards Africa, he knows the Coptic, Ethiopic, Abyssinian, Amharic, and Angolese.”

In like manner he still, as Cardinal, maintains with the Propaganda precisely the same relations which he held as a simple prelate. Although he is not bound thereto by any possible obligation, he devotes every day to the students of that institution, in summer an hour, in winter an hour and a half. He practises them and also himself in their several languages, and zealously avails himself of the opportunity thus afforded him, to exhort them to piety and to strengthen them in the spirit of their calling.

It is scarcely necessary to say that these youths regard their disinterested friend and benefactor with the most devoted affection....

When I spoke to him, one day, about his relations with the pupils, he said to me, ‘It is not as a Cardinal I go there; it is as a student—as a youth—(giovanetto.)’...

He is familiar with all the European languages. And by this we understand not merely the old classical tongues and the first class modern ones; that is to say, the Greek and Latin, the Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and English; his knowledge embraces also the languages of the second class, viz. the Dutch, the Polish, Bohemian or Czechish, and Servian, the Hungarian, and Turkish; and even those of the third and fourth class—the Irish, Welsh, Albanian, Wallachian, Bulgarian, and Illyrian—are equally at his command. On my happening to mention that I had once dabbled a little in Basque, he at once proposed that we should set about it together. Even the Romani of the Alps, and the Lettish, are not unfamiliar to him; nay, he has made himself acquainted with Lappish, the languageof the wretched nomadic tribes of Lapland; although he told me he did not know whether it should be called Lappish or Laplandish. He is master of all the languages which are classed under the Indo-German family—the Sanscrit and Persian, the Koordish, the Armenian, and the Georgian; he is familiar with all the members of the Semitic family, the Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Samaritan, Chaldee, Sabaic, and even the Chinese, which he not only reads but speaks. As regards Africa, he knows the Coptic, Ethiopic, Abyssinian, Amharic, and Angolese.”

Görres adds what I have already mentioned, as a characteristic mark of their affectionate gratitude, that forty-three of his Propaganda scholars waited upon him on occasion of his promotion to the Cardinalate, and addressed to him a series of congratulations, each in his native dialect. He fully bears out too, the assurance which has been repeated over and over again by every one who had really enjoyed the intimacy of the Cardinal, that, frequently as he came before the public in circumstances which seemed to savour of display, and freely as he contributed to the amusement of his visitors by exhibiting in conversation with them his extraordinary acquirements, he was entirely free from that vanity to which Madame Paget thinks proper to ascribe it all.

“With all his high qualifications,” says the Rev. Ingraham Kip,[517]a clergyman of the American episcopal church, “there is a modesty about Cardinal Mezzofanti which shrinks from anything like praise.” “It would be a cruel misconception of his character,” says Guido Görres, “to imagine that, with all the admiration and all the wonder of which he habitually sawhimself the object, he yet prided himself in the least upon this extraordinary gift. ‘Alas!’ he once said to a friend of mine, a good simple priest, who, sharing in the universal curiosity to see this wonderful celebrity, apologized to the Cardinal for his visit by some compliment upon his European reputation:—‘alas! what will all these languages avail me for the kingdom of heaven, since it is by works, not words, that we must win our way thither!’”

In truth Cardinal Mezzofanti possessed in an eminent degree the great safeguard of christian humility—a habitual consciousness of what hewas not, rather than a self-complacent recollection of what he was. He used to speak freely of his acquirement as one of little value, and one especially for which he himself had little merit—a mere physical endowment—a thing of instinct, and almost of routine. God, he said, had gifted him with a good memory and a quick ear. There lay the secret of his success—“What am I,” he would pleasantly say, “but an ill-bound dictionary!” “He used to disparage his gifts to me,” says Cardinal Wiseman; “and he once quoted a saying ascribed to Catherine de Medici, who when told that Scaliger knew twenty languages, observed, ‘that is twenty words for one idea! For my part I would rather have twenty ideas for one word!’” On one occasion, after the publication of Cardinal Wiseman’sHoræ Syriacæ, Mezzofanti said to him: “You have put your knowledge of languages to some purpose. When I go, I shall not leave a trace of what I know behind me!” And when his friend suggested that it was notyet too late, he “shook his head and said it was”—which he also repeated to Guido Görres, earnestly expressing his “regret that his youth had fallen upon a time when languages were not studied from that scientific point of view from which they are now regarded.” In a word, the habitual tendency of his mind in reference to himself, and to his own acquirements, was to depreciate them, and to dwell rather upon his own deficiency and short-comings, than upon his success.

Accordingly, while he was always ready to gratify the learned interest, or even to amuse the lighter curiosity, with which his extraordinary talent was regarded, there was as little thought of himself in the performance, and as little idea of display, as though he were engaged in an ordinary animated conversation. It was to him an exciting agreeable exercise and nothing more. He engaged in it for its own sake. To him it was as natural to talk in a foreign language as it would be to another to sing, to relate a lively anecdote, or to take part in an interesting discussion. To his humble and guileless mind the notion of exhibition never presented itself. He retained to his latest hour and through all the successive steps of his advancement, the simplicity and lightheartedness of boyhood. It was impossible to spend half an hour in his company without feeling the literal truth of what he himself said to Görres regarding his relations to the pupils of the Propaganda;—that he went among them not as a Cardinal, but as a school-boy, (giovanetto.) What Madame Paget puts down to the account of“small vanity,” was in reality the result of these almost boyish spirits, and of this simple and unaffected good nature. He delighted in amusing and giving pleasure; he was always ready to display his extraordinary gifts, partly for the gratification of others, partly because it was to himself an innocent and amusing relaxation: but, among the various impulses to which he yielded, unquestionably the idea of display was the last that occurred to him as a motive of action. I can say, from my own observation, that never in the most distinguished circle, did he give himself to those linguistic exercises with half the spirit which he evinced among his humble friends, the obscure and almost nameless students of the Propaganda.

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