Chapter VIII: 1828-1830

In the year 1828, the Crown Prince of Prussia, (now King Frederic William,) while passing through Bologna, on his way to Rome, sought an interview with Mezzofanti. In common with all other visitors, he was struck with wonder at the marvellous variety and accuracy of his knowledge of languages. On his arrival at Rome, he spoke admiringly of this interview to Dr. Tholuck, the present distinguished professor of Theology at Halle, (at that time chaplain of the Prussian Embassy in Rome,) who has kindly communicated the particulars to me. “The prince urged me,” says Dr. Tholuck, in an exceedingly interesting letter which shall be inserted later, “not to leave Italy without having seen him. ‘He is truly a miracle,’ exclaimed the prince; ‘he spoke German with me, like a German; with my Privy-Councillor Ancillon, he spoke the purest French; with Bunsen, English; with General Gröben, Swedish.’ ‘And what is still more wonderful,’ subjoined M. Bunsen, then minister resident in Rome, ‘all these languages he has learnt by books alone, without any teacher.’” This opinion of M. Bunsen’s, Dr. Tholuck afterwards ascertained to be a mistake, or at least an exaggeration.

It was doubtless to the lessons of his early master, Father Thiulen, that he owed the knowledge of Swedish which enabled him to converse with General Gröben. A still more distinct evidence of his familiarity with it occurred on occasion of the visit of the Crown Prince (now King) Oscar of Sweden to Bologna. M. Braunerhjelm, now Hof-Stallmastäre at Stockholm, who was present at the prince’s interview with Mezzofanti, assured Mr. Wackerbarth, who was good enough to make the inquiry for me last year, that “the abate spoke the language quite perfectly.” According to another account which I have received, the prince, having suddenly changed the conversation into a dialect peculiar to one of the provinces of Sweden, Mezzofanti was obliged to confess his inability to understand him. What was his amazement, in a subsequent interview, to hear Mezzofanti address him in this very dialect!

“From whom, in the name of all that is wonderful, have you learnt it?” exclaimed the prince.

“From your Royal Highness,” replied Mezzofanti. “Your conversation yesterday supplied me with a key to all that is peculiar in its forms, and I am merely translating the common words into this form.”

The Countess of Blessington, in the third volume of her “Idler in Italy,” has given an account of her intercourse with Mezzofanti during this year. She adds but little to the facts already known as to Mezzofanti’s linguistic attainments; but it may not be uninteresting to contrast with the ponderous and matter of fact sketches of the professional scholars whom we have hitherto been considering, the lighter, but in many respects more striking portraiture of a lady visitor, less capable of estimating the solidity of his learning, but more alive to the minor peculiarities of his manner, to the more delicate shades of his character and disposition, and to the thousand minuter specialities, which, after all, go to form our idea of the man.

Lady Blessington had been present at the solemn mass in the church of St. Petronius at Bologna on the morning of the Festival of the Assumption. An adventure which befel her at the close of the ceremony led to her first meeting with the great linguist, which she thus pleasantly describes.

“While viewing the procession beneath the arcades, I was
inadvertently separated from my party, and found myself
hurried along by the crowd, hemmed in at all sides by a moving
mass of strangers who seemed to eye me with much curiosity.
To disentangle myself from the multitude would have been
a difficult, if not an impossible task; and I confess I
experienced a certain degree of trepidation, inseparable from
a woman’s feelings, at finding myself alone in the midst of
a vast throng not one face of which I had ever previously
seen. Great then was my satisfaction at hearing the simple
remark of ‘We have had a very fine day for the fête,’ uttered
in English, and with as good a pronunciation as possible, by
a person having the air and dress of a clergyman, to another
who answered: ‘Yes, nothing could be more propitious than the
weather.’

Though it is always embarrassing to address a stranger, the
sound of my own language, and the position in which I was
placed, gave me courage to touch the arm of the first speaker,
and to state, that being separated from my party, I must
request the protection of my countryman. He turned round,
saluted me graciously, said that, though not a countryman, he
would gladly assist me to rejoin my party, and immediately
placed me between him and his companion.

‘You speak English perfectly, yet are not an Englishman!’ said
I. ‘Then you can be no other than professor Mezzofanti?’

Both he and his companion smiled, and he answered; ‘My name
_is_ Mezzofanti.’

I had a letter of introduction from a mutual friend, and,
intending to leave it for him in the course of the day, I had
put it into my reticule, whence I immediately drew it and gave
it to him. He knew the hand-writing at a single glance, and,
with great good breeding, put it unopened into his pocket,
saying something too flattering for me to repeat, in which the
remark, that a good countenance was the best recommendation,
was neatly turned. He presented his companion to me, who
happened to be the Abbé Scandalaria, then staying on a visit to
him, and who speaks English remarkably well.

My party were not a little surprised to see me rejoin them,
accompanied by and in conversation with two strangers. When
I presented them to my new acquaintances, they were much
amused at the recital of my unceremonious encounter and
self-introduction to Mezzofanti, who not only devoted a
considerable portion of the day to us, but promised to spend
the evening at our hotel, and invited us to breakfast with him
to-morrow.

The countenance of the wonderful linguist is full of
intelligence, his manner well-bred, unaffected and highly
agreeable. His facility and felicity in speaking French,
German, and English, is most extraordinary, and I am told it
is not less so in various other languages. He is a younger
man than I expected to find him, and, with the vast erudition
he has acquired, is totally exempt from pretension or
pedantry.”[419]

An adventure with Mezzofanti, quite similar to Lady Blessington’s, befel a party of Irish ecclesiastical students on their way to Rome in the very same year. They arrived at Bologna late in the afternoon, and, as they purposed proceeding on their journey early on the following morning, they were unwilling to lose the opportunity of seeing and conversing with the celebrated professor. Accordingly they repaired to the university library; but, as might be expected at so late an hour, they found the library closed and the galleries silent and deserted. After wandering about for a considerable time, in search of some one to whom to address an inquiry, they at last saw an abate of very humble and unpretending appearance approach. The spokesman of the party begged of him, in the best Latin he could summon up at the moment, to point out the way to the library.

“Do you wish to see the library?” asked the abate without a moment’s pause, in English, and with an excellent accent.

The student was thunderstruck. “By Jove, boys,” he exclaimed turning to his companions, “this is Mezzofanti himself!”

It _was_ Mezzofanti; and, on learning that they were Irish, he addressed them a few words in their native language, to which they were obliged to confess their inability to reply. One of the number, however, having learned the language from books, Mezzofanti entered into a conversation with him on its supposed analogies with Welsh.

Of this party, five in number, four are now no more. The sole survivor, Reverend Philip Meyler of Wexford, still retains a lively recollection not only of the fluency and precision of Mezzofanti’s English, but of the friendly warmth with which he received them, of the interest which he manifested in the object of their journey, and of the cordiality of the “_Iter bonum faustumque!_” with which he took his leave.

The clergyman alluded to by Lady Blessington, as the “Abbé Scandalaria,” was, in reality, Padre Scandellari,[420] a learned priest of the congregation of the Scuole Pie, and one of Mezzofanti’s especial friends. I was assured by the late Lady Bellew, who knew Padre Scandellari at this period, that he spoke English quite as well as Mezzofanti. Her ladyship, (at that time Mademoiselle de Mendoza y Rios) was presented to Mezzofanti by this father, a few weeks after the visit of Lady Blessington. She was accompanied by the late Bishop Gradwell, ex-rector of the English College at Rome, and by her governess, Madame de Chaussegros,[421] a native of Marseilles. Mezzofanti conversed fluently with Dr. Gradwell in English, and with Mdlle. de Mendoza, who was a linguist of no common attainments, in English, French, and Spanish; and when he learned that her companion was a Marseillaise, he at once addressed her in the Provençal dialect, which, as the delighted Marseillaise declared, he spoke almost with the grace and propriety of a native of Provence.

It will be remembered that the Crown Prince of Prussia, on his arrival at Rome, counselled Dr. Tholuck not to return to Germany, without visiting the Bolognese prodigy. Having heard of this interview, which took place while Dr. Tholuck was returning to Germany, in 1829, I was naturally anxious to learn what was the impression made upon this distinguished orientalist, by a visit which may be said to have been undertaken with the professed design of testing by a critical examination the reality of the accomplishment of which fame had spoken so unreservedly. Dr. Tholuck, with a courtesy which I gratefully acknowledge, at once forwarded to me a most interesting account of his interview, a portion of which has been already inserted. Dr. Tholuck is known as one of the most eminent linguists of modern Germany. From the clear and idiomatic English of his letter, the reader may infer what are his capabilities, as a critical judge of the same faculty in another. After mentioning M. Bunsen’s statement, that Mezzofanti had learned his languages entirely from books, Dr. Tholuck continues:—

“This seemed the more incredible to me, having just made the
experience as to Italian, how impossible it is to acquire the
niceties of conversational language only from books. On my
return from Rome, having arrived at Bologna, I considered it my
first duty to call on that eminent linguist, accompanied by a
young Dane who was conversant also with the Frisian language,
spoken only by a small remnant of that old nation in Sleswic
or Friesland. Mezzofanti having commenced the conversation
in German, I continued it a quarter of an hour in my native
language. He spoke it fluently, but not without some slighter
mistakes, of which, in that space of time, I noticed as many
as four, which I took notes of immediately after; nor was the
accent a pure German accent, but that of Poles and Bohemians
when they speak German, which is to be accounted for from
his having acquired that language from individuals of that
nation, from Austrian soldiers. Upon this I suddenly turned my
conversation into Arabic, having obtained an easy practice in
this language by long intercourse with a family in which it
was spoken. Mezzofanti made his reply in Arabic without any
hesitation, quite correctly, but very slowly, composing one
word with the other, from want of practice. I then turned upon
Dutch, which he did not know then, but replied in Flemish, a
kindred dialect. English and Spanish he spoke with the greatest
fluency, but when addressed in Danish he replied in Swedish.
The Frisian he had not yet heard of. When requested to write
a line for me, he retired in his study, and, as we had been
talking together on the Persian, which at that time had been
my chief study, and which he was able to converse in, though
very slowly, and composing only words, as was my own case
likewise, he wrote for me a fine Persian distich of his own
composition, though only after long meditation in his study.
In the mean while he permitted me to examine his library.
Turning up a Cornish (of the dialect of Cornwall) Grammar, I
found in it some sheets containing a little vocabulary and
grammatical paradigms, and he told me that his way of learning
new languages was no other but that of our school-boys, by
writing out paradigms and words, and committing to memory. As
to the statement of M. Bunsen, mentioned before, it was not
confirmed by Mezzofanti’s communication: he confessed to have
acquired the conversational language chiefly from foreigners in
the hospitals, in part from missionaries. The number he then
professed to know _well_ was upwards of twenty; those which
he knew imperfectly, almost the same number. Of the poetical
productions of several nations he spoke as a man of taste, but
what we call the philosophy of language he did not seem yet to
have entered upon.”

Dr. Tholuck, it will be seen, did not suffer himself to be carried away by the enthusiasm of those who had gone before him. He had eyes for faults as well as for excellencies. Nevertheless, the reader will probably agree with me in thinking the undisguised admiration which pervades his calm and circumstantial statement, even with the drawbacks which it contains, a more solid tribute to the fame of Mezzofanti than the declamatory eulogies of a crowd of uninquiring enthusiasts. There is an irresistible guarantee for his trustworthiness as a reporter upon Mezzofanti’s German, in the fact that he did not fail to take “a note of the four minor mistakes,” into which Mezzofanti fell in the course of their conversation;[422] and one cannot hesitate to receive without suspicion what he tells of his “speaking Arabic and Persian without any hesitation, and quite correctly,” when we find him carefully distinguish between these and the other languages on which he tried him, and note that in these he proceeded “very slowly, composing one word with another for want of practice.” It is proper, however, to add that the opportunity of practice which he afterwards enjoyed at Rome, entirely removed this difficulty: and the fluency and ease with which Mezzofanti there spoke these most difficult languages, is the best confirmation of Dr. Tholuck’s sagacity in ascribing the hesitation which was observable at the time of his visit to want of practice alone.

Dr. Tholuck’s letter is specially important, also, as establishing the fact that Mezzofanti’s acquisitions were by no means so easy, or so much the result of a species of instinctive intuition as has been commonly supposed. Many of the circumstances which Dr. Tholuck notes, indicate labour; all point plainly to successive stages of advancement, to various degrees of perfection, in a word, to all the ordinary accompaniments of progress. The little vocabulary and grammatical paradigms of the Cornish language, an extinct and almost forgotten dialect,[423] which even our English philologists have come to disregard, tell of themselves the character of the man. Of course the main attraction of the Cornish dialect for him, was as one of the representatives of the old British family; but it cannot be doubted that he took a pleasure in the systematic pursuit of the structure of a language for the mere sake of the mental exercise which it involved. I am assured by the Cavalier Minarelli that the deceased Cardinal’s books and papers[424] contain many such grammatical and phraseological skeletons, even in languages which might be supposed to have less interest than that in the study of which Dr. Tholuck found him engaged.[425]

In reply to further inquiries which I addressed to him, Dr. Tholuck added:

“Among the twenty languages which he then professed to know
accurately, he pointed out specially the English and the
Albanese; among these he professed to know imperfectly, was
also the Quichua, or old Peruvian, which he learned from some
of the American missionaries. He mentioned that he was then
engaged in learning the Bimbarra language, studying it from a
catechism translated by a French missionary; an instance which
shows that his _knowing_ a language was in _some_ instances
nothing more than having got a smattering of it, as the
Americans say.[426]

As to the Persian distich, which it took him about half an
hour to compose, it was an imitation of the distichs in Sadi’s
_Gulistan_,[427] and contained, as is the case with these
distichs, some elegant ἐνθύμησεις.”

Whether, at any subsequent time, he acquired the Frisian dialect, of which “he had not yet heard” when Dr. Tholuck visited him, I am unable to pronounce from any positive information. But I find in his catalogue[428] several volumes in this language (to which it is highly probable that this interview called his attention;) not merely elementary books, such as Rasck’s _Friesche Spraakleer_, but historical works, as for instance, Wissers’ History, and even such light literature as Japiek’s Collection of Frisian Poetry.[429] From his known habits I can hardly doubt that, once having acquired these books, he must at least have made some progress towards mastering their contents.

The abate Ubaldo Fabiani, a young Modenese priest of much promise, who, after completing his studies, had been appointed lecturer in sacred Scripture and Hebrew in his native university, came to Bologna in 1829, with letters from the abate Cavedoni to Mezzofanti, under whom he proposed to perfect himself in Hebrew and other Oriental languages. Mezzofanti received him with the utmost cordiality; and the great ability and industry which he exhibited, as well as his exceeding amiableness and unaffected piety, completely won the heart of his master. On his return to Modena, after a residence of a few months, Mezzofanti wrote to his friend Cavedoni.

_Bologna, 17 October, 1829._

“Don Ubaldo Fabiani is just about to return to Modena, after
a sojourn of three months here, the entire of which he has
passed in the midst of books. It would be impossible for me to
describe to you the assiduity, avidity, and perseverance, with
which I have seen him apply to his studies; but I can safely
say that the fruit which he has derived from them has even
exceeded the labour, as he unites with unwearied diligence a
ready wit and a peculiar aptitude for this branch of learning.
The principal object of his attention has been the sacred
Hebrew text; but he has also applied himself to Chaldee, and in
the end to the Rabbinical Hebrew—in all cases with most rapid
progress. Had his time not been so limited, he had intended
to devote himself also to Arabic—a language which has of late
become so necessary an appliance of the polemics of sacred
Scripture. But I have every confidence that he will do this
also, when he shall return another year to Bologna; and I shall
be more than willing to accompany him in this study also.

I am much indebted to you for having given me an opportunity
of forming the acquaintance of so worthy an ecclesiastic. I
have to thank you also for your learned publications, which
you were kind enough to send me, and which, in the midst of
all my varied occupations, are a source of real pleasure to
me. Forgive my irregularity and tardiness as a correspondent;
or rather do you return good for evil, by writing to me the
more frequently. You will thus do what is most grateful to your
devoted friend.”

Fabiani had hardly reached Modena when he was seized with fever—the terrible _perniciosa_ of the Italian summer and autumn—and was carried off after an illness of a few days, at the early age of twenty-four. As soon as the melancholy news reached Bologna, Mezzofanti wrote once more to his friend Cavedoni.

_Bologna, November 12, 1829._

“Death has snatched Don Ubaldo from us! Alas, how much have we
lost in him!—how miserably have we seen all the hopes which we
placed in him, cut off in a single moment! What might we not
have expected from a young ecclesiastic, so entirely devoted to
piety and to letters!

As for himself, his only aspirations were for heaven. His
studies had no other end or aim, save God: and God has been
pleased to take him to Himself, crowning with an early reward a
virtue which, even in the first flower of years, had attained
to its full maturity. Ah, let us hope that our dear Don Ubaldo,
now close to the Divine Fountain, is there admitted to the
hidden source of the divine oracles, to the study of which he
addressed himself here with such indefatigable application. Now
he will recall to memory, the affectionate care bestowed upon
him here by his parents, by his dear Don Celestino, and even by
his last master—last in merit as well as in time—and will feel
the force of the words which I often repeated to him, never
with more tenderness than at our last parting—‘Ah, Don Ubaldo,
give thyself entirely to the Lord!’ He feels now, I confidently
trust, what a thing it is to ‘belong entirely to the Lord.’

Ah, my dear Don Celestino, I should not be acting worthily, if,
on such an event, I gave room for a single moment to earthly
thoughts. Our friend has flown to heaven:—let our hearts also
turn thither, where we hope to meet him in everlasting joy.
Assist me by your prayers to attain this end. When you see
our deceased friend’s parents, comfort them with the true and
blessed consolations which our holy religion bestows; and let
us when, in the Adorable Sacrifice, we offer prayers for those
who are in tribulation, never fail to pray for each other, and
continually strive to disentangle ourselves more and more from
the vanity of the world.”

The premature death of this excellent young clergyman was felt at Modena as a real calamity. His friend, the abate Cavedoni, published these simple but touching letters of Mezzofanti in the _Memorie_[430] of Modena, as the best testimony which could be offered to the rare merit of the deceased; but, although already known in Italy, they are well worthy of being preserved, not merely as a tribute to the memory of the youth whose death they record, but as representing most truthfully the piety, the sensibility, the fervour, and above all, the amiable and affectionate disposition, of the writer himself.

Soon after the date of these letters was founded at Bologna a literary Academy, which has some interest in connexion with the history of Mezzofanti. Like many of the older learned societies of Italy,[431] it took to itself a somewhat fanciful designation, although one which falls far short in oddity of those of many among its predecessors;—as the _Oziosi_, or the _Inquieti_, of Bologna, the _Insensati_ of Perugia, the _Assorditi_ of Urbino, or (strangest of all), the _Umidi_[432] of Florence, who carried the fancy so far as to designate themselves by the names of fish and water-fowls. Mezzofanti and his fellow Academicians contented themselves with the less startling, though somewhat affected, title of _Filopieri_, “Lovers of the Muses.” Their Society received the formal approval of the Congregation of Studies, in the beginning of 1830, and commenced to hold its meetings in the same year. But, in connexion with the life of Mezzofanti, it is chiefly memorable for a curious volume of verses, addressed to him by the members, on the occasion of his elevation to the Cardinalate.[433]