[1807-1814.]
The _Catalogue Raisonné_ of the Oriental and Greek manuscripts was not
completed until 1807, having thus absorbed the greater part of Abate
Mezzofanti’s time during two years.
A large proportion of the Oriental MSS. had never even been entered upon
the ordinary library catalogue, and no attempt at all had been made
to describe them accurately, much less to register their character or
contents. Very many of them too, as we learn from Mezzofanti’s letters,
were imperfect; and a still more considerable number wanted at least the
title and the name of the author. It was no trivial labour, therefore,
to examine the entire collection; to decide on the name, the age, and
the authorship of each; to describe their contents; and to reduce them
all into their respective classes. For most of these particulars the
compiler of the catalogue was utterly without a guide. It is true that
Joseph Assemani’s catalogue of the Oriental MSS. of the Vatican, and
the catalogue of those of the Medicean Library at Florence by his
nephew Stephen Evodius, were in some cases available. But many of the
Bologna MSS. are not to be found in either catalogue; and for all these
Mezzofanti was of course compelled to rely altogether on his own lights.
The catalogue, as drawn up by him, is still preserved, and,
notwithstanding these disadvantages, is described as a highly creditable
performance, and “a valuable supplement to the labours of Talmar and
the Assemanis;”[345] and at all events it was to his long and laborious
researches while engaged in its preparation, that he owed that minute
familiarity with the whole literature of the East, ancient and modern,
which, as we shall see, was a subject of wonder even to learned orientals
themselves.
During the year 1807, an opportunity occurred for testing practically
how far the reputation which he had acquired corresponded with his real
attainments. On the outbreak of hostilities between the Porte and Russia
in that year, the Russian ambassador, Italinski, withdrew (not without
some risk and difficulty)[346] from Constantinople, and, being conveyed
on board the British ship of war, Canopus, to Malta, afterwards made his
way to Ancona. While the ambassador remained at Ancona, the chancellor of
the embassy, Angelo Timoni, who was of Bolognese origin, came to visit
his native city; accompanied by Matteo Pisani, the official interpreter,
who was one of the best linguists of his time, and especially a perfect
master of all the modern languages of the East. As they resided, during
their stay at Bologna, in the house of his friend, Dr. Santagata, their
visit was a severe ordeal for Mezzofanti, who was constantly in their
society; but he withstood it triumphantly; and Santagata records their
wonder and delight to find that, without ever having visited the East,
or mixed in Oriental society, the Bolognese professor had nevertheless
attained a “mastery over the many and various languages, especially
Oriental ones, in which they tried him, and that the marvellous and all
but inconceivable accounts which they had received regarding him, proved
to be not only credible but actually true.”[347]
A great and lasting mortification nevertheless soon afterwards befel
Mezzofanti, in the unexpected deprivation of his beloved professorship.
The circumstances which accompanied his removal have not been fully
detailed, but there is enough in the history of the period to supply an
intelligible explanation. The conflict of Napoleon with the Holy See
was just then approaching its crisis. From the beginning of this year
the French troops had occupied Rome. Two cardinal secretaries of state
had been forcibly ejected from office. The Pope was a prisoner in his
own palace and his authority was completely superseded. Now upon these
and the many similar outrages to which the venerable Pontiff was daily
subjected, the opinions of Mezzofanti were no secret; and there can be
no doubt that the determination of the Government to remove him from
the university was mainly influenced by this knowledge; although in
deference to public opinion, and to the universal feeling of respect
with which he was regarded, they abstained from formally depriving him
of his professorship. His removal was effected indirectly by a decree,
dated November 15, 1808, by which the Oriental professorship itself was
suppressed.
Although a pension, and as it would seem, not a very illiberal one,
was assigned to him, he felt very deeply this exclusion from a career
so congenial to his tastes. He continued nevertheless, as before, to
instruct pupils privately in these and other languages; and although, as
to details, the history of his own studies at this time is a complete
blank, yet from his known habits it may reasonably be presumed that when
the first feeling of mortification had subsided, the ultimate result of
his release from the duties of his chair, was to direct his untiring
energies into new fields of research; and it seems to have been during
this interval that he first gave his attention to the Sanscrit and other
Indian languages;—a family which had till then been but little cultivated
except in England, but to whose vast importance, as well as widely
extended philological relations, Frederic Schlegel[348] had just awakened
the attention of the learned throughout continental Europe.
* * * * *
From the date of this second deprivation, till the year 1812, his quiet
and uniform course of life presents hardly a single interesting incident.
In June, 1810, his mother died. But her advanced age and infirm health
had long prepared him for this bereavement. She died on the feast of St.
Aloysius (June 21,) in her seventy-third year.
The only detail regarding his personal occupations, which I have been
able to discover, is derived from a letter, dated November 30th,
1811,[349] to his friend Pezzana, at Parma, which exhibits him again
engaged in the drudgery of compiling a catalogue—that of the library
of Count Marescalchi. Pezzana had published, some time before, a short
bibliographical essay on two very rare editions of Petrarch, which are
still preserved in the Parma Collection. Mezzofanti, while engaged in
cataloguing the Marescalchi library, discovered a copy of one of these
editions, and at once wrote to communicate the fact to Pezzana.
I may also mention, what, in a life so uneventful, must claim to be
regarded as an event—a short journey which he made to Modena and Mantua.
Joseph Minarelli, the eldest of his sister’s sons, was summoned to
Modena in 1813, to ballot in the conscription which followed the terrible
campaign of 1812, so fatal to the armies of France. Signora Minarelli
was naturally much alarmed at the chance of her son’s being drawn in the
conscription, and in consideration for her anxiety, his uncle accompanied
him to Modena upon the occasion.
It becomes especially difficult henceforward to follow the history of his
studies. The literary friends of this part of his career;—his colleagues
in the University; Ranzani; Caturegli, the astronomer; the eminent
botanist, Felippo Re; his fellow-pupil and fellow-teacher, Clotilda
Tambroni; Schiassi; Magistrini; and others of less note, who could have
supplied information, not only as to his habits and pursuits, but as to
the actual stages of his progress, are long since dead. The letters of
Pietro Giordani,[350] however, recently published, may, in some measure,
fill up the blank; not, it is true, as to the details of his biography,
but at least in so far as regards the opinion entertained in Bologna of
his character and acquirements. Indeed the testimony of Giordani is less
open to exception than any which could have emanated from the personal
friends of Mezzofanti. Giordani had entered the Benedictine congregation,
and had even received the order of sub-deaconship; but on the outbreak
of the Revolution, he had renounced the monastic life, cast aside the
Benedictine habit, and thrown himself into the arms of the revolutionary
party in Italy. Under the French rule at Bologna, he obtained as the
reward of his principles, the place of Assistant Librarian, and also that
of Deputy Professor of Latin and Italian Eloquence. Hence it will easily
be believed that his relations with the Papal party in the University
were by no means friendly; and, as he had had with the Abate Mezzofanti
himself (as I learn from an interesting letter of M. Libri which shall be
inserted hereafter,) some personal misunderstandings, he may be presumed
to have been but little disposed to over-rate the qualifications of an
antagonist. It is no mean evidence of Mezzofanti’s merit, therefore, that
Giordani has specially excepted him from the very disparaging estimate
which he expresses regarding the literary men of Italy at this time.
“I have held but little intercourse with literary men,” he writes to
his friend Lazzaro Papi, “finding them commonly possessed of but little
learning and a great deal of passion. Here, however, I have met an
exception to the rule—the Abate Mezzofanti—a man not only of the utmost
piety, but of attainments truly wonderful and all but beyond belief. You
must, of course, have heard of him; but indeed he well deserves a wider
fame than he enjoys, for the number of languages which he knows most
perfectly, although this is the least part of his learning. Nevertheless,
such is his excessive modesty, that he lives here in obscurity, and I
must add, to the disgrace of the age, in poverty.”[351]
Nor is Giordani’s report to be regarded as one of those vague panegyrics,
which, when Mezzofanti’s fame was established, each new visitor was
wont to re-echo. Giordani is not only well-known as one of the purest
Italian writers of the century, but enjoyed the highest reputation as a
critical scholar; and the subject on which, in another of his letters,
he defers to the judgment of Mezzofanti—a delicate question of Greek
criticism—was precisely that on which he himself was best qualified to
pronounce. In a letter to the Abate Canova (Feb 3, 1812,) he mentions a
conjecture that had recently interested him very much; viz., that the
great Roman architect, Vitruvius, was a Greek, although he wrote in
Latin. His chief argument is based upon Vitruvius’s Latinity, in which
he detects traces of foreign idiom. But, lest he should yield too much
to fancy, he had appealed to the judgment of some of his colleagues, and
he communicates the result to his correspondent. One of the persons thus
consulted was Mezzofanti. “I should not rely on my own judgment,” says
Giordani, “had I not convinced Cicognara and Mezzofanti that it is right.
The authority of the latter is the more important, because my argument
rests chiefly on the style, in every line of which I find impressed, even
where the subject is not technical, traces of halting [_storpiato_] and
ill-translated Greek; and you know what a judge Mezzofanti is of this
point.”[352]
In a letter to another friend, Count Leopoldo Cicognara, (since known
as the biographer of Canova)[353] Giordani reports the sequel of this
discussion, which confirms in a very remarkable manner, Giordani’s
judgment of Mezzofanti’s critical sagacity. Mezzofanti had at first
assented to Giordani’s conjecture; but on a closer examination he
discovered, that what Giordani had considered the Grecisms of Vitruvius’s
style, were, in reality, but _translations from various Greek authors_,
from whom Vitruvius largely borrows, and whom he actually enumerates in
the preface of the seventh book. Mezzofanti further pointed out a phrase
in the same preface which at once put an end to the discussion, and the
discovery of which, as Giordani justly observes, in itself “indicated an
inquiring and critical mind.” Vitruvius, in speaking of the Latin writers
upon his art, as contradistinguished from the Greek, calls them “antiqui
_nostri_.”[354]
To the same friend, Count Cicognara, Giordani in a previous letter,
dated January 30th, 1812, had written of Mezzofanti’s own peculiar
faculty of languages, in terms of almost rapturous admiration. “You
know Mezzofanti,” he says;—“Mezzofanti—the rarest, most unheard of,
most inconceivable of living men. I call him, and he is, the man of all
nations and all ages. By Jove! he appears as though he had been born in
the beginning of the world, and, like St. Anthony, had lived in every
age and in every country!”[355]
In connexion with this very remarkable testimony to the accuracy of
Mezzofanti’s knowledge of Greek, I may mention (although it more properly
belongs to a later period of his life) an amusing anecdote illustrative
of his accomplishments as a Latinist, which is recorded by Dr. Santagata,
and the hero of which was M. Bucheron, Professor of Latin Literature
in the University of Turin, and one of the most celebrated classical
philologists of modern Italy. M. Bucheron came to Bologna, from some
cause strongly prepossessed against Mezzofanti, and disposed to regard
him in the light of a mere literary charlatan, of showy but superficial
acquirements. Of his Latinity—especially in all that bears upon the
critical niceties of the language, and the numberless philological
questions regarding it which have arisen among modern scholars, M.
Bucheron entertained the lowest possible estimate;—considering it, in
truth, impossible, that one whose attention had been divided over so many
languages as fame ascribed to Mezzofanti, _could be_ solidly grounded
in any of them. He resolved, therefore, to put the Abate’s Latinity
to a rigorous test; and came to the library prepared with a number of
questions, bearing upon the niceties of the Latin language, which he
proposed to introduce, as it were casually, in his expected conversation.
He was presented to Mezzofanti by his friend, Michele Ferrucci, Librarian
of the University of Pisa, from whom, I may add, Dr. Santagata received
the account of their interview. The conversation, as Bucheron had
pre-determined, began upon some common-place subject: but in a short time
he artfully contrived to turn it upon those topics on which he desired
to probe his companion. The trial was a most animated one. From a series
of obscure and difficult questions of Latin philology, they passed to a
variety of oriental, historical, and archæological topics. At the moment
when the interest of the conversation was at its very height, Ferrucci
was unfortunately called away by business; but the result may be judged
from the sequel. On his return, after a somewhat lengthened absence, he
met Bucheron coming from the Library.
“Well,” said he, “what do you think of Mezzofanti?”
“_Per Bacco!_” replied the astounded Piedmontese. “_Per Bacco! é il
Diavolo!_”[356]
His celebrity, indeed, was by this time universally established. With all
his unaffected humility; with the full consciousness (which he expressed
in all simplicity and truth to his young friend, Carlino Marescalchi)
that he was “best fitted for the shade”—he had insensibly grown into
one of the notabilities of Bologna. He was constantly visited and
consulted, especially by Oriental students, from foreign countries. What
is more remarkable, more than one Jewish scholar appears in the record
of his visitors. Among the papers of the Abate De Rossi is a letter
of this period (March 18th, 1812,) in which Mezzofanti introduces to
him a certain “Signor Moise Ber;” and, notwithstanding the variety of
orthography, (a variety quite natural in an Italian letter,) there can be
no doubt that this Signor Moise Ber was no other than Rabbi Moses Beer
of the Israelite University of Rome, whose Orations and Discourses have
since been published.[357]
* * * * *
Mezzofanti’s opportunities of conversing with foreigners were much
increased by his becoming permanently attached to the Library of the
University (with which the Library of the Institute had been incorporated
by the French) as Deputy-Librarian. This appointment he received on the
28th of March, in 1812. As the chief librarian at this time was the
Abate Pozzetti, who, like Mezzofanti, was an honorary professor of the
University, and one of his most valued friends, the appointment was
especially agreeable to him: and, independently of its other advantages,
it became for him, as I said, from the constant passing and re-passing of
strangers from every country, a school in which he was able to exercise
himself, almost hourly, in every department of his multilingual studies.
The late Lord Guilford, who was Chancellor of the University of Corfu,
made his acquaintance during one of his visits to Bologna; and on every
subsequent occasion on which he passed through that city, Mezzofanti was
invariably his guest, accompanied by all the Greeks who chanced to be at
the time students of the University.
As his reputation extended, the literary societies of the various cities
of Italy were naturally desirous to number him among their members. He
was already an associate of the _Societá Colombina_ at Florence, and of
the “Society of Letters, Sciences, and Arts,” at Leghorn; and he received
about this time, the decoration of the Royal Order of the Two Sicilies.
The only literary society, however, in whose proceedings he took an
active part, was the Scientific Academy of the Institute of his native
city. It has been commonly supposed that he rarely, if at all, appeared
in the literary arena, and it is true that he has not left behind him
anything at all commensurate with his reputation; but he frequently read
papers, chiefly on philological subjects, in the Bolognese Academy. The
first of these which is noticed by Dr. Santagata was read on the 22nd of
July, 1813; and another, “On the Symbolic Paintings of the Mexicans,” was
delivered in the following session, on the 23rd of March, 1814. Owing
to his early association with several ex-Jesuit American Missionaries
who had settled in Bologna, he had long felt an interest in the curious
subject of Mexican Antiquities. Among his MSS., which still remain in the
possession of the Cavaliere Minarelli at Bologna, is a Mexican Calendar,
drawn up by Mezzofanti’s own hand, and illustrated with fac-similes of
the original pictures and symbolical representations from the pencil of
his niece, Signora Anna Minarelli; but of the paper read in the Academy,
no trace has been found.