[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 the Lord’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, had sent 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 was _Maccodobenesi_, (“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 to settle 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 his _Memoire 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 with which 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 letter _B_ is 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 of _B_ or 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 became completely 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
that he 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 Cingalese
before 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 whole _Camerata_ of 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 Abdo in 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 comparative grammar
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 acquaintance with
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 in _Guzarattee_. 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
wish was 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 of his 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; it _has 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 University of 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.”
Dr. Veggetti still holds the office of Librarian at Bologna. He continued
to correspond occasionally with Mezzofanti, up to the period of his
death.