[1838-1841.]
Among the offices connected with the Roman Court, there is a certain
class, known as _Poste 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 “reserved _in 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 ancient
_Presbyteri 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 the memory 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 all Sixtus 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 or
_minutanti_, 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 Mezzofanti at 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 his own 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 the _Filopieri_, of
which he had been the President at the time of his removal from Bologna.
The Italians are singularly conservative of established forms; the
members 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 elevation was 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 named
_in petto_ in 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 which he 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 expedition by 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 himself spoke 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 named
_Ancharica_ by Ludolf, who probably added the final _c_ in
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 word _self_, and some others of the
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 without embarrassment; 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 had acquired 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.”
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,
‘_zu_ servitzea,’ ‘_zu_ maitatzea’; both of them preferring to write
_zure_. 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 I have
had the gratification to learn by a letter of M. d’Abbadie, (January
18th, 1858,) that “the construction ‘_zu_ servitzea,’ 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
unable to 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
than the 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!”
Now, in the first place, in the midst of this lady’s supercilious and
depreciatory strictures, it may safely be 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, which _only_ embraced “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,” the three works which she names thus slightingly,
comprise no less than _seven volumes_ of 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 language of 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 saw himself 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 he
_was 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’s _Horæ 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 not yet 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.