which he not only reads, but speaks. Among the Ham itic languages, he knows Coptic, Ethiopia, Abyssinian, Amharic, and Angolese." What is especially notable in this marvellous gift possessed by Mezzofanti is that his knowledge of each among this vast variety of languages was almost as perfect as though his attention had been devoted to such language exclusively. The reports of all the great students of language concur in describing liim as speaking even their own tongues always with the precision and, in most cases, with the fluency of a native. His proinniciation, his idiom, his vocabu- lary, were alike unexce])tionable. Even the familiar words of evcry-day life, and the delicate turns of con- versational language, wore at his command ; and in each language he was master of the leading dialects, and of the provincial peculiarities of idiom, of pronuncia- tion, or of expression. In French, he was equally at home in the pure Parisian of the Faubourg St. Germain or in the Provencal of Toulouse. He could acconinid- date himself in German to the rude jargon of the lil.uU Forest or to the classic vocabulary of Hanover; and lir often amused his English visitors with specimens of the provincialisms of Yorkshire, Lancashire, or Somersetshi re. With the literature of those various countries, too, he was well acquainted. He loved to talk with his visitors of the great authors in their respective languages; and his remarks are described as invariably sound and judi- cious, and exhibiting careful and various reading, often extending to departments with which it woidd never be supposed that a foreigner could be familiar. A Dutch traveller, for instance, Dr. Wap, was surprised to find him acquainted with his own national poets, Yondel and Cato ; a Dane, with the philological works of Kask ; a Swede, with the poetry of Ochsentsjema. To a Sicilian he would repeat whole pages of the poetry of Meli ; and an English gentleman w^as astounded to hear him dis- cuss and criticise Iludibras, of all English writers the least attractive, as well as the least intelligible to a for- eigner. He was in the habit, too, of amusing himself by metrical compositions in the various language:
degree of fluency in each. During his lifetime, as we have seen, report varied considerably at different times; nor was he himself believed to have made any verj- ])re- cise statement on the subject. To a Kussian traveller, who visited him before the year 184G, and who begged of him a list of all the languages and dialects in which he was able to express himself, he sent a paper in his own hand containing the name of God in fifty-six lan- guages. The author of a memoir which appeared soon after the cardinal's death in a Roman journal, the Civilfa Catolica (now known to be by father Bresciani, a Ro- man Jesuit), states that in the year 1846 Mezzofanti himself informed him that he was able to express him- self in sovonty-eight languages. jMarvellous as these statements may appear, they seem fully borne out by inquiries (with a view to the preparation of a biogra- phy) which have been made since the death of the car- dinal. Reports have been received from a vast number (if iii(li\iilii;ils. unlives of ililVerent countries, whose col- lc(ii\c' lot iiiKiny. tnumlid mi their own personal knowl- cil^r <if Mi/./.cil'aiiti, plads licyond all question the fact of his having spoken fluently considerably more than fifty different languages. There are others among the languages ascribed to him, regarding which it is diffi- cult to institute any direct inquin,-; but, judging from analogy, and relying on the well-known modesty and truthfuhiess of Mezzofanti, we need not hesitate to ac- cept his own statement as reported by F. Bresciani ; the more so as among his papers now in the possession of his family is a list, drawn up from memoranda contained therein, of no less than a hundred and twenty languages with which he possessed some acquaintance, unaccom- panied, however, by any note specifying those among the number which he spoke, or the degree of his knowl- edge of each. His English biograjdier, Russell, comes to the following results, which are, in Ijrief (for details see that work) : 1. Languages frcnpiently tested, and spoken by the cardinal witli rare excellence — thirty. 2. Stated to have been spoken fluently, but hardly suffi- ciently tested — nine. 3. Spoken rarely and less per-
which he cultivated, and often wrote for his visitors a [ fectly— eleven. 4. Spoken imperfectly; a few sentences couplet or two in their native language, as a little me- j and conversational form— eight. 5. Studied from books, mento of their interview. Dr. Wap, the Dutch travel- but not known to have been spoken— fourteen. G. Dia- ler just referred to, speaks in high praise of some ex- | Iccts spoken, or their peculiarities understood— thirty- tempore lines in Dutch by which Mezzofanti replied to I nine dialects of ten languages, many of which might a sonnet which Dr. Wap had addressed to him ; and the ! justly be described as different languages. This list well-known Orientalist, Dr.Tholuck, having asked ISIez- j ailds uj) one hundred and eleven, exceeding by all com- zofanti for some memorial of his visit, received from parison cver>'thing related in history. Jonadab Alma-
him a Persian couplet, after the manner of Hafiz, which he composed (although not without some delay) during Dr. Tholuck's visit. After his removal to Rome, al- though he had already passed his fiftieth year, he added largely to his stock of languages. His most notable acquisition during this jieriod was Chinese, which he acquired (partly at the ('hinese college in Naples, part- ly among the Chinese students of the Propaganda) in such perfection as to be able not oifly to write and con-