Summing up, therefore, all the authentic accounts of him as yet made public; discarding the loose statements of superficial marvel-mongers, and divesting the genuine reports, as far as possible, of the vagueness by which many of them have been characterized, it appears that, in addition to a large number of (more than thirty) minor dialects, Mezzofanti was acquainted in various degrees with seventy-two languages, popularly, if not scientifically, regarded as distinct:—almost the exact number which F. Bresciani ascribes to him; that of these he spoke with freedom, and with a purity of accent, of vocabulary, and of idiom, rarely attained by foreigners, no fewer than thirty; that he was intimately acquainted with all the leading dialects of these; that he spoke less perfectly, (or rather is not shown to have possessed the same mastery of) nine others, in all of which, however, his pronunciation, at least, is described as quite perfect; that he could, (and occasionally did,) converse in eleven other languages, but with what degree of accuracy it is difficult to say; that he could at least initiate a conversation, and exchange certain conversational forms in eight others; and that he had studied the structure and the elementary vocabularies of fourteen others. As regards the languages included in the latter categories, it is quite possible that he may also have spoken in a certain way some at least among them. So far as I have learned, there is no evidence that he actually did speak any of them: but with him there was little perceptible interval between knowledge of the elementary structure and vocabulary of a language, and the power of conversing in it.
Such is the astounding result to which the united evidence of this vast body of witnesses, testifying without consent, and indeed for the most part utterly unknown to each other, appears irresistibly to lead. I am far, I confess, from accepting in their strict letter many of the rhetorical expressions of these writers—the natural result of warm admiration, however just and well founded. I do not believe, for example, that in each and all the thirty languages enumerated in the first category, the Cardinal actually spoke, as some of the witnesses say, “with all the purity and propriety of a native;” that he could not in any one of them “be recognized as a foreigner;” or that, in them all, he “spoke without the slightest trace of peculiar accent.” On the contrary, I know that, in several of these, he made occasional trips. I do not overlook the “four minor mistakes” in his German conversation with Dr. Tholuck; nor his occasionally “forgetting the marked l in his Polish,” nor the criticism of his manner in several other languages, as “formed rather from books than from conversation.” Neither do I believe that he had mastered the entire vocabulary of each of these languages. Nor shall I even venture to say to what point his knowledge of the several vocabularies extended. So far from shutting out from my judgment the drawbacks on the undiscriminating praise heaped upon the Cardinal by some of his biographers, which these criticisms imply, I regard them as (by recalling it from the realm of legend,) forming the best and most secure foundation of a reputation which, allowing for every drawback, far transcends all that the world has ever hitherto known. I do not say that in all these languages, or perhaps in any of them, Cardinal Mezzofanti was the perfect paragon which some have described him; but, reverting to the standard with which I set out, I cannot hesitate to infer from these united testimonies, that his knowledge of each and every one of the leading languages of the world, ancient and modern, fully equalled, and in several of these languages excelled, the knowledge of those who are commonly reputed as accomplished linguists in the several languages, even when they have devoted their attention to the study of one or other of these languages exclusively. I do not say that he was literally faultless in speaking these languages; nor that what I have said is literally true of each and every one of the thirty that have been enumerated: but, if the attestations recorded in this volume have any meaning, they lead to the inevitable conclusion, that in the power of speaking the languages in which he was best tried,—whether Hebrew, or Arabic, or Armenian, or Persian, or Turkish, or Albanese, or Maltese, or Greek, or Romaic, or Latin, or Italian, or Spanish, or Portuguese, or French, or Swedish, or Danish, or Dutch, or Flemish, or English, or Russian, or Bohemian, or Magyar, or Chinese;—his success is entirely beyond suspicion, and will bear comparison with that of the most accomplished non-native masters of these languages, even those who have confined themselves to one or two of the number. For the few languages upon which I myself may presume to speak, I most unhesitatingly adopt this conclusion, comparing my recollections of the Cardinal with those I retain of almost any other foreigner whom I have ever heard speak the same languages.
The reader’s recollection of the attainments of the most remarkable linguists enumerated in the memoir prefixed to this biography will enable him, therefore, to see how immeasurably Cardinal Mezzofanti transcends them all. Taking the very highest estimate which has been offered of their attainments, the list of those reputed to have possessed more than ten languages is a very short one. Only four—Mithridates, Pico of Mirandola, Jonadab Alhanar, and Sir William Jones—are said, in the loosest sense, to have passed the limit of twenty. To the first two fame ascribes twenty-two, to the last two twenty-eight languages. Müller, Niebuhr, Fulgence Fresnel, and perhaps Sir John Bowring, are usually set down as knowing twenty languages. For Elihu Burritt, Csoma de Körös, their admirers claim eighteen. Renaudot, the controversialist, is said to have known seventeen, Professor Lee sixteen, and the attainments of the older linguists, as Arias Montamus, Martin del Rio, the converted Rabbi Libertas Cominetus, the Admirable Crichton—are said to have ranged from this down to ten or twelve—most of them the ordinary languages of learned and of polite society. It is further to be observed that in no one of those cases has the evidence been examined, the trustworthiness of the witnesses considered, or the degrees of knowledge of the various languages ascertained. Whatever of doubt rests even upon the vaguest statements regarding Mezzofanti, applies with double force in every one of the above instances.
But even putting these considerations aside, and accepting the estimates upon the showing of the parties themselves or their admirers, how far does the very highest of them fall short of what has been demonstrated of Cardinal Mezzofanti!
II. On the curious question as to the system pursued by the Cardinal in the study of languages, I regret to say that little light seems now obtainable. The variety of systems employed by students is endless. The eccentric linguist, Roberts Jones, described in the Introductory Memoir, as soon as he had an opportunity of comparing the vocabulary of a new language with those which he had already studied, proceeded by striking out of it all those words which were common to it with any of the languages already familiar to him, and then impressing on his memory the words which remained. M. Antoine d’Abbadie told me that, in the unwritten languages with which he had to deal, his plan was to write out, with the aid of an interpreter, a list of about five hundred of the leading and most indispensable words, and a few conversational forms; and then to complete his stock of words “by the assistance of an intelligent child who knew no language but the one which he was studying;—because children best understand, and most readily apprehend, an imperfectly conveyed meaning.” Some students commence with the vocabulary; others, with the structural forms of a language. With some the process is tedious and full of labour: others proceed with almost the rapidity of intuition. In comparing the various possible systems, it has not unnaturally been supposed that the process which, in Cardinal Mezzofanti, led to results so rapid and so extraordinary, might be usefully applied, at least in some modified form, to the practical study of languages, even on that modest scale in which they enter into ordinary education. But unfortunately, even if such a fruit could be hoped from his experience, it does not appear that the Cardinal possessed any extraordinary secret, or at least that he ever clearly explained to any of his visitors the secret process, if any, which he employed. One thing at least is certain, and should not be forgotten by those who are always on the look out for short roads to learning, that, whatever may have been his system, and however it may have quickened or facilitated the result for him, it did not enable him to dispense with the sedulous and systematic use of all the ordinary appliances of study, and especially of every available means for the acquisition of vocabularies, and of practice in their exercise.
It is true he told M. Libri that he found the learning of languages “less difficult than is generally thought: that there is but a limited number of points to which it is necessary to direct attention; and that, when one is master of these points, the remainder follows with great facility;” adding that, “when one has learned ten or a dozen languages essentially different from each other, one may, with a little study and attention, learn any number of them.” But he also stated to Dr. Tholuck “that his own way of learning new languages was no other than that of our school-boys, by writing out paradigms and words, and committing them to memory.” (P. 278.) Dictionaries, reading-books, catechisms, vocabularies, were anxiously sought by him, and industriously used. The society and conversation of strangers was eagerly—in one less modest and simple it might almost appear obtrusively—courted, and turned to advantage. A constant and systematic habit of translation and composition both in prose and verse was maintained. In a word, nothing can be clearer than that with Mezzofanti, as with the humblest cultivators of the same study, the process of acquiring each new language was, if not slow, at least laborious; and that, with all his extraordinary gifts, the eminence to which he attained, is in great part to be attributed to his own almost unexampled energy, and to the perseverance with which he continued to cultivate these gifts to the very latest day of his life. He understood thoroughly, as all who have ever attained to eminence have understood, the true secret of study—economical and systematic employment of time. The great jurist D’Aguesseau composed one of his most valuable works in the scraps of time which he was able to save from his wife’s unpunctuality in the hour of dinner. Mezzofanti made it a rule, even amid his most frequent and most distracting occupations, to turn to account every chance moment in which he was released from actual pressure. No matter how brief or how precarious the interval, his books and papers were generally at hand. And even when no such appliance of study were within reach his active and self-concentrated mind was constantly engaged. He possessed a rare power of self-abstraction, by which he was able to concentrate all his faculties upon any language which he desired to pursue, to the exclusion of all the others that he knew. In this respect he was entirely independent of books. When the great mathematician, Euler, became blind, he was able to form the most complicated diagrams, and to resolve the most intricate calculations, in his mind. Every one has heard, too, of cases like that of the prisoner described by Pope:—
Who, locked from ink and paper, scrawls
With desperate charcoal on his darkened walls.
But Mezzofanti’s power of mental study was even more wonderful. He had the habit of thinking when alone, in each and all of his various languages in succession; so that, without the presence of a second individual, he almost enjoyed the advantage of practice in conversation! The only parallel for this extraordinary mental phenomenon that I know, is a story which I have somewhere read, of a musician who attained to great perfection as an instrumental performer, although hardly ever known to touch an instrument for the purpose of practice. This man, it is said, was constantly practising in his mind; and his fingers were actually observed to be always in motion, as though engaged in the act of playing.
On the other hand, it is certain that Mezzofanti’s power of acquiring languages was mainly a gift of nature. It is not easy to say in what this natural gift consisted. Among the faculties of the mind chiefly employed in acquiring language—perception, analysis, judgment, and memory—by some it has been placed in his intuitive quickness of perception—by others in his memory—and by others, in his power of analysing the leading inflexional and structural characteristics by which each language is distinguished. Others place it in some mysterious delicacy of his ear, which detected in each language a sort of rhythm or systematic structure, and thus supplied a key to all its forms. But no one of these characteristics, taken singly, even in its very highest development, will account for a success so entirely unexampled. Almost all great linguists, it is true, have been remarkable for their powers of memory; but there are many examples of such memory, unaccompanied by any very peculiar excellence in the gift of languages. Still less can it be ascribed exclusively to any quickness of perception, or any perfection of analytic or synthetic power. Perhaps there is no form in which these powers are so wondrously displayed, as in the curious phenomena of mental arithmetic. And yet I am not aware that any of the extraordinary mental calculators has been distinguished as a linguist. On the contrary, many of them have been singularly deficient in this respect. Mr. George Bidder, one of the latest, and in many respects most creditable, examples of this faculty, confesses his entire deficiency in talent for literature or language; and Zachariah Dase, whose performances as a calculator almost exceeded all belief, could never master a word of any foreign language except a little German.