But in Cardinal Mezzofanti we meet not only each of these qualities, but a most perfect and perfectly balanced union of them all. His memory in itself would have made him an object of wonder. Quick and tenacious to a degree certainly not inferior to any recorded example of the faculty, it was one of the most universal in its application of which any record is preserved; embracing every variety of subject—not alone the vocabularies and forms which he acquired, but every kind of matter to which it was directed; history, poetry, and even persons and personal occurrences. But there was, above all, one characteristic in which it was distinguished from almost all other memories. Some of those qualities already named were possessed by other individuals in an equal, if not a greater or more striking, degree. Henderson, the player, was said to be able to repeat the greater part of the most miscellaneous contents of a newspaper after a single reading; and the mental arithmetician just named, Zachariah Dase, after dipping his eye over a row of twelve figures, could repeat them backwards and forwards, and in every other order, and could multiply them instantaneously by one or two figures at pleasure. Some memories too possessed this faculty entirely independent of the judgment or the reasoning powers. Père Menestrier was able to repeat a long jumble of unmeaning names after hearing them but once, and the young Corsican mentioned by Padre Menocchio could do the same, even after the lapse of an entire year! But the perfection of Mezzofanti’s memory was different from all these, and consisted in its extraordinary readiness. Sir W. Hamilton, in one of his notes on Reid, happily reviving an old view of Aristotle, distinguishes between memory (μνημή) and reminiscence, (ἀνάμνησις)—between spontaneous and elaborated memory—memory of intuition, and memory of evolution. In Mezzofanti the latter hardly appears to have had a place. His memory seems to have acted by intuition alone. It was not only a rare capacity for storing up and retaining the impressions once made upon it, no matter how rapid and how various, but a power of holding them distinct from each other, and ready for instant use. And thus, over the vast and various assortment of vocabularies which he possessed, he enjoyed a control so complete, that he would draw upon each and all at pleasure, as the medium for the expression of his thoughts;—just as the experimentalist, by the shifting of a slide, can change, instantaneously and at will, the colour of the light with which he illuminates the object of exhibition. Dugald Stewart tells the case of a young woman who could repeat an entire sermon after a single hearing, and whose sole trick of memory consisted in connecting in her mind each part of the discourse with a part of the ceiling. It would almost seem as if the memory of Mezzofanti had some such local division into compartments, in which the several vocabularies could, as it were, be stored apart, and through which his mind could range at pleasure, culling from each the objects or words which it desired, no matter how various or how unconnected with each other.
With such a memory as this to guide its action, and to supply the material for its operation, the extraordinary and almost intuitive power of analysis—something in its own order like what Wollaston called in William Phillips, the “mathematical sense”—which Mezzofanti possessed, and which enabled him at once to seize upon the whole system of a language—form, structure, idiom, genius, spirit—led by a process which it is easy to understand, to the wonderful results which this great linguist accomplished. Memory supplied the material with unfailing abundance and regularity. The analytic faculties were the tools which the mind employed in operating upon the material thus supplied for the use.
Such appears to have been the mental process. But for the practical power of speaking the languages thus mastered in theory, Mezzofanti was also indebted to his singularly quick and delicate organization of ear and tongue. It might seem that the former of these organs could only enter as a very subordinate element, and in a purely mechanical way, into the faculty of speech. Indeed the French journals of the past month, (February, 1858,) contain an account of a deaf and dumb man, M. Moser, who (of course entirely unaided by ear,) has mastered, besides Greek and Latin, no fewer than fourteen modern languages. But, strange as this may seem, it is certain that in Mezzofanti’s case the ear, in addition to its direct and natural use in comprehending and catching up the sounds of languages, and appreciating all their delicate varieties and shades, (in which it is admitted to have been ready and infallible beyond all precedent,) had a nobler, and as it were, more intellectual function; that its office was a thing of mind as well as of organization; that he possessed, as it were, an inner and higher sense, distinct from the material organ; and that the impressions which this sense conveyed, helped him to the structure and the philosophical character of language, as well as to its rhythm, its vocal sounds, and its peculiar intonations. It is difficult to explain the exact mental operation, by which this curious result was attained; but the Cardinal himself repeatedly declared his consciousness of such an operation, and ascribed to it, in a great degree, the rapidity and the ease with which he overcame what to others form the main difficulty in the study of a language, and with which, having once made the first step in each language, he mastered, as if by intuition, all the mysteries of its structural system.
Another element of his wonderful talent was his genuine enthusiasm and the unpretending simplicity of his character. “Pretension,” says Emerson, “may sit still, but cannot act.” There was no pretension about Mezzofanti; nor had he anything of that morbid intellectual sensitiveness which shrinks from the first blunders to which a novice in a foreign language is exposed, and which restrains many from the attempt to speak, by the very apprehension of failure.[571] Children, as is well known, learn to speak a language more rapidly than their elders. I cannot doubt that Mezzofanti’s child-like simplicity and innocence, were among the causes of his wonderful success as a speaker of many tongues.
It was not to be expected that a man so eminent in one absorbing pursuit should have made a very distinguished figure in general literature or science. Among the many laudatory reports of him which are contained in this volume, a few will be found which hardly concede to him even a second-rate place as a scholar, still less as a philologer. In some of the literary circles of Rome, Mezzofanti was not popular. M. Libri[572] alludes to one source of unfriendly feeling in his regard. There is another which may perhaps have already struck the reader. From some of the facts noticed in the Introductory Memoir of German linguists[573] and from other incidental allusions, the reader will have observed a certain tendency on the part of philologers to depreciate the pursuit of linguists, and to undervalue its usefulness; and it is precisely from the philologers that this low estimate of Mezzofanti proceeds. It is only just, however, to Baron Bunsen, who is pre-eminently the head of the German school of that science, to admit that he carefully draws the distinction between the two branches of the study of language—that of the linguist, and that of the philologer. And although the natural preference which a student unconsciously gives to his own favourite pursuit, no doubt leads him to attach little value to what Mezzofanti knew, and to dwell more on what in his opinion he did not know, yet it must be said that he gives him full credit for his unexampled power as a linguist.
The Baron’s recollections, nevertheless, contain a summary of the strictures upon the literary character of Mezzofanti, which were current during his lifetime—that his learning was merely superficial—that in the phrase of the late Mr. Francis Hare, “with the keys of the knowledge of every nation in his hand, he never unlocked their real treasures;” that in all the countless languages which he spoke he “never said anything;” that he left no work or none of any value behind him; that he was utterly ignorant of philology; that his theology was mere scholasticism; that he had no idea of Biblical criticism, and that even as a critical Greek scholar, he was very deficient.
It would be a very mistaken zeal for the honour of Cardinal Mezzofanti to deny the literal truth of several of these criticisms. Most of the branches of knowledge in which he is here represented as deficient, are in themselves the study of an ordinary life. To have added them all to what he really did possess, would have been a marvel far exceeding the greatest wonder that has ever been ascribed to him; nor was any one more ready than the modest Cardinal himself, not merely to admit many particulars in which his learning was defective, but even to disparage the learning which he actually possessed. He confessed over and over again, that he was no philologer—that he was nothing but “an ill bound dictionary.” He expressed his regret to Guido Görres, that he had begun his studies at a time when this science was not cultivated. He lamented the weakness of his chest and other constitutional infirmities, which prevented him from writing. He deplored to Cardinal Wiseman, that, when he should be gone, he would have left behind him no trace of what he knew.
But, notwithstanding his own modest estimate of himself, I think enough will be found in the testimonies of many unsuspected witnesses embodied in this Memoir, to shew that the depreciating strictures, to which I have here alluded, are grievously exaggerated. Cardinal Mezzofanti certainly was not a scientific philologer; but the Abbé Gaume’s memorandum proves that, while he had little taste for the mere speculative part of the subject—for those
Cloud-built towers by ghostly masons wrought,
On shadowy thoroughfares of thought—