Pity you was not druggerman [dragoman] at Babel!
For had they found a linguist half so good,
I make no question but the Tower had stood.’”
[381] Yet not without foundation in fact. My friend Mr. James E. Doyle, was assured by the late Dr. Charles R. Walsh (an English surgeon of great ability, who fell a victim to his exertions as an officer of the Board of Health, during the last cholera in London), that he once heard Mezzofanti “doing” the slang of a London cabman in great perfection.
[382] Gaume, “Les Trois Rome,” II., p. 415.
[383] Santagata, “Sermones Duo,” p. 11.
[384] Santagata, pp. 19-20.
[385] Bologna, 1820.—It was on the occasion of the celebration of Father Aponte’s “Jubilee”—the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination as priest—that Mezzofanti addressed to him the Hebrew Psalm which will be found in the Appendix.
[386] Reise durch Italien, I. p. 30-2.
[387] Biographie Universelle (Brussels Edition), XIX., 50-1.