Bologna, February 4, 1805.
The works which I lately received from you have only served to confirm the estimate of your powers which I had formed from those with which I was previously acquainted; while the obliging letter and valuable present which accompanied them, equally convinced me of the kindness of your heart. May I hope that this kindness, as well as your profound erudition, may establish for me a title to claim the permission which I solicited in my last letter? I venture, therefore, to enclose to you a printed page in unknown characters, which the owner of the original, Mgr. Alessandro Bevilacqua of Ferrara, tells me has been already examined by several savants, but to no purpose. The book comes originally from Congo;[318] having been brought thence to Ferrara by a Capuchin of the same respectable family. Being full of the idea of Sanscrit, to which I earnestly long to apply myself as soon as I shall find means for the study, I was at first inclined to suspect that this might be the Sanscrit character; but this is a mere fancy of mine, or at best a guess. I look, therefore, to your more extensive knowledge for a satisfactory solution of the doubt; and meanwhile pray you to accept the assurance of my sincere gratitude and esteem.
This correspondence with De Rossi, also, shows very remarkably that, however, at a later period of his career, Mezzofanti’s wonderful faculty of language may have been sharpened by practice into what appears almost an instinct, his method of study at this time was exact, laborious, and perhaps even plodding. He appears, from the very first, to have pursued as a means of study that system of written composition which was the amusement of his later years; and he occasionally availed himself of De Rossi’s superior knowledge and experience so far as to submit these compositions for his judgment and correction.
It is to one of these he alludes in the following letter:—
Bologna, April 15, 1805.
I send you a translation in twelve languages of a short Latin sentence, in the hope that you will kindly correct any mistakes into which I may have fallen. I have been obliged to write it almost impromptu (su due piedi). I mention this, however, not to excuse my own blunders, but to throw the blame of them on those who have forced me to the task. Not having a single individual within reach with whom to take counsel, I have been obliged to impose this trouble upon one whose kind courtesy will make it seem light to him. Accept my thanks in anticipation of your compliance.
P. S. I should feel obliged if you could let me have your observations by return of post. Pray attribute this, perhaps excessive, liberty to the peculiar circumstances in which I am placed.
I have in vain endeavoured to ascertain what were the twelve languages of this curious essay. As no trace of the copy is now to be found among De Rossi’s papers, it seems probable that De Rossi, in complying with the request contained in the letter, returned the paper to the writer with his own corrections. But whatever these “twelve languages” may have been, it is certain that, even at the date of this letter, Mezzofanti’s attainments were by no means confined to that limit. My attention has been called to a notice of him contained in a curious, though little-known work, published at Milan in 1806,[319] which describes his range of languages as far more extensive.
The work to which I refer is the narrative of an occurrence, which, although not uncommon even down to a later date, it is difficult now-a-days,—since Islam has ceased to
——————————wield, as of old, her thirsty lance,