I have collected from many sources, published[360] and unpublished, a variety of these travellers’ notices, which I shall use freely in illustrating the narrative of the remaining years of the life of Mezzofanti. I shall be careful, however, in all that regards the critical portion of the biography, and especially in estimating the actual extent of Mezzofanti’s linguistic attainments, only to rely, for each language, on the authority of one who, either as a native, or at least an unquestioned proficient in that particular language, will be admitted to be a perfectly competent judge in its regard.
The autumn of the year 1814 supplies one such notice, which is remarkable, as the first direct testimony to Mezzofanti’s proficiency in speaking German. He had learned this language in boyhood; and it is clear from his letters to De Rossi, and from the books to which he freely refers in that correspondence, that he was intimately acquainted with it as a language of books. But in this year we are able for the first time to test his power of speaking German by the judgment of a native.
The writer in question is a German tourist, named Kephalides, professor in the University of Breslau,[361] who (as may be inferred from his alluding to the Congress of Vienna, as just opened) visited Bologna in the October or November of 1814. “The Professor Abate Mezzofanti,” writes this traveller, who met him in the Library, “speaks German with extraordinary fluency, although he has never been out of Bologna. He is a warm admirer, too, of the literature of Germany, especially its poetry; and he has stirred up the same enthusiasm among the educated classes in Bologna, both gentlemen and ladies.”[362] We learn incidentally, too, from this writer’s narrative, that German was among the languages which Mezzofanti taught to his private pupils. In a rather interesting account of an interview which he had with old Father Emmanuel Aponte, (one of Mezzofanti’s first instructors,) and with the celebrated lady-professor of Greek, so often referred to, Clotilda Tambroni, Kephalides mentions that the youth whom Mezzofanti sent to conduct him to Aponte was one of his own pupils, who had just begun to “lisp German.” Strangely enough, nevertheless, Kephalides does not allude to any other of Mezzofanti’s languages, nor even to his general reputation as a linguist of more than ordinary attainments.
In the commencement of the year 1815, the chief Librarianship of the University became vacant by the death of Father Pompilio Pozzetti. Pozzetti was one of the congregation of the Scuole Pie, and in earlier life had been Librarian of that Ducal Library at Modena, which Tiraboschi has made familiar to every student of Italian literature. From the time of his appointment as Prefect of the Bologna Library, a close intimacy had subsisted between him and Mezzofanti; and on the latter’s being named his assistant, this intimacy ripened into a warm friendship. Mezzofanti was at once appointed as his successor, on the 25th of April, 1815.[363] In the letter in which (May 15th,) he communicated his appointment to his friend, Pezzana, who held the kindred office at Parma, he speaks in terms of the highest praise of his predecessor and of the services which he had rendered during his tenure of office, and deplores his death as a serious loss to the institution.
The revenue of this office, which he held conjointly with his professorship, (although both salaries united amounted to a very moderate sum)[364] placed the Abate Mezzofanti in comparatively easy circumstances, and for the first time above the actual struggle for daily bread. That he still continued, nevertheless, to instruct pupils in private, need hardly be matter of surprise, when it is remembered that, as we have seen, the support of no less than ten individuals was dependent upon his exertions.[365]
Indeed, once released from the sordid cares and excessive drudgery of tuition to which his earlier years had been condemned,—
The starving meal, and all the thousand aches
Which patient merit of the unworthy takes—
the exercise of teaching was to him rather an enjoyment than a labour. After his removal to the Vatican Library, and even after his elevation to the Cardinalate, we shall find it his chief, if not his only, relaxation. Few men have possessed in a higher degree the power of winning at once the confidence and the love of a pupil. The perfect simplicity of his character—his exceeding gentleness—the cheerful playfulness of his manner—the total absence of any seeming consciousness of superior attainments—his evident enjoyment of the society of the young, and above all the unaffected goodness and kindness of his disposition, attracted the love of his youthful friends, as much as his marvellous accomplishments challenged their admiration. It is only just to add that he repaid the affection which he thus invariably won from them by the liveliest interest in all that regarded their progress, and a sincere concern for their happiness which followed them in every stage of their after life.
By degrees, too, he was beginning, in the natural advance of years, to enjoy the best fruit of the labour of instruction, in the success, and even distinction, attained by his quondam pupils. One of these to whom he was especially attached, the young Marchese Angelelli, had passed through the University with much honour; and, in the beginning of 1815, published anonymously a metrical translation of the Electra of Sophocles, which met with very marked favour. Mezzofanti who was much gratified by the success of this first essay, communicated to his friend Pezzana the secret of the authorship. “I send you,” he writes, May 8, 1815, “a first essay in translation from the Greek, published by an able pupil of mine, whose modesty has not permitted him to put his name to his work. From you, however, I make no secret of it. The author is one of our young nobles, the Marchese Maximilian Francis Angelelli, an indefatigable cultivator of every liberal study. I may add, as there is no danger of its reaching the ears of the modest translator, that this first effort is only the beginning of greater things. You will accept a copy for yourself, and place the other in your library, which I am happy to know grows daily, both in extent and reputation, through the care of its librarian, no less than by his distinguished name.”