The ‘Grammatica Linguæ Amharicæ,’[410] number 43.
The ‘Osservazioni sulla Lingua albanese,’ number 44.
The ‘Grammatica Damulica,’[411] number 46.
Benjamin Schulz’s, ‘Grammatica Hindostanica,’ number 50.
‘Chilidugu; sive ses Chilenses,’[412] number 67.
And the ‘Catecismo en Lengua Española y Moxa,’[413] No 71.
I shall await your reply.”
Only one of these works, the “Observations on the Albanese Language,” (by Francis Maria da Lecce,) appears in the catalogue of Mezzofanti’s Library. Benjamin Schulz’s Tamul Bible and New Testament, are both in that catalogue, but not his Hindostani Grammar. Probably the price of the books exceeded the very modest limit which Mezzofanti’s humble means compelled him to fix.
In the August of 1825, he had a visit from the veteran philologist and literateur, Frederic Jacobs, of Gotha. The report of Jacobs may be considered of special importance, as he had been prepared, by the doubts expressed as to the credibility of Baron Von Zach’s report, to scrutinize with some jealousy the real extent of the attainments thus glowingly described. It is important, therefore, to note that after quoting all the most material portions of Von Zach’s narrative, he fully confirms it from his own observations—
“I was most kindly received by him,” says Dr. Jacobs: “we spoke in German for above an hour, so that I had full opportunity for observing the facility with which he spoke; his conversation was animated, his vocabulary select and appropriate, his pronunciation by no means foreign, and I could detect nothing but here and there a little of the North German accent. He was not unacquainted with German literature, spoke among other things of Voss’s services in the theory of metre, and made some observations on the imitation of the metrical system of the ancients. His opinions were precise and expressed without dogmatism. This fault, so common among persons of talent, appears quite foreign to him, and there is not a trace of charlatanism about him.”