The life of Cardinal Mezzofanti / With an introductory memoir of eminent linguists, ancient and modern

by Charles William Russell

Another language which Mezzofanti, in 1839, told Dr. Tholuck he had studied, but in which Dr. Tholuck had no means of trying him, was the Albanese. The late M. Matranga mentioned that he also spoke this language with some Albanian students who were in the Propaganda, soon after his arrival in Rome: but that, as they were from upper Albania, and spoke a corrupt half Turkish dialect of Albanese, he conversed but rarely with them. I may add, however, that Signor Agostino Ricci who came to the Propaganda in 1846, assured me, in a note written two years since,[489] that, between 1846, and the Cardinal’s death in 1849, he had “repeatedly conversed with him in Albanese, and that he spoke it very well.” (assai bene.)

For Armenian, Turkish, and Greek, the Propaganda also supplied abundant resources. The students, Hassun and Musabini—the first, it will be recollected, whom Mezzofanti chanced to meet at his earliest visit—ever afterwards continued his especial favourites and friends. With the former he always spoke in Turkish, with the latter in Greek. A youth named Tigrani, supplied him with practice in Armenian; but to this language, which he enjoyed other opportunities of cultivating, he seldom devoted much of the time which he spent in the Propaganda. It was the same for most of the European languages which he constantly met outside. In the college, for the most part, he confined himself to those which he had no means of cultivating elsewhere.

Without wearying the reader, however, with further details, I shall transcribe (although it regards a later period,) an interesting letter received from the Rev. Charles Fernando, the missionary apostolic at the Point of Galle in Ceylon, which enters briefly, but yet very fully and distinctly, into the particulars of the languages which Mezzofanti used to speak in the Propaganda, during the writer’s residence there as a student. M. Fernando is a native of Colombo in the Island of Ceylon. He came to Rome early in the year 1843, and remained until after the death of Cardinal Mezzofanti.

“When I left Ceylon for Rome,” he writes, August 29, 1855, “I knew but very little of the Cingalese language; a very small vocabulary of domestic words, and a facility in reading in Cingalese characters, without understanding the written language, was the full stock of my knowledge when I reached the college of the Propaganda. From such a master you might be disposed to augur badly of the scholar. Still it was not so.

A few days after my arrival in college, I was introduced to his Eminence in his polyglot library and study room in the college itself. Cardinal Mezzofanti knew nothing of the Cingalese before I went to the Propaganda, yet in a few days he was able to assist me to put together a short plain discourse for our academical exhibition of the Epiphany.

My own knowledge of the language, nevertheless, was not at that time such as to warrant my saying that he knew the Cingalese, or that he spoke it well. This, however, I can assert confidently, that, after a few conversations with me, (I don’t recollect having been with him above a dozen times for the purpose,) he thoroughly entered into the nature and system of the Cingalese language.

Among the other languages of Hindostan, I can only speak as to one. In my time there were no students who spoke the Mahratta, Canarese, or Malayalim; but I heard him speak Hindostani with a student who is now missionary apostolic in Agra, where he was brought up, the Rev. William Keegan.

The most remarkable characteristic of the Cardinal as a linguist was his power of passing from one language to another without the least effort. I recollect having often seen him speak to a whole Camerata of the Propaganda students, addressing each in his own language or dialect in rapid succession, and with such ease, fluency, and spirit, and so much of the character and tone of each language that it used to draw a burst of merry laughter from the company; every one delighted to have heard his own language spoken by the amiable Cardinal with its characteristic precision. I may mention the names of many with whom the Cardinal thus conversed; with Moses Ngau (who died in Pegu not long ago) in the Peguan language; with Zaccaria Cohen in Abyssinian; with Gabriel, another Abyssinian, in the Amariña dialect; with Sciata, an Egyptian, in the Coptic; with Hollas in Armenian; with Churi[490] in Arabic; with Barsciu in Syriac; with Abdo in Arabico-maltese, (the Maltese speak a mixture of Arabic and Italian); in Tamulic with Pedro Royapen, (of this, however, I am not so sure); with Leang and Mong in Chinese; with Jakopski and Arabagiski in Bulgarian; with Beriscia and Baddovani in Albanian. With regard to Malay, Tibetan, and Mantchu, I cannot bear witness, as there were no students who spoke those dialects in my time. As for the European languages, I can assure you that I heard the Cardinal speak a great variety, Polish, Hungarian,[491] Rhetian, Swedish, Danish, German, Russian, &c.”

The caution with which M. Fernando speaks on the subject of Cingalese, as well as of the rest of the Indian languages, makes his testimony in other respects more valuable, inasmuch as I had frequently heard it said in Rome that the Cardinal spoke “Hindostani and all the dialects of India.” It needed, however, but a moment’s recollection of the number and variety of these dialects, (several of which till very recently were almost unknown even by name to Europeans,) to assure me that this was a great exaggeration. I am inclined to think that his knowledge of Indian languages lay entirely among those which are derived from the Sanscrit. The notion of Colebrook and the philologers of his time, that all the languages of India are of Sanscrit origin, is now commonly abandoned. It is found that the languages of the Deccan have but little of the Sanscrit element; and Mr. Caldwell, in his recent comparative grammar of the South-Indian Languages,[492] has enumerated under the general designation of Dravidian, nine un-Sanscritic languages of this region of India, among which the best known are the Tamil, Telugu, Canarese, and Malayalim. There seems no reason to believe that Mezzofanti was familiarly acquainted with any one of these four, or indeed with any member of Dravidian family, unless the Guzarattee can be included therein.

M. Fernando’s hesitation regarding his knowledge of Tamil, induced me to inquire of Rev. Dr. MacAuliffe, lately a Missionary at Madras, who, after spending several years in that Presidency, had entered the Propaganda, and who knew the Cardinal at the same time with M. Fernando. Dr. MacAuliffe informs me, that his eminence did not know Tamil. The Indian languages which he knew, according to Dr. MacAuliffe, were Hindostani and Mahratta; that he was acquainted with at least the first of these there seems no possible doubt, both from M. Fernando’s testimony, and from that of Count Lackersteen of Calcutta, a native East Indian gentleman, who assures me[493] that he conversed with him in Hindostani, in 1843-4. As to the Mahratta dialect, I have not (beyond Dr. MacAuliffe’s assurance) been able to obtain any direct information; but Mr. Eyoob, an Armenian merchant of Calcutta, testifies to the Cardinal’s acquaintance with another Indian language—the Guzarattee. Mr. Eyoob saw the Cardinal in the same year with Count Lackersteen, and writes[494] that, when he was introduced to his eminence as a native of Bombay, the Cardinal at once addressed him in Guzarattee. Mr. Eyoob adds, that the Cardinal also spoke with him in Armenian and in Portuguese, in both of which languages his accent, vocabulary, and grammatical accuracy, were beyond all exception. Count Lackersteen’s letter fully confirms so much of this statement as regards Portuguese. The Count also spoke with Mezzofanti in Persian: but, as he does not profess to be a profound Persian scholar, his testimony on this head is not of so much value.