Joseph Caspar Mezzofanti,[264] was born at Bologna,[265] on the 17th of September, 1774.[266] His father, Francis Mezzofanti, a native of the same city, was of very humble extraction, and by trade a carpenter. Though almost entirely uneducated,[267] Francis Mezzofanti is described by the few who remember him, as a man of much shrewdness and intelligence, a skilful mechanic, and universally respected for his integrity, piety, and honourable principles. For Mezzofanti’s mother, Gesualda Dall’ Olmo, a higher lineage has been claimed;—the name of Dall’ Olmo[268] being extremely ancient and not undistinguished in the annals of Bologna; but the fortunes of the immediate branch of that family from which Gesualda Dall’ Olmo sprung, were no less humble than those of her husband. Her education, however, was somewhat superior; and with much simplicity and sweetness of disposition, she united excellent talents, great prudence and good sense, and a profoundly religious mind. Of this marriage were born several children; but they all died at an early age, except a daughter named Teresa, and Joseph Caspar, the subject of the present biography. Teresa was the senior by ten years, and, while her brother was yet a boy, married a young man named Joseph Lewis Minarelli,[269] by trade a hair dresser, to whom she bore a very numerous family,[270] several of whom still survive. To the kind courtesy of one of these, the Cavaliere Pietro Minarelli, I am indebted for a few particulars of the family history, and of the early years of his venerated uncle.[271] It may be supposed that in the case of Mezzofanti, as in those of most men who attain to eminence in life, there are not wanting marvellous tales of his youthful studies, and anecdotes of the first indications of the extraordinary gift by which his later years were distinguished. According to one of these accounts, his first years were entirely neglected, and he was placed, while yet a mere child, in the workshop of his father, to learn the trade of a carpenter. As is usual in the towns of Italy, the elder Mezzofanti, for the most part, plied his craft not within doors, but in the open street: and it chanced that the bench at which the boy was wont to work was situated directly opposite the window of a school kept by an old priest, who instructed a number of pupils in Latin and Greek. Although utterly unacquainted, not only with the Greek alphabet, but even with that of his own language, young Mezzofanti, overhearing the lessons which were taught in the school, caught up every Greek and Latin word that was explained in the several classes, without once having seen a Greek or Latin book! By some lucky accident the fact came to the knowledge of his unwitting instructor: it led of course to the withdrawal of the youth from the mechanical craft to which his father had destined him, and rescued him for the more congenial pursuit of literature.[272]