The year 1819 is further notable as the date of Mezzofanti’s only published composition, the above-named panegyric of his early friend and instructor Emanuel Aponte. The death of this excellent and venerable man had occurred more than three years earlier, (November 22, 1815), and his funeral oration had been pronounced by Filippo Schiassi, the professor of numismatics, as also by Pacifico Deani, whose discourse was translated into Spanish by Don Camillo Salina. Aponte’s grateful pupil, nevertheless, took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the opening of the public studies of the university, to offer his own especial tribute to the piety and learning of the good old father, and particularly to the excellence of his method of teaching the Greek language and the merits of a Grammar which he had published for the use of the higher schools. The Discourse is chiefly occupied (after a sketch of Aponte’s life and character) with a criticism of the method pursued in this Grammar,—a criticism chiefly noticeable as embodying the method, (which we know from other sources to have been the speaker’s own,) of studying a language rather by rhythm than by rule; “by ascertaining its normal structure, the principle which governs its inflexions, and especially the dominant principle which regulates the changes of letters according to the different organs of speech.” As a specimen of this general manner of the Discourse, I shall translate the concluding paragraphs,—the exhortation to the study of Greek literature with which the professor takes leave of his audience.