“Bianconi and Mezzofanti,” says Blume, “are the librarians. The latter, as is well known, is considered throughout all Europe as a linguistic prodigy, a second Mithridates; and is said to speak and write with fluency two-and-thirty dead and living languages. Willingly as I join in this admiration, especially as his countrymen usually display little talent for the acquisition of foreign tongues, I cannot but remark that the account recently given in the fourth and fifth volumes of Von Zach’s ‘Correspondance Astronomique,’ is very much exaggerated. Readiness in speaking a language should not be confounded with philological knowledge. I have heard few Italians speak German as well as Mezzofanti; but I have also heard him maintain that between Platt-Deutsch, or the Low German, and the Dutch language, there was no difference whatever.”[404] It will be remarked here, however, that these condemnatory observations of Herr Blume do not regard Mezzofanti’s attainments as a linguist, but only his skill as a philologist. On the contrary, to his linguistic talents Blume bears testimony hardly less unreserved than that which he criticises in the Baron; and as regards the rest of Blume’s criticism, the mistake in philology, (as to the identity of Platt-Deutsch with Dutch,) which he alleges, and which appears to be the sole foundation of his depreciatory judgment of Mezzofanti’s philological knowledge, is certainly a very minor one, and one which may be very readily excused in any other than a German; especially as Adelung (II. 261), distinctly states of at least one dialect of Platt-Deutsch, that spoken in Hamburg and Altona, that it contains a large admixture of Dutch words—so large that a cursory observer, if we may judge from the specimens which Adelung gives (II. 268), might very readily consider the two dialects almost identical. As to another statement of Blume’s, which imputes to Mezzofanti a want of courtesy to strangers visiting or studying in the library, it is contradicted by the unanimous testimony of all who ever saw him whether at Bologna or at Rome. He was politeness and good nature itself.