by Colebroke, had been published in London, in 1817.[434] Being still filled with admiration for the labours of the ancient Hindoos on indeterminate analysis, I mentioned the book casually to Mezzofanti, and merely to show him that even a man almost exclusively devoted to the study of mathematics, might take a lively interest in the labours of the Orientalists. I had no intention of introducing a scientific conversation on this subject with the celebrated librarian; and I must even add, that I thought him quite incapable of engaging in one. How great then was my surprise, when I saw him immediately seize the opportunity, and speak to me during half an hour on the astronomy and mathematics of the Indian races, in a way which would have done honour to a man whose chief occupation had been tracing the history of the sciences. Deeply astonished at so specific a knowledge, which had taken me quite unexpectedly, I eagerly sought explanation from him on points which had seemed to me the most difficult in the history of India; such, for instance, as the probable epoch when certain Indian astronomers had lived, before the Mahometan conquest, and how far those astronomers might have been able, directly or indirectly, to borrow from the Greeks. On all those points Mezzofanti answered on the spot, with great modesty, and as a man who knows how to doubt; but proving to me at the same time, that those were questions on which his mind had already paused, and which he had approached with all the necessary accomplishment of the accessory sciences. I cannot express how much that conversation interested me; and I did not delay to testify to Mezzofanti all the admiration which knowledge at once so varied and so profound, had excited in me. No more was said of visiting the library, or of seeing books. I had before me a most extraordinary living book, and one well calculated to confound the imagination. Encouraged by his courtesy and modesty, I could not resist my desire of putting questions to him on the mode which he had employed in making himself master of so many languages. He positively assured me, but without entering into any detail, that it was a thing less difficult than was generally thought; that there is in all languages a limited number of points to which it is necessary to pay particular attention; and that, when one is once master of those points, the remainder follows with great facility. He added, that, when one has learned ten or a dozen languages essentially different from one another, one may, with a little study and attention, learn any number of them. I strenuously urged him to publish his experience on the subject and on the result of his labours; but I observed in him a great aversion to the publication of his researches. He affirmed that the more we