The life of Cardinal Mezzofanti: With an introductory memoir of eminent linguists, ancient and modernRussell, Charles William
History
The life of Cardinal Mezzofanti: With an introductory memoir of eminent linguists, ancient and modern
Russell, Charles William
Linguists; Mezzofanti, Giuseppe, 1774-1849
All who were most familiar with Mezzofanti, to whatever party in
Italian politics they belonged, have borne testimony to the sincerity
of his convictions and the entire disinterestedness of his views—a
disinterestedness which had marked the entire tenor of his life, and had
been attested by long and painful sacrifices. Nevertheless, on the return
of the Bolognese deputation from Rome, he had the mortification to find
his conduct misrepresented and his motives maligned. The marked attention
which he had experienced at the hands of the Pope, was made a crime.
His simple and long-tried loyalty—the spontaneous homage which a mind
such as his renders almost by instinct—was denounced as the interested
subserviency of a courtier; and the favours which had been bestowed on
him in Rome, were represented as the price of his treason to Bologna.
Mezzofanti felt deeply these ungenerous and unfounded criticisms. His
health was seriously affected by the chagrin which they occasioned; and
these memories of his last days in Bologna often clouded in after years
the happier reminiscences of his native city on which his mind delighted
to dwell.
Owing to the unsettled condition of Italy during this year, but few
Englishmen visited Bologna. Among these were Dr. Christopher Wordsworth,
Canon of Westminster (who also saw Mezzofanti in the following year in
Rome,) and Mr. Milnes, of Frystone Hall, Yorkshire, father of the poet,
Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes. The latter was much amused by Mezzofanti’s
proposing, when he heard he was a Yorkshire man, to speak Welsh with him,
“_as Yorkshire lay so near Wales!_”
It would hardly be worth while to note this amusing blunder in English
topography, (a blunder more remarkable in Mezzofanti, as in all
geographical details he was ordinarily extremely accurate,) were it not
that it is another testimony on the disputed question of his acquaintance
with the Welsh language.
He left Bologna finally for Rome in October, 1831. The Pope afterwards
used jokingly to say, that “the acquisition of Mezzofanti for Rome was
the only good that came of the Revolution of Bologna in 1831.” By the
kind care of the Pope, he was provided with apartments in the Quirinal
Palace, nearly opposite the Church of Saint Andrew—the same apartments at
the window of which the lamented Monsignor Palma was shot during the late
Revolution.
CHAPTER X.
[1831-33.]
It is one of Rochefoucauld’s maxims, that “in order to establish a great
reputation, it is not enough for one to possess great qualities, he must
also economize them.” If Mezzofanti had desired to act upon this prudent
principle, he could not possibly have chosen a worse position than Rome.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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