‘I cannot explain it,’ said Mezzofanti. ‘Of course God has given me this peculiar power: but if you wish to know how I preserve these languages, I can only say, that, when once I hear the meaning of a word in any language, I never forget it.’ He then begged us to excuse him, and called one of the librarians to show us the principal curiosities of the library. On our return, we found him seated with a young German artist, who, he told us, was going to Constantinople. ‘I am teaching him Turkish before he goes,’ he continued, ‘and as he speaks modern Greek very well, I use that language as the means of my instruction. I had the honour,’ he subjoined, ‘of giving some lessons on modern Greek to your poet, Lord Byron, when he was in Bologna.’ “I should add,” said Dr. Cox “that I frequently heard him speak of Byron, and that his criticisms upon his works, and his reflections on the peculiar characteristics of his poetry, would have been worthy of a place in a Review.” While he thus professed, however, to speak forty-five languages, he took care, as in his similar conversation with Dr. Tholuck, to convey that his knowledge of some of them was much less perfect than of others. Nor did it remain stationary at this limit. Its progress, even while he resided at Bologna, had been steady, and tolerably uniform. But the increased facilities for the study which he enjoyed in Rome, enabled him to add more rapidly to his store. Cardinal Wiseman assures me, that, before he left Rome, Mezzofanti’s reply to the inquiry as to the number of his languages, was that which has since become a sort of proverb, “Fifty, and Bolognese.” Even as early as 1837, Mezzofanti himself, in his extempore reply to Dr. Wap’s Dutch verses, as we have seen, used words to the same effect:— Mijne tong verbleef med _vijftig taalen_ stom, I have been anxious to obtain, on this interesting point, an authentic report from persons who enjoyed almost daily opportunities of intercourse with Mezzofanti at this period, for the purpose of testing more satisfactorily, the accuracy of a contemporary sketch of him, which appeared in a work of considerable pretensions, published in Germany, in 1837—Fleck’s “Scientific Tour,”—which describes him, from popular report, as speaking “some thirty languages and dialects, but of course, not all with equal readiness.” As M. Fleck is in many things, an echo of the supercilious criticisms of those who, while they admitted in general terms the marvellous character of Mezzofanti’s talent, contrived, nevertheless, to depreciate it in detail, it may be well to afford the reader an opportunity of judging it for himself.[471]