As to the extent of his acquaintance with English literature, my own personal knowledge is very limited. His only allusion to the subject which I recollect, was a question which he put to me about the completion of Moore’s History of Ireland. He expressed a strong feeling of regret that we had not some Irish History, as learned, as impartial, and as admirable in its style, as Lingard’s History of England. This is a point, however, on which we have the concurring testimony of a number of English visitors, extending over a period of nearly thirty years. The report of Mr. Harford in 1817, has been already quoted; Dr. Cox of Southampton, spoke with high admiration of the Cardinal’s powers as an English critic. Cardinal Wiseman assures me that “he often heard him speaking on English style, and criticizing our writers with great justness and accuracy. He certainly,” adds the Cardinal, “knew the language and its literature far better than many an English gentleman.” With Mr. Henry Grattan, then (in the year 1843,) member of Parliament for Meath, he held a long conversation on the English language and literature, especially its poets. “He spoke in English,” says Mr. Grattan, “and with great rapidity. He talked of Milton, Pope, Gray, and Chaucer. Milton, he observed, was our English Homer, but he was formed by the study of Dante, and of the Prophets. On Gray’s Elegy, and on Moore’s Melodies, he dwelt with great delight; of the latter he repeated some passages, and admired them extremely. Chaucer, he said, was taken from Boccaccio. He added that Milton, besides his merit as an English poet, also wrote very pretty Italian poetry. Talking of French literature, he said that, properly speaking, the French have no poetry: ‘they have too much poetry in their prose,’ said he, ‘and besides they want the heart that is necessary for genuine poetry.’” But the most extraordinary example of Mezzofanti’s minute acquaintance with English literature that I have heard, has been communicated to me by Mr. Badeley, who found him quite familiar with an author so little read, even by Englishmen, as Hudibras!