The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti [pp. 645-661]

The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti.
knowledge, though not profound, was extensive and varied.
Authors of all countries, in poetry as well as prose, grave and
gay, were known to him. His English list was not confined
to Chaucer, Milton, and Gray, but included Hudibras and
Moore's Melodies. He read Cooper's novels. His biographer
gives many incidental proofs that he was much better acquainted with the biography, history, and literature, both of
the ancient and modern world, than would seem to be possible
to a mind so full of the mere signs and expressions of knowledge. An eminent scientific Italian was surprised, on the
incidental mention of a Hindoo treatise on mathematics, to
hear Mezzofanti converse for 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."
The personal character of this remarkable man transpires
through his biography in such a way as to draw to him the
affection as well as the admiration of the reader. Gentle, humble, modest, humane, he seems to feel himself most at home in
the seclusion of the library, or by the pallets of the sick and
dying. The reader wonders how such a quiet, plain, unambitious person could have got into a path the history of which
would come out in binding of scarlet and gold, stamped with
the insignia of one of the proudest stations open to the envy of
mortals. He was, after the manner of Rome indeed, but as it
clearly appears, with a sincere heart, a devout man. "Ah,
Don Ubaldo, give thyself entirely to the Lord!" if this were his
exhortation to a novice in the priesthood, we may trust it was
the principle of his own soul. If he spoke of the blessedness
of that same friend and pupil, on his early death, as consisting
in being "close to the Divine fountain, and then admitted to the
hidden source of the divine oracles, to the study of which he
addressed himself here with such indefatigable application,"
we may trust that those oracles were much more than scholastic
studies to himself. "Alas! what will all these languages avail
me for the kingdom of heaven, since it is by works, not words,
that we must win our way thither!" this exclamation of his, in
reply to a compliment to his talents, may be interpreted by
Protestant charity to be as consistent with the doctrines of
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