esto, set off at half-past eight,
and arrived here at nine this morning. The first thing I did was
to present my letter to Madame de Marescalchi from her sister,
the Duchesse de Dalberg, who received me graciously and asked me
to dinner; the next to call on Mezzofanti at the public library,
whom I found at his desk in the great room, surrounded by a great
many people reading. He received me very civilly, and almost
immediately took me into another room, where I had a long
conversation with him. He seems to be between fifty and sixty
years of age, short, pale, and thin, and not at all remarkable in
countenance or manner. He spoke English with extraordinary
fluency and correctness, and with a very slight accent. I
endeavoured to detect some inaccuracy of expression, but could
not, though perhaps his phraseology was occasionally more stiff
than that of an Englishman would be. He gave me an account of his
beginning to study languages, which he did not do till he was of
a mature age. The first he mastered were the Greek and Hebrew,
the latter on account of divinity, and afterwards he began the
modern languages, acquiring the idioms of each as he became
acquainted with the parent tongue. He said that he had no
particular disposition that way when a child, and I was surprised
when he said that the knowledge of several languages was of no
assistance to him in mastering others; on the contrary, that when
he set to work at a fresh language he tried to put out of his
head all others. I asked him of all modern languages which he
preferred, and which he considered the richest in literature. He
said, 'Without doubt the Italian.' He then discussed the genius
of the English language, and the merits of our poets and
historians, read, and made me read, a passage of an English book,
and then examined the etymology and pronunciation of several
words. He has never been out of Italy, or further in it than
Leghorn, talks of going to Rome, but says it is so difficult to
leave his library. He is very pleasing, simple, and communicative,
and it is extraordinary, with his wonderful knowledge, that he
should never have written and published any work upon languages.
He asked me to return if I stayed at Bologna. The library has a
tolerable suite of apartments, and the books, amounting to about
80,000 volumes, are in excellent order. One thousand crowns a
year are allowed for the purchase of new books.

The Bolognese jargon is unintelligible. A ma