Ges. This post, which was most congenial to his tastes, he held, with one interruption, for a long series of years. In 1812, he was advanced to a higher place in the staff of the library; and in 1815, on the death of the chief librarian, Pozetti, he was appointed to fill his place. When it is considered how peculiarly engrossing the study of languages is known to be, and especially how attractive for an enthusiastic scholar like Mezzofanti, it might be supposed that for him the office of librarian could have been little more than a nominal one. But the library of Bologna to the present day bears abundant evidence that it was far otherwise. The admirable order in which the Greek and Oriental manuscripts are arranged, the excellent _catalogue raisonne_ of these manuscripts, and the valuable additions to the notices of them by Assemani and Talmar which it contains, are all the fruit of Mezzofanti's labour as librarian. During his occupancy of this office, too, he continued to hold his professorship of Oriental languages, and, for a considerable part of the time, that of Greek literature in addition. Nor was he exempt from those domestic cares and anxieties which are often the most painful drawback upon literary activity. The death of a brother, which threw upon him the care of an unprovided family of eleven children, was the severest trial sustained in Mezzofanti's otherwise comparatively quiet career; and by driving him to the ordinary expedi
