First Professor of Italian at Columbia University       29

fore, my dear sir, that I pray you to let this suffice, and not aspire
to acquire for yourself alone, like Bonaparte, the whole glory of
the universe."

His efforts having failed once more, he makes in his Memoirs
some sad observations about the diffusion of Italian in America.
It is true that Da Ponte's narrative may have been pessimistic and
that he enjoyed posing as a victim of human perfidy. But, he can¬
not accept the fact that although there were several progressive
merchants in Italy willing to ship wine and olive oil and silk and
marble and Venetian jewelry and Parma cheese, there was not a
single bookseller who ventured to send books to America. At the
time of Da Ponte there was no bookstore owned or managed by
an Italian. All the books to be found in New York were either
brought in accidentally by travelers or were in somebody's li¬
brary and were sold at auction upon his death. Americans were
fascinated by the oracles of Germany, England and France, but
very little they knew of Italian culture.

After Da Ponte's death in 1838, the instruction of Italian lapsed
at Columbia for nearly half a century. It was revived in 1882 with
the appointment of Carlo Leonardo Speranza as instructor in Ital¬
ian and Spanish. Since then, the development of the Italian Depart¬
ment under such men as Arthur Livingston, Giuseppe Prezzolini
and Dino Bigongiari, and the founding in 1927 of the Casa Italiana,
with its Paterno Library, have at last made Da Ponte's dream come
true.