Note 261 — MEMOIRS OF EMINENT LINGUISTS. (continued 3)

A vocalist, named H. K. von Freher, has appeared recently, who advertises to sing in thirty-six different languages! He is a native of Hungary. With how many of these languages, however, he professes to be acquainted, and what degree of familiarity he claims with each, I am unable to say; but he is described in the public journals as “speaking English with purity;” and in one of his latest performances he favoured the audience with “portions of songs in no less than three or four and twenty different languages, commencing with a Russian hymn, and proceeding on with a French romance, a Styrian song, a Polish air, which he screeched most amusingly, a Sicilian song, as dismal as the far-famed Vespers of that country, a Canadian ditty, a Hungarian serenade, a Maltese air, a Bavarian, a Neapolitan barcarole, a Hebrew psalm, a Tyrolean air, in which the rapid changes from the basso profondo to the falsetto had a most singular effect.”