MARVELS OF MEMORY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4233, 14 October 1874, Page 3

MARVELS OF MEMORY.

Instances of remarkable memory, generally supposed to be assisted by mnemotechny, have been given from the time of Cicero, who concluded that memory is not, therefore, of, the heart, blood, brain, or atoms ; whether of air or fire, lie is not, like the rest, ashamed to say he is ignorant; he undertakes, however, to swear that it is divine, having regard to such men as Cineas, the Ambassador of Pyrrhus, who aluted the Senate and all the people by their names the second day after his arrival in Rome ; of Theodoetus, the disciple of Aristotle, and of Hortensius, a man of his own time. We have most of us heard of Joseph Scaliger,who learned tlie twice twenty-four books of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” in three weeks; of Avicenna, who repeated by heart the whole of the Koran at the age of ten; of Lipsins, who was willing to recite the histories of Tacitus word for word, giving any one leave to plunge a dagger into his body if he made a mistake—an idle licence, for few would have cared to run the reluctant risk; one of the youth of Corsica, of good appearance, mentioned by Murctus, who recited all the barbarous words the latter had written till lie was tired of writing, and stopped at last, as it was necessary to stop somewhere, while theyontli, like Oliver, asked for more. “ Certainly,” says Mm-etus, “he was no boaster, and lie told me lie could repeat in that way 36,000 words. For my own part I made trial of him after many days, and found what he said was true.” This Corsican, as those others, was, no doubt, of a soul disdaining silver and gold, or he.might have made his fortune by offering his services to an Emperor. Of Frances Suarez, who, after the witness of Strada, could quote tlie whole of Augustine (the father’s works would fill a small library) from the egg to tile apple. Of Dr. Thomas Fuller, who could name in order all the sigus on both sides of the way from the beginning of Paternoster-row at Ave Marialane to the bottom of Chcapside to Stock’s Market, now the Mansion House. Of Magliabecchi, whose name is pleasantly and permanently associated with spiders and the proof of the lost MS. Of William Lyon, who, for a bowl of punch—a liquor of winch bo was exceedingly fond—repeated a Daily Advertiser in the morning which he had read once only, and then in the course of a debauch —over night. We might extend this paper far beyond its normal dimensions by mention of such names as Jedeliah Buxton, who, if bis witness be true, could, by some strange mnemotechny of his own, multiply thirty-nine figures without paper, and amused himself when at the theatre by a compilation of the words used by Garrick, and at another time by that of the pots of beer drunk during twelve years of bis life: Of Zcrab Colburn, a more child, of whom there remains on record a testimony that he could tell the iiunTber of seconds in fifty-eight years in less time than the question could be written down ; or of that prodigy of parts, Pascal, who is said to have forgotten nothing thought, read, or done during his rational age. ’This, says the author of the essay on the “Conduct of the Human Understanding,” is a thing so inconsistent with onr experience of human nature, that to doubt it is no reprehensible stretch of scepticism. —Cornhill Mnyazinc.