Good Memories.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 5, 31 July 1912, Page 3

Good Memories.

It has been -aid that it was no uncommon thing for Julius. Caesar to dictate to several secretaries at the same time, heide- maintaining a running con vernation with a number of officers in his tent, the great man never being at a loss to know “where he was at” when ever he took up a loose threa t in dictation or conversation. Joseph Scaliger bed a fair memory. In Homer’' Iliad and the Odyssey there are something orer 60,000 verse*. Scali

ger consumed only 21 days to al! of them to memory. Seneca, we are informed, could repeat 2000 name* in the same order in which they had been spoken, and could rehearse 200 verses after hearing them read tvrice. Mithridates, the Asiatic mMiiarih of poison fame. numbered some 22 countries in his dominion?, and was able to Converse with natives of any of them without the assistance of an interpreter. I.orJ Macaulay had perhaps one of the most astounding memories of which there is any account. So well did he know the Bible that, when it was hi* desire to acquire another language, he was accustomed, once he had skimmed through the grammar, to take up the reading of the Bible in that language. He was fond of boasting that if by some catastrophe all the written works of Homer, Shakespeare. Milton. Dante, and Plato were destroyed., he would at once furnish the texts from memory, since he knew them all by heart. When, however, we come to consider the case of Mezzofanti. the Italian lin g’.iiat, we find that his extraordinary memory was such as far to outstrip any thing that has i*een referred to here. At his death, in 1549, at the age of 73. he is said to have been acquainted with 114 languages. Byron, whom he is said to have beaten at talking English slang, pronounced him a monster of languages, a Briaretts of parts of speech, a walking polyglot.” It is interesting to note Mezzufanti’s progress in the accumulation of tongues other than his own. Before the close of his university career he had mastered ijatin, Greek. Hebrew, Arabic. Coptic. .Spanish, French, German, and Swedish. In the hospital of Bologna, to which he attached himself in the capacity of volunteer chaplain, there were invalids from most of the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, and from these he speedily acquired a grasp of their re spective tongues. In 1817 he could read 20 languages and write 18. During his later residence in Rome, whither he went in 1831 to .ueept a position in the Vatican library, he made further addition-* to his store of linguistic knowledge, lrish. Welsh. Lappish. Sanskrit. Persian. Georgian. Armenian. Chinese, an I -everal African tongues. K> It h.ts ii»n*n averred that Mezzefanti's familiarity with the dialectical varieties and local idioms of the principal languages, a- well as with their respective literature, together with his power of rapidly pa-Uug from one to another in conversation, were well-nigh incredible. In 1838 he was made a e.* dinal.