MARVELS OF MEMORY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 84, 5 December 1874, Page 10

MARVELS OF MEMORY.

, -i I. ■{ I. Wjß have most of us heard of Joseph Scaliger, who learnt fl,» twice twenty.four books of the Iliad and Odyssey ia Three we eks -of Avicenna, who repeated by heart the whole of the Koran at tie age of ten } of Lipsius, who was willmg to recite the histories of Tacitus word for word, gmng any one cave to plunge a dagger into his body if he made a ioi ? take--an idle license, for tew would have cared to run the resultant risk ; of the youth of Corsica of good appearance lnL»!l n L»! by Muretus, who recited all the barbarous lords ?K er hXrSen tUI he was tired of wnlmg, and stopped at last, as it was neceßßarln eceBBa rl to ptoj somewhere, while the youth, like Oliver, a.ak.ed for more

Certainly," says Muretus, "he was no boaster, and he told m^M could repeat m that way thirty-six thousand words. For my own pVi I made trial of him c fter many days, and found what he said true!* lhis 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 Francis Suarez, who after the witness ofStrada, could quote the whole of Augustine (the father's works would fill a small library), from the egg to the apple. Of Dr. Thomas Fuller, who could name in order all the signs on both sides of the way from Paternoster Eow at Aye Maria Lane to the bottom of Cheapside to Stock's market, now the Mansion House. Of Magliabecchi, whose name is pleasantly and permanently associated with spider 3 and the proof of the lost MS. Of William Lyon, who for a bowl of punch— a liquor of which he was exceedingly fond— repeated a « Daily Advertiser,' in the morning, which he had read once only, and then in the course of a debauch overnight. We rcight extend this paper far beyond its normal dimensions by mention of such names as Jadediah Buxton, who, if his witness be true, could, by some strange mnemoteehny of his own, multiply thirty-nine figures by thirty-nine 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 drank during twelve years of his life ; of Zerah Colburn, a mere child, of whom there remains on record a testimony that he could tell the number 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 wholly inconsistent with our experience of human nature, that to doubt it is no reprehensible stretch of sceptism."— ' The Cornhill Magazine.'