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4 
err] THE SECOND BOOK. 165 
worth: all of them carrying merely the face of a school, 
and not of a world; and referring to vulgar matters and 
pedantical divisions, without all life or respect to action. 
2. For the other principal part of the custody of know- 
ledge, which is memory, I find that faculty in my judge- 
ment weakly inquired of. An art there is extant of it; 
but it seemeth to me that there are better precepts than 
that art, and better practices of that art than those re- 
ceived, It is certain the art (as it is) may be raised to 
points of ostentation prodigious: but in use (as it is now 
managed) it is barren, not burdensome, nor dangerous to 
natural memory, as is imagined, but barren, that is, not 
dexterous to be applied to the serious use of business 
and occasions. And therefore I make no more estima- 
tion of repeating a great number of names or words 
upon once hearing, or the pouring forth of a number of 
verses or rhymes ex “empore, or the making of a satirical 
simile of everything, or the turning of everything to a 
jest, or the falsifying or contradicting of everything by 
cavil, or the like (whereof in the faculties of the mind 
there is great copie, and such as by device and practice 
may be exalted to an extreme degree of wonder), than 
I do of the tricks of tumblers, funambuloes, baladines ; 
the one being the same in the mind that the other is in 
the body, matters of strangeness without worthiness. 
3. This art of memory is but built upon two intentions ; 
the one prenotion, the other emblem. Prenotion dis- 
chargeth the indefinite seeking of that we would re- 
member, and directeth us to seek in a narrow compass, 
that is, somewhat that hath congruity with our place of 
memory. Emblem reduceth conceits intellectual to images 
sensible, which strike the memory more; out of which 
axioms may be drawn much better practique than that 
