XV. i.] THE SECOND BOOK. 165 



worth : all of them carrying merely the face of a school,&quot;^) 

 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 tempore, 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 



