246 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



in an inclosure. Order, therefore, is a manifest help to 

 memory; for here there is a previous notion, that the things 

 sought for must be agreeable to order. And thus verse is 

 easier remembered than prose, because if we stick at any 

 word in verse, we have a previous notion that it is such a 

 word as must stand in the verse, and this prenotion is the 

 first part of artificial memory. For in artificial memory we 

 have certain places digested, and proposed beforehand; but 

 we make images extemporary as they are required, wherein 

 we have a previous notion that the image must be such as 

 may, in some measure, correspond to its place; while this 

 stimulates the memory, and, as it were, strengthens it to 

 find out the thing sought for. 



But emblems bring down intellectual to sensible things; 

 for what is sensible always strikes the memory stronger, and 

 sooner impresses itself than what is intellectual. Thus the 

 memory of brutes is excited by sensible, but not by intel 

 lectual things. And, therefore, it is easier to retain the 

 image of a sportsman hunting the hare, of an apothecary 

 ranging his boxes, an orator making a speech, a boy repeat 

 ing verses, or a player acting his part, than the correspond 

 ing notions of invention, disposition, elocution, memory, 

 and action. There are also other things that contribute to 

 assist the memory, but the art at present in use consists 

 of the two above mentioned; 2 and to treat of the particular 

 defects of the arts is foreign to our present purpose. 



2 I suppose that the art of memory, now commonly taught by memory 

 masters, is little more than a lecture upon the foundations here laid down ; and 

 perhaps their secrets are disclosed in Sir Hugh Plat s &quot;Jewel House of Art 

 and Nature,&quot; printed in London in the year 1653. See page 77-80 of that 

 edition. Consult also upon the means of improving the memory, Morhof a 

 &quot;Polyhistor, &quot; torn. i. lib. ii. cap. 4, de Subsidiis dirigendi Judicii. Shaw. 

 [Grey s &quot;Memoria Technica&quot; and Feinagle s &quot;Art of Memory&quot; are the modern 

 works on the same subject. Ed.] 



