110 ENGLISH MEN OF SCIENCE. [CHAP. 



[I am informed verbally by this correspondent, 

 that he is obliged to abstain from writing out 

 his addresses, &c., beforehand, otherwise he 

 has found the memory of what he wrote to be 

 so strong and exacting as to make it difficult 

 to him to deviate from it and accommodate his 

 language to the current temper of his audience.] 

 " Mother Excellent memory." 



3. " Considerable, both verbal and objective ; 

 great facility in quotations ; familiarity with 

 large collections of coins and specimens. 



" Father and Mother both good memories." 



4. "In childhood, all the Psalms, old ver- 

 sion ; much old English poetry ; afterwards, 

 nearly the whole Latin grammar (Eton), Virgil, 

 Ovid, Lucan ; still later, considerable parts of 

 the Iliad, Odyssey, &c., could be, and partly can 

 [still] be, repeated ex memorid ; zoological, 

 botanical, mineralogical and paleontological 

 names in abundance." 



5. " My memory was very good. I remember 

 as a boy, to have read Schiller's ' Thirty Years' 



