CHAP. V.] PEKSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 43 



But against this there were times when the mind required to 

 isolate itself, as it were, from the external world, and concen- 

 trate thought upon the subject to be worked out. 



The ear must not hear nor the eye see. Many times I have been so 

 thoroughly absorbed in developing a general scheme, that whilst walking 

 the public streets I have found myself standing still to grasp, as it were, 

 the relation of one part of the complicated details of the subject to another ; 

 and one day when it poured with rain I was amused on passing a friend to 

 find that I had said, " A fine day," so entirely was my mind engrossed by 

 the consideration of the matter before me. 



This was by no means an uncommon case; for on similar 

 mistakes arising from his absorption of mind, I might quote many 

 laughable occurrences and sources of merriment to his family. 

 His powers of memory were truly remarkable. 



He was once at an important meeting where no reporter was present, 

 and it was considered desirable for a report to appear. Upon application 

 two or three days afterwards, he wrote out such of the speeches as were 

 required, in such a manner that the substance was so correctly given that 

 no person found out that his very words had not been taken down in the 

 room by a shorthand- writer. Those proceedings happened to interest the 

 public, and have been copied from paper to paper, and from newspapers 

 to standard works.* 



After this it may seem a paradox to state that he could never 

 learn anything by rote : to commit Homer or Virgil to memory 

 would have been to him an impossibility. Yet he could quate 

 numerous favourite passages from the immortal Shakspeare's 

 works. When at King's College, he used to write the lectures 

 that he there attended verbatim after he came home. He did 

 not take notes during the lectures, but afterwards, for his memory 

 was so perfect that he could often write them out as they were 

 delivered. It has been told him that he could learn from a book 

 by heart if he only chose, to which assertion he always gave 

 an unequivocal denial. Yet any image that had once been re- 

 gistered on his brain he never forgot. As an instance of this, 

 he would remember thirty years after where he had placed a 

 most trivial object, which ordinary individuals speedily forgot ; yet 

 he did not take any trouble to remember, but did remember 

 nevertheless. I must confess that his family would not have 

 regretted the absence of such a power of memory, for he was 

 particularly untidy and careless ; and as he used every room in 

 the house as his study, and as he never dreamt of sorting or 



* * Instinct and Reason,' p. 52. 



