CHAP, v.] THE ART OF MEMORY. 213 



perhaps, I may receive from the political course of life I have 

 led, never to value what has the appearance of art without 

 any use. For immediately to repeat a multitude of names, 

 or words, once repeated before, or off-hand to compose a 

 great number of verses upon a subject, or to touch any mat- 

 ter that occasionally turns up with a satirical comparison, or 

 to turn serious things into jest, or to elude anything by con- 

 tradiction, or cavil, &c., of all which faculties there is a great 

 fund in the mind, and which may, by a proper capacity and 

 exercise, be carried to almost a miraculous height ; yet I 

 esteem all the things of this kind no more than rope-dancing, 

 antic postures, and feats of activity. And indeed the^ are 

 nearly the same things, the one being an abuse of the bodily, 

 as the other is of the mental powers ; and though they may 

 cause admiration, they cannot be highly esteemed. 



This art of memory has two intentions ; viz., prenotion 

 and emblem. By prenotion we understand the breaking off 

 of an endless search ; for when one endeavours to call any- 

 thhig to mind without some previous notion, or perception 

 of what is sought for, the mind strives and exerts itself, 

 endeavours and casts about in an endless manner ; but if it 

 hath any certain notion beforehand, the infinity of the 

 search is presently cut short, and the mind himts nearer 

 home as 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 ; be* 

 we make images extemporary as they are required, wherein 

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

 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 tor. 



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 th^ 

 m^rtjcry ot bri;tep i3 ^XQJte^ by sensible, but iiot by iiitel 



