MNEMONIC S. 



5S7 



M-.cmo- 



DIG*. 



after many trials, that there was no quackery in his 



.n. "He once assured me (and he was the great- 

 est ewmy of ail boasting) that he could, in the MM 

 manner, repeat 3(> (HX) (others rer.d only 6,000) words. 

 But what is most remarkable, every thing was so firmly 

 impressed on his memory, that, as he asserted, he could 

 without difficulty remember whatever he had commit- 

 ted to it r.tter a lapse of ye.irs ; end this assertion I 

 found to be true, upon making a trial some consider- 

 able time afterwards. But farther : There dwelt with 

 me Franewcus Molinus, a patrician of Venice, who was 

 exceedingly ardent in the study of the sciences. Im- 

 pressed with the feeling of the weakness of his memo- 

 ry, he entreated the Corsica;! to teach him his art, to 

 which tlie latter immediately consented. A place and 

 hour were accordingly fixed for their daily meet.; 

 and in the course of six or seifii days the scholar could 

 repeat, wthout difficulty, more than five hundred 

 words, in the same, or any other given order." Mure- 

 tns add*, " I ctiotild not hnve ventured to relate all 

 thi<>. It-rt I should be sunpecte-d of a taNehood, if the 

 frets hnd not been qnite recent, and capable of being 



d by a nmn!>er of witnesses. '1'he Corsic 

 aerted that he had learnt this art from a Frenchman 

 who had been his tutor " disbert Voethis, a relormed 

 divine of the seventeenth century, considers the per- 

 formance -it' this Conican a* a proof of his intercourse 

 with the devil. 



he astonishing powers of calculation pomessed by 

 Jededinh Bit x ton. a man otherwise illiterate, are well 

 known ; and many of us have had a recent opportuni- 

 ty of witnessing a similar phenomenon, in the person of 

 Zerah C Ibnrn, an American boy, under eight years of 

 age, who exhibited in London and Edinburgh some 

 years ago, and who, without any previous knowledge 

 of the common ru;rs of arithmetic, or even of the use 



power of the Arabic numerals, and without having 

 f ulnr attention to the subject, was found 

 to pu**eM, a if by intuition, the singular faculty of 

 solving great variety of arithmetical questions bv the 

 mere operation of the mind, and without the usual as. 

 sistancc of any visible symbol or contrivance *. 



Uc might quote- variou- other instances of individu- 

 als whopoeMMed extraordinary powers of mcn.ory, lu-t 

 it is unnecessary to multiply examples. \\ > proceed, 

 therefore-, to not' r tin- traditional urif-in of the mne- 

 monic art; as mentioned in the Parian Chronicle, as 

 weH as by Cicero and Quintilian, :u,d otlur undent 

 authors. And here we shall avail ourselves of the la- 

 bours of the late Professor Barron, who, in his Lrc- 

 htret, has entered pretty fully into the discussion of 



bject. 



I he principal expedient for HIM -ting th- 1 memory is 

 derived from u-- r instance, when 1 see a 



hou- u recollect the inl man- 



ner of life, and the intercourse i have huci with tin m 



igt t of a book promts the memory 01 its <on- 

 tents, BIKI tlu- ple:.-ure or profit I have receiied from 

 the pt-rus.il of it. A view of the sea mav suggest the 

 mi ; and tin- painful rerolic< tiun of the loss 

 e life of a friend, by shipwreck, 

 n, of aiding recollection by association, is 

 ote or abstract, with others 

 * . ml f.r :liar. that the r< currence of the 

 "ng with it the memory of the fcir- 

 nng. which 1 cannot mi si 

 "n, to supjj--t the n-- 



MM ! 



rfTprtp 



more o! 

 la ter n 

 mir. 

 toouset 



inembruiice of which I removed it from one finger to Mncm- 

 another. The ringing of the bell, or the sounding of n ' cs - 

 the clock, prompts the recollection of the business 1 had S "~V^^ 

 resolved to jierform at these times. A glimpse of the 

 first words of a paragraph, or a page, introduces the re- 

 collection of the whole. In a word, we must connect 

 the things we wish to remember with the immediate 

 objects of our senses, that otier themselves daily 10 our 

 attention, but particularly with the objects of our Mglit, 

 the most vigorous and lively of all our senses, aim of 

 which the objects are perhaps more numerous tnuu 

 those of all our other sen~c- put together. 



This theory is the foundation of all contrivances 

 which liave been, or perhaps can be, employed to iu-ip 

 recollection. It is the groundwork of the famous arti- 

 ficial memory of Ssimomdes, a lyric poet, who is cele- 

 brated by Cicero and Qunitilian as the inventor of 

 mnemonics. Doth these authors relate the following 

 mythological incident, on the occasion which suggested 

 the invention. Simonides was employed by hcopas, a 

 rich 1 hessalian, to compose a panegyric on him for a 

 certain sum of money ; was invited to a festival, given 

 by Scopas to his friends, in order to rchtar.-e it, but 

 was sordidly refused more than half the stipulated com. 

 pcnsation; because, puzzled perhaps with the sterility 

 of the principal subject, he had introduced u long epis- 

 ode in praise of Castor and i'oliux. Snmonides was 

 soon after summoned from the company by two young 

 men on horseback, supposed to be Castor and i'oliux 

 in disguise, who, as soon as they hud s.tved then- fa. 

 vourite poet, made the roof fall on acop.is and his com- 

 -11115 them to death, that no; a lineament of 

 them could be known, bmioiiidc.-., however, by recol- 

 lecting the order in which they sat at table, was en. 

 . to distinguish them, and to deliver them to their 

 I'l lends for burial. The aid which the recollection of 

 the (.<>et received, on this occasion, is said to have sug- 

 gested the idea of an artificial memory. 



The principle of the scheme of bimonides is to trans- 

 fer a train ol ideas, the archetypes of which are not the 

 objects of sense, and are, therefore, of difficult recollec. 

 tion, to another train which we cannot fail to recollect, 

 because the archetypes are not only objects of sense, 

 but objects of sight, with which archetypes we are per. 

 tectlj familiar, or which may be placed actually 1 

 our eyes. Suppose tlien Smioi.iilrs were to coinriit to 

 memory a discourse consisting of speculations con- 

 ft-ming government, finances, naval affairs, or wisdom, 

 none 01 the archetypes of which could be made objects 

 of sense, at least, at the tune of delivery ; and to assist 

 his recollection, he were to connect the series of ideas, 

 in that discourse, with a series ot objects, which he 

 could either place in sight, or with which he was so 

 t.iiiii.inr that lie could not tail to recollect them ; he 

 would proceed in the following manner: He would 

 take a turn e, tor instance, either the one in which he 

 inight deliver the diMxmrse, or another; with every 

 part of which he was perfectly acquainted. He would 

 IM-^HI at some fixed |xint of that house, suppose the 

 right side of the door, and he would proceed round it 

 i>i a circular line, till he arrived at the point from 

 which he set out. He would divide the circumference 

 of the house into as many parts as there were different 

 topics, or paragraphs, in the discourse. He would dis- 

 tMix'i -)i i .it'll paragraph by some symbol of the sub* 

 ji-et it contained ; that on government, by the symbol 

 of a crown, or a sceptre ; that on finances, by the ym- 





I>OT 



liiir, ha rxbihiled power* of calculation not inferior to those of /erah Colrinrn. He is now 

 the p.tnm*ge of Hrury J.riKnr. K*q. Se Ibc KUnburgh PMIotopUctt Jmr*al, VoL II. p. 193 EIK 



