in. He was always hesitating and inquiring raising objections and removing them, and waiting for clearer light and fuller discovery. Baker,2 after many years passed in biography, left his manuscripts to be buried in a library, because that was imperfect, which could never be perfected.

Of these learned men, let those who aspire to the same praise, imitate the diligence, and avoid the scrupulosity.3 Let it be always remembered that life is short, that knowledge is endless, and that many doubts deserve not to be cleared. Let those whom nature and study have qualified to teach mankind, tell us what they have learned while they are yet able to tell it, and trust their reputation only to themselves.

1 "He was so exact in everything he set about that he never gave over any part of study till he had quite mastered it; but when that was done he went to another subject, and did not lay out his learning with the diligence with which he laid it in."-Burnet's History, i. 210.

2 Thomas Baker, the author and antiquary (1656—1740). At his death the greater part of his collections came into the possession of the College [St John's, Cambridge], and the shelves of the library were enlarged for their reception." -Dict. of Nat. Biog., iii. 20.

3 Scrupulosity was a favourite word with Johnson. Sir William Jones, writing in 1776, said :-" You will be able to examine with the minutest scrupulosity, as Johnson would call it."-Life of Sir William Jones, p. 177.

No. 74. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15,

1759.

N the mythological pedigree of learning, memory is made the mother of the muses, by which the masters of ancient wisdom, perhaps, meant to shew the necessity of storing the mind copiously with true notions, before the imagination should be suffered to form fictions or collect embellishments; for the works of an ignorant poet can afford nothing higher than pleasing sound, and fiction is of no other use than to display the treasures of memory.

The necessity of memory to the acquisition of knowledge is inevitably felt and universally allowed, so that scarcely any other of the mental faculties are commonly considered as necessary to a student: he that admires the proficiency of another, always attributes it to the happiness of his memory; and he that laments his own defects concludes with a wish that his memory was better.

It is evident, that when the power of retention is weak, all the attempts at eminence of knowledge must be vain; and as few are willing to be doomed to perpetual ignorance, I may, perhaps, afford consolation to some that have fallen too easily into despondence, by observing that such

1 Before the invention of writing memory was the poet's excellence ; therefore Mnemosyne was called the mother of the Muses.-See Liddell and Scott's Greek Lexicon.

weakness is, in my opinion, very rare, and that few have reason to complain of nature as unkindly sparing of the gifts of memory.1

In the common business of life, we find the memory of one like that of another, and honestly impute omissions not to involuntary forgetfulness, but culpable inattention; but in literary inquiries, failure is imputed rather to want of memory than of diligence.

We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.

Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire. He whose mind is most capacious, finds it much too narrow for his wishes: he that remembers most, remembers little compared with what he forgets. He therefore that, after the perusal of a book, finds few ideas remaining in his mind, is not to consider the disappointment as peculiar to himself, or to resign all hopes of improvement, because, he does not retain what even the author has perhaps forgotten.

He who compares his memory with that of others, is often too hasty to lament the inequality. Nature has sometimes, indeed, afforded examples of enormous, wonderful, and gigantic memory. Scaliger reports of himself, that, in his youth, he could repeat above an hundred verses, having

1 Boswell mentions that Johnson one day "maintained that forgetfulness was a man's own fault."-Boswell's Johnson, iv. 126.

once read them'; and Barthius' declares that he wrote his comment upon Claudian without consulting the text. But not to have such degrees of memory, is no more to be lamented, than not to have the strength of Hercules, or the swiftness of Achilles. He that, in the distribution of good, has an equal share with common men, may justly be contented. Where there is no striking disparity, it is difficult to know of two which remembers most, and still more difficult to discover which reads with greater attention, which has renewed the first impression by more frequent repetitions, or by what accidental combination of ideas either mind might have united any particular narrative or argument to its former stock.

1 Boswell records the following instance of Johnson's powerful memory:-"We had this morning a singular proof of Dr. Johnson's quick and retentive memory. Hay's translation of Martial was lying in a window; I said, I thought it was pretty well done, and showed him a particular epigram, I think, of ten, but am certain, of eight lines. He read it, and tossed away the book, saying, 'No, it is not pretty well.' As I persisted in my opinion, he said, 'Why sir, the original is thus,' and he repeated it, 'and this man's translation is thus'; and then he repeated that also exactly, though he had never seen it before, and read it over only once, and that too without any intention of getting it by heart."-Boswell's Johnson, v. 368.

2 Gaspar Barthius published his Comment in 1650. In most of the editions of the Idler, even of those published in Johnson's life-time, the name is printed Barthicus.

3 "The Life of Rowe (says Nichols) is a very remarkable instance of the uncommon strength of Dr. Johnson's memory. When I received from him the MS. he complacently observed that the criticism was tolerably well done, considering that he had not read one of Rowe's plays for thirty years."Boswell's Johnson, iv. 36.

But memory, however impartially distributed, so often deceives our trust, that almost every man attempts, by some artifice or other, to secure its fidelity.

It is the practice of many readers to note, in the margin of their books, the most important passages, the strongest arguments, or the brightest sentiments. Thus they load their minds with superfluous attention, repress the vehemence of curiosity by useless deliberation, and by frequent interruption break the current of narration or the chain of reason, and at last close the volume, and forget the passages and marks together.

Others I have found unalterably persuaded, that nothing is certainly remembered but what is transcribed; and they have therefore passed weeks and months in transferring large quotations to a common-place book. Yet, why any part of a book, which can be consulted at pleasure, should be copied, I was never able to discover. The hand has no closer correspondence with the memory than the eye. The act of writing itself distracts the thoughts, and what is read twice is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.1

1 Gibbon, describing his studies, says :-"This various reading was digested, according to the precept and model of Mr. Locke, into a large common-place book; a practice, however, which I do not strenuously recommend. The action of the pen will doubtless imprint an idea on the mind as well as on the paper; but I much question whether the benefits of this laborious method are adequate to the waste of time, and I must agree with Dr. Johnson that 'what is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed.'" -Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 97.