Memory: How to Develop, Train, and Use ItAtkinson, William Walker
Science
Memory: How to Develop, Train, and Use It
Atkinson, William Walker
Memory
John Stuart Mill is said to have acquired a fair knowledge of Greek, at
the age of three years, and to have memorized Hume, Gibbon, and other
historians, at the age of eight. Shortly after he mastered and
memorized Herodotus, Xenophon, some of Socrates, and six of Plato's
"Dialogues." Richard Porson is said to have memorized the entire text of
Homer, Horace, Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Shakespeare, Milton, and Gibbon. He
is said to have been able to memorize any ordinary novel at one careful
reading; and to have several times performed the feat of memorizing the
entire contents of some English monthly review. De Rossi was able to
perform the feat of repeating a hundred lines from any of the four great
Italian poets, provided he was given a line at random from their
works--his hundred lines following immediately after the given line. Of
course this feat required the memorizing of the entire works of those
poets, and the ability to take up the repetition from any given point,
the latter feature being as remarkable as the former. There have been
cases of printers being able to repeat, word for word, books of which
they had set the type. Professor Lawson was able to teach his classes on
the Scriptures without referring to the book. He claimed that if the
entire stock of Bibles were to be destroyed, he could restore the book
entire, from his memory.
Rev. Thomas Fuller is said to have been able to walk down a long London
street, reading the names of the signs on both sides; then recalling
them in the order in which they had been seen, and then by reversing the
order. There are many cases on record of persons who memorized the words
of every known tongue of civilization, as well as a great number of
dialects, languages, and tongues of savage races. Bossuet had memorized
the entire Bible, and Homer, Horace and Virgil beside. Niebuhr, the
historian, was once employed in a government office, the records of
which were destroyed. He, thereupon, restored the entire contents of the
book of records which he had written--all from his memory. Asa Gray knew
the names of ten thousand plants. Milton had a vocabulary of twenty
thousand words, and Shakespeare one of twenty-five thousand. Cuvier and
Agassiz are said to have memorized lists of several thousand species and
varieties of animals. Magliabechi, the librarian of Florence, is said
to have known the location of every volume in the large library of which
he was in charge; and the complete list of works along certain lines in
all the other great libraries. He once claimed that he was able to
repeat titles of over a half-million of books in many languages, and
upon many subjects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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