The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1879-02-06
Chambers Journal
Observation and Memory.

The famous Thurlow, Lord Chancellor
OF England, was on one occasion compli-
mented on his extraordinary memory.
He said in reply HE had no merit in
having a good memory, for memory was
only result OF attention" By this he
meant close observation of what is seen,
heard, or read. The answer was only
part of the truth. To have good mem
ory, there must in the first place be a
natural or acquired capacity for observing G
and treasuring up observations. No
doubt, the good memory demonstrated
by Thurlow and other clever men has
been greatly owing to strict attention
to what they have heard or read, or b as
passed before their eyes. The brain ma y
be defined as kind of Photographic APP
paratus, which retains the impressions
made on it through the eyes or ears
But then the apparatus must be of the
right sort to begin with, and at all events,
it must be kept in good order by exercise.
The great thing is to begin young One
boy, for example, will notice all that
takes place. He observes the look of
people, their mode of speaking, their
style of dress, the houses they live in,
the anecdotes and stories they relate.
Another boy going through the same
routine, takes no heed of anything to be
afterwards useful. He is thinking only
of trivial amusements, what he is to have
for dinner, his new suit of clothes, or
something equally paltry and evanescent.
l His education is little better than thrown
away, and he but dimly remembers any
thing that fell under his attention in
youth.
Sir Walter Scott " as as remarkable for
good memory as Thurlow, and in some
respects more SO. His power of observa-
tion was extraordinary. We have evil
dence of this in his popular fctions. The
bulk of them are composed of scraps of
remembrances, as to what he had seen,
heard, or read, put together and embel-
lished by the imaginative faculty. The
Sayings of his Scottish characters in
humble life, such as of Davie Gellatley,
Edie Ochiltree, Cuddie Headrig, and
Davie Deans, are just what he had over
heard in his youth. He had picked up
what others allowed to pass unnoticed,
and skilfully brought them out at the
suitable opportunity And SO with his
historical facts and apt poetical quota
tions. Nothing escaped him. II in walk
ing out he accidentally overheard pecu-
liar vernacular phrase, down it went in
his memory Dickens had the same ca
pacity and tact in observing and treasur-
ing up the personal appearance and
phraseology of individuals whom he
CHANGED to encounter.
There are diversities in this exercise of
memory Some are good in remember
| ing dates, some at personal oddities, some
at languages, some at miscellaneous oc-
currences, some at recollecting sermons
and Conversations the speciality in each
case being due to particular idiosyncra-
sy of character. Boswell's power of re-
cording his conversations with johnson,
is perhaps the most marvellous thing of
| the kind ever heard of. The late DR..
Robert Chambers had a memory so COM
prehensive and minute that he was never
at loss for the date of any leading his
torical event. He often referred to what
he had been doing at particular day
and moment in the past years of his life
| For example, we once heard him say
This day forty-seven years ago, at twenty
minutes past two o'clock, l was passing
| No. II Princes Street, when l met old
Wylie and we spoke of the change of
times within his recollection. He told
me that he remembered the London mail
arriving in Edinburgh one day about the
middle of the last century with only
single letter; and now letters and papers
arrive in tons" In this way by acute
observation, a literary man gathers up
materials to be brought into use on fu-
ture and proper occasion. 1t ought to
be enough to inspire youth with a taste
| for cultivating powers of observation, to
know that the greatest efforts of genius
are mainly due to memory; for without
that, thought would have little scope or
value.
Most persons will have experienced
strange forgetfulness of names and Cir
cumstances until something occurs to
bring them to remembrance. Sometimes
| in
| illness. There have been men who when
i'll have spoken foreign language, which
when well they had forgotten. Why this
should be we shall probably never under
stand; but these revivals of memory
seem to point to the conclusion that we
do not really forget anything in the strict
sense of the word. 1t may be that we
cannot at given moment recall this or
that to mind, but still it is laid up we
know not how in a secret storehouse of
the BRAIN and when we least expect it,
may suddenly be brought again to light
Sometimes the memory thus revived is
one of early childhood, as in the case re-
lated by DR.. Carpenter of clergyman
who on visiting Pevensey Castle felt con-
vinced he must have seen it before, and
| that when he did there were donkeys
under the gateway and some people on
top of it, By inquiry he actually ascer-
tained that he had been there with a pic
mic party, who made the excursion on
donkeys, when he was only about eigh-
| teen months old.
Sir BENJAMIN Brodie in his Psycholog
ical Researches gives an explanation of
one of the strangest freaks of memory
by which at times we believe we detect a
parallel between the passing event and
something else that we have witnessed
we know not when. But the case given
does not fulfil all the conditions of this
singular feeling. There are few who will
not know what we here refer to. Dick
ems in his novels more than once alludes
to this sensation, and describes it very
accurately in the thirty ninth chapter OF
David Copperfeld. 1--WE have all, - he
says some experience of a feeling that
comes over US occasionally of what we
are saying and doing having been said
and done before in a remote time-of our
having been surrounded dim ages ago by
the same faces, objects, and cirsumstan-
ces-of our knowing perfectly what will
be said next, as if we suddenly remem-
bered it, l never had this mysterious
impression more strongly in my life than
before he uttered these words. The
knowing of what is to come nert is the
strangest part of this feeling, and one