The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1886-08-02
from beginning to end. In their day,
Person, Elmsley, Parr and Wakefield,

all, OF course, had rare memories, Dut
The palm must be given to Person,
Of whom endless stories are told. Be
fore he went to Elton. he was able 70
repeat almost the whole of Horace,
Virgil, Homer, Cicero and Livy. When,
rs practical joke, school-fellow
slipped the wrong book into Persons
hand. Just as he was about TO read and
the boy was not discon-
certed, but went Oh to read from his
as if nothing had occurred.
In later life, his performances APP
preached the miraculous 1t would re-
quire all our space to give any fair idea
OF them; for he not only knew all the
great Greek poets and prose writers
pretty well by heart, but could recite
whole plays OF Shakespeare, or COM
plctc books from Paradise Lost, Pope's
Rape Of the Lock. Barrow's sermons,
scenes from Footc, EdgewOrth's Essay
on Irish Bulls, scores of pages from
Gibbon or Rapin. He is also said to
have been able to repeat the whole Of
the Moral Tale of the Dean of Badaioz,
and Smollett's Roderick Random from
the first page to the last.
Gilbert Wakefield's memory was
also of the gigantic order, but it will
not bear comparison with Persons.
There were few passages in Homer or
Pindar which he could not recitc at a
moments notice; Virgil and Horace he
knew perfectly: and he could recite en-
tire books from the Old and New
Testaments without hating or failing
in q single verse. There was also
John Wyndham Bruce, whose leisure
time was devoted to classical studies.
His chief favorite was Eschylus, the
whole of whose plays he had learnt by
heart, including the twelve hundred
lines Of the Agamemnon collated by
Robertellus. He knew his Horace in
the same way, and was quite content,
until one day he met with an old fell
low-student at Bonn, who, when he
made q quotation, would mention
book, ode and verse, remarking that
he did not regard any one as knowing
Horace properly unless he could do
that. Mr.. Bruce accordingly set to
work at Horace again, and it was not
long before he could name the exact
place occupied by line in any Of the
famous odes. 1t would be hard to be-
lieve that Athenian lads could heat the
English lads of fourteen years and UNI
der, of whom Archdcacon Fearon tells
US in the pamphlet referred to above.
1t was the custom in the school to
which he went for the boys to repeat at
the end of one of the terms all the
Latin and Greek poetry they had learnt
during the year. The usual quantity
for boy to 90 in with wa, from eight
to ten thousand lines, and it took about
week to hear them. Zone boy in my
year." he says, repeated the enormous
quantity of fourteen thousand lines OF
Homer, Horace and Virgil. l heard
him say 1t.
Ease in learning foreign languages
Is sometimes regarded as a mere mat
ter Of memory; while, however. this Il
not exactly true, It must be allowed, Of
course, that skilled lingnists src en-.
dowed with powers Of memory beyond
the average. Here also We find thai
there are no examples In ancient times
that will stand comparison with
our great modern linguists. Oul
modern facilities for travel and study
place us at On immense advantage.
Crassus, when pr@tor in Asia, was &C
familiar with the dialects of Greek,
that he was able to try cases and pro-
nounce Judgment in any dialect thai
might chance to be spoken in his pres
ence. "Mithridates, king of twenty
two nations, administered their law.
in as many languages" and coult
haranguc each division of his motley
array Of soldiers in its own Language
or dialect.
Blu, what are such linguists as thest
by the side Of the best examples Of re
cent times? Keeping within the limit.
OF the last hundred years. we have ex
amples that have never been surpassed
or even approached in former times
Sir William Jones knew thirteen Ian
guages we'll, and could read with com
parativc ease in thirty others. Johl
leydon, very inferior man to hi
great contemporary, had a good nc
quaintance with fifteen of the leadin!
European and Asiatic languages
Within the last few years we have los
two men who could have travelled from
the hills OF Couhnmara or the mount
aims of Wales to the Ural mountains
or from Lisbon or Algiers to lspahan o
Delhi, and hardly met with a languag,
in which they could not converse o
write with ease. The reader will mos
likely have anticipated the names o
two OF the most remarkable linguist
this country has produced Gcorg
Borrow and Edward Henry Palmer
When Borrow was Mt st. Petersburg
he published little book called Tar
gum, in which he gave translations il
prose and poetry from thirty diiferen
languages. Besides speaking tn
native tongue of every European nation
Palmer was so perfect master of Ara
bic, Persian, Hindustani. Turkish an,
the language Of the gypsics, that eve
natives were sometimes deceived as I
his nationality. Mr.. Leland SAYS tina
one day in Paris Palmer conferred int
conversation with Zouave or Turcs
a native Arab. After while the ma
said: Why do You wear these clothes:
Why, how should l dressp exclaime
Palmer. Dress like what you are!
was the indignant reply like a Mu
linn p"
| Viscount Strangford may he place
in the same category with these; an
the ''learned blacksmith" Elihu Bul
rift, whose friends claim for him tn.
he knew all the languages of Euror
and most of those of Asia, must not
left out Of sight. But even these
not touch the highest limit of linguisti
skill and power Of memory. The mos
scientific linguist we have to nam'
and one of the most remarkable for I'll
! extent Of his annuiSition IL Won 4.