The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-09-14
REMARKABLE EXAMPLES
 OF ATTENTIVE MEMORY

1 was able to retain verbatim most of the | contents of his "multitudinous books." 1 comparatively recent writer has de- 1 elared that Magliabeechi "could name all l the authors who had written upon any 1 subject, giving the name of the book l the words, and often the page" This is 1 doubtless exaggeration. But, on the other l hand, 1t should be remembered that the number of books on any subject were i much fewer than at the present time. 1 Besides this there are two stories that 1 have come down from Magliabeechfs l time to ours that give color to it's truth. 1 On one occasion a gentleman of Flor ence desired to, test Magliabeechi's mem l ory and ascertain for himself whether the
 wonderful stories told were truth or fic- tion. He gave him a manuscript to read,
 then some days after its return, pre- tending to have lost it, he asked Maglia- beechi to recall it, which, it is said, he
 did with remarkable exaetness.
 l At another time the Grand Duke of
 Florence asked him if the could pro-
 cure a certain book for him. Immedi-
 ately came the responses: No, sir; it is
 impossible; there is but one in the world;
 that is in the grand seignoirs library at Constantinople, and is the seventh book
 on the seventh shelf on the right hand
 as you go in"
 The other instance in the seventeenth
 century is that of pr. John Wallis. It ] Is not as a theologian, however that Wallis name is permanently enrolled ir the temple of fame, but as a mathe-
 matieian. His great work is the 'Arith- metica Infintorum." In this he makes the successful attempt to solve a number
 oi the more simple problems of the cal culus by the summation of series to in- 1 lnity. His power of concentration and l memory were so strange that while in 1 bed in the dark he extracted the square
 root of a number of fifty-three places in 1 twentyseyen terms and repeated the re-
 suit twenty days afterward"
 These examples of retentive memory are
 quite well authenticated and give plausi- l bility to the possible truth of others ire
 quently cited. Plny tells us that Cyrus
 the Great knew all his soldiers by name,
 and Cicero in his De Senectue" says
 that Themistocles could call the 10000 citizens of Athens by name It is re-
 lated that both Horace Vernet and Gus tave Dore could paint a portrait from
 memory.
 | There is a story that is more than tradition that Wolfgang Mozart let down the whole of the Sistine Miserere from
 memory" and that too, from hearing it
 but twice. Sir William Hamilton, in his | Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic" | gives Muretus as authority for the state
 ment that young Corsican could repeat
 in either direct or reverse order, or begin l at any point and repeat DOtn ways, a i list of 36,000 names.
 1 Seneca, the rhetorican; Pascal. Ben
 Johnson Sealiger, Niebuhr, and Macaulay | all were men of marvellous memories. | Pascal says he never forgot anything | that he read Ben Johnson tells us that | he could repeat all he had ever written 1 "and whole books" that he had read. The same feat, too, is credited to Niebuhr, the historian.
 ic alc nf ig
 youth he was employed in one of the public offices of Denmark. Part of a hook of accounts having been destroyed. he was able to restore 1t completely through his recollection.
 Joseph Justus Scaliger in his youth was a student of the famous Turebus.
 There is a tradition that he became dis satisfied with his progress in Creek. and | to make more rapid progress he closeted himself with his Homer. Then with the 1 aid of a Latin translation. he read the whole of the Tliad and committed it to | memory in twenty-one days. Whether | this was an actual occurrence or not. 1t
 is certain that his mind was one of great retentiveness. He spoke thirteen lan-
 guases and was one of the most erudite
 men of the sixteenth century. Casaubon says of him: "ITe read nothing (and
 what did he not readO which he did not l forthwith remember"
 The many stories told of Macaulay's
 almost protentous memory have been | related too often to bear repetition. Not l a few of them are on seemingly certain authorfty He was a man of splendid ltalents. His knowledge of English his 1 tory was unsurpassed by his contempo- | raries He was an excellent classical
 scholar. and had most remarkable mis- | cellaneous knowledge of literary and his torcal subjects