Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth

by Maria Edgeworth

  The librarian Magliabechi was no less famous than M. de Longuerue for his memory, and he was yet more strongly affected by the mania for books. His appetite for them was so voracious, that he acquired the name of the glutton of literature. Before he died, he had swallowed six large rooms full of books. Whether he had time to digest any of them we do not know, but we are sure that he wished it; for the only line of his own composition which he has left for the instruction of posterity, is round a medal. The medal represents him sitting with a book in his hand, and with a great number of books scattered on the floor round him. The candid inscription signifies, that to become learned it is not sufficient to read much, if we read without reflection. The names of Franklin and of Shakespeare are known wherever literature is cultivated, to all who have any pretensions to science or to genius; yet they were neither of them men of extraordinary erudition, nor from their works should we judge that memory was their predominant faculty. It may be said, that a superior degree of memory was essential to the exercise of their judgment and invention; that without having treasured up in his memory a variety of minute observations upon human nature, Shakespeare could never have painted the passions with so bold and just a hand; that if Franklin had not accurately remembered his own philosophical observations, and those of others, he never would have made those discoveries which have immortalized his name. Admitting the justice of these assertions, we see that memory to great men is but a subordinate servant, a treasurer who receives, and is expected to keep faithfully whatever is committed to his care; and not only to preserve faithfully all deposits, but to produce them at the moment they are wanted. There are substances which are said to imbibe and retain the rays of light, and to emit them only in certain situations. As long as they retain the rays, no eye regards them.

  It has often been observed, that a recollective and retentive memory are seldom found united. If this were true, and that we had our choice of either, which should we prefer? For the purposes of ostentation, perhaps the one; for utility, the other. A person who could repeat from beginning to end the whole Economy of Human Life, which he had learned in his childhood, might, if we had time to sit still and listen to him, obtain our admiration for his extraordinary retentive memory; but the person who, in daily occurrences, or interesting affairs, recollects at the proper time what is useful to us, obtains from our gratitude something more than vain admiration. To speak accurately, we must remark, that retentive and recollective memories are but relative terms: the recollective memory must be retentive of all that it recollects; the retentive memory cannot show itself till the moment it becomes recollective. But we value either precisely in proportion as they are useful and agreeable.

  Just at the time when philosophers were intent upon trying experiments in electricity, Dr. Heberden recollected to have seen, many years before, a small electrical stone, called tourmalin, in the possession of Dr. Sharpe at Cambridge. It was the only one known in England at that time. Dr. Heberden procured it; and several curious experiments were made and verified with it. In this instance, it is obvious that we admire the retentive, local memory of Dr. Heberden, merely because it became recollective and useful. Had the tourmalin never been wanted, it would have been a matter of indifference, whether the direction for it at Dr. Sharpe’s at Cambridge, had been remembered or forgotten. There was a man who undertook, in going from Temple Bar to the furthest part of Cheapside and back again, to enumerate at his return every sign on each side of the way in its order, and to repeat them, if it should be required, either backwards or forwards. This he exactly accomplished. As a playful trial of memory, this affords us a moments entertainment; but if we were to be serious upon the subject, we should say it was a pity that the man did not use his extraordinary memory for some better purpose. The late king of Prussia, when he intended to advance Trenck in the army, upon his first introduction, gave him a list of the strangest names which could be picked out, to learn by rote. Trenck learned them quickly, and the king was much pleased with this instance of his memory; but Frederick would certainly never have made such a trial of the abilities of Voltaire.

  We cannot always foresee what facts may be useful, and what may be useless to us, otherwise the cultivation of the memory might be conducted by unerring rules. In the common business of life, people regulate their memories by the circumstances in which they happen to be placed. A clerk in a counting-house, by practice, learns to remember the circumstances, affairs, and names of numerous merchants, of his master’s customers, the places of their abode, and, perhaps, something of their peculiar humours and manners. A fine lady remembers her visiting list, and, perhaps, the dresses and partners of every couple at a crowded ball; she finds all these particulars a useful supply for daily conversation, she therefore remembers them with care. An amateur, who is ambitious to shine in the society of literary men, collects literary anecdotes, and retails them whenever occasion permits. Men of sense, who cultivate their memories for useful purposes, are not obliged to treasure up heterogeneous facts: by reducing particulars to general principles, and by connecting them with proper associations, they enjoy all the real advantages, whilst they are exempt from the labour of accumulation.

  Mr. Stewart has, with so much ability, pointed out the effects of systematic arrangement of writing, reading, and the use of technical contrivances in the cultivation of the memory, that it would be a presumptuous and unnecessary attempt to expatiate in other words upon the same subject. It may not be useless, however, to repeat a few of his observations, because, in considering what further improvement may be made, it is always essential to have fully in our view what is already known.

  “Philosophic arrangement assists the memory, by classing under a few principles, a number of apparently dissimilar and unconnected particulars. The habit, for instance, of attending to the connection of cause and effect, presents a multitude of interesting analogies to the minds of men of science, which escape other persons; the vulgar feel no pleasure in contemplating objects that appear remote from common life; and they find it extremely difficult to remember observations and reasonings which are foreign to their customary course of associated ideas. Even literary and ingenious people, when they begin to learn any art or science, usually complain that their memory is not able to retain all the terms and ideas which pour in upon them with perplexing rapidity. In time, this difficulty is conquered, not so much by the strength of the memory, as by the exercise of judgment: they learn to distinguish, and select the material terms, facts and arguments, from those that are subordinate, and they class them under general heads, to relieve the memory from all superfluous labour.

  “In all studies, there is some prevalent associating principle, which gradually becomes familiar to our minds, but which we do not immediately discover in our first attempts. In poetry, resemblance; in philosophy, cause and effect; in mathematics, demonstrations continually recur; and, therefore, each is expected by persons who have been used to these respective studies.

  “The habit of committing our knowledge to writing, assists the memory, because, in writing, we detain certain ideas long enough in our view to perceive all their relations; we use fixed and abbreviated signs for all our thoughts; with the assistance of these, we can prevent confusion in our reasonings. We can, without fatigue, by the help of words, letters, figures, or algebraic signs, go through a variety of mental processes, and solve many difficult problems, which, without such assistance, must have been too extensive for our capacities.

  “If our books be well chosen, and if we read with discrimination and attention, reading will improve the memory, because, as it increases our knowledge, it increases our interest in every new discovery, and in every new combination of ideas.”

  We agree entirely with Mr. Stewart in his observations upon technical helps to the memory; they are hurtful to the understanding, because they break the general habits of philosophic order in the mind. There is no connection of ideas between the memorial lines, for instance, in Grey’s Memoria Tech
nica, the history of the Kings or Emperors, and the dates that we wish to remember. However, it may be advantageous in education to use such contrivances, to assist our pupils in remembering those technical parts of knowledge, which are sometimes valued above their worth in society.

  The facts upon which the principles of any science are founded, should never be learnt by rote in a technical manner. But the names and the dates of the reigns of a number of kings and emperors, if they must be remembered by children, should be learnt in the manner which may give them the least trouble.

  It is commonly asserted, that our memory is to be improved by exercise: exercise may be of different kinds, and we must determine what sort is best. Repetition is found to fix words, and sometimes ideas, strongly in the mind; the words of the burden of a song, which we have frequently heard, are easily and long remembered. When we want to get any thing by rote, we repeat it over and over again, till the sounds seem to follow one another habitually, and then we say we have them perfectly by rote. The regular recurrence of sounds, at stated intervals, much assists us. In poetry, the rhymes, the cadence, the alliteration, the peculiar structure of the poet’s lines, aids us. All these are mechanical helps to the memory. Repetition seems much more agreeable to some people than to others; but it may be doubted whether a facility and propensity to repetition be favourable to rational memory. Whilst we repeat, we exclude all thought from the mind; we form a habit of saying certain sounds in a certain order; but if this habit be afterwards broken by any trifling external circumstances, we lose all our labour. We have no means of recollecting what we have learned in this manner. Once gone, it is gone for ever. It depends but upon one principle of association. Those who exert ingenuity as well as memory in learning by heart, may not, perhaps, associate sounds with so much expedition, but they will have the power of recollection in a greater degree. They will have more chances in their favour, besides the great power of voluntary exertion: a power which few passive repeaters ever possess. The following lines are easily learned:

  “Haste, then, ye spirits; to your charge repair, The fluttering fan be Zephyretta’s care; The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign, And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine; Do thou, Crispissa, tend her favourite lock, Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock.”

  To a person who merely learned the sounds in these lines by rote, without knowing the sense of the words, all the advantage of the appropriated names and offices of the sylphs would be lost. No one, who has any sense of propriety, can call these sylphs by wrong names, or put them out of their places. Momentilla and the watch, Zephyretta and the fan, Crispissa and the lock of hair, Brillante and the diamond drops, are so intimately associated, that they necessarily recur together in the memory. The following celebrated lines on envy, some people will find easy, and others difficult, to learn by heart:

  “Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue; But, like a shadow, proves the substance true: For envy’d wit, like Sol eclips’d, makes known Th’ opposing body’s grossness, not its own. When first that sun too pow’rful beams displays, It draws up vapour, which obscures its rays; But ev’n those clouds at last adorn its way, Reflect new glories, and augment the day.”

  The flow of these lines is not particularly easy; those who trust merely to the power of reiteration in getting them by rote, will find the task difficult; those who seize the ideas, will necessarily recollect their order, and the sense will conduct them to their proper places with certainty: they cannot, for instance, make the clouds adorn the sun’s rays before the sun’s powerful beams have drawn up the vapours. This fixes the place of the four last lines. The simile of merit and the sun, and envy and the clouds, keeps each idea in its order; if any one escapes, it is easily missed, and easily recalled.

  We seldom meet with those who can give us an accurate account of their own thoughts; it is, therefore, difficult to tell the different ways in which different people manage their memory. We judge by the effects frequently, that causes are the same, which sometimes are entirely different. Thus we, in common conversation, should say, that two people had an equally good memory, who could repeat with equal exactness any thing which they had heard or read. But in their methods of remembering, these persons might differ essentially; the one might have exerted much more judgment and ingenuity in the conduct of his memory than the other, and might thus have not only fatigued himself less, but might have improved his understanding, whilst the other learned merely by rote. When Dr. Johnson reported the parliamentary debates for the gentleman’s Magazine, his judgment, his habit of attending to the order in which ideas follow one another in reasoning, his previous knowledge of the characters and style of the different speakers, must considerably have assisted his memory. His taste for literary composition must have shown him instantly where any argument or allusion was misplaced. A connecting phrase, or a link in a chain of reasoning, is missed as readily by a person used to writing and argument, as a word in a line of poetry is missed by a poetic ear. If any thing has escaped the memory of persons who remember by general classification, they are not only by their art able to discover that something is missing, but they have a general direction where to find it; they know to what class of ideas it must belong; they can hunt from generals to particulars, till they are sure at last of tracing and detecting the deserter; they have certain signs by which they know the object of which they are in search, and they trust with more certainty to these characteristics, than to the mere vague recollection of having seen it before. We feel disposed to trust the memory of those who can give us some reason for what they remember. If they can prove to us that their assertion could not, consistently with other facts, be false, we admit the assertion into the rank of facts, and their judgment thus goes surety for their memory.

  The following advertisement (taken from the star of the 21st September, 1796) may show that experience justifies these theoretic notions:

  “Literature.

  “A gentleman capable of reporting the debates in parliament, is wanted for a London newspaper. A business of no such great difficulty as is generally imagined by those unacquainted with it. A tolerable good style and facility of composition, as well as a facility of writing, together with a good memory (not an extraordinary one) are all the necessary requisites. If a gentleman writes short hand, it is an advantage; but memory and composition are more important.

  “The advertiser, conceiving that many gentlemen either in London or at the Universities, or in other parts of the kingdom, may think such a situation desirable, takes this public method of enabling them to obtain it. The salary, which will vary according to the talents of the reporter, will at least afford a genteel subsistence, and the business need not interrupt the pursuit of studies necessary for a more important profession. A gentleman who has never tried parliamentary reporting, will be preferred by the advertiser, because he has observed, that those who have last attempted it, are now the best reporters.”

  In the common mode of education, great exactness of repetition is required from pupils. This seems to be made a matter of too much importance. There are circumstances in life, in which this talent is useful, but its utility, perhaps, we shall find, upon examination, is over-rated.

  In giving evidence of words, dates, and facts, in a court of justice, the utmost precision is requisite. The property, lives, and characters of individuals depend upon this precision.

  But we must observe, that after long detailed evidence has been given by a number of witnesses, an advocate separates the material from the immaterial circumstances, and the judge in his charge again compresses the arguments of the counsel, so that much of what has been said during the trial, might as well have been omitted. All these superfluous ideas were remembered to no purpose. An evidence sometimes, if he be permitted, would tell not only all that he remembers of the circumstances about which he is examined, but also a number of other circumstances, which are casually associated with these in his memory. An able advocate rejects, by a quickness of judgment which app
ears like intuition, all that is irrelevant to his argument and his cause; and it is by this selection that his memory, in the evidence, perhaps, of twenty different people, is able to retain all that is useful. When this heterogeneous mass of evidence is classed by his perspicuous arrangement, his audience feel no difficulty either in understanding or recollecting all which had before appeared confused. Thus the exercise of the judgment saves much of the labour of memory; labour which is not merely unnecessary, but hurtful, to our understanding.

  In making observations upon subjects which are new to us, we must be content to use our memory unassisted at first by our reason; we must treasure up the ore and rubbish together, because we cannot immediately distinguish them from each other. But the sooner we can separate them, the better. In the beginning of all experimental sciences, a number of useless particulars are recorded, because they are not known to be useless; when, from comparing these, a few general principles are discovered, the memory is immediately relieved, the judgment and inventive faculty have power and liberty to work, and then a rapid progress and great discoveries are made. It is the misfortune of those who first cultivate new sciences, that their memory is overloaded; but if those who succeed to them, submit to the same senseless drudgery, it is not their misfortune, but their fault. Let us look over the history of those who have made discoveries and inventions, we shall perceive, that it has been by rejecting useless ideas that they have first cleared their way to truth. Dr. Priestley’s Histories of Vision and of Electricity, are as useful when we consider them as histories of the human mind, as when we read them as histories of science. Dr. Priestley has published a catalogue of books, from which he gathered his materials. The pains, he tells us, that it cost him to compress and abridge the accounts which ingenious men have given of their own experiments, teach us how much our progress in real knowledge depends upon rejecting all that is superfluous. When Simonides offered to teach Themistocles the art of memory, Themistocles answered, “Rather teach me the art of forgetting; for I find that I remember much that I had better forget, and forget” (consequently) “some things which I wish to remember.”