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tween some word in the verse, and some letter, syllable, property, or accident of the name or thing to be remembered, even though they had been repeated but once or twice at most in his hearing. Animato practised much the same art of memory by getting the Latin names of twentytwo animals into his head according the alphabet, viz. asinus, basiliscus, canis, draco, elephas, felis, gryphus, bircus, juvencus, leo, mulus, noctua, ovis, panthera, quadrupes, rbinoceros, simia, taurus, ursus, xipbias, byana or yana, zibetta. Most of these he divided also into four parts, viz. head and body, feet, fins or wings, and tail, and by some arbitrary or chimerical attachment of each of these to a word or thing which he desired to remember, he committed them to the care of his memory, and that with good success.

It is also by this association of ideas that we may better imprint any new idea upon the memory, by joining with it some circumstance of the time, place, company, &c. wherein we first observed, heard, or learnt it. If we would recover an absent idea, it is useful to recollect those circumstances of time, place, &c. The substance will many times be recovered and brought to the thought by recollecting the shadow: a man recurs to our fancy by remembering his garment, his size, or stature, his office, or employment, &c. A beast, bird, or fish, by its colour, figure, or motion, by the cage, or court-yard, or cistern, wherein it was kept.

To this head also we may refer that remembrance of names and things which may be derived from our recollection of their likeness to other things which we know; either their resemblance in name, character, form, accident, or any thing that belongs to them. An idea or word which has been lost or forgotten, has been often recovered by hitting upon some other kindred word or idea, which has the nearest resemblance to it, and that in the letters, syllables, or sound of the name, as well as properties of the thing.

If we would remember Hippocrates, or Galen, or Paracelsus,

celsus, think of a physician's name beginning with H, G, or P. If we shall remember Ovidius Naso, we may represent a man with a great nose; if Plato, we may think upon a person with large shoulders; if Chrispus, we shall fancy another with curled hair; and so of other things.

And sometimes a new or strange idea may be fixed in the memory, by considering its contrary or opposite. So if we cannot hit on the word Goliath, the remembrance of David may recover it; or the name of a Trojan man be recovered by thinking of a Greek, &c.

8. In such cases, wherein it may be done, seek after a local memory, or a remembrance of what you have read by the side or page where it is written, or printed; whether the right or the left, whether at the top, the middle, or the bottom; whether at the beginning of a chapter or a paragraph, or the end of it. It has been some advantage, for this reason, to accustom one's self to books of the same edition; and it has been of constant and special use to divines and private Christians, to be furnished with several Bibles of the same edition, that wheresoever they are, whether in their chamber, parlour, or study, in the younger or elder years of life, they may find the chapters and verses standing in the same parts of the page.

This is also a great conveniency to be observed by printers in the new editions of Grammars, Psalms, Testaments, &c. to print every chapter, paragraph, or verse, in the same part of the page as the former, that so it may yield an happy assistance to those young learners, who find and even feel the advantage of a local memory.

9. Let every thing we desire to remember be fairly and distinctly written and divided into periods, with large characters in the beginning, for by this means we shall the mote readily imprint the matter and words on our minds, and recollect them with a glance, the more remarkable the writing appears to the eye. This sense conveys the ideas to the fancy better than any other; and what we have seen is not so soon forgotten as what we have only heard. What

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Horace affirms of the mind or passions may be said also of the memory.

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurum
Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus, et quæ
Ipse sibi tradit spectator.

Applied thus in English:

Sounds which address the ear are lost, and die
In one short hour; but that which strikes the eye
Lives long upon the mind; the faithful sight
Engraves the knowledge with a beam of light.

For the assistance of weak memories, the first letters or words of every period, in every page, may be written in distinct colours; yellow, green, red, black, &c. and if you observe the same order of colours in the following sentences, it may be still the better. This will make a great impression, and may much aid the memory.

Under this head we may take notice of the advantage which the memory gains, by having the several objects of our learning drawn out into schemes and tables; matters of mathematical science and natural philosophy are not only let into the understanding, but preserved in the memory by figures and diagrams. The situation of the several parts of the earth are better learnt by one day's conversing with a map or a sea-chart, than by mere reading the description of their situation a hundred times over in books of geography. So the constellations in astronomy, and their position in the heavens, are more easily remembered by hemispheres of the stars well drawn. It is by having such sort of memorials, figures, and tables hung round our studies, or places of residence or resort, that our memory of these things will be greatly assisted and improved, as I have shewn at large in the twentieth chapter of the Use of the Sciences,

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I might add here also, that once writing over what we design to remember, and giving due attention to what we write, will fix it more in the mind than reading it five times. And in the same manner, if we had a plan of the naked lines of longitude and latitude, projected on the meridian printed for this use, a learner might much more speedily advance himself in the knowledge of geography by his own drawing the figures of all the parts of the world upon it by imitation, than by many days survey of a map of the world so printed. The same also may be said concerning the constellations of heaven, drawn by the learner on a naked projection of the circles of the sphere upon the plane of the equator.

io. It has sometimes been the practice of men to imprint names or sentences on their memory, by taking the first letters of every word of that sentence, or of those names, and making a new word out of them. So the name of the Maccabees is borrowed from the first letters of the Hebrew words which make that sentence, Mi Camoka Baelim Jehovah, i. e. Who is like thee among the gods? which was written on their banners. Jesus Christ, our Saviour, hath been called a fish, in Greek IXOYE, by the fathers, because these are the first letters of those Greek words, Jesus Christ, God's Son, the Saviour. So the word vibgyor teaches us to remember the order of the seven original colours, as they appear by the sun-beams cast through a prism on white paper, or formed by the sun in a rainbow, according to the different refrangibility of the rays, viz. violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red.

In this manner the Hebrew grammarians teach their students to remember the letters which change their natural pronunciation by the inscription of a dagesh, by gathering these six letters, beth, gimel, daleth, caph, pe, and thau, into the word begadchephat; and that they might not forget the letters named quiescent, viz. a, b, v, and i, they are joined in the word abevi. So the universal and particular propositiona

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propositions in logic, are remembered by the words, barbara, celarent, Darii, &c.

Other artificial helps to memory may be just mentioned here.

Dr Grey, in his book called Memoria Technica, has exchanged the figures, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, for some consonants, b, d, t, f, 1, y, p, k, n, and some vowels, a, e, i, o, u, and several diphthongs, and thereby formed words that denote numbers which may be more easily remembered; and Mr Lowe has improved his scheme, in a small pamphlet called Mnemonics delineated, whereby, in seven leaves, he has comprized almost an infinity of things in science and in common life, and reduced them to a sort of measure like Latin verse; though the words may be supposed to be very barbarous, being such a mixture of vowels and consonants as are very unfit for harmony.

But after all, the very writers on this subject have confessed that several of these artificial helps of memory are so cumbersome as not to be suitable to every temper or person; nor are they of any use for the delivery of a discourse by memory, nor of much service in learning the sciences: but they may be sometimes practised for the assisting our remembrance of certain sentences, numbers, or names.

CHAP. XVIII.

Of determining a Question.

I.

WHEN a subject is proposed to your thoughts, consider whether it be knowable at all, or not; and then whether it be not above the reach of your inquiry and knowledge in the present state; and remember that it is a great waste of time to busy yourselves too much amongst unsearchables the chief use of these studies is to keep the mind humble, by finding its own ignorance and weakness.

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II. CONSIDER again whether the matter be worthy of your inquiry at all; and then how far it may be worthy

of

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