BAD MEMORIES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3068, 27 April 1881, Page 4

BAD MEMORIES.

Thackeray tised to tell how once, in a Swiss valley, ho came across an English schoolboy reading a novel. The boy seemed to care more for fiction than scenery, and ignored the Alps while he turned over the pages of his story-book. Thackeray at once accosted him. It was delightful to meet a British schoolboy enjoying his vacation by reading, and an author felt a sympathy with the occupation which would not bo so intelligible to the general public. It soon turned out that the schoolboy had read almost all modern novels—not, of course, tho threevolume productions of ephemeral duration, but all the standard novels. He had read all Dickens, Thackeray, Scott, Wilkie, Collinß, etc. The novelist went away very much impressed and delighted, till by and by a bitter reflection ocourred to him. That boy was probably familar with most plots. There was nothing new for him. He could see tho end from the introductory chapters, and would never be surprised when the rightful heir turned up at the appropriate moment, or when an opportune stray accident killed off an unnecessary and perplexing character. And, in fact, in the end the novelist began to think that he could have no more fastidious reader for his next serial than this lazy schoolboy, with his thorough experience of all the tricks of the fiction writer's trade.

But, then, Thackeray did not make allowance for the probability or for the advantages of a bad memory. He failed to realise that great readers are not always great recollectors, and that much of the pleasure of which the fiction writer has the bestowal is the mere ephemeral enjoyment of each page as it conveys its own moral and suggests its proper images. The praises of good memories are so often illustrated' and insisted upon that persons who are destitute of such advantages often forget that something remains to be said on their sido. It does not follow that they are to be subjected to unqualified commiseration. Memory is, after all, but a kind of property in past events ; and it is a property that has many duties, and no small share of responsibility. Illustration, dealing with the sxibject, is fond of taking hold of startling instances, and telling us of retentive memories and descinbing them as "good." But it is something to be able to forget. It is something to be able to-discard, to'blow away the chaff of worthless detail, and merely retain the solid grains of valuable fact." Of course, the loss of a good memory is a very different thing from the enjoyment of a bad one. The surrender of a power of the mind is always a gloomy fact in the process of init\i:.pr»!'finn. Nobody likes to realise the advent of an undeniable symptom of impaired physical powev. It is not for strong memories grown feeble, but for weak memories that never were strong, that a dofence is here timidly put forward. Thus, for instance, take the case of a retentive memory. What a multitude of useless details it must harbor; how difficult for its owner, if he have not joined to it the rare quality of a philosophic mind, to come to just conclusions and to judge of relative values. What a fatiguing thing it is to take up a page of Bradsbaw and follow the course of a parliamentary train through all its minor stopping places to its ultimate destination. Such information is valuable, very valuable indeed ; and yet how gladly would the puzzled traveller often dispense with it. . The rarer quality is to be able to retain and to be able to discard. Dr Johnson, indeed, maintained that every one had an equal capacity for reminiscence, and that capacity availed for one thing quite as well as for another ; and he illustrated it by saying that were it otherwise, it would be like a person complaining that he could hold silver in his hand, but could not hold copper. The aptness of the illustration must not blind us to its deficiency. Dr. Johnson had himself an admirable memory, and often delighted to give evidence of it, but any reader who enjoys but a moderate or a feeble one will readily admit that its prehensile power depends much, on the subject it is to grasp. Even Locke's theory of aids includes pleasure, and pleasure cannot be capriciously commanded. Thackeray's school-boy would probably have known much more about Anne of Gierstein than Cornelius Nepos.

And let the reader think over the list of his own friends, and he will be ready to admit that some people are gifted with -what may be called fussy memories, who might very advantageously change them for bad •ones. Such memories harbour trivialities to the exclusion of grand results. From the " capacity of grasping what is small it fails to exercise any power of appreciating what is important. We meet such people in everyday life, and could wish them endowed with a generous oblivion instead of a morbid reoollection. What memories they have for the causes of small quarrels and the occa- . eions of petty family disputes. How accurate they are and how unforgiving. What notice they take of supposed slights and unintentional affronts. How much finer is the attitude of forgiveness, even based upon mere forgetfulness. Pragmatical memories make sore troubles for their owners and for their owners' friends. Charles Lamb used to remark, no doubt from personal observation, that the capacity to forget has always been largely enjoyed by men who possess the faculty to borrow, and that those who spend other persons' money have rarely that disagreeable sense of indebtedness that might be supposed to haunt a conscientious debtor. And yet even Lamb, dividing the world for practical purposes into the men who borrow and tho men who lend, emphatically pronounces the borrowing class to be the great race. Tbe whole essay is one of the happiest illustrations of Elia's airy humour. And yet under what is intended for paradox lies just that amount of truth which makes paradox more valuable than axiom. For it is to bo observed that the capacity to forget is really an attribute in greatness, and the power to forget comes very close to the enjoymont of a memory that is habitually bad. The great French detective used to sharpen his retentiveness by a singular exercise. He would walk down the street with a friend, and botli would look into a shop window. They would then walk a little further on and would each compare their recollections. The different phases of memory wore thus easily tested, and a return to the window enabled a doubtful point to be at once cleared up. The method ledto practical generalisations which can easily be tested by the reader ; a memory which retains all the incidents of the scene is found to have often missed the general effect, and thus great varieties exist in what is too loosely described as merely a good memory, One person will recollect shape, another color, a third quality, and these three would be able to go into detail as to the contents of the window, while they will be ignorant altogether as to its general appearance, and yet for many purposes the bad memory would be a very good one.