PRODIGIOUS MEMORIES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 243, 13 April 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

PRODIGIOUS MEMORIES

LADY WHO KNEW THE METHODIST HYMX-BOOK BY HEART. The blind man who for many years sat with an open Braille Bible' in the market-place of an English town, and who died lately, was the possessor of a prodigious memory. So leng had he read the Scriptures aloud in this public place that he had become quite independent of the touch of his sensitive lingers ; on the raised type. He was often put to the test, and if a chapter in the Bible were mentioned to him, without turning to the place, he ccald .begin to recite it, making no pause or mistake. As far as the New Testament was concerned he could also generally quote any verse to which reference was made, and could recite the Gospels from beginning to end. Another old lady in the north of, England was equally familiar with the Methodist hymn-book. If the number of a hymn were mentioned, she could invariably recite the words with which it commenced, and in main' casts could repeat the hymn from the first to the last verse. Furthermore, if the first line of a hymn from this collection were mentioned she could at once supply its num-

ber m the book. Indeed, if every copy of the Methodist hymn-book had been destroyed this old lady could have gone far towards restoring it from her memory alone. This same remark" applied also to the poet Browning with respect to many of the plays of Shakespeare. It is an unthinkable thing that every- copy of these pays should ever be lost, but"if such a tiling had happened Robert Browning could have re-written a good many of them word for word, as well as the greater part of ''Paradise Lost." Macaulay had a wonderful memory At twelve years of age he knew by heart every word of Scott's ••Lay 0 f the Last Minstrel and the greater part of "Marmion.' 'When he was quite a tiny child he paid a call with his father, and, being left alone in a room, found the famous -Lay open on the table. When he got home he sat down and repeated to Jis mother as much of the poem as she would listen to. When in his twU th } ear he took up a newspaper in which veie wo poems, which he very soon

earned -by heart. He never thought of hem again until forty years afterwards, | when he suddenly recalled them to mind and repeated them as though he had learned them the day before .Richard Porson, the wonderful classical scholar, had a prodigious memory. He went to Eton at an early flfie but he >ad little or nothing to iLfthere fo r he already could repeat word for word j the whole of Horace, Virgil, the Iliad, as I well as very considerable portions of the I Odyssey, Cicero, Livy and many other classics. J r I

Sir Thomas Lawrence, who afterwards became president of the Koyal Academy was not only one of the greatest o '& ™i\ "'* Paintei ' s ' b,,t was in addition the possessor of a marvellous memthe Bear Inn Devi.es, which was on the •fi To to .. Bath ' a " d * the «»« little lonuny' was five years old he would say to the ladies and gentlemen who stopped for their ~,,-als a ° t h ™** , Hero smy son. Will y OU , nave h ' im ' je.tejrom the poets > r take } | This was no idle boast, for ] le oould «lo; either with equal facility, a „d 3d o oft reams of Shakespeare. \?£ "id P "if > not only correctly as a he words were concerned, but with the Proper emphas,s and ,ood ( ~oe„tio„ v

Everybody knows that Gladstone had a wonderful knack of lengthy and evict quotat,o», and could quote Who]> ,a" of Homer, but it is not so "eneraHv se or of o "f ed ' Was also the possessor ot a wonderful memory P At a dinner party someone'was lauding (.ladstone'a memory when Disraeli™ that the fit w M ,, . 1 SS l ti?' and n order to prove his point asked or the loan of any book, The >!?!>? <-« to him. ,He retired with it for an hour, and then, returning, repeated from memory the first book JacgSS Uid Randolph Churchill had a system by the famous humorist, Theodore Hon - was also said that he c ou 7I repeatt Ketpeis in any thoroughfare however long, aft or walking down the str et and scanning them once. d