VIII
Discourseth of the Wondrous Memory of Some and the Forgetfulness of Others
Now when I awaked next morning were both my becalfed bedfellows up and away: so I rose up likewise, and when the adjutant came to fetch away the keys to open the town gates, out I slipped to my pastor; and to him I told all that had happened to me, as well in heaven as in hell. So when he saw that it vexed my conscience that I should deceive so many folk, and specially my master, whereas I pretended to be a fool, “why, upon that point,” says he, “thou needest not to trouble thyself: this foolish world will be befooled; and if they have left thee thy wits, so use thou those same wits to thine own advantage, and imagine to thyself as if thou, like to the Phoenix, hast been newly born from folly to understanding through fire, and so to a new human life. Yet know thou withal thou art not yet out of the wood, but with risk of thy reason hast slipped into this fool’s cap. Yea, and these times be so out of joint that none can know whether thou yet escape without loss of thy life. For a man can run quickly into hell, but to get out again doth need a deal of puffing and blowing: and thou art not yet—no, not by a long way—man enough to escape the danger that lies before thee, as well thou mightest suppose. So wilt thou have need of more foresight and wit than in those days when thou knewest not what reason or unreason was: bide thou thy time and wait on the turn of the tide.”
Now was his manner of speaking different from what it had been, and that because, I believe, he had read it in my countenance that I fancied myself to be somewhat, since I had with such masterly deceit and art slipped through the net. Nay, I gathered this from his face, that he was sick and tired of me, for his looks showed it; and indeed what part had he in me? With that I changed my discourse also, and busied myself to give him great thanks for the excellent remedies which he had imparted to me for the preserving of my wits: yea, and I made him impossible promises to repay him all that my debt to him demanded. Now this tickled him and brought him again to a different humour, wherein he bepraised his medicine and told me Simonides of Melos had invented an art which Metrodorus of Skepsis had perfected, and that not without great pains, whereby he could teach men at the repeating of a single word to recount all that they had ever heard or read, and such a thing, said he, “were not possible without medicines to strengthen the head such as he had ministered to me.”
“Yea,” thought I, “my good master parson: yet have I read in thine own books, when I dwelt with my hermit, a different tale of that wherein the Skepsian’s mnemonic did consist.”
Yet was I crafty enough to hold my peace: for if I must speak truth, ’twas now first, when I must be counted a fool, that I became keen-witted and more guarded in my talk. So the pastor continued, and told me how Cyrus could call every one of his 30,000 soldiers by his right name; how Lucius Scipio could do the like with every citizen of Rome; and how Cineas, Pyrrhus’s ambassador, on the very day after he came to Rome could repeat in their order the names of all the senators, and nobles. Mithridates, the King of Pontus, said he, had in his realm men speaking twenty-two languages, to all of which he could minister judgment in their own tongue: yea, and talk with each separately. So, too, the learned Greek Charmides could tell a man what each would know out of all the books in a whole library if he had but read them once through. Lucius Seneca could say 2,000 names in order if they were once recited before him and, as Ravisius tells, could repeat 200 verses spoken by 200 scholars from the last back to the first. So Esdras knew the five books of Moses by heart, and could dictate the same word by word to the scribes. Themistocles in one year did learn the Persian Speech, and Crassus, in Asia, could talk the five separate dialects of the Greek language, and in each administer the law to his subjects. Julius Caesar could at the same time read, dictate, and give audiences. The holy Jerome knew both Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, Persian, Median, Arabic and Latin, and the eremite Antonius knew the whole Bible by heart only from hearing it read. And so we know of a certain Corsican that he could hear 6,000 men’s names recited and thereafter repeat them in proper order.
“And all this I tell thee,” said he further, “that thou mayest not hold it for an impossible thing that a man’s memory should be excellently strengthened and maintained, even as it may, on the other hand, be in many ways weakened and even altogether destroyed. For in man there is no faculty so fleeting as that of memory: for by reason of sickness, terror, fear, or trouble and grief, it either vanisheth away or loseth a great part
