quired to whom it belonged; another has been for three years digging canals and raifing mounts, cutting trees down in one place, and planting them in another, on which Tranquil looks with ferene indifference, without asking what will be the coft. Another projector tells him that a water-work, like that of Versailles, will complete the beauties of his seat, and lays his draughts before him; Tranquil turns his eyes upon them, and the artist begins his explanations; Tranquil raises no objections, but orders him to begin the work, that he may efcape from talk which he does not understand.

THUS a thousand hands are busy at his expence, without adding to his pleasures. He pays and receives vifits, and has loitered in publick or in folitude, talking in fummer of the town, and in winter of the country, without knowing that his fortune is impaired, till his Steward told him this morning, that he could pay the workmen no longer but by mortgaging a manor.

N° 74.

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N°

74. Saturday, September 15.

N the mythological pedigree of learning, Memory is made the mother of the Mufes; by which the mafters of ancient Wisdom, perhaps, meant to fhew the neceffity of ftoring the mind copiously with true notions, before the imagination fhould be fuffered to form fictions or collect embellishments; for the works of an ignorant Poet can afford nothing higher than pleafing found, and fiction is of no other use than to display the treasures of Memory.

THE neceffity of Memory to the acquifition of Knowledge is inevitably felt and univerfally allowed, so that scarcely any other of the mental faculties are commonly confidered as neceffary to a Student: he that admires the proficiency of another, always attributes it to the happiness of his Memory; and he that laments his own defects, concludes with a wish that his Memory was better.

It is evident, that when the power of retention is weak, all the attempts at eminence of knowledge must be vain; and as few are willing to be doomed to perpetual ignorance, I may, perhaps, afford confolation to fome that have fallen too eafily into defpondence, by obferving that fuch weakness is, in my opinion, very rare, and that few have reason to complain of Nature as unkindly sparing of the gifts of Memory.

In the common bufinefs of life, we find the Memory of one like that of another, and honeftly impute omiffions not to involuntary forgetfulness, but culpable inattention but in literary inquiries, failure is imputed rather to want of Memory than of Diligence.

WE Confider ourselves as defective in Memory, either because we remember lefs than we defire, or less than we suppose others to remember.

MEMORY is like all other human powers, with which no man can be fatisfied who mea

fures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can defire, He whofe mind is moft

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capacious, finds it much too narrow, for his wishes he that remembers moft, remembers little compared with what he forgets. He therefore that, after the perufal of a book, finds few ideas remaining in his mind, is not to confider the disappointment as peculiar to himself, or to refign all hopes of improvement, because he does not retain what even the author has perhaps forgotten.

HE who compares his Memory with that of others, is often too hafty to lament the inequality. Nature has fometimes, indeed, afforded examples of enormous, wonderful, and gigantick Memory. Scaliger reports of himself, that, in his youth, he could repeat above an hundred verses, having once read them; and Barthicus declares, that he wrote his Comment upon Claudian without confulting the text. But not to have fuch degrees of Memory, is no more to be lamented, than not to have the ftrength of Hercules, or the swiftnefs of Achilles. He that in the diftribution of good has an equal share with common men, may juftly be contented. Where there is no ftriking difparity, it is difficult to know of two which remembers VOL. II.

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most,

most, and still more difficult to discover which read with greater attention, which has renewed the first impreffion by more frequent repetitions, or by what accidental combination of ideas either mind might have united any particular narrative or argument to its former ftock.

BUT Memory, however impartially diftributed, fo often deceives our truft, that almost every man attempts, by fome artifice or other, to fecure its fidelity.

It is the practice of many readers, to note in the margin of their books, the most important paffages, the strongest arguments, or the brighteft fentiments. Thus they load their minds with fuperfluous attention, reprefs the vehemence of curiofity by useless deliberation, and by frequent interruption break the current of narration or the chain of reason, and at laft close the volume, and forget the paffages and the marks together.

OTHERS I have found unalterably perfuaded, that nothing is certainly remembered but what is tranfcribed; and they have therefore