Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

MEMORY. 283
respect to the general stock of human knowledge. A memorable,
or rather an extreme, case of this sort is said to have occurred
in "that prodigy of parts, Mr. Pascal," of whom Mr. Locke
tells us, "i6 t was reported, that, till the decay of his health had
impaired his mind, he forgot nothing of what lie had done, read,
or thought, in any part of his rational age." A statement to
which, (making every allowance for the usual exaggerations of
testimony,) I do not know that any thing exactly parallel can
be produced in the history of any other individual equally distinguished by all the highest gifts of the understanding.
The learned 3Menage, whom Bayle calls the Varro of the
seventeenth century, deserves also to be mentioned here, on account of the extraordinary strength and extent of his memory;
but still more, on account of the singular degree in which he
appears to have recovered that faculty, after it had been greatly
impaired and almost destroyed by the infirmities of old age.
Few physiological facts, relating to the mind, are so well attested
as this, Menage having himself commemorated his own very
interesting history in Latin verses not inferior to any of his
juvenile productions; and, making due abatements for some
slight poetical licenses, the circumstances which he records cannot have differed widely from the truth.
Another instance of the same sort of memory, though in a
very inferior man, occurred in France, about a hundred years
ago, in the Abbe de Longuerue, whose erudition (to borrow an
expression which D'Alembert applies to it) was not only prodigious, but terrible. His extraordinary powers displayed themselves even in his childhood, to such a degree, that Louis XIV.,
when passing through Charleville, stopped to see him as a curiosity. Greek and even Hebrew (we are told) were as familiar
to him as his native tongue; and on questions of literature,
Paris consulted him as an oracle. His mind was so well furnished, not only with historical facts, but with the minutiae of
chronology and topography, that, upon hearing a person remark
in conversation, that it would be a difficult task to write a good
historical description of France, lie asserted that he could do it
from Memory, without consulting any books. All he asked was