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24 Hist. of Greece, vol. ii. p. 191, sqq.
2
5 It is, indeed not easy to calculate the height to which the memory
may be cultivated. To take an ordinary case, we might refer to that
of any first rate actor, who must be prepared, at a very short
warning, to 'rhapsodize,' night after night, parts which when laid
together, would amount to an immense number of lines. But all this
is nothing to two instances of our own day. Visiting at Naples a
gentleman of the highest intellectual attainments, and who held a
distinguished rank among the men of letters in the last century, he
informed us that the day before he had passed much time in examining
a man, not highly educated, who had learned to repeat the whole
Gierusalemme of Tasso, not only to recite it consecutively, but also
to repeat those stanzas in utter defiance of the sense, either
forwards or backwards, or from the eighth line to the first,
alternately the odd and even lines--in short, whatever the passage
required; the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more
than to the sense, had it at such perfect command, that it could
produce it under any form. Our informant went on to state that this
singular being was proceeding to learn the Orlando Furioso in the
same manner. But even this instance is less wonderful than one as to
which we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty
years ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland. No such person
can have forgotten the poor, uneducated man Blind Jamie who could
actually repeat, after a few minutes consideration any verse
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