About the author

John Willis (d. 1625) developed a widely used system of shorthand writing and wrote extensively on applications of the memory arts.

About the text

The Art of Memory (1621) is a translation of the third part of Willis's Latin treatise, Mnemonica, sive reminiscendi ars (1618); a complete and augmented translation of the whole was produced by Leonard Sowersby (1661).

The arts of memory

This work is the most thoroughly developed English treatise on the memory arts that is not directly indebted to continental sources. Colloquial examples and contemporary references abound, such as tying a ribbon around one's finger as a visual reminder of something still to be done (A6r). Willis insists that memory theatres be constructed realistically in every detail to facilitate the effective staging and recall of ideas. Explicit references are made to emblems and imprese as viable components of memory theatres; and to this end Willis advocates keeping a commonplace book (enchiridion) for sorting and storing all such items under distinct headings.

Textual notes

John Willis, Mnemonica, or, The art of memory (London, 1661), A3r–A6v, B6r–B6v, E2v–F2v; the final excerpt follows The art of memory (London, 1621), C5r-v, for Willis's elaboration on this passage is not retained in later versions.

The Art of Memory

The Preface

First I acknowledge and willingly confess, that writing is the surest guardian of memorable things, far excelling all other art of memory; but a man cannot always commit to writing everything he desireth to remember, and must therefore necessarily sometimes make use of other helps as writing memorandums is worthily esteemed the best way of remembering; so that may rightly challenge the next place, which heareth greatest affinity thereto. Now if men deal impartially, they will easily find that the art of memory by places and ideas or images doth very nearly resemble writing. The places in artificial memory are, as it were, leaves; the ideas, letters; the distribution of them in places representeth writing; lastly, the repetition of them, reading, which thing Cicero in his Partitions, but more copiously in his second book De Oratore, doth elegantly declare.