PART II - Rhetoric and poetics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2016
Summary
For in old time, men (if they had heard any thing worthy to be known) they wrote and graved the same, not in books, but in the heart and mind. And the memory by this confirmed and made steadfast, they kept in their remembrance whatsoever they were willing, and what every man perfectly knew, he had always ready with him at his fingers' ends. Afterward, the use of writing being once found out, while men put all their affiance and trust in books, they were nothing like earnest to imprint in their mind, such things as they had learned.
– Erasmus, Apophthegmes, trans. Nicholas Udall (1542), E4rBut, see, how I have the art of memorative at commandment.
– Gabriel Harvey, Three Proper and Witty, Familiar Letters (1580), F1rHitherto Ramus concerning the help of memory by logical disposition to the which counsel of him, if we add some comfortable simples, and have a careful heed that we distemper not our selves either with unorderly diet or unhonest exercise, I am persuaded it will be more available, than all the volumes of the art of memory.
– Abraham Fraunce, The Lawyer's Logic (1588), Ki3r- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Memory Arts in Renaissance EnglandA Critical Anthology, pp. 101 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016