The extraordinary powers of calculation entirely from memory are very surprising. The mathematician Wallis, in bed, and in the dark, extracted the cube root from a number consisting of thirty figures. George III. had a memory remarkably retentive. He is said never to have forgotten the face he had once seen, or the name once heard. Carolan's memory was remarkably quick and retentive. On one occasion, he met a celebrated musician at the house of an Irish nobleman. He challenged him to a trial of musical skill. The musician played the fifth Concerto of Vivaldi on his violin, to which Carolan, who had never heard it, listened with deep attention. When it was finished, he took his harp, and played the Concerto from beginning to end, without missing a single note. An instance of great memory is related of La Motte, who was invited by Voltaire, then a young man, to hear a tragedy which he had just finished. La Motte listened with great attention, and was delighted with it. However, he said he had one fault to find with it. On being urged by Voltaire to say what that was, he replied, that he regretted that any part of it should have been borrowed. Voltaire, chagrined and incredulous, requested that he would point this out. He named the second scene of the fourth act, saying, that, when he had met with it, it had struck him so much, that he took the trouble of transmitting it to memory. He then recited the scene, just as Voltaire had read it, with the animation which showed how much it pleased him. Voltaire, utterly confounded, remained silent; the friends who were present looked at each other in amazement; a few moments of embarrassment and dismay ensued. La Motte at length broke the silence: "Make yourself easy, sir," said he, "the scene belongs to no one but you. I was so charmed by its beauty that I could not resist the temptation of committing it to memory."
It is not uncommon to find the memory retentive on some subjects, yet extremely defective on others. The remarkable powers of some are limited to dates and names. A lady with whom we were acquainted could tell the number of stairs contained in each flight in the houses of all her acquaintance, but her memory was not particularly retentive in any thing else. In the notice of the death of Miss Addison, daughter of the celebrated Addison, which took place in 1797, it is stated, that "she inherited her father's memory, but none of the discriminating powers of his understanding; with the retentive faculties of Jedediah Buxton, she was a perfect imbecile. She could go on in any part of her father's works, and repeat the whole, but was incapable of speaking or writing an intelligible sentence." Cases of occasional forgetfulness on matters of interest to the mind are among the strange caprices of memory. When Dr. Priestley was preparing the dissertations prefixed to his "Harmony of the Gospels," he had taken great pains to inform himself on a subject which had been under discussion, relative to the Jewish passover. He transcribed the result of his researches, and laid the paper aside. His attention being called to something else, a fortnight elapsed before the subject again occurred to his mind. The same pains were taken which he had bestowed on it before. The fruits of his labor were again written out. So completely had he forgotten that he had before copied out exactly the same paragraphs and reflections, that it was only when he found the papers on which he had transcribed them that it was recalled to his recollection. At times he has read his own published writings without recognizing them.
John Hunter's memory once failed him. When he was in the house of a friend, he totally forgot where he was, in whose house, in what room, or in what street, or where he lived himself. He was conscious of this failure, and tried to restore his recollection by looking out of the window to ascertain where he was, but to no purpose. After some time, recollection gradually returned. It is well known that a young man of great ability, and for whom his friends looked for the most brilliant success, totally forgot what he had been about to say, when making his first, and, as it proved, his only parliamentary speech. He tried to resume the thread of his argument, but all was a cheerless blank—he came to a dead stop; and thus his parliamentary career ended: he never attempted to address the house again. An actor, who was performing in a play which had a great run, all at once forgot a speech which he had to make. "How," said he, when he got behind the scenes, and offered, as he thought, a very sufficient excuse, "how could it be expected that I should remember it forever. Haven't I repeated it every night for the last thirty nights!"
We are told in the "Psychological Magazine," that many cases have occurred in which persons have forgotten their own names. On one occasion, a gentleman had to turn to his companion, when about to leave his name at a door where they called to visit, to ask him what it was, so completely and suddenly had he forgotten it. After severe attacks of illness and great hardship, loss of memory is not infrequent. Some who recovered from the plague at Athens, as Thucydides relates, had lost their memories so entirely that no friend, no relation, nothing connected with their personal identity, was remembered. It is said, that, among those who had escaped with life the disasters of the memorable campaign in Russia, and the disease which was so fatal to the troops at Wilna, there were some who had utterly lost their memory—who preserved not the faintest recollection of country, home, or friends. The fond associations of other days had left nothing but a dreary blank.
As the body has been made the vehicle for the exercise of the faculties of the mind, and as they are united in some mysterious manner, we find injuries to the one often hurtful, and sometimes fatal to the other. Mental shocks frequently impede, or in some cases utterly put an end to that exercise which the union of body and mind produces. The memory is often disturbed or upset by some injury to the brain. A fall, a sudden blow, or disease, may obliterate all recollection. We have heard of those who have suffered from such who have forgotten every friend and relation, and never knew the face of one belonging to them again. But the effects are sometimes very strange and partial, and totally beyond our comprehension. The functions of the memory, in some cases, are suspended for a time, but, on recovery, take up at the very point where they were deprived of their power. Dr. Abercrombie was acquainted with a lady who had an apoplectic seizure while at cards. From Thursday evening till Sunday morning she was quite unconscious. At length she spoke, and the first words she uttered were, "What is trump?" Beattie mentions a gentleman who had a similar attack, in the year 1761, from which he recovered, but all recollection of the four years previous to the attack was gone, while all that had happened in the preceding years was accurately recollected. He had to refer to the public journals of the forgotten years, in which he had taken great interest at the time, for information about the passing events of those years, and read the details with great satisfaction and surprise. By a fall from his horse, a gentleman, who was an admirable scholar, received a severe hurt on the head. He recovered, but his learning was gone, and he had actually to commence his education again by the very first step, the learning of the alphabet. A less unfortunate scholar, meeting with a similar accident, lost none of his acquirements but his Greek; but it was irrevocably lost. A strange caprice of memory is recorded in the case of Dr. Broussannet. An accident which befell him brought on an attack of apoplexy. When he recovered, he had utterly lost the power of pronouncing or writing proper names, or any substantive, while his memory supplied adjectives in profusion, by the application of which he distinguished whatever he wished to mention. In speaking of any one, he would designate him by calling him after the shape or color for which he was remarkable. If his hair was red, he called him "red;" if above the usual height, he named him "tall;" if he wanted his hat, he asked for his "black;" if his "blue" or "brown" was required, it was a coat of the color that he called for. The same mode of mentioning plants was that which he made use of. As he was a good botanist, he was well acquainted with a vast number, but he could never call them by their names.
Mr. Millingen quotes from Salmuth an account of a man who could pronounce words, though he had forgotten how to write them; and of another, who could only recollect the first syllable of the words he used. Some have confused substantives altogether, calling their watch a hat, and ordering up paper when they wanted coals; others have transposed the letters of the words which they intended to use. A musician, laboring under the partial loss of memory, was known to call his flute a tufle, thus employing every letter in the right word. Curious anagrams, it is stated, have been made in this way, and innumerable names for persons and things invented. An extraordinary case of periodic recollection had occurred in an old man, who had forgotten all the events of his former life, unless they were recalled to his memory by some occurrence; yet every night he regularly recollected some one particular circumstance of his early days. There are, indeed, very extraordinary cases of a sudden rush of recollections. A gentleman with whom we are acquainted, mentioned that at one time he was in imminent danger of being drowned, and that in the brief space of some moments all the events of his life were vividly recalled. There have been similar instances; indeed, were we to transcribe one-third of the remarkable cases of the caprice of memory, we should far exceed our limits. Some very wonderful details are given of those which have been known to occur in the somnambulist state. Dr. Dyce of Aberdeen describes the case of a girl who was subject to such attacks. During these, she would converse with the bystanders, answering their questions. Once she went through the whole of the baptismal service of the Church of England. On awakening, she had no recollection of what had occurred in her state of somnambulism, but, on falling into it again, she would talk over all that had passed and been said while it continued. During one of these paroxysms, she was taken to church, where she appeared to attend to the service with great devotion. She was much affected by the sermon, and shed tears at one passage. When restored to the waking state, she had not the faintest recollection whatever of the circumstance; but, in the following paroxysm, her recollection of the whole matter was most accurate; her account of it was as vivid as possible. Not only did she describe every thing, but she gave the subject of the sermon, repeating verbatim the passage at which she had wept. Thus she appeared endowed with two memories—one for the walking state, and the other for that mysterious sleep.
There are some very affecting cases of the partial loss of memory from sudden misfortune and from untoward accidents. The day was fixed for the marriage of a young clergyman and one to whom he was most tenderly attached. Two days before the appointed time, he went out with a young friend, who was going to shoot. The gun went off accidentally. He instantly fell, and it was found that part of the charge had lodged in his forehead. For some days his life was despaired of; but at the end of that time he was pronounced out of danger. The happiness, however, which had hung on his existence was forever gone. She who had watched by him night and day had a trial more bitter than his death: he was deranged; his memory retained nothing but the idea of his approaching marriage. Every recollection, every thought was absorbed in that one idea. His whole conversation related to the preparations. He never would speak on any other subject. It was always within two days of the happy time. Thus years and years went over. Youth passed, and still two days more would wed him to her who was fondly loved as ever. And thus he reached his eightieth year, and sunk into the grave.
It has sometimes happened that the recollection of a sudden calamity has been lost in the very shock which it has produced. A curate of St. Sulpice, never weary of doing good, practiced the most rigid self-denial, that he might have the means of serving others. He adopted an English orphan boy, who repaid his kindness with a fond affection, which increased every year—in short, they loved like a father and a son. The poor boy was an apt scholar, and his protector took special delight in teaching him. But his predominant taste was for music, for which he evinced the enthusiasm that ever marks genius. His taste was cultivated, for many of those whom the curate instructed were the sons of artists, and were themselves well skilled in the delightful art, and he got them to give lessons to his protégé. He soon excelled upon the harp, and his voice, though not powerful, was capable of all those touching modulations which find their way to the heart. Accompanied by the chords, which he so well knew how to waken, more enchanting melody could scarcely be heard; and the poor curate found no more delightful relaxation than listening to his music; and the kind old man felt pride as well as delight in the progress of his son, as he always called the young musician. But peace and harmony was sadly interrupted. The attachment of the curate to the Archbishop of Arles was the cause of his being thrown into confinement with him in the convent of the Carmelites. His poor son pined to share the prison of one so much beloved—the one in whom all his feelings of affection and gratitude centred. At length his entreaties succeeded, and the pupil and his preceptor were together again. But even this melancholy companionship was to be rent asunder. The convent was attacked. The particulars of the massacre of the 2d of September, 1792, are too well known to need repetition. Some sought concealment among the branches of the trees into which they had climbed; but pikes and bullets soon reached them. The archbishop, attended by thirty of the clergy, went with steady steps up to the altar in the chapel at the end of the garden. It was there that these martyrs were sacrificed, as it has been beautifully told by Mr. Alison, with eyes raised to the image of their crucified Redeemer, and offering a prayer for their cruel assassins. Poor Capdeville, the good curate, it is said, recited at this awful moment the prayers of persons in the last agonies. The youth flew about the house in a state of bewildered distraction, seeking for his benefactor; at one moment bursting into an agony of tears, and then uttering the wildest lamentations; then, brushing away his tears, he would listen for some sound which might direct him to the spot where he might find his father. Some of the neighbors, who had been led by compassion to the melancholy scene, tried to induce the boy to escape, but he pursued his way wildly, till he found his benefactor. Nothing could persuade him to leave him. He appeared riveted to the spot, and refused to quit his side. But soon after the murder of the archbishop, the death-blow was aimed at Capdeville. He cast a last look, full of compassion and tenderness, on the beloved boy, and expired. Even as he lay, with his head resting on the step of the altar, it seemed as if he still observed his favorite with looks of kindness. The poor child's mind was quite upset. He would not believe him dead. He insisted that he slept. He forgot the scene of carnage by which he was surrounded. He sat by the bleeding corpse for three hours, expecting every moment that he would awaken. He rushed for his harp, and, returning to his patron's side, he played those plaintive airs in which he had taken especial delight. At length, worn out by watching for the moment of his awaking, he fell into a profound sleep, and the compassionate people about him bore him away and laid him on a bed. The sleep, or, more properly speaking, the stupor, continued for forty-eight hours. It was thought that when consciousness returned he might be somewhat composed; but his senses were never restored. As his affliction met with great commiseration, and as he was perfectly harmless, he was allowed the free range of the house. He would remain, as it were, in abstracted thought, pacing silently along the apartments, till the clock struck three; then he would bound away and fetch his harp, and, leaning against the fragments of the altar, he would play the tunes his preceptor had loved to hear. There was a touching expression of anxious hope in his countenance, but, when hours passed on, it was gradually succeeded by utter sadness. It was observed that at the hour of six he ceased to play, and slowly moving, he would say, "Not yet, not yet; but he will soon speak to his child;" and then he would throw himself on his knees, and appear for a while rapt in devotion, and, heaving a sigh as he rose, he would glide softly about, as if fearing to disturb his friend, whom he thought was sleeping; and then he would again fall into a state of abstraction till the next day. How it happened that there was such regularity in the time of his commencing and ceasing to play, has not been suggested. It may have been that the exact time of his last interview with his friend was impressed upon his mind, or it may have been, which seems to us most likely, that these were the hours in which the poor curate was in the habit of seeking the relaxation of music to soothe and elevate his spirit after the labors of the day. Every one pitied the poor demented boy, and could not see unmoved how he clung to affection and to hope, though bereft of reason and of recollection.