ic grove were satisfied to go almost without the necessaries of
life. In the specimens of Abeillard's composition, which are handed
down to us, we may discover proofs of his having been vain of a
surprising memory; it seems to have been the superior faculty of his
mind: his six hundred pupils could carry away with them only so much
of his learning as they could get by heart during his course of
lectures; and he who had the best memory, must have been best paid for
his journey.[40]

The art of printing, by multiplying copies so as to put them within
the easy reference of all classes of people, has lowered the value of
this species of retentive memory. It is better to refer to the book
itself, than to the man who has read the book. Knowledge is now ready
classed for use, and it is safely stored up in the great common-place
books of public libraries. A man of literature need not incumber his
memory with whole passages from the authors he wants to quote; he need
only mark down the page, and the words are safe.

Mere erudition does not in these days ensure permanent fame. The names
of the Abbe de Longuerue, and of the Florentine librarian Magliabechi,
excite no vivid emotions in the minds of those who have heard of them
before; and there are many, perhaps not illiterate persons, who would
not be ashamed to own that they had never heard of them at all. Yet
these men were both of them, but a few years ago, remarkable for
extraordinary memory and erudition. When M. de Longuerue was a child,
he was such a prodigy of memory and knowledge, that Lewis the
fourteenth, passing through the abbe's province, stopped to see and
hear him. When he grew up, Paris consulted him as the oracle of
learning. His erudition, says d'Alembert,[41] was not only prodigious,
but actually terrible. Greek and Hebrew were more familiar to him than
his native tongue. His memory was so well furnished with historic
facts, with chronological and topographical knowledge, that upon
hearing a person assert in conversation, that it would be a difficult
task to write a good historical description of France,[42] he
asserted, that he could do it from memory, without consulting any
books. All he asked, was, to have some maps of France laid before him:
these recalled to his mind the history of each province, of all the
fiefs of the crown of each city, and even of each distinguished
nobleman's seat in the kingdom. He wrote his folio history in a year.
It was admired