r essentially; the one might
have exerted much more judgment and ingenuity in the conduct of his
memory than the other, and might thus have not only fatigued himself
less, but might have improved his understanding, whilst the other
learned merely by rote. When Dr. Johnson reported the parliamentary
debates for the gentleman's Magazine, his judgment, his habit of
attending to the order in which ideas follow one another in reasoning,
his previous knowledge of the characters and style of the different
speakers, must considerably have assisted his memory. His taste for
literary composition must have shown him instantly where any argument
or allusion was misplaced. A connecting phrase, or a link in a chain
of reasoning, is missed as readily by a person used to writing and
argument, as a word in a line of poetry is missed by a poetic ear. If
any thing has escaped the memory of persons who remember by general
classification, they are not only by their art able to discover that
something is missing, but they have a general direction where to find
it; they know to what class of ideas it must belong; they can hunt
from generals to particulars, till they are sure at last of tracing
and detecting the deserter; they have certain signs by which they know
the object of which they are in search, and they trust with more
certainty to these characteristics, than to the mere vague
recollection of having seen it before. We feel disposed to trust the
memory of those who can give us some reason for what they remember. If
they can prove to us that their assertion could not, consistently with
other facts, be false, we admit the assertion into the rank of facts,
and their judgment thus goes surety for their memory.

The following advertisement (taken from the star of the 21st
September, 1796) may show that experience justifies these theoretic
notions:

"Literature.

"A gentleman capable of reporting the debates in parliament, is
wanted for a London newspaper. A business of no such great
difficulty as is generally imagined by those unacquainted with it.
A _tolerable_ good style and facility of composition, as well as a
facility of writing, together with a good memory (_not an
extraordinary one_) are all the necessary requisites. If a
gentleman writes short hand, it is an advantage; but memory and
composition are more important.

"The advertiser, conceiving that many gentlemen either in Londo