“Memoria certe non modo Philosophiam sed omnis
          vitae usum, omnesque artes, una maxime continet.”

     ["It is certain that memory contains not only philosophy,
     but all the arts and all that appertain to the use of life.” 
     —­Cicero, Acad., ii. 7.]

Memory is the receptacle and case of science:  and therefore mine being so treacherous, if I know little, I cannot much complain.  I know, in general, the names of the arts, and of what they treat, but nothing more.  I turn over books; I do not study them.  What I retain I no longer recognise as another’s; ’tis only what my judgment has made its advantage of, the discourses and imaginations in which it has been instructed:  the author, place, words, and other circumstances, I immediately forget; and I am so excellent at forgetting, that I no less forget my own writings and compositions than the rest.  I am very often quoted to myself, and am not aware of it.  Whoever should inquire of me where I had the verses and examples, that I have here huddled together, would puzzle me to tell him, and yet I have not borrowed them but from famous and known authors, not contenting myself that they were rich, if I, moreover, had them not from rich and honourable hands, where there is a concurrence of authority with reason.  It is no great wonder if my book run the same fortune that other books do, if my memory lose what I have written as well as what I have read, and what I give, as well as what I receive.

Besides the defect of memory, I have others which very much contribute to my ignorance; I have a slow and heavy wit, the least cloud stops its progress, so that, for example, I never propose to it any never so easy a riddle that it could find out; there is not the least idle subtlety that will not gravel me; in games, where wit is required, as chess, draughts, and the like, I understand no more than the common movements.  I have a slow and perplexed apprehension, but what it once apprehends, it apprehends well, for the time it retains it.  My sight is perfect, entire, and discovers at a very great distance, but is soon weary and heavy at work, which occasions that I cannot read long, but am forced to have one to read to me.  The younger Pliny can inform such as have not experimented it themselves, how important an impediment this is to those who devote themselves to this employment.

There is no so wretched and coarse a soul, wherein some particular faculty is not seen to shine; no soul so buried in sloth and ignorance, but it will sally at one end or another; and how it comes to pass that a man blind and asleep to everything else, shall be found sprightly, clear, and excellent in some one particular effect, we are to inquire of our masters:  but the beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for all things; if not instructed, at least capable of being so; which I say to accuse my own; for whether it be through infirmity or negligence (and to neglect that which lies at our feet, which we have in our hands, and what nearest concerns the use of life, is far from my doctrine) there is not a soul in the world so awkward as mine, and so ignorant of many common things, and such as a man cannot without shame fail to know.  I must give some examples.