building of two rooms is divided into spaces, in which he mentally places symbolic objects, their consecutive order being denoted by color gold, silver, black, blue, red, yellow, green, purple, white, and cinnamon, representing one to ten. By way of illustrating the use of his system Willis instances a person visiting a town who wishes to remember that he is to inquire the price of barley, to engage a man as haymaker, to buy some spices, to consult a lawyer, and to buy some velvet. By the mental picturing of a man measuring barley into a bushel with gold handles, a haymaker sharpening a golden scythe on a whetstone; a grocer's shop with the articles required associated in different ways with silver; a lawyer in a black gown; and a piece of black velvet, the order of the things required is impressed on the memory. Rules are also given for the better recalling of ideas, which consist of the application of a series of questions relative to kind, subject, quantity, sight, and attributes. The volume concludes with a treatise on the art of cherishing natural memory, dealing in a large measure with the questions of health, diet, and medicine.
From 1620 to 1680 a number of works were published on the art, but of these only one was in English—that by Henry Herdson, a Cambridge professor, entitled "Ars Memoriœ: the art of memory made plaine." Feinaigle's compiler describes this work as scarce and rare, and reprints it. The method partakes to a great extent of the topical arrangements advocated by Willis and other earlier authors. Consecutiveness in the arrangement, and the remembrance of figures were obtained by placing in position symbols representing numerals, "for 1 a candle, a fish, a staf, a dart, &c.; for 2, a swan, a duck, a goose, a serpent; for 3, a triangle, a trident, or anything with three legs; for 4, a quadrangle, a die, or any four-square thing; for 5, a foot of a man, an hand, a glove, a sickle, a peircer, a shoemaker's knife; for 6, a tobacco pipe; for 7, a carpenter's iron square, a raizer bent thus 7; for 8, a pair of spectacles, a sea crab, twin apples, &c.; for 9, a burning glass, a riding stick (twisted at the upper end thus 9), long peares, &c.; 10, 20, 30, &c., to a thousand, may be formed from these figures, taking anything round for the ciphers, 000, as an orange, a
