detractions

detractions

Item No. comdagen-6602032538170612422
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of the gods above! Till on the pyre I place thee; till I rear The grassy mound, and clip thy sacred hair. Some ease at least those pious rites may give, And soothe my sorrows, while I bear to live. Howe'er, reluctant as I am, I stay And share your feast; but with the dawn of day, (O king of men!) it claims thy royal care, That Greece the warrior's funeral pile prepare, And bid the forests fall: (such rites are paid To heroes slumbering in eternal shade:) Then, when his ear

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required; the memory, which seemed to cling to the words much more than to the sense, had it at such perfect command, that it could produce it under any form. Our informant went on to state that this singular being was proceeding to learn the Orlando Furioso in the same manner. But even this instance is less wonderful than one as to which we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty years ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland. No such person can have forgotten the poor, uneducated man Blind Jamie who could actually repeat, after a few minutes consideration any verse required from any part of the Bible--even the obscurest and most unimportant enumeration of mere proper names not excepted. We do not mention these facts as touching the more difficult part of the question before us, but facts they are; and if we find so much difficulty in calculating the extent to which the mere memory may be cultivated, are we, in these days of multifarious reading, and of countless distracting affairs, fair judges of the perfection to which the invention and the memory combined may attain in a simpler age, and among a more single minded people?--Quarterly Review, _l. c.,_ p. 143, sqq. Heeren steers between the two opinions, observing that, "The Dschungariade of the Calmucks is said to surpass the poems of Homer in length, as much as it stands beneath them in merit, and yet it exists only in the memory of a people which is not unacquainted with writing. But the songs of a nation are probably the last things which are committed to writing, for the very reason that they are remembered."-- _Ancient Greece._ p. 100. 26 Vol. II p. 198, sqq. 27 Quarterly Review, _l. c.,_ p. 131 sq. 28 Betrachtungen uber die Ilias. Berol. 1841. See Grote, p. 204. Notes and Queries, vol. v. p. 221. 29 Proleg