If the nine muses and Apollo (their president) were painted upon the wall, he might talk to them without either laughing or lowering, they would serve him for places of memory, or for hieroglyphical partitions.

Calling to mind my former travels, and the fit occasion offered me thereby, a little to communicate my self unto the world, by a brief relation of such short passages and observations therein taken…It being a point of wisdom sometimes (among the unwise) to seem to play the fool, as to do it understandingly, requires (they say) the best wits; of purpose to forget, improves the very Art of Memory; the way (in some cases) to advance forward, is by a learned skill to retire back; and by a discreet retreat, no small advantage is gotten.

There is no Art of Memory like a death-bed's review of one's life; sickness, and a nearer prospect of death, often makes a man remember those actions wherein youth and jollity made him forget his duty.…