Memory

Use in the book

Charmides remembers Socrates associating with Critias when he himself was a child (156a). This ordinary social memory establishes familiarity and allows Socrates to speak more frankly about the charm. At 159e recollecting and remembering are paired among mental activities said to be finer when vigorous and quick. The distinction is roughly between retrieving and retaining, but the text does not develop a technical psychology of memory.

The most consequential act of recollection is Charmides' third answer: he has just remembered hearing someone say that temperance is doing one's own business (161b). Recollection supplies an available formula, not knowledge of its truth or understanding of its meaning. His admission at 162b exposes the gap between recalling a saying and being able to account for it.

These uses should not be assimilated to the recollection arguments of other dialogues. Nothing here says that the soul knew before birth, that mathematical knowledge is recovered from a prenatal condition, or that remembering this formula is evidence for immortality. The ordinary lexical range is philosophically productive enough: memory brings a claim into discussion, while examination must determine what it means and whether it withstands scrutiny.

Places to read

1. 156aCharmides remembers Socrates from childhood
2. 159eRemembering and recollecting in the comparison of quick and slow mental activity
3. 161b–162b23A remembered saying introduced without secure understanding

Translation in this edition

“Recollecting and remembering” retains the two Greek verbs at 159e. “I have just remembered” at 161b translates an aorist of recollection, not a reference to the later technical theory often called “recollection”.

ἀναμιμνῄσκομαι

Attested: ἀναμιμνῄσκεσθαι / ἀνεμνήσθην (anamimnēiskesthai / anemnēsthēn). Recall or bring back to mind; used of memory performance and of a previously heard definition. References: 159e, 161b. Lexical identification: lemma: ἀναμιμνῄσκομαι. See Memory and recollection.

μιμνῄσκομαι

Attested: μέμνημαι / μεμνῆσθαι (memnēmai / memnēsthai). To remember or retain in memory; Charmides remembers Socrates’ earlier companionship with Critias, and remembering is later compared with recollection as an activity better performed quickly. References: 156a, 159e. Lexical identification: lemma: μιμνῄσκομαι. See Memory and recollection.

Use in the book

At 232a Socrates asks whether the companion remembers where “this argument of ours” began. The companion thinks he does; Socrates offers to remind him if not. The immediate origin supplied is the dispute about good people not wishing to gain every gain, but only good gains rather than base ones. This points to 227d–e and the subsequent reopening, not simply to the first question at 225a.

The reminder selects the objection most relevant to the final conclusion. If all gains are now good, then decent people’s wish for good things can cover all gains. Recollection is thus part of the inferential arrangement: earlier commitments are brought into the scope of the new result. The move also prevents the last exchange from appearing unrelated to the companion’s original resistance.

Yet the wording is not neutral in every respect. “Good men” and “decent men,” good gains and base gains, have been used across a discussion in which the relation between practical benefit and moral decency is disputed. Restating these words together can make the argument seem more uniform than it has been. A careful reader follows the exact earlier speech as well as the recap.

At 232c Socrates adds that the companion himself said base men love gains small and great. The earlier account explicitly emphasized even tiny gains worth little or nothing. The final paired formula broadens that recollection, plausibly drawing on the “even,” but it is not the same sentence. The edition’s note flags the source of the reminder and the conjecture behind “you yourself.”

The episode gives memory a double role. It is necessary for a sustained inquiry because admissions must not be forgotten when inconvenient. It can also become a source of pressure when one speaker decides which formulation best represents what has been agreed. The companion’s distinction between compulsion and persuasion follows directly after the reminder, making that tension dramatically audible.

Places to read

1. 232aΜνημονεύεις οὖν ὅθεν — Socrates asks whether the argument’s starting point is remembered.
2. 232aἐγώ σε ὑπομνήσω — The proposed reminder is supplied by the questioner.
3. 232aἠμφεσβήτησάς μοι — The earlier point is identified as a dispute.
4. 232cαὐτὸς εἶπες — The final recap emphatically attributes a statement to the companion.

Translation in this edition

The apparatus reports B and W’s ἠμφισβήτησας beside the text’s ἠμφεσβήτησας at 232a8. At 232c1 Burnet prints Bekker’s αὐτός, “you yourself,” against the reported αὐτούς in B and T. These are textual distinctions, not claims based on direct manuscript inspection.

Use in the book

After the crafts the Athenian identifies one remaining power that wins a reputation for wisdom (976b–c2). It consists of learning whatever is encountered easily, securely remembering many things, recalling what suits each occasion, and acting quickly on the fitting response. The profile includes practical responsiveness as well as retention. It is not just a person who can repeat a large list by rote.

Different observers name the same powers differently: nature, wisdom, or quick-wittedness of nature. The intelligent, the Athenian says, will never call anyone really wise for any of them. This is a refusal to infer completed wisdom from aptitude. It need not imply that the powers are worthless, acquired only mechanically, or impossible to combine with wisdom.

The numerical argument soon confirms the limitation. A living being may possess perceptions and memories yet be unable to give an account without number (977c). Retention preserves experience but does not alone make its relations intelligible or accountable. The distinction is especially important because the earlier lawsuit helpers already used memory without reaching the truth of justice.

The later education gives these same capacities a positive role. The best natures can learn, remember, and delight in learning (989b–c2), while the middle beings of ether and air are described as quick-learning and of good memory (985a). The recurrence shows that the catalogue excludes a sufficiency claim, not the capacities themselves. An excellent aptitude must receive the right content, nourishment, and education; the best nature can still lack the piety the argument seeks to supply.

The slow learner of the elementary counting account gives the reverse comparison. A person need not possess spectacular quickness to learn one and two from repeated days and nights (978d). That broad elementary teaching is different from the capacity needed to apprehend all celestial circuits. The work thus separates speed, receptivity, memory, elementary achievement, and completed understanding instead of treating them as one scale.

Places to read

1. 976bπρὸς δόξαν σοφίας — The initial issue is a reputation for wisdom
2. 976b–c2ῥᾳδίως … μανθάνοντα — Learning easily is the first natural power
3. 976cπολλὰ καὶ ἀσφαλῶς μνημονεύοντα — Memory combines extent and security
4. 976cτὸ πρόσφορον ἑκάστῳ διαμνημονεύῃ — The person recalls what fits each case
5. 976cἀγχίνοιαν … φύσεως — One possible name is natural quick-wittedness
6. 977cαἰσθήσεις καὶ μνήμας — Perceptions and memories can be acquired without the ability to give an account
7. 989cδυναμένη μανθάνειν καὶ μνήμων οὖσα — Learning capacity and memory later qualify the best educational nature

Translation in this edition

“Quick-wittedness of nature” preserves the genitival expression rather than treating anchinoia as wisdom already secured. The distinction between μνήμη and the plural μνήμας follows the printed forms. “What suits” links this case to useful equipment at 975c, while leaving the different recipients, people and particular situations, clear.

Appropriate action — πρέπειν (prepein)

πρέπειν (prepein)

Appropriate action. What would be fitting if done is recalled by the naturally adept person; fittingness and prompt performance remain insufficient for wisdom. Attested: πρέποι (976c). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Ease without guaranteed wisdom — ῥᾳδίως (rhaidiōs)

ῥᾳδίως (rhaidiōs)

Ease without guaranteed wisdom. The adverb qualifies learning whatever one learns, one feature of the natural power that attracts a reputation for wisdom. Attested: ῥᾳδίως (976b). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Recall what fits — διαμνημονεύειν (diamnēmoneuein)

διαμνημονεύειν (diamnēmoneuein)

Recall what fits. The quick-witted person keeps in mind the suitable response for each case and promptly carries it out. Attested: διαμνημονεύῃ (976c). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Retained experiences — μνήμη (mnēmē)

μνήμη (mnēmē)

Retained experiences. Memories are acquired together with perceptions by the hypothetical being that cannot give an account without number. Attested: μνήμας (977c). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Natural quickness — φύσις (physis)

φύσις (physis)

Natural quickness. One conventional name for easy learning, extensive memory, and prompt fitting action is nature rather than wisdom. Attested: φύσιν (976c). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Recognize an aptitude — συννοεῖν (synnoein)

συννοεῖν (synnoein)

Recognize an aptitude. With the participial description of a learner, the verb means noticing someone’s easy learning and memory; it is not yet the later mathematical understanding. Attested: συννοῇ (976b). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Reputation for wisdom — δόξα (doxa)

δόξα (doxa)

Reputation for wisdom. Public estimation of a naturally quick learner and good rememberer, distinguished from real wisdom. Attested: δόξαν (976b). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Aptitude that wins reputation — δύναμις (dynamis)

δύναμις (dynamis)

Aptitude that wins reputation. The strange power of easy learning, secure memory, and quick action attracts the name wisdom without deserving it. Attested: δύναμις (976b). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Natural responsiveness — ἀγχίνοια (anchinoia)

ἀγχίνοια (anchinoia)

Natural responsiveness. One of the names given to easy learning, memory, and rapid fitting action, explicitly distinguished from the title truly wise. Attested: ἀγχίνοιαν (976c). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Extent and security of retention — μνημονεύειν (mnēmoneuein)

μνημονεύειν (mnēmoneuein)

Extent and security of retention. The learner remembers many things securely, but these accomplishments do not by themselves make him genuinely wise. Attested: μνημονεύοντα (976c). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Reliable retention — ἀσφαλῶς (asphalōs)

ἀσφαλῶς (asphalōs)

Reliable retention. The adverb qualifies memory in the natural aptitude example; the criticism therefore is not that the memory is unreliable. Attested: ἀσφαλῶς (976c). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Suited to the case — πρόσφορος (prosphoros)

πρόσφορος (prosphoros)

Suited to the case. A quick-witted person remembers what suits each occasion and promptly acts on it; situational fitness still does not prove complete wisdom. Attested: πρόσφορον (976c). Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Remembering what suits each case (contextual phrase)

τὸ πρόσφορον ἑκάστῳ διαμνημονεύῃ (976c)

The person’s memory concerns what fits each occasion, followed by the condition of its being appropriate if done and the fact of prompt action. The aptitude is practical and discriminating, not merely storage of disconnected facts. Its insufficiency for wisdom is therefore a demanding claim. Memory quick learning and the limits of natural aptitude.

Use in the book

Socrates asks Lysis to recall the preceding exchange as fully as possible so that he can explain it clearly to Menexenus. If he forgets part, he may ask Socrates again on their next meeting.

The aorist infinitive ἀπομνημονεῦσαι follows the imperative “try.” This is an active educational task: attentive listening should become the ability to reproduce and explain an argument. Socrates does not promise that Lysis has mastered everything already. The invitation to ask again makes accurate recollection revisable rather than an exercise in unquestioning repetition.

Places to read

1. 211a–211bἀπομνημονεῦσαι αὐτὰ ὅτι μάλιστα — to recall it as fully as possible.
2. 211a–b

Use in the book

The Philebus extract derives a kind of pleasure belonging to soul from memory, then turns back to sensation to explain how memory becomes possible. It carefully denies that an unnoticed bodily disturbance has been forgotten: forgetting presupposes a memory that once existed. The Phaedo’s account of an earlier physical inquiry places memory between sensory experience and more settled belief or knowledge.

Places to read

1. I.47.14.1Memory is needed to explain a pleasure of soul.
2. I.47.14.3Absence of sensation is distinguished from forgetting.
3. I.51.6Memory belongs to a proposed sequence leading toward knowledge.

Translation in this edition

“Memory” is kept distinct from “recollection.” Failure to notice is not translated as the loss of something remembered.

Use in the book

The distinction between individuals and qualities assigns fixed, definite figures to memory and qualities to ideas. It breaks off before completing the account of idea, so its asymmetry must remain. The dancer’s feet and musician’s fingers then show a different extension: the whole body remembers although reflection belongs to the head. An undated appendix fragment distinguishes each member’s local memory from the “great memory,” without identifying the member singled out as most independently existent. In style, memory can also recognize a successful rhetorical period even when a rule protests. Remembering here becomes a test of composition rather than a theory of mental storage.

Places to read

1. I, p. 136, entry 3, ¶1Definite figures distinguish memory from the incomplete account of idea.
2. I, p. 43, entry 1, ¶1Skilled bodily members possess remembering.
3. II, p. 919, entry 1, ¶1Local bodily memory differs from the unnamed great memory.
4. II, p. 500, entry 8, ¶1Memory recognizes a periodic style despite the rule’s protest.

Translation in this edition

The English translation leaves “The idea cannot be...” unfinished and does not identify the appendix’s bodily member. The rhetorical period is a unit of composition, not simply a punctuation mark.

Impression

French: impression.

The memory of a painting cannot perfectly keep its colors: recollection represents only the impression of their harmony’s charm. Impression denotes the retained effect, not a faithful internal reproduction. In faute d’impression the same noun belongs to printing: Joubert welcomes the fille/folle printing error as the occasion for distinct household roles for sensibility, imagination and reason.

Places to read: I, p. 355–356, entry 6, ¶1; I, p. 452, entry 1, ¶1.

Use in the book

Traherne treats memory as a region rather than a mere store of fading impressions. The ancient works of God can no longer be seen in the visible world, yet they remain accessible through minds and the teaching that joins generations. Their absence from the street does not make them absent from human life.

The Cross has a related communal presence: Christ’s death lives in every memory and his person is held in affection. The contemplative can enter this shared remembrance and find the same inexhaustible object in many souls. Memory therefore enlarges both time and company. It preserves relations capable of renewed understanding, gratitude, and enjoyment.

Places to read

1. I.86Christ’s death lives in many memories and becomes a shared interior presence.
2. III.89Intergenerational teaching preserves divine works in the luminous region of memory.

In this edition

Memory is not interchangeable with bodily witnessing. III.89 expressly distinguishes things no longer visibly present from their continued accessibility through minds.

Use in the book

The opening return to childhood ground makes remembrance a renewed pilgrimage: the adult presses firmly where the child once passed carelessly. Nature later awakens memories with no apparent connection to the scene, suggesting correspondences that cannot be consciously traced. A letter can produce the opposite result, reviving ten years of misery as present sensation. Remembering is thus neither invariably consoling nor voluntary.

Before leaving the coast, Guérin tries to take impressions from places and implores them to send into him something that will not pass. Writing supplies another receptacle; an account of shared happiness is reread almost like the image of a beloved dead person. After Marie’s actual death, this work changes. Memory’s fading face is restored, but imagination marks it with death’s pallor. The aim is no longer simply to preserve a past scene unchanged: it is to learn how the absent person can inhabit a different order of presence.

Oblivion accordingly has more than one value. Freedom from harmful impressions is desired, while the loss of cherished features is feared. The notebook asks not merely what can be retained, but what kind of continuing life a recollection gives to the person who retains it.

Places to read

1. 10 July 1832 · ¶1Repeated childhood footsteps become a deliberate act of remembered devotion.
2. 22 March 1833 · ¶1A letter reactivates old pain as sensation and produces a wish for release from its impressions.
3. 28 March 1833 · ¶1Nature awakens apparently unrelated memories through unknown sympathies.
4. 20 January 1834 · ¶2The departing observer asks landscapes to impress something imperishable into his soul.
5. 9 February 1835 · ¶1Imagination restores Marie’s fading face while transforming it into an image of death.

Translation in this edition

The English alternates “memories” and “recollections” for souvenirs according to context. Neither implies that the remembered object is merely mental: at 22 March 1833 · ¶1 the explicit phrase “real and profound sensation” insists on present bodily force.

Use in the book

René insists that his father’s death left an impression that still lasts, yet observes that the indifferent passer-by crosses the grave that same evening (pp. 145–1462). Private persistence and public oblivion coincide. At the royal monument in London, workers barely know or do not know the catastrophe represented (p. 150). From their ignorance René derives a measure of human smallness. His interpretation does not recover every historical person’s motives; it uses the scene to think about disappearance.

Chactas supplies an alternative to recollection as exclusive self-enclosure. Saying he now lives only by memory, he asks René to tell him about France (p. 155). His decrepit oak is clothed by plants that have grown on its old branches: another person’s story can supplement what age no longer produces. Memory here participates in listening and adoption rather than merely maintaining a lost private world.

Amélie’s letter dwells on uneven mourning across distance: one group learns of a death after another has begun to be consoled (pp. 172–1732). Her anxious question whether her own memory will vanish joins the Preface’s debate about the finite heart. René, however, keeps her letter specifically to remove future impulses of joy (p. 169). The document can become a chosen instrument of recurrent suffering, not simply an aid against involuntary forgetting.

At the abandoned château, memory encounters places that remain while their social life has dispersed. The final sunset rock likewise survives René, but without preserving an account of reform or happiness. The frame’s closing ‘one still shows’ makes his solitude a local trace available to strangers. The novel itself preserves what the protagonist once asked to bury in eternal silence, making remembrance an unresolved formal and ethical question.

Places to read

1. p. 145Cette impression fut grande ; elle dure encore — René places enduring personal memory beside the subsequent account of public indifference.
2. p. 155je ne vis plus que par la mémoire — Chactas’s request for another person’s narrative makes memory relational.
3. p. 169que je conserve pour m'ôter à l'avenir tout mouvement de joie — René deliberately uses Amélie’s letter to govern future feeling.
4. p. 173mon souvenir s'effacera-t-il — Amélie fears that her remembered presence may fail to outlast separation.
5. p. 192On montre encore un rocher — The ending replaces the vanished person with a surviving place associated with his habits.

Translation in this edition

At p. 144 the 1802 ‘réminiscences enchantées’ becomes ‘rêveries enchantées’ in 1826. At p. 169 the earlier ‘que j'ai conservée’ becomes the present-purpose statement quoted here. The supplied collation reports these differences; they do not establish when each revision occurred.

Use in the book

The memoir first makes strong claims for retention. The account of the Sphere's dialogue is offered as nearly as the narrator can recollect it, with apologies omitted. In §192345 he promises exact words and facts burnt into his brain. Such declarations belong to the rhetoric of testimony, but the closing narrative places them under pressure. The voice preserving the encounter is also a voice confessing that preservation is incomplete.

The trouble starts almost immediately after the return. Before sleep the construction of a Cube is less clear than the Square wishes, so he grasps the formula about upward movement as a clue. The dream refreshes his confidence, but the clarity already weakens again as he considers teaching his household. His urgency to gain a disciple is therefore partly an urgency to stabilize knowledge outside his own mind.

The failed lesson with the grandson deprives him of that support. Several months of private writing follow, but Flatland's representational tools cannot supply the needed diagrams. Rehearsal, argument and inscription preserve propositions more readily than perceptual acquaintance. They do not simply duplicate the experience of moving through Space and handling a Solid.

The specific crisis arrives about eleven months after the return: he closes his eye and cannot see the Cube mentally. Later he succeeds, but never regains certainty that the image is exact. The distinction is subtle. Abbott does not say that all knowledge vanishes at once, nor that failure to visualize disproves the object's existence. He describes the erosion of a traveller's ability to compare a present mental representation with an unavailable original.

Imprisonment intensifies the loss by removing ordinary companionship and any possibility of renewed travel. The brother's disbelief deprives testimony of the confirmation the narrator longs to obtain. The memorable catch-phrase now haunts rather than helps him, and moments of doubt spread beyond Spaceland to Flatland's own walls and writing tablets. The final movement is not a clean erasure of knowledge but an alternation between hope and uncertainty. Memory sustains the book even while the book records memory's failure.

Places to read

1. §162345“as near as I can recollect it” — Reconstructed dialogue acknowledges a limit
2. §192345“they are burnt in upon my brain” — The narrator asserts indelible testimony
3. §212“slipping away from me” — The urgency to teach is also fear of loss
4. §2223“about eleven months after my return” — A particular lapse marks the long decline
5. §2223“confident as to the exact shape” — Uncertainty concerns fidelity as well as existence

In this edition

The notes link the fading image to comparative accounts of knowledge that cannot be securely held, but the temporal sequence is Abbott's own. The ending is not annotated as an authoritative announcement that the entire adventure was unreal; the narrator explicitly distinguishes brighter moments from periods of mental weakness.

Iota

An extremely small part, from the name of a Greek letter. The promise not to alter an iota asserts exact testimony that later failures of memory make difficult to sustain. Printed form: iota (§ 192345). See Memory and forgetting.

Palled

Lost their power to interest or delight. Ordinary pleasures fade after the dimensional visit, as everyday sights continually remind the narrator of an inaccessible larger view. Printed form: palled (§ 2223). See Memory and forgetting.

But he is not the Square he once was (contextual phrase)

Preface23: “he is not the Square he once was”. The idiom usually marks a change in strength, character or ability; here its noun also names a geometrical class. The Editor does not report that the prisoner's body has acquired another number of sides. He reports the decline of a person whose class-name appears to promise a fixed identity. Imprisonment, mockery and ageing have reduced the witness's ability to express what he learned. The joke is quiet, and its human cost is not cancelled by the geometrical pun. It warns a reader that a later account may combine remembered revelation with damaged resources of recollection. See The Editor and the revised Preface and Memory and forgetting.

The soul devouring Sphinx (contextual phrase)

§ 2223: “a soul-devouring Sphinx”. The remembered instruction Upward, not Northward has become a riddle the narrator cannot solve in practice. The named monster transforms a successful clue into a torment. The Square still has the words, and knows that their distinction mattered, but cannot consistently recover the direction or mental image they once opened. The failure is therefore neither ordinary forgetfulness of a formula nor proof that the formula was always meaningless. It is a broken relation between language and a once-available conception. By setting this image beside the fluctuating Cube, the ending makes the price of revelation a problem of continued intelligibility as well as of punishment. See Memory and forgetting and Upward and Northward.

Use in the book

The recording officer

In the account of inward senses, memory is a “good Register,” a recorder or recording officer. It lays up the species brought in by the senses so that imagination and reason can call for them. The object of memory is said to be the same as imagination’s, and its organ or seat the back of the brain. The earlier ventricular anatomy locates it in the hindmost chamber and carefully says that this is where “they say” it is seated. The recording metaphor explains availability and retrieval; the anatomical location belongs to the historical account Burton is summarizing.

Memory and imagination overlap in some operations, but are distinguished by office. Imagination already retains and recalls sensory forms but also compares them and makes new ones; memory’s particular office is storage and provision on demand. A terrifying object can be presented to imagination by memory as well as through common sense. Later, the passions’ causal sequence starts with an object reaching imagination through outward sense or memory, then being magnified or misconceived and communicated to the heart. The earlier encounter need not be occurring again for its retained form to stimulate a bodily and emotional response.

Burton also includes remembering in the definition of understanding and lists memory among its activities, according to some authorities. The sensory store and the rational employment of what is remembered are therefore connected, while the lists are not perfectly exclusive. The word’s recurrence is no warrant for forcing every description into one rigid diagram of the faculties.

Remembering before embodiment

The recollection attributed to Plato makes a different claim. Burton reports a soul originating from God and knowing all, forgetting when enclosed in the body, and learning anew through “reminiscentia, or recalling.” This is not the ordinary storage of experiences received during the present life. It is a reported explanation of learning through earlier knowledge, placed beside transmigration and the idea of embodiment as punishment. Burton introduces his comparison of Plato with the preceding account by “for ought I can perceive,” preserving the limits of his own synthesis.

The continuation joins several Platonic narratives and gives a ten-thousand-year return. The supplied notes distinguish the texts Burton brings together and caution that the cited Phaedrus passage concerns return to the soul’s place of origin, not simply its former body. The lexicon’s subject here is Burton’s report and the sense of recollection within it; the report cannot replace a source-specific account of each Platonic dialogue.

Recollection returns in a dispute over people supposedly speaking languages or discussing subjects they never learned. Some writers take those feats as evidence of possession; others appeal to bodily humour, the force of spirits and Plato’s recollection. Burton compares the latter argument with Ficino’s claim that Pierleone knew philosophical doctrines by divine infusion before encountering their books. His comparison leaves room for irony, but he explicitly concludes that he would rather accept an explanation involving evil spirits taking advantage of disordered humours. Thus the appearance of “Plato’s reminiscentia” is one proposal in a disputed causal account, not Burton’s settled answer.

Impairment, preservation and useful exercise

Memory does not simply decline wherever melancholy is present. In the symptoms Burton says that, despite outward dullness, restlessness and difficulty undertaking business, sufferers’ memories are “most part good,” alongside gifted wit and apprehension. Elsewhere fear can confound voice and memory when someone must speak publicly; Lucian’s Jupiter needing Mercury to prompt him gives the comic example. These describe different circumstances and retain their qualifications: generally good memory in one account, disruption under fear in another.

Earlier, “weake memory” appears among disorders attributed to the substance of the brain. “Memory decayed” enters the description of fever-associated frenzy, while the next account says memory in madness is mostly better. These are historical diagnostic comparisons, not a single rule for every patient. In the later dispute over the faculty affected in melancholy, one margin excludes thought and memory from the injury and assigns it to imagination; the body immediately presents the opposing argument that reason too is impaired. The marginal exclusion belongs to a disputed account.

Good powers of retention do not imply command over what returns to mind. In the symptoms, remembrance of an old disgrace, loss or injury renews distress as though it had just happened. The catalogue includes pleasant waking dreams as well as distress. Someone absorbed in such thoughts may forget the business presently before them, yet be unable to dismiss the disturbing idea. Burton’s “nec oblivisci possunt,” “they cannot forget,” emphasizes involuntary recurrence. He attributes the general account to Mercurialis and continues with thoughts that return against the sufferer’s wishes, especially distressing ones.

The terror stories give this recurrence bodily force. Blasius still cannot drive out the memory of an earthquake two months afterwards; Burton generalizes that mention of a terrifying event may provoke fresh trembling years later. Agrippa’s reported story goes further: after an unpleasant purge, the sight of the medicine box and then its very remembrance are said to cause evacuation. The neighbouring comparison extends remembered danger to similar dangers. These stories illustrate what memory is claimed to do in Burton’s account, without independently establishing their medical truth.

Memory work can also occupy attention therapeutically. For people otherwise idle or caught in empty thoughts, Burton recommends learning something “without book,” meaning by heart, along with copying and translation. He later lists the art of memory beside shorthand, geometry and algebra as a demanding voluntary task that may divert melancholy thoughts. The argument concerns purposeful occupation and redirection, not a promise that mnemonic technique will cure every kind of illness. The preceding qualification limits the recommendation to the relevant readers and does not cancel his warnings about excessive study.

The medical catalogue also contains a claimed bodily aid to memory. A margin on asarum or asarabacca, attributed to Fuchs, says it purges the brain like hellebore and “roborat memoriam,” strengthens memory. The surrounding body instead names Ruel’s experience of purging black bile and then a dispute over which humours the plant evacuates. The memory claim is therefore a separately attributed marginal assertion, not a benefit established by all the surrounding authorities or a recommendation for present use.

What remains in thought and what outlives a person

The preface gives memory an authorial role. Burton complains that indiscriminate reading yields little without order, memory and judgment, and later explains that authors are sometimes placed out of chronological order as his memory suggested. The two remarks connect retention with selection and arrangement rather than equating extensive reading with organized knowledge. His collected book acknowledges dependence on recollection while also exposing its irregularities.

The reporting verb can have a still different force. When Burton says that Pliny “remembers” the haunted house at Athens, he means that Pliny relates or mentions the story, not that he personally witnessed and later recalled it. The passage cites Pliny’s letters and then places Augustine’s report beside it.

Remembering can preserve injury as well as learning. At the close of the address he asks that errors be forgotten and forgiven, then notes that a biting joke leaves a bitter memory. People fear the satirist’s wit; he fears their memories, meaning their lasting recollection of the offence and possible retaliation. In the erotic catalogue, by contrast, lovers continually remember the beloved through portraits, belongings, visitors, names and letters. The Lucretian images of the absent beloved show representation maintaining attachment across absence. These are different contents and consequences of persistence, not separate faculties.

The beloved’s remembrance may even be a dying lover’s consolation, but the proposed treatment of erotic attachment tries to remove prompts to it. An “occasion of remembrance” is a reminder: a name, conversation, book or other association. Ismenias and Hermotinus relapse on seeing women they had nearly or wholly forgotten. Hermotinus “agnovit,” recognized, the traces of his former flame; the encounter occasions recognition rather than a stated voluntary effort to retrieve a memory. Later, comparison with new objects of affection can make a lover abhor the former beloved’s very memory.

Both remembering and forgetting can serve consolation. Old people telling stories recall their earlier lives with pleasure. Burton later calls oblivion, or forgetfulness, a common medicine for losses and injuries, but immediately adds that former troubles may one day be pleasant to remember: the Latin “meminisse” means to remember, and his adapted Virgil line omits the original poet’s “perhaps,” as the supplied note observes. Remembering once-undervalued contentment can also be pleasant after it is lost. Yet recollection of dead friends remains grievous many years later, including deaths encountered through reading. The difference is the remembered object and its present force, not a uniformly beneficial power.

Remembering has a consolatory force in the Epicurus example. The original margin’s “memoriam inventorum” concerns recollection of his discoveries: the joy of that remembrance is said to counter bodily pain. Burton’s body introduces a “conceit of immortality,” but the supplied note warns that the compared Ciceronian passage does not locate comfort in an afterlife. Enduring fame may be intended, while the exact sense and immediate source remain unsettled. The marginal memory and the body’s immortality phrase should not silently become one proposition.

The account of “amor Lethes,” Love of Forgetfulness, supplies a contrary wish. In the ancient practice reported through Verdurius, lovers visit the statue to be freed from their pangs; the margin specifies that they wish to put away “amicæ memoriam,” the memory of their mistress. This is an attempt to relinquish remembered attachment, rather than preserve it. The temple’s printed name differs from the Ovidian location identified by the supplied note, and the reported ritual does not establish its efficacy.

Memory can finally mean what later people retain of someone who has died. Burton contrasts the rich man’s stinking memory with poor Lazarus’s sweet and enduring memory. In the discussion of worthy people, a fresh and sweet memory sustains love centuries after death. The subject is posthumous remembrance and reputation, rather than the dead person continuing to exercise a cerebral faculty. The smell imagery evaluates the quality of the remembered life.

Not every apparent forgetting describes lost knowledge. The rich who “voluntarily forget” poor friends they meet are refusing to acknowledge or help them. The phrase accuses them of deliberate social disregard.

Remembering duties, judgement and mercy

Remembering also means keeping a truth or obligation present to the mind. Burton invokes Moses’s warning not to forget God in prosperity, and includes memory itself among divine gifts that people may misuse. In the Epictetus consolation, remembering a loved one’s mortality prepares a person for loss; it need not recover a particular past experience.

The religious uses depend on what is remembered and how it is presented. A margin attributed to Bernard warns that “recordatio solius judicii,” remembrance of judgement alone, drives people into despair, while a misleading display of mercy breeds complacency. The phrase’s “alone” qualifies judgement separated from mercy. Conscience then becomes a ledger or register of offences that grinds the soul through recollection of earlier sins. This register is a record-book, whereas memory’s “good Register” earlier was a recording officer.

The consolation answers with a scriptural promise that God will not remember sins, applied in the surrounding passage to the truly penitent. The meaning is forgiveness, not an account of impaired divine recall. Conversely, David’s remembrance of how God formerly dealt with him becomes meditation on mercy, strengthening faith and calming his heart. Remembering and not remembering thus have different agents, objects and pastoral functions.

Gathering passages and rays

The Latin “recolligit se animus” says that the mind gathers itself together. Burton’s following English explains this as the mind reflecting on and judging itself during sickness. He attributes the comparison to Pliny, but the supplied note distinguishes his wording from the cited letter. Self-collection here is reflective attention, not simply recovery of a forgotten event.

The older gathering sense of recollect is concrete in the burning-glass comparison. Sunbeams are “recollected to a center”; Burton compares this concentration with love’s rays issuing from the beloved’s eyes. The rays are brought together spatially, not recalled by a mind.

The closing consolation uses the same verb for literary work. Because large treatises are not accessible to everyone, Burton will “recollect out of their voluminous Treatises” a few consoling speeches, arguments and pieces of advice, together with Scripture. He names benefit to afflicted readers and his friends’ request as the occasion. The next paragraph specifies the pastoral preparation he thinks recipients need. This is deliberate collection for use, not necessarily quotation from unaided memory; it preserves the practical distinction between remembering material and making it available in a book.

Related entries

Faculty; Soul; Common sense; Imagination; Species in perception; Simulacra; Intellect; Fear; Metempsychosis; Obsession and possession; Conscience. Future entries: Art of memory; Reputation; Study; Oblivion and forgetfulness

Places to read

1. Memory and the making of the bookReading, arrangement, and the dangerous memory of an offended reader
2. The mind gathering itselfSelf-examination in sickness, with Burton’s attribution and the supplied note’s qualification
3. Remembered duty and a gift that can be misusedRemembering God, and memory among the capacities whose use carries responsibility
4. Memory in historical diagnosisWeak or impaired memory and the qualified comparison between frenzy and madness
5. The faculty and its materialProposed seat, recording officer and retrieval
6. Platonic recollection as reportedLearning anew, prior knowledge, forgetting and the surrounding transmigration narratives
7. Rational employmentRemembering and memory included among understanding’s activities
8. A disputed exclusion of memory impairmentThe margin excludes thought and memory; the continuation challenges the imagination-only account
9. Remember as relating a storyPliny’s haunted-house report beside other attributed accounts
10. Memory supplies an emotional objectRetained representations and the imagination–heart sequence
11. Fear disrupting memoryPublic speaking and the comic example of prompting
12. Remembered terror and bodily effectsRecurring fear, the reported purge story and extension from a remembered danger to similar ones
13. Memory as thought of approaching deathA prospective object of mindful consideration, rendered thought
14. Otherwise preserved memoryThe qualified claim that memories are mostly good in melancholy
15. Intrusive recollection and diverted attentionOld injury felt anew, current business forgotten, and inability to dismiss an idea against one’s wishes
16. Unlearned knowledge and a disputed explanationRecollection, humours, divine infusion and Burton’s stated preference for demonic agency
17. Whose living memory?The time phrase belongs to quoted Sabellicus
18. Pleasurable reminiscenceCompanions retelling experiences from youth
19. Purposeful mnemonic activityLearning by heart and the art of memory within a qualified recommendation of study
20. Oblivion and consolatory recollectionForgetting injury, finding later pleasure in former troubles, and appreciating lost contentment
21. Consolatory remembranceEpicurus’s remembered discoveries and the unresolved body phrase about immortality
22. Posthumous moral reputationSweet and stinking memory after death
23. Deliberately not acknowledgingVoluntarily forgetting poor friends is social refusal
24. The continuing pain of remembranceRemembering friends’ deaths and grief prompted by reading
25. Keeping mortality in mindEpictetus’s anticipatory counsel, rather than recall of an episode
26. A claimed medicinal aidFuchs’s marginal claim of strengthened memory, distinct from the body’s purgative claims
27. Continuing love for the deadFresh and sweet memory sustaining affection
28. Gathered raysA non-mental sense of recollect
29. A dying lover’s consolationRemembering the beloved at death
30. Persistent attachmentReminders of an absent beloved
31. Reminders and renewed recognitionRemoving prompts to love and recognition of an old flame after supposed forgetting
32. Displaced attachmentThe former beloved’s name, sight and memory may come to be disliked
33. Wishing to forgetLove of Forgetfulness and the reported wish to put away a mistress’s memory
34. Religious remembering and conscienceJudgement without mercy and conscience’s record of offences
35. Gathering consolationsAccessible compilation and its intended readers
36. Divine non-remembrance as forgivenessThe promise not to remember sins and its penitential setting
37. Remembering mercyFormer dealings recalled as support for present faith

In this edition

“Register” becomes “clerk,” making memory’s personified office explicit. “Reminiscentia, or recalling” becomes “recollection or remembering”; the earlier-knowledge doctrine comes from the surrounding reported account, not from the Latin noun alone. “Learn something without book” is rendered “memorize something” in Burton’s English restatement: memorize compresses learning by heart, while something remains the object. The preceding Latin is separately rendered “Let them always learn something by heart.”

The original marginal “memoriam inventorum,” “amicæ memoriam” and “roborat memoriam” have separate editorial translations: “remembering his discoveries,” “the memory of their mistress” and “strengthens the memory.” Each construction supplies information beyond the noun memory alone; the possessors in the first two English phrases come from the local context.

“Recollect out of their voluminous Treatises” becomes “gather from their extensive treatises.” The burning glass likewise “gathers” the sun’s rays where the original says they are “recollected.” These equivalents prevent the mental-memory sense from swallowing the verb’s gathering sense. The fear passage’s is supplied in the edition from another witness to fill the base scan’s missing opening; the source qualification is retained here, without claiming a new collation.

“Memory” becomes “thought” when the object is the anticipated hour of death. “In our memory” becomes “Within living memory,” retaining its temporal function, and belongs to Sabellicus’s quoted account. “Occasion of remembrance” is compressed into “a reminder.” The religious margin’s “recordatio solius judicii” and “remembrance of judgement alone” are separately aligned Latin and editorial English; neither is the wording of the paired modern body.

agnosco

Printed “agnovit” (Latin; lemma).

Printed form, Original wording: agnovit

Recognized or identified again; on seeing his former mistress, the lover recognizes traces of his old passion after the narrative has said he had quite forgotten her.

Context: Hermotinus is the narrated subject. Burton adapts a Virgil phrase to third person; recognition is occasioned by seeing the woman, rather than explicitly by a deliberate search of memory.

Grammar: Third-person singular perfect active indicative

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: agnovit veteris vestigia flammæ

Modern rendering, Modern wording: recognized

Alignment convention

Qualification: Agnovit aligns with recognized. The modern he makes its finite subject explicit; the old flame comes from the phrase’s complement and is not part of the verb’s dictionary meaning.

Supplied words: he (finite subject made explicit in the wider modern clause)

Modern construction: he recognized the traces of the old flame

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

amor Lethes

Printed “amor Lethes” (Latin).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: amor Lethes

Personified Love of Forgetfulness, whose statue is reportedly sought by lovers wishing release.

Context: Body attributes story to Verdurius and invokes Ovid; temple localization differs in supplied Ovid comparison.

Source: Burton original marginal quotation

Source wording, Original construction: amor Lethes olim fuit

Modern rendering, Modern wording: Love of Forgetfulness

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original Latin component and editorial English component are separately aligned; wider constructions are retained as context.

Modern construction: there was once a Love of Forgetfulness

Notes: The complete mixed note was consulted, but only its original Latin is used as lexical attestation.

Translation layer: Editorial translation within the supplied Burton-labelled note; not original marginal wording and not paired modern body

art of memory

Printed “art of memory” (English phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording, Modern rendering, Modern wording: art of memory

Mnemonic study among attentive occupations proposed to divert melancholy thoughts.

Context: Burton recommends purposeful tasks alongside shorthand and mathematics.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: To study the art of memory

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned lexical component is separate from the checked construction context.

Modern construction: to study the art of memory

good Register

Printed “good Register” (English).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: good Register

A good recording officer, the personification of memory preserving forms for later retrieval.

Context: Memory is the keeper, sensory forms the stored material.

Source: original body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: good clerk

Alignment convention

Qualification: Displayed phrase has its own explained lookup record, separate from the component record(s).

in our memory

Printed “In our memory” (English; phrase).

Printed form, Original wording: In our memory

Within the time remembered by a living generation; Sabellicus places Mehmed’s activity in his own remembered time, not Burton’s lifetime.

Context: The time-reference belongs to the explicitly quoted historian Sabellicus.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: In our memory (saith Sabellicus)

Modern rendering, Modern wording: Within living memory

Alignment convention

Qualification: The temporal phrase is aligned as a whole; the wider constructions explicitly retain the quoted speaker.

Modern construction: “Within living memory,” says Sabellicus

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

memini

Printed “meminisse” (Latin; lemma).

Printed form, Original wording: meminisse

To remember or call to mind; the adapted Virgil line promises later pleasure in recollecting troubles that have passed.

Context: Burton’s Latin adaptation has no perhaps; the edition identifies his departure from Virgil’s forsan wording. Past trouble is recalled at a later time.

Grammar: Perfect infinitive of defective memini, with present sense

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: Atque hæc olim meminisse juvabit

Modern rendering, Modern wording: to remember

Alignment convention

Qualification: The infinitive alone aligns with to remember. Even appears in the wider supplied modern rendering; the original prints Atque hæc, and the supplied note distinguishes it from Virgil’s forsan et haec. No claim of direct historical-witness collation is made.

Supplied words: even (in the wider modern rendering, not the infinitive alignment)

Modern construction: One day it will be pleasant to remember even these things

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

memoria

Printed “memoriam” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording: memoriam

Recollection, here of discoveries, as a source of joy countering bodily pain.

Context: Cicero citation in margin; supplied editorial comparison identifies a different Ciceronian work, and does not support afterlife as the source of comfort.

Source: Burton original marginal quotation

Source wording, Original construction: animi gaudium ob memoriam inventorum

Modern rendering, Modern wording: remembering

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original Latin component and editorial English component are separately aligned; wider constructions are retained as context.

Modern construction: joy of mind in remembering his discoveries

Notes: The complete mixed note was consulted, but only its original Latin is used as lexical attestation.

Translation layer: Editorial translation within the supplied Burton-labelled note; not original marginal wording and not paired modern body

memoria amicae

Printed “amicæ memoriam” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording: amicæ memoriam

Remembrance of the mistress, as the object the lovers wish to relinquish.

Context: Attributed ancient devotional practice; desire to forget, not evidence that the rite worked; English their makes possession explicit.

Source: Burton original marginal quotation

Source wording, Original construction: qui amicæ memoriam deponere volebant.

Modern rendering, Modern wording: the memory of their mistress

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original Latin component and editorial English component are separately aligned; wider constructions are retained as context. Contextual possessor is made explicit in the English phrase and is not a separately printed Latin possessive.

Supplied words: their

Modern construction: who wished to put away the memory of their mistress.

Notes: The complete mixed note was consulted, but only its original Latin is used as lexical attestation.

Translation layer: Editorial translation within the supplied Burton-labelled note; not original marginal wording and not paired modern body

memoria inventorum

Printed “memoriam inventorum” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording: memoriam inventorum

Remembering discoveries; English his makes the contextual possessor explicit.

Context: Reported Epicurean consolation; do not collapse into Burton’s unresolved conceit of immortality.

Source: Burton original marginal quotation

Source wording, Original construction: animi gaudium ob memoriam inventorum

Modern rendering, Modern wording: remembering his discoveries

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original Latin component and editorial English component are separately aligned; wider constructions are retained as context. Contextual possessor is made explicit in the English phrase and is not a separately printed Latin possessive.

Supplied words: his

Modern construction: joy of mind in remembering his discoveries

Notes: The complete mixed note was consulted, but only its original Latin is used as lexical attestation.

Translation layer: Editorial translation within the supplied Burton-labelled note; not original marginal wording and not paired modern body

memory · Memory

Printed “Memory” (English).

Retentive faculty that records sensory forms for imagination and reason.

Context: Memory personified as recorder; organs and seat are historical anatomy.

Source: original body

Source wording: Memory layes up all the species which the senses have brought in

memory · memories · local use 1

Printed “memories” (English).

Generally preserved capacity to remember despite other symptoms of melancholy.

Context: Qualified most part, contrasted with outward dullness and inability to undertake business.

Source: original body

Source wording: yet their memories are most part good

memory · local use 1

Printed “memory” (English).

Power of recall disrupted by fear in public speaking.

Context: Fear is the agent; Lucian’s Jupiter supplies a comic example.

Source: original body

Locator qualification: Do not remove bracketed or repeated-page qualifier.; This source group includes repeated printed 96–97 and supplied 98–99; see SUPPLIED_OPENING and SOURCE_DJR_040.

Source wording: It confounds voice and memory

memory · memories · local use 2

Printed “memories” (English).

Lasting recollection of injury by the people mocked, with possible retaliation.

Context: Bacon’s observation reported by Burton after a request to forgive errors.

Source: original body

Source wording: They fear a Satyrist’s wit, he their memories

memory · local use 2

Printed “memory” (English).

Posthumous reputation and remembrance, morally evaluated as sweet.

Context: Poor Lazarus contrasted with the rich man’s bad name.

Source: original body

Source wording: he leaves an everlasting and a sweet memory behind him

memory · local use 3

Printed “memory” (English; lemma).

Mindful thought or consideration; here the thought of approaching death is bitter to some prosperous people. The referent need not be a personally experienced past event.

Context: Burton invokes Ecclesiasticus 41:1; some wealthy people, not everyone; prospective death rather than a recovered experience.

Source: original body

Source wording: the memory of that sad hour, to some fortunate and rich men, is as bitter as gaule

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

memory decayed

Printed “Memory decayed” (English; phrase).

Printed form, Original wording: Memory decayed

Impaired memory; Burton includes it among the historical distinctions of fever-associated frenzy and then says memory in madness is mostly better.

Context: The original gives waking, or Memory decayed; the modern renders this as a list. Burton attributes such distinctions to physicians, and the next units report disagreement about grouping disorders.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: with waking, or Memory decayed

Modern rendering, Modern wording: impaired memory

Alignment convention

Qualification: The noun-plus-participle phrase aligns with adjective-plus-noun impaired memory. The original or is absent from the wider modern list, so the record does not silently use the modernization to strengthen the original conjunction.

Modern construction: with sleeplessness, impaired memory

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

nec oblivisci possunt

Printed “nec oblivisci possunt” (Latin; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: nec oblivisci possunt

They cannot forget; an inability to dismiss an entertained idea, emphasized as contrary to the sufferers’ will.

Context: The quoted report is attached to Mercurialis’s account; Burton repeats its claim in English and continues with unwanted thoughts. Negation belongs to ability to forget, not to ability to remember.

Grammar: Negative finite clause with present infinitive oblivisci and third-person plural possunt

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: Perpetuò molestantur, nec oblivisci possunt

Modern rendering, Modern wording: and cannot forget

Alignment convention

Qualification: Nec is represented by coordinated and plus negation in cannot; the wider subject They is explicit only in the modern clause.

Supplied words: They (subject made explicit in the wider modern clause)

Modern construction: They are perpetually troubled and cannot forget

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

oblivion

Printed “oblivion” (English; lemma).

Forgetfulness; Burton presents the wearing-away of painful recollection through time and habit as a general consolation.

Context: Burton’s expansive consolatory maxim; the following unit also gives pleasant recollection of former troubles, so forgetting is not the passage’s sole strategy.

Source: original body

Source wording: oblivion is a common medicine for all losses, injuries, griefes, and detriments whatsoever

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

occasion of remembrance

Printed “occasion of remembrance” (English; phrase).

A prompt or opportunity for remembering; names, books, stories and other associations may revive the lover’s attachment.

Context: Burton reports restrictions recommended to lovers; remembered material can be prompted by words and objects as well as direct sight.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: that may administer any occasion of remembrance

Original wording: any occasion of remembrance

Modern rendering, Modern wording: a reminder

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original indefinite phrase any occasion of remembrance is compressed into a reminder; original occasion alone is not equated with remembrance.

Modern construction: that may provide a reminder

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

recollect · recollected

Printed “recollected” (English past participle).

Printed form, Original wording: recollected

Gathered spatially into a focus, as in a burning glass.

Context: Passive optical construction; the rays are gathered, not remembered.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: the Sun beams are recollected to a center

Modern rendering, Modern wording: gathers

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original passive recollected is recast with the burning glass as subject of the active gathers; this is a voice shift in a construction.

Modern construction: a burning glass gathers the sun’s rays into a single point

recollect

Printed “recollect” (English).

Gather material from books to make consolatory counsel available.

Context: Burton announces compilation at friends’ request for afflicted readers lacking access.

Source: original body

Source wording: recollect out of their voluminous Treatises

recollect out of their voluminous Treatises

Printed “recollect out of their voluminous Treatises” (English).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: recollect out of their voluminous Treatises

Collect material out of large books for a shorter accessible consolation; recollect has the gathering sense.

Context: Burton announces compilation at friends’ request for afflicted readers lacking access.

Source: original body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: gather from their extensive treatises

Alignment convention

Qualification: Displayed phrase has its own explained lookup record, separate from the component record(s).

recollected to a center

Printed “recollected to a center” (English past participle).

Gathered spatially into a focus; passive original is recast with the burning glass as active grammatical subject in the modern clause.

Context: Passive optical construction; the rays are gathered, not remembered.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: as in a burning-glass, the Sun beams are recollected to a center

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: as a burning glass gathers the sun’s rays into a single point

Alignment convention

Qualification: No contiguous phrase-level English rendering corresponds to the displayed passive phrase alone; the checked alignment therefore uses the complete passive-to-active construction and retains its agent and object.

recolligit se animus

Printed “recolligit se animus” (Latin; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording, Original construction: recolligit se animus

The mind gathers itself together; a reflective return to oneself, explained by Burton as self-examination during sickness.

Context: Burton attributes the saying to Pliny. The supplied note does not find this exact opening in the identified letter; attribution and wording remain distinct.

Source: original body

Source wording: In morbo recolligit se animus

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: the mind gathers itself together

Alignment convention

Qualification: The whole reflexive construction is aligned: animus supplies the mind, se itself, and recolligit gathers together. Burton’s separate English reflection gloss is not silently substituted for the literal Latin.

recordatio solius judicii

Printed “recordatio solius judicii” (Latin; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: recordatio solius judicii

Remembrance of judgement alone; the attributed warning concerns judgement separated from mercy, not every act of religious remembering.

Context: The margin attributes the warning to Bernard. Solius modifies judicii: the problem is the exclusive content of the remembrance. A misleading display of mercy supplies the converse danger in the same note.

Source: Burton original marginal quotation

Source wording, Original construction: recordatio solius judicii in desperationem præcipitat

Modern rendering, Modern wording: remembrance of judgement alone

Alignment convention

Qualification: Literal lexical meaning is distinguished from the local argument; complete surrounding constructions are retained.

Modern construction: remembrance of judgement alone plunges into despair

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

Translation layer: Editorial English translation within the supplied Burton-labelled note; not original marginal wording and not paired modern body

register · Register

Printed “Register” (English).

Recording officer or clerk; metaphor for memory’s storage and retrieval.

Context: Memory is the keeper, sensory forms the stored material.

Source: original body

Source wording: records them as a good Register

register

Printed “register” (English; lemma).

A written record or record-book; conscience preserves offences like a ledger. Here register is the record, unlike the recording officer.

Context: Conscience is compared with a great ledger and then a grinding mill; offences are what the register stores.

Source: original body

Source wording: a register to lay them up

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

remember

Printed “remember” (English; lemma).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording, Modern rendering, Modern wording: remember

Keep a known truth in mind; the imperative asks a person to bear the mortality of loved ones in mind before loss occurs.

Context: Burton concludes with an Epictetus example; the remembered content is mortality, not an instruction to reconstruct a particular past encounter. The modern rendering changes were to are and supplies that.

Grammar: Imperative

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: remember they were mortall

Alignment convention

Qualification: The verb is aligned alone; that and the tense change belong to the wider English modernization, not to the source verb.

Supplied words: that (complement marker in the wider modern clause)

Modern construction: remember that they are mortal

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

remember · remembring

Printed “remembring” (English; lemma).

Printed form, Original wording: remembring

Calling past events to mind; David’s remembrance of how God formerly dealt with him is described as meditation on mercy that strengthens faith and calms his heart.

Context: The subject remembering is David as Burton calls the psalmist; God is the agent of the former dealings. The modern rendering explicitly identifies that pronoun’s referent.

Grammar: Present participle

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: remembring how he had formerly dealt with him

Modern rendering, Modern wording: remembering

Alignment convention

Qualification: The participles align directly. God in the wider modern construction makes the original he explicit, avoiding reversal of the two agents.

Supplied words: God (referent of original he made explicit in the wider modern clause)

Modern construction: remembering how God had formerly dealt with him

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

remember · remembers

Printed “remembers” (English; lemma).

Key type, Alignment scope: lemma

Printed form, Original wording, Original construction: remembers

Relates or mentions in writing; introduces Pliny’s account of a haunted house.

Context: Pliny is the reporting author, not identified as an eyewitness to the narrated event. Burton then adduces Augustine’s separate report.

Source: original body

Source wording: Plinius secundus remembers such a house at Athens

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: recalls

Qualification: Equal-scope source and modern units checked separately; the modern rendering is not independent primary authority.

remembrance · local use 1

Printed “remembrance” (English; lemma).

The act or content of remembering; in the reported purge story, merely remembering the medicine is said to reproduce its bodily effect.

Context: Agrippa’s story from William of Paris is reported evidence, not a demonstrated modern physiological claim; the medicine is remembered rather than newly taken.

Source: original body

Source wording: nay the very remembrance of it did effect it

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

remembrance · local use 2

Printed “remembrance” (English; lemma).

A recollection of something past; remembered disgrace, loss or injury renews distress as though it had just occurred.

Context: Burton’s symptom description distinguishes recalled past injury from feared future danger in the following unit.

Source: original body

Source wording: the remembrance of some disgrace, loss, injury, abuse, &c. troubles them now being idle afresh, as if it were new done

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

remembrance · local use 3

Printed “remembrance” (English; lemma).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: remembrance

Remembering a former experience; the recollection of once-undervalued contentment is itself said to be pleasant after its loss.

Context: Burton counsels present contentment by anticipating later appreciation; this complements remembered past troubles without making their objects identical.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: the remembrance of it is pleasant

Modern rendering, Modern wording: remembering

Alignment convention

Qualification: The English noun remembrance is recast as gerund remembering; even in the wider modern clause is an added emphasis, not part of the noun’s lexical meaning.

Supplied words: even (added emphasis in the wider modern clause)

Modern construction: even remembering it is pleasant

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

remembrance · local use 4

Printed “remembrance” (English; lemma).

Recollection of past deeds; the memory of previous sins is the means by which conscience is said to accuse and torment the self.

Context: Conscience is the grammatical agent; remembered sins are the content. Burton’s moral and theological account is not reduced to ordinary loss of memory.

Source: original body

Source wording: grinds our souls with the remembrance of some precedent sins

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

reminiscentia · local use 1

Printed “reminiscentia” (Latin).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: reminiscentia

Recollection, in the reported theory of learning as remembering prior knowledge.

Context: Plato as read by Burton, qualified for ought I can perceive; not Burton’s unequivocal doctrine.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: which he calls reminiscentia, or recalling

Modern rendering, Modern wording: recollection

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned lexical component is separate from the checked construction context.

Modern construction: which he calls recollection or remembering

reminiscentia · local use 2

Printed “reminiscentia” (Latin).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: reminiscentia

Platonic recollection appealed to as an explanation of allegedly unlearned knowledge.

Context: One proposal in a dispute; Burton’s stated preference later in the paragraph is demonic.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: another argument he hath from Plato’s reminiscentia

Modern rendering, Modern wording: recollection

Alignment convention

Qualification: The aligned lexical component is separate from the checked construction context.

Modern construction: Plato’s recollection

reminiscentia, or recalling

Printed “reminiscentia, or recalling” (Latin and English; mixed-language phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: reminiscentia, or recalling

Latin recollection and Burton’s accompanying English gloss; the surrounding Platonic report supplies the doctrine of knowledge before embodiment.

Context: Plato as read by Burton, qualified for ought I can perceive; not Burton’s unequivocal doctrine.

Source: original body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: recollection or remembering

Alignment convention

Qualification: Displayed phrase has its own explained lookup record, separate from the component record(s).

roborare memoriam

Printed “roborat memoriam” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording: roborat memoriam

Strengthens the capacity to remember, a historical medicinal claim.

Context: Fuchs cited in margin; antecedent asarum/asarabacca in 101-32; body attributes purgation of black bile to Ruel, a separate author and claim.

Source: Burton original marginal quotation

Source wording, Original construction: Veratri modo expurgat cerebrum, roborat memoriam. Fuchsius.

Modern rendering, Modern wording: strengthens the memory

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original Latin component and editorial English component are separately aligned; wider constructions are retained as context.

Modern construction: It purges the brain like hellebore and strengthens the memory. Fuchs.

Notes: The complete mixed note was consulted, but only its original Latin is used as lexical attestation.

Translation layer: Editorial translation within the supplied Burton-labelled note; not original marginal wording and not paired modern body

voluntarily forget

Printed “voluntarily forget” (English; phrase).

Deliberately disregard or refuse to acknowledge; the rich ignore poor friends they meet, rather than being described as unable to recall who they are.

Context: The grammatical subject is the rich people refusing help; the object is their poor friends in adversity.

Source: original body

Source wording: they voluntarily forget and will take no notice of them

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

weak memory

Printed “weake memory” (English; phrase).

Citation key, Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: weak memory

Printed form, Original wording, Original construction: weake memory

Diminished power of retaining or recalling; listed among disorders assigned to the brain’s substance.

Context: Historical anatomical classification, not a modern diagnostic identification.

Source: original body

Source wording: Frensie, Lethargie, Melancholy, madness, weake memory

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope source and modern units checked separately; the modern rendering is not independent primary authority.

will not remember thy sins

Printed “will not remember thy sins” (English; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: will not remember thy sins

Will no longer hold sins in remembrance; the scriptural divine promise supplies the language of forgiveness rather than a failure of mental capacity.

Context: God is the quoted speaker and the addressee’s sins the object. The surrounding application concerns truly penitent believers; it is not an unconditional statement about every possible recipient.

Source: original body

Notes: No fresh collation of the historical authority is claimed.

without book

Printed “without book” (English phrase).

By heart or from memory, proposed as a directed intellectual task.

Context: Burton’s restatement follows a separate Piso Latin quotation; recommendation is qualified by patient context.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original construction: let them learn something without book

Original wording: learn something without book

Modern rendering, Modern wording: memorize something

Alignment convention

Qualification: The complete learn something without book construction corresponds to memorize something; memorize compresses learn without book, while something corresponds to something. The phrase without book alone means by heart or from memory.

Modern construction: Let them memorize something