A Help to Memory and Discourse
A question-and-answer miscellany of jokes, riddles and wise sayings, written to help young gentlemen shine in conversation. The author is probably the poet W.B., a household poet to a country gentleman.
what it teaches
Good talk needs a good memory, and a good memory needs knowledge to work on. Memory is untrustworthy and unstable: a lawyer once forgot more law than his colleague ever knew.
He compares memory to the Tower of London, where the realm's old records were kept, and to a clerk keeping records.
The art writers say places are like paper and images like letters. The Bible supports it: twelve stones from the River Jordan, the sacraments as visible signs, a thread tied round a finger.
He does not practise the art himself. He leaves it to specialists and trusts a natural memory, helped by God.