Sunday, August 29, 2010
Feats of Memory
"Anecdotes of Dr. Jabez Earle, a Dissenting Minister, Who Died in 1768," The Kentish Register (December 1794) 464:
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His chief excellence, as a scholar, was in classical learning. When he was above ninety years old, he would repeat with the greatest readiness and fluency, a hundred verses or more from Homer, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, or others of the ancient poets, upon their being at any time occasionally mentioned.William Cowper mentions him in a letter to Martin Madan (June 8, 1789, anent Madan's translation of Juvenal and Persius):
Dr. Earl, I remember, was a Master of both these authors, and could perhaps have repeated the greatest part of Juvenal, but of all the Scholars I have ever known He was the only one so well acquainted with him. Juvenal, of all the Roman Writers, was his Favorite.
