24 chapter 1
rather, phonemes, stand for numbers which, in turn, make up dates in a his-
torical chronolog y. Grey’s Memoria Technica was written in barely perceptible
hexameters, which are only evident if you read his preface, since the “memorial
lines” read as a kind of Latinate gibberish, complete with entirely useless ac-
cent marks in superscript (see figure 1).
Despite their surreal quality, the metrics of Grey’s memorial lines nonethe-
less inspired later histories in so-called “mnemonic hexameters.”^14 But beyond
the epic nature of its rough meter, Grey’s Memoria Technica was concerned
with measure to such a degree that the epochs of history, cycles of the moon,
and ancient weights and measures all appeared reduced into one, albeit ex-
tremely complicated, system of assigning each historical figure his own
letter—a mnemonic cipher. He admits that the verse structure is not as impor-
tant as the cipher, writing,
to make this even easier to be remember’d, the Technical words are
thrown into the Form of common Latin Verse, or at least of something
like it. For as there was no Necessity to confine my self to any Rules of
Quantity or Position, I hope I need make no Apolog y for the Liberty I
have taken in having, without Regard to either, and perhaps now and
then without so much as a Regard to the just Number of Feet, only
placed the Words in such Order as to make them run most easily off the
Tongue, and succeed each other in the most natural Manner.^15Since Gray’s “Technical Words” consist of such inventions as “Casibelud
Bóadaup Vo r t i gfos Hengsul & Arthlaf ” (14), it is quite astonishing that he
would be concerned with the “natural” manner that these words would be pro-
nounced out loud. Bringing a whole new level of pedagogical and cultural
meaning to the idea of poetic “numbers,” which usually refer, as above, to the
number of feet, syllables per a line of verse, or the quantity of time it might
take to pronounce a line of verse, Grey’s “artificial memory” valued arithmetic
over language and, indeed, subdued the idea of a dactylic hexameter to that
arithmetic, shrugging off the obligations of Latin hexameter while at the same
time admitting it may be helpful.
Despite its various contradictions and complications, the “artificial mem-
ory” system took hold and Grey’s odd volume went into eight editions. Rich-
ard Valpy took up the idea of Grey’s “artificial memory” but lamented that
Grey’s verses were too difficult to memorize. In his A Poetic Chronolog y of An-
cient and English History (1794), Valpy discards the complicated mnemonic
cipher and happily hopes that a poetic form will simplify the method of mem-
orizing history: “if the knowledge of dates, which is happily connected with
that of facts, could be reduced to a poetical form, to a series of English verses,
which might be learnt on account of their simplicity, and remembered with-