About the author

Hugh Plat (1552–1608) was a miscellaneous writer knighted by James I for his efforts to increase agricultural productivity. Among his ‘inventions’ was the production of cheap fuel by pressing coal and clay or manure into combustible balls.

About the text

This collection of domestic wisdom gives easy-to-follow recipes for a range of useful products and ingenious processes. It is divided into five tracts, the last of which contains a chapter on the art of memory, treated as yet another expeditious scheme, coming after chapters on ‘How to melt down the filings of iron nails’ and ‘How to put several liquors or Wines in one Glass, without mixing’.

The arts of memory

Plat addresses the art of memory popularised by Alexander Dickson (1558–1604), a follower of Giordano Bruno who was in England 1583–5 (the interlocutor ‘Dicsono’ appears as a disciple in Bruno's Italian dialogues). Although Plat finds this method apt for discharging one's errands and recalling table-talk aphorisms, he disdains Dickson's taking money for this simple system of associative connections. He grants its efficacy for winning at cards, but concludes the chapter in the vein of a ‘coney-catching’ pamphlet, exposing the grift. Elsewhere in Jewel House he recounts a method for cheating at cards using ‘A perspective ring that will discover all the cards that are near him that wears it on his finger’ (C3v). Notwithstanding his wariness of Dickson's aims, Plat still advocates memory techniques when judiciously applied; for example, in ‘A ready way for children to learn their ABC’: ‘Cause four large dice of bone or wood to be made and upon every square one of the small letters of the cross row to be graven, but in some bigger shape, and the child used to playing with them, and being always told what letter chanceth, will soon gain his Alphabet as it were by the way of sport or pastime’ (H3r).

Textual notes

Hugh Plat, The Jewell House of Art and Nature (London, 1594), N1r–N3r.

The Jewell House of Art and Nature