The new English translation of Paolo Rossi's classic study, "Logic and the Art of Memory," presents a useful opportunity to examine contemporary efforts to understand what its subtitle calls "the quest for universal language." At the same time, a seventeenth-century philosophical romance, Thomas Urquhart's, "Jewel," affords a good test case for evaluating the success of those contemporary critical efforts--including Rossi's own. (Author/VWL)