Essays of Michel de Montaigne

ave come to my knowledge, I should make answer, that m

s not equal to him in his own art, which I leave to be determined by such as know them both. I who, for my part, understand but one

armen docta t

sitis tempera

arned lute a verse s

mposed fingers."-Pro

er to me this poet admirable, even as it were above human condition. And, in truth, I often wonder that he who has produced, and, by his authority, given reputation in the world to so many deities, was not deified himself. Being blind and poor, living before the sciences were reduced into rule and certain observation, he was so well ac

rum, quid turpe, qu

us Chrysippo et

good, what evil, what

er than Chrysipp

, Ep.,

this ot

ceu font

is ora riga

a perennial spring,

erian waters."-Ovid

the

dum comites, qu

ra po

of the Muses, whose s

Lucretius,

the

e ex ore

as latices in

nues ausa est

oecunda

l posterity has drawn

old to turn the might

le in the prope

, Astyon.

s the poet of the Lacedaemonians, for that he was an excellent master for the discipline of war. This singular and particular commendation is also left of him in the judgment of Plutarch, that he is the only author in the world that never glutted nor disgusted his readers, presenting himself always another thing, and always flourishing in some new grace. That wanton Alcibiades, having asked one, who pretended to learning, for a book of Homer, gave him a box of the ear because he had none, which he thought as scandalous as we should if we found one of our priests without a Breviary. Xenophanes complained one day to Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, that he was so poor he had not wherewithal to maintain two servants. "What!" replied he, "Homer, who was much poorer than thou art, keeps above ten thousand, though he is dead." What did Panaetius leave unsaid when he called Plato the Homer of the philosophers? Besides what glory can be compared to his? Nothing is so frequ

lophon, Salamis, Ch

ected so glorious a design, the authority he obtained in such mere youth with the greatest and most experienced captains of the world,

uicquid sibi

densque viam

who sought to withs

ay by ruin."-L

general, seem in truth incapable of any manner of reproach, although some particular and extraordinary actions of his may fall under censure. But it is impossible to carry on such great things as he did within the strict rules of justice; such as he are to be judged in gross by the main end of their actions. The ruin of Thebes and Persepolis, the murder of Menander and of Ephistion's physician, the massacre of so many Persian prisoners at one time, of a troop of Indian soldiers not without prejudice to his word, and of the Cossians, so much as to the very children, are indeed sallies that are not well to be excused. For, as to Clytus, the fault was more than redeemed; and that very action, as much as any other whatever, manifests the goodness of his nature, a nature most excellently formed to g

ceani perfusus

alios astrorum

um coelo, teneb

he waves of Ocean, Luc

, has displayed his sa

ses the darkness"-

ve written the actions of any other king or prince whatever; and that to this very day the Mohammedans, who despise all other histories, admit of and honour his alone, by a special privilege: whoever, I say, will seriously consider these particulars, will confess that, all these things put together, I had reason to prefer him before C

issi diversis

am, et virgulta

su rapido de

mosi amnes, et i

uum popul

laurel, or as with impetuous fall from the steep mountains, foaming torrents p

e ruin of his country and universal mischief to the world for its abominable object, that, a

ant, as bravely fought, and carried with them as manifest testimony of valour and military conduct, as those of any whatever. The Greeks have done him the honour, without contradiction, to pronounce him the greatest man of their nation; and to be the first of Greece, is easily to be the first of the world. As to his knowledge, we have this ancient judgment of him, "That never any man knew so much, and spake so little as he";-[Plutarch, On the Demon of Socrates, c. 23.]-for he was of the Pythagorean sect; but when he did speak, never any man spake better; an excellent orator, and of powerful p

ame: in this man only there is a full and equal virtue throughout, that leaves nothing to be wished for in him, whether in private or public employmen

ttle too scrupulous and nice; and this is the only feature, though high in itself and well wort

the other scale of the balance. Oh, what an injury has time done me to deprive me of the sight of two of the most noble lives which, by the comm

rs, and of a moderate ambition, the richest life that I know, and full of the richest an

a cause: which made him so cold in the enterprise of his companion Pelopidas for the relief of Thebes. He was also of opinion that men in battle ought to avoid the encounter of a friend who was on the contrary side, and to spare him. And his humanity, even towards his enemies themselves, having rendered him suspected to the Boeotians, for that, after he had miraculously forced the Lacedaemonians to open to him the pass which they had undertaken to defend at the entrance into the Morea,