Classic French Course in English

3-1

rnals of travel in quest of health and pleasure. But these are chiefly void of interest. Montaigne the Essayist alone is emphat

unequal in length; and they are on the most various topics,-topics often the most whimsica

or slow speech; A proceeding of some ambassadors; Various events from the same counsel; Of cannibals; That we laugh and cry from the

ng, on whatever topic, in whatever vein, always revolves around the writer for its pivot. Montaigne, from no matter what apparent diversion, may constantly be depended upon to bring up in due time at himself. The tether is long and elastic, but it is tenacious, and it is securely tied to Montaigne. This, as we shall presently let the author himself make plain, is no

t is simple, direct, manly, genuine. It is fresh and racy of the writer. It is flexible to every turn, it is sensitive to every rise or fall, of the thought. It is a steadfast rebuke to rant and fustian. It quietly laughs to scorn the

had observed much, he had experienced much. The result of all, digested in brooding thought, he put into his "Essays." These grew as

Their fascination, too, consists in the self-revelation they contain. This was, first, self-revelation on the part of the writer; but no less it becomes, in each case, self-revelation in the experience of the reader. For, as face answereth to face in the glass, so doth the heart of man to man,-from race to race, and from gene

o his "Essays;" "The Author t

cover some traits of my conditions and humors, and by that means preserve more whole, and more life-like, the knowledge they had of me. Had my intention been to seek the world's favor, I should surely have adorned myself with borrowed beauties. I desire therein to be viewed as I appear in mine own genuine, simple, and ordinary manner, without study and artifice; for it is myself I paint. My defects are therein to be read to the life, and

e, the 12th o

; they may be flouting unawares Seneca, Plutarch, or some other, equally redoubtable, of the reverend ancients. Montaigne is perhaps as signal an example as any in literature, of the man of genius exercising his prescriptive right to help himself to his own wherever he may happen to find it. But Montaigne has in turn been freely borrowed from. Bacon borrowed from him, Shak

ed to translate. We have allowed Mr. Hazlitt to supply the deficiency. Montaigne addresses his educational views to a countess. Several others of his essays are similarly inscribed to women. Mr. Emerson's excuse of Montaigne for his coarseness,-that he wrote for a generation in which women were not expected to be reade

n the subject of education. In this happy country of ours, all boys are boys

ther a well-made than a well-filled head, seeking, indeed, both the one and the other, but rather of the two t

rmitting his pupil himself to taste things, and of himself to discern and choose them, sometimes opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving him to open it for himself; that is, I would not have him alone to invent and speak, but that he should also hear his pupil speak in turn.... Let him make him put what he has learned into a hundred several for

on trust. Aristotle's principles will then be no more principles to him than those of Epicurus and the Stoics: let this divers

che saper, dub

Inferno

leases me, not le

ow's Tra

earning, provided he know how to apply it to his own use. Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them after; 'tis no more according to Plato, than according to me, since both he and I equally see and understand them. Bees cull their several sweets from this flower and that blossom, here and there where they find them; but themselves afterward make the honey, which is all and purely their own, and no more thyme and marjoram: so the several fr

ho live only in the records of history: he shall, by reading those

miliar with Emerson will be reminded of him in perusing Montaigne. Emerson himself said, "It seemed to me [in reading the "Essays" of Montaigne] as if I had myself written the book in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thoughts and experience." The rich old English of Cotton's translation had evidently a strong influence on Emerson, to mould his own style of expression. Emerson's trick of writing "'tis," was apparently caught from Cotton. The following sentence, from the present essay of Montaigne, might very well have served Mr. Emerson for his own rule of writing: "Let it go before, or come after, a goo

-the subject which his son, in this essay, so instructively treats. The essayist leads up to his autobiographical epi

neither himself nor my mother, man nor maid, should speak any thing in my company, but such Latin words as every one had learned only to gabble with me. It is not to be imagined how great an advantage this proved to the whole family: my father and my mother by this means learned Latin enough to understand it perfectly well, and to speak it to such a degree as was sufficient for any necessary use, as also those of the servants did, who were most frequently with me. In short, we Latined it at such a rate, that it overflowed to all the neighboring vi

leasant whimsey of his own in the nurture of his boy. Highly ?sthetic was the m

than we, he [the father] caused me to be wakened by the sound of some musical instrument, and was never unprovided of a musician for that purpose.... The good man, being extremely timorous of any way failing in a thing

r Eyquem père; and, in the education of his son, the stout Gascon, ha

nd other, with which Montaigne plentifully bestrews his pa

genious fellow that was brought to her, seeing no outward tumor nor alteration, supposing it to be only a conceit taken at some crust of bread that had hurt her as it went down, cau

ng earnestly fixed his eyes upon a kite in the air, laid a wager that he would bring her down with the sole power of his

ion. Whether a given reflection of Montaigne's is strictly his own, in the sense of not having been first another's, who gave it to him, is not to be determined except upon very wide reading, very well remembered, in all the books that Montaigne could have got under his eye. That was full fairly h

taigne was so fond of poising his mind between opposite views. It o

ally when they come to rush in with their utmost vigor, their courages increasing by the shouts and the career; 'tis to render the soldiers' ardor, as a man may say, more reserved and cold." This is what he says. But, if C?sar had come by the worse, why might it not as well have been urged by another, that, on the contrary, the strongest and most steady posture of fighting is that wherein a man stands planted firm, without motion; and that they who are steady upon the march, closing

the author. This apothegmatic or proverbial quality in Montaigne had a very important sequel of fruitful influence on subsequent French writers, as chapters to follow in

ver at home, but

, that my death shall say not

good nor bad: it is the pl

stuck on to the mind,

the most common and app

the mind more

a secon

cures

o get money th

n been the veh

icult to comman

ld have a g

he daughter o

, you must be dis

live when li

ease when its compa

we think, but we are br

ce of man is... to be

ntaigne's not found in M

ughts and actions to the laws, that he is not faul

Un" (literally, "Against One"), or "Voluntary Servitude," is by many esteemed among the most important literary productions of modern times. Others, again, Mr. George Saintsbury for example, consider it an absurdly overrated book. For our own part, we are inclined to give it conspicuous place in the history of free thought in France. La Bo?tie died young; and his "Contr' Un" was published posthumously,-first by the Protestants, after the terrible day of St. Barthol

that he may slake his luxury; you bring up your sons that he may take them to be butchered in his wars, to be the ministers of his avarice, the executors of his v

account of La Bo?tie's death is boldly, and not presumptuously, paralleled by Mr. St. John with the "Ph?do

esent Montaigne. Montaigne is very far from being an innocent writer. His moral tone generally is low, and often it is execrable. He is coarse, but coarseness is not the worst of him. Indeed, he is cleanliness itself compared with Rabelais. But Rabelais is morality itself

before me, which, thanks be to God, I regard without fear, but not without

uod perdi

rita se totus

ius, c

s lost, and in fancy flings i

if they will, but it shall be backward; as long as my eyes can discern the pleasant season expired, I shall now and then

oc

vita posse p

l, x.

to be able to enjoy

elude to detailed reminiscence on the author's part of sensual pleasures-the basest-enjoyed in the past

are not to be published, displease me; the worst of my actions and qualities do

individual, I say to the people; and, as to my most secret thoughts, send my most intimate friends to my book.... For my part, if any one sho

of readers to conjecture what "pleasures" they are, of which this worn-out debauchee (nearing dea

ards the things we take leave of: I take my last leave of

um, in indifference, between contrary opinions. He saw reasons on this side, but he saw reasons also on that, and he did not clear his mind. "Que s?ai-je?" was his motto ("Wh

ubt. Montaigne, on the other hand, gave the benefit of his doubt to the world of sense. He was a sensualist, he was a glutton, he was a lecher. He, for his portion, chose the good things of this life. His body he used to get him

. His own lawful children, while infants, had to go out of the house for their nursing; so it not unnaturally happened that all but one died in their infancy. Five of such is the number that you can count in his own journal

g, and full of personal association with its most famous owner. He occupied a room in the tower, fitted up as a library. Over the door of this room may still, we believe,

rn" overlay the waves of the sea, stretching from summit to summit. Not that, in the form of his literary work, he was altogether independent of time and of circumstance. Not that he was uninfluenced by his historic place, in the essential spirit of his work. But, more than often happens, Montaigne may fairly

m to commend it, to flatter it, to justify it, to make it seem sufficient, to erect it into a kind of gospel,-that means much. It means hardly less than to provide the world with a new Bible,-a Bible of the world's own, a Bible that shall approve itself as better than the Bible of the Old and New Testaments. Montaigne's "Essays" constitute, in effect, such a book. The man of the world may,-and, to say truth, d

, "Montaigne is absolutely pernicious to those who have any inclination toward irreligion, or toward vicious indulgences." We, for our part, are prepared, speaking more broadly than Pascal, to say that, to a somewhat numerous class of naturally dominant minds, Monta