ABUNDANCE OF LATER SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PROSE--A
DISTINCTION--SULLY--BODIN--THE GREAT MEMOIR-WRITERS--CARLOIX--LA
NOUE--D’AUBIGNÉ--MONLUC--BRANTÔME--THE ‘SATYRE MÉNIPÉE’--ITS
ORIGIN--ITS AUTHORS--ITS FORM AND SPIRIT--MONTAIGNE--HIS
‘ESSAYS’--THE SCEPTICISM OF MONTAIGNE--HIS STYLE--CHARRON AND DU VAIR.
[SN: _Abundance of later sixteenth-century prose._]
No race has ever allowed less of what it has done, suffered, or even
only seen, to be lost than the French. It has ever been the ambition
of the men of that people to leave some record of themselves. We have
to thank what an ill-conditioned critic might call its vanity for a
memoir-literature which would be inadequately praised if it were only
called the first in the world. The world has not only no equal, but no
second, to be used as a comparison. The France of the wars of Religion,
agitated as it was, was exceptionally rich in these delightful books.
For that we have good reason to be grateful, since this time, full
as it was of colour, of ability, of passion, and of the most remote
extremes in character, has left us the means of knowing it more fully
than we can know our own generation. As it was also an age of great
political and religious strife, treatises on politics and religion
were naturally written, seeing that amid all the turmoil and fury men
continued to write. There is more cause for surprise when we meet also
with works of science, or on the arts--though the surprise is not
perhaps fully justified, since even in the wildest times the great mass
of men live their lives very much as in peace. When commotions have
reached the point of causing universal disturbance, they soon end.
Mankind would starve if they were not suspended.
[SN: _A distinction._]
Out of all the mass of writing produced in the second half of the
sixteenth century in France (or by men who must be assigned to that
period but who lived into the seventeenth), which is valuable for one
reason or another, all is not literature. Only a part can be read from
any other motive than interest in the matter. The historians Palma
Cayet, Jean de Serres, and his brother Olivier de Serres, author of
the _Théâtre d’Agriculture_, for instance, will hardly be read for
their style, or except by students. [SN: _Sully._] As much must be said
of the memoirs of Sully, which are called for short _Les Œconomies
Royales_.[104] It is not because this book began to be published
at the Château de Sully in 1638 that we must leave it aside, for in
matter and spirit it belongs to the previous century. Nor is it because
_Les Œconomies Royales_ are wanting in interest. They are of great
historical value, and the form is attractive from its mere oddity.
Sully employed four secretaries to tell him his own life, so that they
are found informing their master, “Monsieur your father had four sons,
for whom he had no other ambition than to make them such gallant men
that they might raise their house to its ancient splendour, from which
the fall of the elder line to the distaff [_i.e._, to female heirs]
three times, and the unthrifty courses of his ancestors, and especially
of his father, had much diminished it in goods.” Or a little further
on, “This [viz., to be a faithful and obedient servant] you also swore
to him in such fair terms, with so much confidence, and in so agreeable
a tone of voice, that he at once conceived great hopes of you.” Yet
the oddity and the matter are the virtues of the _Œconomies Royales_.
Something equivalent must needs be said of the memoirs of Castelnau,
of Gaspard de Saulx-Tavannes--written by his son Jean--of Condé, of
François de Guise, and many others.[105]
[SN: _Bodin._]
Jean Bodin (1530-1596) is a great name in political science. His
_République_, first published in French in 1578 and then enlarged
and translated into Latin by the author in 1586, must always remain
of value, if for no other reason than because it shows how it was
possible for men of the sixteenth century who were not merely servile
courtiers, to believe in the “right divine” of kings and the excellence
of despotism. Bodin’s influence, even among ourselves, was strong in
the seventeenth century. Strafford was almost certainly thinking of him
when he told the Council that the king was entitled, as representative
of the State, to act _legibus solutus_; and his doctrine was taught
in incomparable English by Hobbes. Yet Bodin will hardly be read for
his French, and what we cannot read for the form cannot be called
literature.
[SN: _The great memoir-writers._]
It shows, as fully as anything well could, the wealth of French prose
that we can leave aside so many writers, even in what is not one of the
great periods, and yet retain a considerable body of literature in the
very fullest sense of the word. Montaigne, who is pre-eminent, stands
by himself, alike in form and in matter, and so for other reasons does
the _Satyre Ménippée_. But among the memoir-writers who also were in
some cases historians, there are five who would of themselves be enough
to make the wealth of any other literature in this kind--Carloix, La
Noue, D’Aubigné, Monluc, and Brantôme. They came indeed in a happy
hour. The generation was full of strong and violent characters, and of
sudden picturesque events to supply them with matter. The language had
been developed and shaped by Rabelais, Calvin, and the translators with
Amyot at their head, while it had not yet been pruned by the pedantry
of the seventeenth century. It still kept its colour. In history the
classics and the Italians had supplied models of more capability than
the chronicles which Comines had followed. For the model of the memoir,
a people who could look back to Joinville and Villehardouin had no need
of foreign influence.
[SN: _Carloix._]
The five writers just named are not only excellent in themselves,
but each of them is either in his own person the representative of a
class, or makes us acquainted with one. Vincent Carloix wrote, not
his own life, but that of his master, François de Scépeaux, Marshal
de Vieilleville (1509-1571).[106] Carloix was the Marshal’s secretary
for thirty-five years, and was fully trusted by him. It was by
Vieilleville’s direction that the secretary undertook the memoirs,
for which he was supplied with ample materials. He gives, as to the
matter, the picture of a very important member of the party called
“Les Politiques”--that is, those Frenchmen who, with no wish to
separate from the Church of Rome, had yet no fanatical enmity to the
Huguenots on religious grounds, but who were the enemies of the Dukes
of Guise of the house of Lorraine. “Les Politiques” conquered in the
end by alliance with Henry IV., and from them, years after the death
of Vieilleville, came one of the most remarkable of political satires,
the _Satyre Ménippée_. The style of Carloix is one of singular life
and colour, “although,” as the editor of the edition of 1757 says, “it
is full of Gaulish, and antiquated, phrases and expressions.” It would
now appear more proper to put “because.” Carloix has been said to have
taken “Le Loyal Serviteur,” who wrote the life of Bayard, as his model.
But if so, he followed him only in his plain narrative. Carloix has a
wit and a share of the quality called by the French _malice_, wanting
to Bayard’s simple-hearted squire. Under his air of candour he is a
shrewd experienced man of the world.
[SN: _La Noue._]
François de la Noue, called Iron Arm, was born in Brittany of a
well-connected family in 1531, and was killed at the siege of Lamballe
in 1591. His character was drawn in the concise words of Henry IV.:
“He was a thorough good soldier, and, still more, a thorough good
man.” “C’était un grand homme de guerre, encore plus un grand homme
de bien.” What are called his memoirs form the twenty-sixth book of
his _Discours Politiques et Militaires_, a great work of description,
criticism, and reflection, rather than history, composed while he was
a prisoner in the hands of the Spaniards in the Low Countries.[107] La
Noue, who was converted to “the religion” by the chaplain of Coligny,
was a type of all that was best among the Huguenots. He did not embrace
the fanaticism together with the principles of his party. The memoirs,
which are in fact an account of the wars of Religion, from the first
“taking up of arms” in 1562 till 1570, are remarkably impartial. La
Noue was one of the small body of men who can be perfectly loyal to
their own party, and yet never falsify the story in its favour. He is
just to the chiefs on the other side. Though a profoundly moral man, he
was saved from priggery by a very real sense of humour. He could see
the laughable side of things. His style wants the inimitable flash of
Monluc, and it has not got the very peculiar flavour of the prose of
D’Aubigné, but it is nervous, clear, exact, and thoroughly excellent in
its own way--the way of a wise temperate man, a quiet gentleman, and
modest valiant soldier.
[SN: _D’Aubigné._]
The title of memoir-writer must be understood in a very wide sense when
it is applied to D’Aubigné. Strictly speaking, the short _Vie à ses
Enfants_ is his memoir.[108] The _Histoire Universelle_, his main work
in prose, is a great general history of contemporary events at home
and abroad. But then it is also a history of events in which D’Aubigné
himself played an active part, and which he tells from an intensely
personal point of view. It is to be noted that it ends with the wars
of Religion, and the peace which was brought about by the abjuration
of the king--that is to say, when D’Aubigné himself ceased to take a
prominent share in public affairs. To judge by his other prose work,
which is considerable,[109] D’Aubigné was by nature a vehement--or even
virulent--pamphleteer. His _Baron de Fœneste_ and his _Confession de
Sancy_ are fiercely satirical. They are also rather obscure, and not
easily readable. It was on the suggestion of Henry IV. that he first
began to think of writing the history of his time. He was to have
worked in co-operation with the President Jeannin, an ex-Leaguer, and
another thorough-going partisan. It is difficult to imagine what they
could have produced between them. This fantastic scheme was dropped,
and the _Histoire Universelle_ was written after the king’s death. The
style of D’Aubigné shows the influence of his learned education, and of
his practice in the poetic school of Ronsard. He sometimes uses purely
pedantic words, as when he says that his father put him under the
charge of a tutor, “Jean Costin, homme astorge et impiteux.” Astorge is
a Greek word (ἄστοργος), which would never have been used by Carloix,
La Noue, or Monluc. Again, he deliberately followed classic models in
the long speeches, frequently delivered by himself, which abound in his
History, and are the most carefully written parts. When he tells Henry
IV. in one of these addresses that it is useless for him to endeavour
to make peace with the Court, because “you are guilty of your birth,
and of the wrongs which have been done you,” the echo of Sallust and
of Tacitus is distinctly audible; yet he can also be colloquial, and
has no scruple in using idiomatic and proverbial phrases which a later
generation would have rejected as unworthy of the “dignity of history.”
Dignity is not wanting to D’Aubigné, but it is given by the force of
his thoughts and of his character, which is that of a man who might
be a tyrannical friend and an exacting servant, but who was brave and
high-minded.
[SN: _Monluc._]
For a perfect picture of a partisan on the other side we have only
to go to the _Commentaries_ of one whom D’Aubigné describes as “ce
vieux renard de Monluc.” Yet Blaise de Lasseran-Massencome, Seigneur
de Monluc, is perhaps hardly to be called a party man. Like the Lord
Byron of our own civil war, he “was passionately the king’s.” He was
born in or about 1503, near Condom, of an ancient and impoverished
family of Gascony. Though the eldest son, he had even less than the
traditional cadet’s portion. He could boast that, though a gentleman
born, he had fought his way up from the lowest rank. After serving in
the wars of Italy, he was named Governor of Guyenne by the king, and
there distinguished himself by a ferocity exceptional even in those
times. An arquebuse-wound in the face at the siege of Rabastens in
1570 disabled him for active service. His _Commentaries_ were dictated
in his last years, and he died in 1577.[110] It is one of the many
sayings attributed to Henry IV. that the _Commentaries_ of Monluc
are “the Soldier’s Bible.” Whether the king said it or not, no truer
description of this delightful book could be given. Monluc was a man
of his time and his race. He “had the honour to be a Gascon” in every
sense of the word, having all the valour, enterprise, craft, humour,
and expansive vanity of the type. But he was also a perfect soldier,
and profoundly convinced that his business was the greatest a man could
follow. His _Commentaries_ were avowedly written to show the “captains
and lieutenants of France” what a soldier ought to be, by the example
of Blaise de Monluc. The very thoroughness of his vanity gives the
book a sincere tone. We feel that he was far too well pleased with
himself to think it necessary to lie. That he saw things through the
colouring medium of his self-sufficiency is possible--even certain--but
at least he gives them as he saw them. Monluc was also a very able man,
who was not wanting in appreciation of the humorous side of his own
_gasconnades_, and therefore his vanity is never silly. The style is
that of a book dictated by a man with a boundless _faconde_--that is to
say, command of ready language; but it is too vivid and has too much
substance ever to be garrulous. At times he can strike out images of
great force.
[SN: _Brantôme._]
Different though they were in life and character, there is a certain
resemblance between Monluc and Brantôme. Both have the same air of
perfect satisfaction with themselves, and both pour out the fruits
of their varied experience with the same appearance of colloquial
confidence.[111] Pierre de Bourdeilles, called Brantôme from the name
of an abbey of which he was lay abbot--that is to say, of which he
drew the abbot’s portion by favour of the king, without taking the
vows--was a younger son of a distinguished family of Perigord. He was
born about 1540, and died in 1614. During many years he travelled much,
fought more or less, and lived at Court in the intervals of journeys or
campaigns. Being disappointed of a place which the king had promised
him, he was preparing to revenge himself by treason, when his horse
fell with him, and crippled him for life. Brantôme now betook himself
to writing his reminiscences as a consolation. Though he professed a
certain contempt for letters, he spent great pains on his work, and
its bulk is considerable. In addition to some minor treatises--the
so-called _Discours des Duels_, the _Rodomontades Espaignolles_, and a
few others--he made two great collections, which he named _Des Hommes_
and _Des Femmes_. These he rewrote and revised not a little. It was
his wish that they should be published as he left them, but his heirs
neglected his directions. His manuscripts were copied, handed about,
and finally straggled into print by fragments, to which the booksellers
gave fancy names, such as _Les Grandes Dames_, _Les Dames Galantes_,
and so forth. The admiration which Monluc felt for his own business
of soldiering, Brantôme extended to every manifestation of energetic
character by deed or word, moral or immoral, with a marked, but mainly
artistic, preference for good sayings and immorality. He is not to
be trusted in details, but he is in himself an invaluable witness to
the time which produced him. Nowhere else can we see so fully the
combination of the French love of showy action, and indifference to
what we call morality, with the cruel wickedness of Italy, which
distinguished the Court of the later Valois. He does not seem to have
been in himself a bad man, and yet it does not appear that he saw
any difference between right and wrong. Murders, and breaches of the
seventh commandment, committed by ladies and gentlemen in a spirited
way, have his admiration quite as easily as the most honourable
actions. He tells all in the same brightly coloured, rapid, gossipping
style, and stops to rejoice over every striking story which runs from
his pen, whether it be a trait of magnanimity on the part of the Duke
of Guise, or the brutal murder of three unarmed traders by one of his
own friends, who was angry, and relieved his feelings by a butchery.
The attempt to enumerate all the writers who may be classed with one or
another of the five just named could lead to nothing but a catalogue
of mere names. Marguerite de Valois (1553-1615), the wife whom Henry
IV. married at the “red wedding” of Saint Bartholomew, and afterwards
repudiated, wrote memoirs under the direct inspiration of her friend
and admirer Brantôme. Pierre de l’Estoile (1545-1611)[112] wrote
_Mémoires-Journaux_--_i.e._, a diary of his time. The _Correspondence_
of Catherine de Medici--recently edited by M. de Ferrière--of
Duplessis-Mornay (1549-1623), and of the Cardinal D’Ossat (1557-1604),
which have long been known, the _Negotiations_ of Pierre Jeannin
(1546-1632), the great _History_ of De Thou, written in Latin, are all
of value, and are all well written. The list could easily be swollen,
but it would be to little purpose where space does not allow of more
than mention. From the literary point of view they are notable as
showing that the autobiographical, anecdotic, historical, and, in
short, average practical writing faculty of the French, which has
given their literature its unrivalled continuity, was in full vigour
during these generations, when, as one is tempted to think, men must
have been far too intent on keeping themselves alive in the prevailing
anarchy to have leisure for the use of the pen. Spain, in its happier
days, produced something approaching the French historical and memoir
work of the later sixteenth century. Elizabethan England, rich beyond
comparison in poetic genius, has nothing like it to show. It could not
be, of course; and yet we could have spared, not Marlowe, but perhaps
Greene and Peele, and certainly Nash, Lodge (the lyrics apart), and
Breton, to see the Armada, and the voyages to the Isles, through the
eyes of an English Monluc, or the pacification of Ireland as told by
a La Noue of our own, or such a picture of the Court of Elizabeth as
could have been painted by the nearest conceivable English approach to
Brantôme.
[SN: _The_ Satyre Ménippée.]
There is, however, one piece of French prose of what may be called the
practical order--written, that is to say, to secure a definite business
end--which is far too good in itself, as well as too important in its
consequences, to be passed with a mere mention. This is the famous,
and in some ways still unrivalled, _Satyre Ménippée_.[113] The book is
a small collection of pamphlets, burlesques, and satiric verse. When
due precaution is taken to avoid exaggeration and misunderstanding, it
may be compared to our own Martin Mar-Prelate pamphlets. Both were the
work of a body of men not individually of importance, who yet produced
a great effect by combined action for a cause. Each is the beginning
of journalism in its own country. They were nearly contemporary, but
Martin Mar-Prelate came a little earlier. His dates are 1589-1592, and
the _Satyre Ménippée_ belongs to 1593 and 1594. The comparison must not
be pushed further, since the _Satyre Ménippée_ is markedly superior
to Martin in artistic skill, and, it must be allowed, in dignity of
purpose also, however kindly we may wish to think of the Puritan
writers. Neither is there any reason to suppose that any connection
existed between the two. If the writers of the _Satyre Ménippée_ had
any inspiration other than their own desire to answer the virulent
sermons and speeches of the League, they probably found it in Erasmus,
and in the _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_ of Ulrich von Hutten. The fact
that the _Satyre_ and Martin appeared almost side by side, only shows
that the causes which were making for the establishment of journalism
were working in France as well as in England. Use had already been
made of the printing-press, the pulpit, and, in France at least,
of the stage, for controversy. But much had been written in Latin,
whether of the study or of the kennel. The anti-papal “sotties” of
Gringore, played by the encouragement of Louis XII., the anti-Church
farces of the Reformers, the sermons and the pamphlets of the League,
were individual work, the still uncollected raw material of possible
journalism. The next step was to organise collective action. It was
done roughly, and unhappily for a party purpose, in England, but in
France with skill, with much literary finish, and for a national cause.
[SN: _Its origin._]
In order to appreciate the full merit of the _Satyre Ménippée_, the
reader must call to mind that after the murder of Henry III. his
cousin of Navarre became King of France by inheritance. Henry IV. had
the support not only of his own subjects and the Huguenots, but of
the “Politiques,”--the moderate men, as we might say, among the Roman
Catholics. The ardent partisans of the Church turned against him, and
banded themselves with the princes of the house of Guise. The Catholic
League, which had been first founded by Gaspard de Saulx-Tavannes
nearly thirty years before, after the conspiracy of Amboise, was
extended, and became a great organisation for the purpose of setting
aside the heretic King of Navarre, and putting some assured Romanist
on the throne. In reality it was little more than a cloak for the
ambition of the Guises, and the partisans who saw a chance of profiting
by anarchy. It had the support of the King of Spain. Paris was held,
partly by the help of the more fanatical Roman Catholic clergy and
the mob, partly by a so-called Spanish garrison--Moors, Neapolitans,
and what not--made up out of the sweepings of Philip II.’s army. Even
the conversion of Henry did not disarm the League. It called a sham
meeting of the Estates of the realm to debate the question of setting
him aside. At this moment a body of men in Paris combined to assail
these so-called États with ridicule; and when we remember how brutally
the “Guisards” had disposed of opponents and critics, it is hard to
exaggerate the courage they showed.
[SN: _Its authors._]
The leader of the band was Pierre Leroy, canon of the Sainte
Chapelle. It was to him that the idea first suggested itself, and
he drew about him his friends Gillot, Passerat, Rapin, Chrestien,
Pithou, and Durant. As may well be supposed, the early history of an
anonymous work is somewhat obscure. It was at first a small manuscript
pamphlet, handed about quietly. Additions were made. The verse seems
to have been introduced at the later stages. Whether it was actually
printed in 1593 appears very doubtful. The first known example is
of 1594, and, as was natural enough, the _Satyre_ was subject to a
good deal of modification. The names of men who had been attacked,
and who passed over later to Henry IV., were dropped out. Even the
title was altered. The first chosen was “Abbrégé et l’Ame des Estatz
convoquez à Paris en l’an 1593 le 10 Febvrier. Jouxte la relation de
Mademoiselle de la Lande, Messieurs Domay et Victon Penitens blancqs.”
An alternative title was “Le Catholicum de la Ligue, 1593.” The name
of _Satyre Ménippée_ (taken from Lucian) seems to have been given by
common consent rather than by the authors, and the first undoubted
edition is called “La Vertu du Catholicon d’Espagne, avec un Abrégé
de la tenue des Estats de Paris convoquez aux de Febvrier 1593 par
les chefs de la Ligue. Tiré des mémoires de Mademoiselle de la Lande,
alias la Bayonnoise, et des secrettes confabulations d’elle et du Père
Commelaid.”
[SN: _Its form and spirit._]
In its final form the _Satyre Ménippée_ has some resemblance in form,
and a marked likeness in spirit, to our own _Anti-Jacobin_ as it was in
the first and most militant stage. The authors of both were fighting
with a combination of ridicule and argument against anarchy, and in
the name of common-sense and patriotism. There is the same resistance
to the foreigner in both. The Gallican clergy of the stamp of Leroy
were no friends to the interference of the Pope in French affairs. That
Philip II. was a foreigner could be disputed by nobody; and though the
Lorraine princes had played a great part in France, and were connected
with the Valois by marriage, they were still considered strangers.
The _Satyre Ménippée_ opens by a burlesque speech delivered by a quack
in praise of the Catholicon or universal cure of Spain--of the bribes
which Philip II. was lavishing in order to promote the misfortunes
of his neighbours. Then comes a description of the procession at the
opening of the Estates, and of the tapestry on the walls, in which
the different chiefs of the League are ridiculed, and the misfortunes
they were bringing on the country shown. Then Mayenne makes a speech
as Lieutenant-General of the kingdom--the sort of speech he would have
made if he had told the truth. Various churchmen then speak--Italian or
Italianate priests who were prepared to sacrifice France to the Pope,
or mere beaters of the drum ecclesiastic. Then comes what is perhaps
the best single thing in the _Satyre_, the speech of M. des Rieux,
who speaks for the noblesse. The choice of this man--an historical
character who was finally hanged as a brigand--to speak for the nobles
is in itself a most ingenious stroke. He was a thorough military
ruffian of the worst stamp, low-born and ignorant, who had obtained
command of a castle, and who lived by plundering his neighbours. Des
Rieux begins by giving it as his opinion that nothing could prove the
excellence of the League more fully than just this, that the like
of him could come to speak for the nobles. He goes on in the same
tone, which is the swagger of a vulgar adventurer who feels himself
safe. No more artful way of showing to what the League was reducing
France could have been chosen. The speech of Des Rieux is attributed
to Jacques Gillot, clerk to the Parliament of Paris. Then the tone
of burlesque is dropped, and a vigorous denunciation of the League
is delivered by M. d’Aubray as the spokesman of the Third Estate,
the Burgesses. This, the longest of all, is said to be the work of
Pierre Pithou. The verse, partly scattered through the book and partly
collected at the end, belongs to Jean Passerat, the successor of Ramus
at the Collége Royal, and to Gilles Durant, a lawyer and country
gentleman. Both Passerat and Durant wrote other verse of excellence.
All this memoir, history, and satire is interesting, but no part of it
belongs to the literature which every thinking man in every country
has read, or knows that it would be good to read. They may be all left
aside, not without loss indeed, yet without irreparable loss. But
whoever has not read the _Essays_ of Montaigne has missed something
necessary for the “criticism of life”--the exposition of a habit
of thought, a way of looking at things, of discussing and deciding
questions of conduct and principle, which are not only French and
peculiar to one time, but human and universal.
[SN: _Montaigne._]
Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne, was born at the Château de
Montaigne in Perigord, near Bordeaux, in 1533. A legend, which appears
to have no foundation, asserts that the family was of English origin.
It had risen by the salt-fish trade, and its nobility was of recent
origin, facts which Montaigne did not recognise so calmly as a
philosopher should. His father served under Francis I. in the wars of
Italy, and increased the considerable fortune he had inherited, by a
rich marriage with Antoinette de Louppes, or Lopes, a Spanish Jewess by
descent. Michel was educated at the College of Bordeaux by Buchanan,
Muretus, and other famous scholars. By a fad of his father’s, he was
surrounded from the beginning by people who only spoke Latin, and so
learned the language naturally. His schooling came to an end when he
was thirteen. Although he inherited a strong frame from his father,
and did possibly serve one or two campaigns, he applied himself to the
law, and not to arms, as a profession. He held a judicial post, first
at Périgueux, then at Bordeaux, but resigned it early, and retired
to his own house. Montaigne was known at Court, which he visited
several times, even before he published the first two books of his
_Essays_ in 1580. During one visit to Paris in 1588 to superintend the
publication of the third book, he was an eye-witness of the “day of
the barricades,” and was imprisoned in the Bastille by Leaguers. He
travelled abroad, and returned to hold municipal office at Bordeaux,
where he showed more caution than courage during a visitation of the
plague. He died at his own house of Montaigne in 1592, just as the long
anarchy of the wars of Religion, which he had never allowed to ruffle
the calm of his life, was coming to an end.[114]
The fame of Montaigne was great in his own time, and has never suffered
eclipse. Nor is it possible that it ever should, since, in addition
to personal qualities of an amusing and attractive kind, he was the
thorough type of a certain stamp of intellect. He was as complete a
Gascon as his countryman Monluc, and may even be said to have carried
the peculiar quality of his race to a yet higher pitch. Monluc was
resolved that all the world should know him for the astute and intrepid
soldier he was. Montaigne did not condescend to justify himself by his
deeds. He asked the world to be interested in him, not as a soldier,
nor indeed as anything, except just a thinking man. And the world has
never denied that the man and his thoughts were worth knowing. [SN:
_His_ Essays.] The subject of his _Essays_ is always substantially
Michel of Montaigne, his health, his reading, his views of men, things,
and opinions, his habits of mind and body. In matter, in form, and in
intellectual scope he is all the world apart from Brantôme, and yet
he is not wholly unlike the old disappointed courtier of the Valois,
discoursing _Des Hommes_ and _Des Femmes_. Both talk out all that was
in them, with a certain affectation of carelessness, but in reality
with thought, and no small toil over the manner of saying. During his
later years Montaigne employed himself much in covering the margins of
a copy of the so-called fifth edition of his _Essays_ with corrections
and additions. The book still exists in the library at Bordeaux.
After his death his widow intrusted his friend, Pierre de Brach, with
the task of editing a revised edition. Brach, who had the help of
Montaigne’s adopted daughter, Mdlle. de Gournay, produced what was
for long the accepted text in the edition of 1595. But though Pierre
de Brach and Mdlle. de Gournay worked with care, they omitted a good
deal, and misunderstood something. Successive editors in this century
have laboured to correct their errors of omission and commission, but
the text of Montaigne has never yet been fixed to the satisfaction of
exacting critics.
[SN: _The scepticism of Montaigne._]
It is but natural that a writer who deals with permanently interesting
questions of principle and conduct, and who has always been read,
should have been diversely judged during the very different centuries
which have passed since his death. The judgments of the seventeenth
and the eighteenth centuries on the scepticism of Montaigne are
in fact examples of a truth which he has himself most excellently
stated--namely, that we read much of ourselves into our authors.
During the strong Roman Catholic reaction of the seventeenth century
his amused interest in both sides of all questions, and his favourite
thesis that no doctrine is so sure that we are justified in killing
men for it, were found exasperating by those who were terribly in
earnest. In the eighteenth century he was praised, and accepted as
a forerunner of Voltaire, on these very grounds. What one body of
critics called poorness of spirit and coldness of heart, another called
wisdom. For that he would himself have been prepared. In the first of
his _Essays_, “By divers meanes men come unto a like end,” he states
what was perhaps the firmest of his convictions--to wit, that “surely
man is a wonderfull, vaine, divers, and wavering subject; it is very
hard to ground any directly-constant and uniforme judgement upon him.”
We shall perhaps not go far wrong if we describe the scepticism of
Montaigne as a constant recollection that whatever men have said,
thought, or done, has been necessarily the work of this “vaine, divers,
and wavering subject,” and is not to be taken too seriously. A wise
man will accept the social and religious order of his country, even
with its vices, since we have so little wisdom that our efforts at
amendment will probably produce more mischief than they will correct.
In any case, what has existed and stood the test of experience has more
claim on our loyalty than the mere guesses of the reformer. Yet, while
accepting existing order, he need not believe in it too much, and he
certainly need not deny himself the pleasure of noting the innumerable
absurdities of even the most respectable parts of man’s handiwork.
Science is vain, since it is but speculation on subjects we shall
never really understand. Conduct is the important thing. Do not lie,
do not be cruel, do not be a pedant (on these points indeed there was
no scepticism in Montaigne); do not strive after unattainable ideals
of truth (for what is truth except what we think about the causes and
nature of things, and what are we but “vaine, diverse, and wavering
subjects”?), or of virtue, or of chastity. Let us live our lives,
exercising all our faculties of body and mind--in prudent moderation,
and with due regard to our time of life. It is not the greatest
advice which can be given to man. If the human race had acted up to
Montaigne’s standard of wisdom, there would have been no prophets, no
saints, no martyrs, hardly any great thinkers, or great explorers.
It would be possible to follow Montaigne and be a haberdasher of
small-wares. One could not follow him and be a bigot, “une bonne
ligne droite de ferocité sotte,” in any cause, or disgrace knowledge
by pedantry, or conquest and discovery by cruelty and avarice. But
it is an idle question whether he was better or worse than Luther or
Saint Francis de Sales. He was different, and he is a perfect example
of a stamp of man who will never fail while the human race lasts and
thinks--the sagacious man who is naturally kind and honest, but is not
virtuous in any lofty sense, or capable of strong conviction. Amid the
clash of dogmatists, all fanatically sure they were right, and all
cruel, which filled the sixteenth century with tumult, the voice of
Montaigne supplied something which was sorely needed.
[SN: _His style._]
As a writer the importance of Montaigne can hardly be exaggerated. To
him modern literature owes the essay, which of itself would be a claim
to immortality. He first set the example of discussing great questions
in the tone of the man of the world speaking to men of the world. His
style, which can be eloquent to the highest degree, is more commonly
easy and “savoury”--full, that is to say, of colour and character.
His amplifications, and his constant use of quotations, his lawless
wanderings away from his subject, and then through many turnings
back to it--when he has a subject at all--his amazing indiscretions
concerning his health, his morals, and his family history, his frequent
sudden appeals to the reader, as of one speaking in confidence and on
the spur of the moment, make up a combination which cannot be defined
in its inexhaustible variety. It is not the least charm of the _Essays_
that they invite desultory reading. If advice in this matter were
ever of much value, we might recommend the reader who has Montaigne
to begin, to start with the “Apologie for Raymond of Sebonde,” which
will give him the whole spirit and way of thinking, and then to read as
accident dictates. Orderly study is quite unnecessary with an author
who starts from no premiss to arrive at no conclusion, whose unity
is due not to doctrine but to character, and who “rays out curious
observations on life” all illuminated by a vast learning and by humour.
[SN: _Charron and Du Vair._]
The teaching of Montaigne was expounded by Pierre Charron (1541-1603),
a lawyer, who took orders, and had written against the League and
the Protestants, before he fell under the influence of the author of
the _Essays_. His most famous--or rather, his one surviving--work,
the _Traité de la Sagesse_ (1601),[115] is a restatement in more
scholastic form of the ideas of Montaigne. Charron also drew largely,
for he was not by any means an original writer, on Guillaume du Vair
(1556-1621). Du Vair, who is considered one of the best prose-writers
of his time, was the author of many treatises on philosophical
subjects;[116] but he is remembered mainly for his famous _Suasion_, or
plea for the Salic Law, delivered before the Estates summoned by the
League in 1593. He represented the magistracy, and it is said that his
argument persuaded the Estates to reject the candidature of the Infanta
of Spain, who had been brought forward by the extreme Catholic party as
rival to Henry IV.
FOOTNOTES:
[104] The true title, which is too characteristic not to be given in
full, is, “Des Sages et Royales Œconomies domestiques, politiques, et
militaires de Henri le Grand, le prince des vertus, des armes, et des
lois, et le père en effet [i.e., _en realité_] de ses peuples françois.
Et des servitudes utiles, obéissantes, convenables, et administrations
loyales de Maximilien de Béthune, l’un des plus confidents familiers
et utiles soldats et serviteurs du grand Mars des François. Dédiés à
la France, à tous les bons soldats et tous peuples François.” It is
described as printed at Amestelredam (Amsterdam), at the sign of the
three immortal virtues crowned with amaranth--_i.e._, Faith, Hope,
Charity (of which last Sully had no great share), by Alethinosgraphe of
Clearétimélée, and Graphexechon of Pistariste--_i.e._, Veracious-Writer
of Glory-Virtue-Care, and Emeritus Secretary of High Probity. The
_Œconomies Royales_ are included by M. Petitot in his collection of
memoirs, 2nd series, vols. i.-ix.
[105] These memoirs are included in the great collections of Petitot,
and Michaud and Poujoulat. M. Zeller, in two volumes of his excellent
_Histoire de France racontée par les contemporains_, has made up a
consecutive story by extracts from the writers named above and others.
No other literature could supply so much good reading of the same kind,
and they are to be obtained for the “ridiculous sum” of tenpence each.
[106] Petitot, vols. xxvi.-xxviii.
[107] The memoirs are printed in the thirty-fourth volume of Petitot.
[108] Ed. of M. L. Lalanne, 1854.
[109] Much remained unprinted till it was published by MM. Réaume and
Caussade.
[110] The _Commentaries_ of Monluc are included in Petitot’s
Collection, vols. xx.-xxii., but the definitive edition is that of M.
Alphonse de Ruble, published by the Société de l’Histoire de France.
The first three volumes contain the _Commentaries_; the fourth and
fifth the _Letters_, which M. de Ruble discovered in Russia.
[111] The best edition of Brantôme is that of the Société de l’Histoire
de France. Prosper Mérimée edited an incomplete edition in the
“Bibliothèque Elzévirienne.” Partial reprints are numerous.
[112] Ed. Brunet et Champollion, 1875-1881.
[113] Ed. M. Ch. Read, Paris, 1880, in Jouaust’s “Librairie des
Bibliophiles.”
[114] The standard edition of Montaigne’s _Essays_ is still that of Le
Clerc, reprinted in 1865-66. There have been two recent reprints of our
own excellent and contemporary translation by John Florio; one, very
handsome, in Mr Henley’s “Tudor Translations”; and another, cheap and
pretty, edited by Mr Waller, in six small volumes.
[115] Ed. Amaury Duval, 1828.
[116] Œuvres Complètes, 1641.