Produced by David Widger
ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Translated by Charles Cotton
Edited by William Carew Hazilitt
1877
CONTENTS OF VOLUME 1.
Preface
The Life of Montaigne
The Letters of Montaigne
PREFACE.
The present publication is intended to supply a recognised deficiency in
our literature--a library edition of the Essays of Montaigne. This great
French writer deserves to be regarded as a classic, not only in the land
of his birth, but in all countries and in all literatures. His Essays,
which are at once the most celebrated and the most permanent of his
productions, form a magazine out of which such minds as those of Bacon
and Shakespeare did not disdain to help themselves; and, indeed, as
Hallam observes, the Frenchman's literary importance largely results from
the share which his mind had in influencing other minds, coeval and
subsequent. But, at the same time, estimating the value and rank of the
essayist, we are not to leave out of the account the drawbacks and the
circumstances of the period: the imperfect state of education, the
comparative scarcity of books, and the limited opportunities of
intellectual intercourse. Montaigne freely borrowed of others, and he
has found men willing to borrow of him as freely. We need not wonder at
the reputation which he with seeming facility achieved. He was, without
being aware of it, the leader of a new school in letters and morals. His
book was different from all others which were at that date in the world.
It diverted the ancient currents of thought into new channels. It told
its readers, with unexampled frankness, what its writer's opinion was
about men and things, and threw what must have been a strange kind of new
light on many matters but darkly understood. Above all, the essayist
uncased himself, and made his intellectual and physical organism public
property. He took the world into his confidence on all subjects. His
essays were a sort of literary anatomy, where we get a diagnosis of the
writer's mind, made by himself at different levels and under a large
variety of operating influences.
Of all egotists, Montaigne, if not the greatest, was the most
fascinating, because, perhaps, he was the least affected and most
truthful. What he did, and what he had professed to do, was to dissect
his mind, and show us, as best he could, how it was made, and what
relation it bore to external objects. He investigated his mental
structure as a schoolboy pulls his watch to pieces, to examine the
mechanism of the works; and the result, accompanied by illustrations
abounding with originality and force, he delivered to his fellow-men in a
book.
Eloquence, rhetorical effect, poetry, were alike remote from his design.
He did not write from necessity, scarcely perhaps for fame. But he
desired to leave France, nay, and the world, something to be remembered
by, something which should tell what kind of a man he was--what he felt,
thought, suffered--and he succeeded immeasurably, I apprehend, beyond his
expectations.
It was reasonable enough that Montaigne should expect for his work a
certain share of celebrity in Gascony, and even, as time went on,
throughout France; but it is scarcely probable that he foresaw how his
renown was to become world-wide; how he was to occupy an almost unique
position as a man of letters and a moralist; how the Essays would be
read, in all the principal languages of Europe, by millions of
intelligent human beings, who never heard of Perigord or the League, and
who are in doubt, if they are questioned, whether the author lived in the
sixteenth or the eighteenth century. This is true fame. A man of genius
belongs to no period and no country. He speaks the language of nature,
which is always everywhere the same.
The text of these volumes is taken from the first edition of Cotton's
version, printed in 3 vols. 8vo, 1685-6, and republished in 1693, 1700,
1711, 1738, and 1743, in the same number of volumes and the same size.
In the earliest impression the errors of the press are corrected merely
as far as page 240 of the first volume, and all the editions follow one
another. That of 1685-6 was the only one which the translator lived to
see. He died in 1687, leaving behind him an interesting and little-known
collection of poems, which appeared posthumously, 8vo, 1689.
It was considered imperative to correct Cotton's translation by a careful
collation with the 'variorum' edition of the original, Paris, 1854,
4 vols. 8vo or 12mo, and parallel passages from Florin's earlier
undertaking have occasionally been inserted at the foot of the page. A
Life of the Author and all his recovered Letters, sixteen in number, have
also been given; but, as regards the correspondence, it can scarcely be
doubted that it is in a purely fragmentary state. To do more than
furnish a sketch of the leading incidents in Montaigne's life seemed, in
the presence of Bayle St. John's charming and able biography, an attempt
as difficult as it was useless.
The besetting sin of both Montaigne's translators seems to have been a
propensity for reducing his language and phraseology to the language and
phraseology of the age and country to which they belonged, and, moreover,
inserting paragraphs and words, not here and there only, but constantly
and habitually, from an evident desire and view to elucidate or
strengthen their author's meaning. The result has generally been
unfortunate; and I have, in the case of all these interpolations on
Cotton's part, felt bound, where I did not cancel them, to throw them
down into the notes, not thinking it right that Montaigne should be
allowed any longer to stand sponsor for what he never wrote; and
reluctant, on the other hand, to suppress the intruding matter entirely,
where it appeared to possess a value of its own.
Nor is redundancy or paraphrase the only form of transgression in Cotton,
for there are places in his author which he thought proper to omit, and
it is hardly necessary to say that the restoration of all such matter to
the text was considered essential to its integrity and completeness.
My warmest thanks are due to my father, Mr Registrar Hazlitt, the author
of the well-known and excellent edition of Montaigne published in 1842,
for the important assistance which he has rendered to me in verifying and
retranslating the quotations, which were in a most corrupt state, and of
which Cotton's English versions were singularly loose and inexact, and
for the zeal with which he has co-operated with me in collating the
English text, line for line and word for word, with the best French
edition.
By the favour of Mr F. W. Cosens, I have had by me, while at work on this
subject, the copy of Cotgrave's Dictionary, folio, 1650, which belonged
to Cotton. It has his autograph and copious MSS. notes, nor is it too
much to presume that it is the very book employed by him in his
translation.
W. C. H.
KENSINGTON, November 1877.
BOOK THE FIRST.
CHAP.
I. That men by various ways arrive at the same end.
II. Of Sorrow.
III. That our affections carry themselves beyond us.
IV. That the soul discharges her passions upon false objects, where
the true are wanting.
V. Whether the governor of a place besieged ought himself to go out
to parley.
VI. That the hour of parley is dangerous.
VII. That the intention is judge of our actions
VIII. Of idleness.
IX. Of liars.
X. Of quick or slow speech.
XI. Of prognostications.
XII. Of constancy.
XIII. The ceremony of the interview of princes.
XIV. That men are justly punished for being obstinate in the defence
of a fort that is not in reason to be defended.
XV. Of the punishment of cowardice.
XVI. A proceeding of some ambassadors.
XVII. Of fear.
XVIII. That men are not to judge of our happiness till after death.
XIX. That to study philosophy is to learn to die.
XX. Of the force of imagination.
XXI. That the profit of one man is the damage of another.
XXII. Of custom, and that we should not easily change a law received.
XXIII. Various events from the same counsel.
XXIV. Of pedantry.
XXV. Of the education of children.
XXVI. That it is folly to measure truth and error by our own capacity.
XXVII. Of friendship.
XXVIII. Nine-and-twenty sonnets of Estienne de la Boetie.
XXIX. Of moderation.
XXX. Of cannibals.
XXXI. That a man is soberly to judge of the divine ordinances.
XXXII. That we are to avoid pleasures, even at the expense of
life.
XXXIII. That fortune is oftentimes observed to act by the rule of reason.
XXXIV. Of one defect in our government.
XXXV. Of the custom of wearing clothes.
XXXVI. Of Cato the Younger.
XXXVII. That we laugh and cry for the same thing.
XXXVIII. Of solitude.
XXXIX. A consideration upon Cicero.
XL. That the relish of good and evil depends in a great measure upon
the opinion we have of them.
XLI. Not to communicate a man's honour.
XLII. Of the inequality amongst us.
XLIII. Of sumptuary laws.
XLIV. Of sleep.
XLV. Of the battle of Dreux.
XLVI. Of names.
XLVII. Of the uncertainty of our judgment.
XLVIII. Of war-horses, or destriers.
XLIX. Of ancient customs.
L. Of Democritus and Heraclitus.
LI. Of the vanity of words.
LII. Of the parsimony of the Ancients.
LIII. Of a saying of Caesar.
LIV. Of vain subtleties.
LV. Of smells.
LVI. Of prayers.
LVII. Of age.
THE LIFE OF MONTAIGNE
[This is translated freely from that prefixed to the 'variorum' Paris
edition, 1854, 4 vols. 8vo. This biography is the more desirable that
it contains all really interesting and important matter in the journal of
the Tour in Germany and Italy, which, as it was merely written under
Montaigne's dictation, is in the third person, is scarcely worth
publication, as a whole, in an English dress.]
The author of the Essays was born, as he informs us himself, between
eleven and twelve o'clock in the day, the last of February 1533, at the
chateau of St. Michel de Montaigne. His father, Pierre Eyquem, esquire,
was successively first Jurat of the town of Bordeaux (1530), Under-Mayor
1536, Jurat for the second time in 1540, Procureur in 1546, and at
length Mayor from 1553 to 1556. He was a man of austere probity, who had
"a particular regard for honour and for propriety in his person and
attire . . . a mighty good faith in his speech, and a conscience and
a religious feeling inclining to superstition, rather than to the other
extreme."[Essays, ii. 2.] Pierre Eyquem bestowed great care on the
education of his children, especially on the practical side of it. To
associate closely his son Michel with the people, and attach him to those
who stand in need of assistance, he caused him to be held at the font by
persons of meanest position; subsequently he put him out to nurse with a
poor villager, and then, at a later period, made him accustom himself to
the most common sort of living, taking care, nevertheless, to cultivate
his mind, and superintend its development without the exercise of undue
rigour or constraint. Michel, who gives us the minutest account of his
earliest years, charmingly narrates how they used to awake him by the
sound of some agreeable music, and how he learned Latin, without
suffering the rod or shedding a tear, before beginning French, thanks to
the German teacher whom his father had placed near him, and who never
addressed him except in the language of Virgil and Cicero. The study of
Greek took precedence. At six years of age young Montaigne went to the
College of Guienne at Bordeaux, where he had as preceptors the most
eminent scholars of the sixteenth century, Nicolas Grouchy, Guerente,
Muret, and Buchanan. At thirteen he had passed through all the classes,
and as he was destined for the law he left school to study that science.
He was then about fourteen, but these early years of his life are
involved in obscurity. The next information that we have is that in 1554
he received the appointment of councillor in the Parliament of Bordeaux;
in 1559 he was at Bar-le-Duc with the court of Francis II, and in the
year following he was present at Rouen to witness the declaration of the
majority of Charles IX. We do not know in what manner he was engaged on
these occasions.
Between 1556 and 1563 an important incident occurred in the life of
Montaigne, in the commencement of his romantic friendship with Etienne de
la Boetie, whom he had met, as he tells us, by pure chance at some
festive celebration in the town. From their very first interview the two
found themselves drawn irresistibly close to one another, and during six
years this alliance was foremost in the heart of Montaigne, as it was
afterwards in his memory, when death had severed it.
Although he blames severely in his own book [Essays, i. 27.] those who,
contrary to the opinion of Aristotle, marry before five-and-thirty,
Montaigne did not wait for the period fixed by the philosopher of
Stagyra, but in 1566, in his thirty-third year, he espoused Francoise de
Chassaigne, daughter of a councillor in the Parliament of Bordeaux. The
history of his early married life vies in obscurity with that of his
youth. His biographers are not agreed among themselves; and in the
same degree that he lays open to our view all that concerns his secret
thoughts, the innermost mechanism of his mind, he observes too much
reticence in respect to his public functions and conduct, and his social
relations. The title of Gentleman in Ordinary to the King, which he
assumes, in a preface, and which Henry II. gives him in a letter, which
we print a little farther on; what he says as to the commotions of
courts, where he passed a portion of his life; the Instructions which he
wrote under the dictation of Catherine de Medici for King Charles IX.,
and his noble correspondence with Henry IV., leave no doubt, however, as
to the part which he played in the transactions of those times, and we
find an unanswerable proof of the esteem in which he was held by the most
exalted personages, in a letter which was addressed to him by Charles at
the time he was admitted to the Order of St. Michael, which was, as he
informs us himself, the highest honour of the French noblesse.
According to Lacroix du Maine, Montaigne, upon the death of his eldest
brother, resigned his post of Councillor, in order to adopt the military
profession, while, if we might credit the President Bouhier, he never
discharged any functions connected with arms. However, several passages
in the Essays seem to indicate that he not only took service, but that he
was actually in numerous campaigns with the Catholic armies. Let us add,
that on his monument he is represented in a coat of mail, with his casque
and gauntlets on his right side, and a lion at his feet, all which
signifies, in the language of funeral emblems, that the departed has been
engaged in some important military transactions.
However it may be as to these conjectures, our author, having arrived at
his thirty-eighth year, resolved to dedicate to study and contemplation
the remaining term of his life; and on his birthday, the last of February
1571, he caused a philosophical inscription, in Latin, to be placed upon
one of the walls of his chateau, where it is still to be seen, and of
which the translation is to this effect:--"In the year of Christ . . .
in his thirty-eighth year, on the eve of the Calends of March, his
birthday, Michel Montaigne, already weary of court employments and public
honours, withdrew himself entirely into the converse of the learned
virgins where he intends to spend the remaining moiety of the to allotted
to him in tranquil seclusion."
At the time to which we have come, Montaigne was unknown to the world of
letters, except as a translator and editor. In 1569 he had published a
translation of the "Natural Theology" of Raymond de Sebonde, which he had
solely undertaken to please his father. In 1571 he had caused to be
printed at Paris certain 'opuscucla' of Etienne de la Boetie; and these
two efforts, inspired in one case by filial duty, and in the other by
friendship, prove that affectionate motives overruled with him mere
personal ambition as a literary man. We may suppose that he began to
compose the Essays at the very outset of his retirement from public
engagements; for as, according to his own account, observes the President
Bouhier, he cared neither for the chase, nor building, nor gardening, nor
agricultural pursuits, and was exclusively occupied with reading and
reflection, he devoted himself with satisfaction to the task of setting
down his thoughts just as they occurred to him. Those thoughts became a
book, and the first part of that book, which was to confer immortality on
the writer, appeared at Bordeaux in 1580. Montaigne was then
fifty-seven; he had suffered for some years past from renal colic and
gravel; and it was with the necessity of distraction from his pain, and
the hope of deriving relief from the waters, that he undertook at this
time a great journey. As the account which he has left of his travels in
Germany and Italy comprises some highly interesting particulars of his
life and personal history, it seems worth while to furnish a sketch or
analysis of it.
"The Journey, of which we proceed to describe the course simply," says
the editor of the Itinerary, "had, from Beaumont-sur-Oise to Plombieres,
in Lorraine, nothing sufficiently interesting to detain us . . . we
must go as far, as Basle, of which we have a description, acquainting us
with its physical and political condition at that period, as well as with
the character of its baths. The passage of Montaigne through Switzerland
is not without interest, as we see there how our philosophical traveller
accommodated himself everywhere to the ways of the country. The hotels,
the provisions, the Swiss cookery, everything, was agreeable to him; it
appears, indeed, as if he preferred to the French manners and tastes
those of the places he was visiting, and of which the simplicity and
freedom (or frankness) accorded more with his own mode of life and
thinking. In the towns where he stayed, Montaigne took care to see the
Protestant divines, to make himself conversant with all their dogmas. He
even had disputations with them occasionally.
"Having left Switzerland he went to Isne, an imperial then on to Augsburg
and Munich. He afterwards proceeded to the Tyrol, where he was agreeably
surprised, after the warnings which he had received, at the very slight
inconveniences which he suffered, which gave him occasion to remark that
he had all his life distrusted the statements of others respecting
foreign countries, each person's tastes being according to the notions of
his native place; and that he had consequently set very little on what he
was told beforehand.
"Upon his arrival at Botzen, Montaigne wrote to Francois Hottmann, to say
that he had been so pleased with his visit to Germany that he quitted it
with great regret, although it was to go into Italy. He then passed
through Brunsol, Trent, where he put up at the Rose; thence going to
Rovera; and here he first lamented the scarcity of crawfish, but made up
for the loss by partaking of truffles cooked in oil and vinegar; oranges,
citrons, and olives, in all of which he delighted."
After passing a restless night, when he bethought himself in the morning
that there was some new town or district to be seen, he rose, we are
told, with alacrity and pleasure.
His secretary, to whom he dictated his Journal, assures us that he never
saw him take so much interest in surrounding scenes and persons, and
believes that the complete change helped to mitigate his sufferings in
concentrating his attention on other points. When there was a complaint
made that he had led his party out of the beaten route, and then returned
very near the spot from which they started, his answer was that he had no
settled course, and that he merely proposed to himself to pay visits to
places which he had not seen, and so long as they could not convict him
of traversing the same path twice, or revisiting a point already seen, he
could perceive no harm in his plan. As to Rome, he cared less to go
there, inasmuch as everybody went there; and he said that he never had a
lacquey who could not tell him all about Florence or Ferrara. He also
would say that he seemed to himself like those who are reading some
pleasant story or some fine book, of which they fear to come to the end:
he felt so much pleasure in travelling that he dreaded the moment of
arrival at the place where they were to stop for the night.
We see that Montaigne travelled, just as he wrote, completely at his
ease, and without the least constraint, turning, just as he fancied, from
the common or ordinary roads taken by tourists. The good inns, the soft
beds, the fine views, attracted his notice at every point, and in his
observations on men and things he confines himself chiefly to the
practical side. The consideration of his health was constantly before
him, and it was in consequence of this that, while at Venice, which
disappointed him, he took occasion to note, for the benefit of readers,
that he had an attack of colic, and that he evacuated two large stones
after supper. On quitting Venice, he went in succession to Ferrara,
Rovigo, Padua, Bologna (where he had a stomach-ache), Florence, &c.; and
everywhere, before alighting, he made it a rule to send some of his
servants to ascertain where the best accommodation was to be had. He
pronounced the Florentine women the finest in the world, but had not an
equally good opinion of the food, which was less plentiful than in
Germany, and not so well served. He lets us understand that in Italy
they send up dishes without dressing, but in Germany they were much
better seasoned, and served with a variety of sauces and gravies. He
remarked further, that the glasses were singularly small and the wines
insipid.
After dining with the Grand-Duke of Florence, Montaigne passed rapidly
over the intermediate country, which had no fascination for him, and
arrived at Rome on the last day of November, entering by the Porta del
Popolo, and putting up at Bear. But he afterwards hired, at twenty
crowns a month, fine furnished rooms in the house of a Spaniard, who
included in these terms the use of the kitchen fire. What most annoyed
him in the Eternal City was the number of Frenchmen he met, who all
saluted him in his native tongue; but otherwise he was very comfortable,
and his stay extended to five months. A mind like his, full of grand
classical reflections, could not fail to be profoundly impressed in the
presence of the ruins at Rome, and he has enshrined in a magnificent
passage of the Journal the feelings of the moment: "He said," writes his
secretary, "that at Rome one saw nothing but the sky under which she had
been built, and the outline of her site: that the knowledge we had of her
was abstract, contemplative, not palpable to the actual senses: that
those who said they beheld at least the ruins of Rome, went too far, for
the ruins of so gigantic a structure must have commanded greater
reverence-it was nothing but her sepulchre. The world, jealous of her,
prolonged empire, had in the first place broken to pieces that admirable
body, and then, when they perceived that the remains attracted worship
and awe, had buried the very wreck itself.--[Compare a passage in one
of Horace Walpole's letters to Richard West, 22 March 1740 (Cunningham's
edit. i. 41), where Walpole, speaking of Rome, describes her very ruins
as ruined.]--As to those small fragments which were still to be seen on
the surface, notwithstanding the assaults of time and all other attacks,
again and again repeated, they had been favoured by fortune to be some
slight evidence of that infinite grandeur which nothing could entirely
extingish. But it was likely that these disfigured remains were the
least entitled to attention, and that the enemies of that immortal
renown, in their fury, had addressed themselves in the first instance to
the destruction of what was most beautiful and worthiest of preservation;
and that the buildings of this bastard Rome, raised upon the ancient
productions, although they might excite the admiration of the present
age, reminded him of the crows' and sparrows' nests built in the walls
and arches of the old churches, destroyed by the Huguenots. Again, he
was apprehensive, seeing the space which this grave occupied, that the
whole might not have been recovered, and that the burial itself had been
buried. And, moreover, to see a wretched heap of rubbish, as pieces of
tile and pottery, grow (as it had ages since) to a height equal to that
of Mount Gurson,--[In Perigord.]--and thrice the width of it, appeared to
show a conspiracy of destiny against the glory and pre-eminence of that
city, affording at the same time a novel and extraordinary proof of its
departed greatness. He (Montaigne) observed that it was difficult to
believe considering the limited area taken up by any of her seven hills
and particularly the two most favoured ones, the Capitoline and the
Palatine, that so many buildings stood on the site. Judging only from
what is left of the Temple of Concord, along the 'Forum Romanum', of
which the fall seems quite recent, like that of some huge mountain split
into horrible crags, it does not look as if more than two such edifices
could have found room on the Capitoline, on which there were at one
period from five-and-twenty to thirty temples, besides private dwellings.
But, in point of fact, there is scarcely any probability of the views
which we take of the city being correct, its plan and form having changed
infinitely; for instance, the 'Velabrum', which on account of its
depressed level, received the sewage of the city, and had a lake, has
been raised by artificial accumulation to a height with the other hills,
and Mount Savello has, in truth, grown simply out of the ruins of the
theatre of Marcellus. He believed that an ancient Roman would not
recognise the place again. It often happened that in digging down into
earth the workmen came upon the crown of some lofty column, which, though
thus buried, was still standing upright. The people there have no
recourse to other foundations than the vaults and arches of the old
houses, upon which, as on slabs of rock, they raise their modern palaces.
It is easy to see that several of the ancient streets are thirty feet
below those at present in use."
Sceptical as Montaigne shows himself in his books, yet during his sojourn
at Rome he manifested a great regard for religion. He solicited the
honour of being admitted to kiss the feet of the Holy Father, Gregory
XIII.; and the Pontiff exhorted him always to continue in the devotion
which he had hitherto exhibited to the Church and the service of the Most
Christian King.
"After this, one sees," says the editor of the Journal, "Montaigne
employing all his time in making excursions bout the neighbourhood on
horseback or on foot, in visits, in observations of every kind. The
churches, the stations, the processions even, the sermons; then the
palaces, the vineyards, the gardens, the public amusements, as the
Carnival, &c.--nothing was overlooked. He saw a Jewish child
circumcised, and wrote down a most minute account of the operation. He
met at San Sisto a Muscovite ambassador, the second who had come to Rome
since the pontificate of Paul III. This minister had despatches from his
court for Venice, addressed to the 'Grand Governor of the Signory'. The
court of Muscovy had at that time such limited relations with the other
powers of Europe, and it was so imperfect in its information, that it
thought Venice to be a dependency of the Holy See."
Of all the particulars with which he has furnished us during his stay at
Rome, the following passage in reference to the Essays is not the least
singular: "The Master of the Sacred Palace returned him his Essays,
castigated in accordance with the views of the learned monks. 'He had
only been able to form a judgment of them,' said he, 'through a certain
French monk, not understanding French himself'"--we leave Montaigne
himself to tell the story--"and he received so complacently my excuses
and explanations on each of the passages which had been animadverted upon
by the French monk, that he concluded by leaving me at liberty to revise
the text agreeably to the dictates of my own conscience. I begged him,
on the contrary, to abide by the opinion of the person who had criticised
me, confessing, among other matters, as, for example, in my use of the
word fortune, in quoting historical poets, in my apology for Julian, in
my animadversion on the theory that he who prayed ought to be exempt from
vicious inclinations for the time being; item, in my estimate of cruelty,
as something beyond simple death; item, in my view that a child ought to
be brought up to do everything, and so on; that these were my opinions,
which I did not think wrong; as to other things, I said that the
corrector understood not my meaning. The Master, who is a clever man,
made many excuses for me, and gave me to suppose that he did not concur
in the suggested improvements; and pleaded very ingeniously for me in my
presence against another (also an Italian) who opposed my sentiments."
Such is what passed between Montaigne and these two personages at that
time; but when the Essayist was leaving, and went to bid them farewell,
they used very different language to him. "They prayed me," says he,
"to pay no attention to the censure passed on my book, in which other
French persons had apprised them that there were many foolish things;
adding, that they honoured my affectionate intention towards the Church,
and my capacity; and had so high an opinion of my candour and
conscientiousness that they should leave it to me to make such
alterations as were proper in the book, when I reprinted it; among other
things, the word fortune. To excuse themselves for what they had said
against my book, they instanced works of our time by cardinals and other
divines of excellent repute which had been blamed for similar faults,
which in no way affected reputation of the author, or of the publication
as a whole; they requested me to lend the Church the support of my
eloquence (this was their fair speech), and to make longer stay in the
place, where I should be free from all further intrusion on their part.
It seemed to me that we parted very good friends."
Before quitting Rome, Montaigne received his diploma of citizenship, by
which he was greatly flattered; and after a visit to Tivoli he set out
for Loretto, stopping at Ancona, Fano, and Urbino. He arrived at the
beginning of May 1581, at Bagno della Villa, where he established
himself, order to try the waters. There, we find in the Journal, of his
own accord the Essayist lived in the strictest conformity with the
regime, and henceforth we only hear of diet, the effect which the waters
had by degrees upon system, of the manner in which he took them; in a
word, he does not omit an item of the circumstances connected with his
daily routine, his habit of body, his baths, and the rest. It was no
longer the journal of a traveller which he kept, but the diary of an
invalid,--["I am reading Montaigne's Travels, which have lately been
found; there is little in them but the baths and medicines he took, and
what he had everywhere for dinner."--H. Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, June
8, 1774.]--attentive to the minutest details of the cure which he was
endeavouring to accomplish: a sort of memorandum book, in which he was
noting down everything that he felt and did, for the benefit of his
medical man at home, who would have the care of his health on his return,
and the attendance on his subsequent infirmities. Montaigne gives it as
his reason and justification for enlarging to this extent here, that he
had omitted, to his regret, to do so in his visits to other baths, which
might have saved him the trouble of writing at such great length now; but
it is perhaps a better reason in our eyes, that what he wrote he wrote
for his own use.
We find in these accounts, however, many touches which are valuable as
illustrating the manners of the place. The greater part of the entries
in the Journal, giving the account of these waters, and of the travels,
down to Montaigne's arrival at the first French town on his homeward
route, are in Italian, because he wished to exercise himself in that
language.
The minute and constant watchfulness of Montaigne over his health and
over himself might lead one to suspect that excessive fear of death which
degenerates into cowardice. But was it not rather the fear of the
operation for the stone, at that time really formidable? Or perhaps he
was of the same way of thinking with the Greek poet, of whom Cicero
reports this saying: "I do not desire to die; but the thought of being
dead is indifferent to me." Let us hear, however, what he says himself
on this point very frankly: "It would be too weak and unmanly on my part
if, certain as I am of always finding myself in the position of having to
succumb in that way,--[To the stone or gravel.]--and death coming nearer
and nearer to me, I did not make some effort, before the time came, to
bear the trial with fortitude. For reason prescribes that we should
joyfully accept what it may please God to send us. Therefore the only
remedy, the only rule, and the sole doctrine for avoiding the evils by
which mankind is surrounded, whatever they are, is to resolve to bear
them so far as our nature permits, or to put an end to them courageously
and promptly."
He was still at the waters of La Villa, when, on the 7th September 1581,
he learned by letter that he had been elected Mayor of Bordeaux on the
1st August preceding. This intelligence made him hasten his departure;
and from Lucca he proceeded to Rome. He again made some stay in that
city, and he there received the letter of the jurats of Bordeaux,
notifying to him officially his election to the Mayoralty, and inviting
him to return as speedily as possible. He left for France, accompanied
by young D'Estissac and several other gentlemen, who escorted him a
considerable distance; but none went back to France with him, not even
his travelling companion. He passed by Padua, Milan, Mont Cenis, and
Chambery; thence he went on to Lyons, and lost no time in repairing to
his chateau, after an absence of seventeen months and eight days.
We have just seen that, during his absence in Italy, the author of the
Essays was elected mayor of Bordeaux. "The gentlemen of Bordeaux," says
he, "elected me Mayor of their town while I was at a distance from
France, and far from the thought of such a thing. I excused myself; but
they gave to understand that I was wrong in so doing, it being also the
command of the king that I should stand." This the letter which Henry
III. wrote to him on the occasion:
MONSIEUR, DE MONTAIGNE,--Inasmuch as I hold in great esteem your fidelity
and zealous devotion to my service, it has been a pleasure to me to learn
that you have been chosen mayor of my town of Bordeaux. I have had the
agreeable duty of confirming the selection, and I did so the more
willingly, seeing that it was made during your distant absence; wherefore
it is my desire, and I require and command you expressly that you proceed
without delay to enter on the duties to which you have received so
legitimate a call. And so you will act in a manner very agreeable to me,
while the contrary will displease me greatly. Praying God, M. de
Montaigne, to have you in his holy keeping.
"Written at Paris, the 25th day of November 1581.
"HENRI.
"A Monsieur de MONTAIGNE,
Knight of my Order, Gentleman in Ordinary of my
Chamber, being at present in Rome."
Montaigne, in his new employment, the most important in the province,
obeyed the axiom, that a man may not refuse a duty, though it absorb his
time and attention, and even involve the sacrifice of his blood. Placed
between two extreme parties, ever on the point of getting to blows, he
showed himself in practice what he is in his book, the friend of a middle
and temperate policy. Tolerant by character and on principle, he
belonged, like all the great minds of the sixteenth century, to that
political sect which sought to improve, without destroying, institutions;
and we may say of him, what he himself said of La Boetie, "that he had
that maxim indelibly impressed on his mind, to obey and submit himself
religiously to the laws under which he was born. Affectionately attached
to the repose of his country, an enemy to changes and innovations, he
would have preferred to employ what means he had towards their
discouragement and suppression, than in promoting their success." Such
was the platform of his administration.
He applied himself, in an especial manner, to the maintenance of peace
between the two religious factions which at that time divided the town of
Bordeaux; and at the end of his two first years of office, his grateful
fellow-citizens conferred on him (in 1583) the mayoralty for two years
more, a distinction which had been enjoyed, as he tells us, only twice
before. On the expiration of his official career, after four years'
duration, he could say fairly enough of himself that he left behind him
neither hatred nor cause of offence.
In the midst of the cares of government, Montaigne found time to revise
and enlarge his Essays, which, since their appearance in 1580, were
continually receiving augmentation in the form of additional chapters or
papers. Two more editions were printed in 1582 and 1587; and during this
time the author, while making alterations in the original text, had
composed part of the Third Book. He went to Paris to make arrangements
for the publication of his enlarged labours, and a fourth impression in
1588 was the result. He remained in the capital some time on this
occasion, and it was now that he met for the first time Mademoiselle de
Gournay. Gifted with an active and inquiring spirit, and, above all,
possessing a sound and healthy tone of mind, Mademoiselle de Gournay had
been carried from her childhood with that tide which set in with
sixteenth century towards controversy, learning, and knowledge. She
learnt Latin without a master; and when, the age of eighteen, she
accidentally became possessor of a copy of the Essays, she was
transported with delight and admiration.
She quitted the chateau of Gournay, to come and see him. We cannot do
better, in connection with this journey of sympathy, than to repeat the
words of Pasquier: "That young lady, allied to several great and noble
families of Paris, proposed to herself no other marriage than with her
honour, enriched with the knowledge gained from good books, and, beyond
all others, from the essays of M. de Montaigne, who making in the year
1588 a lengthened stay in the town of Paris, she went there for the
purpose of forming his personal acquaintance; and her mother, Madame de
Gournay, and herself took him back with them to their chateau, where, at
two or three different times, he spent three months altogether, most
welcome of visitors." It was from this moment that Mademoiselle de
Gournay dated her adoption as Montaigne's daughter, a circumstance which
has tended to confer immortality upon her in a far greater measure than
her own literary productions.
Montaigne, on leaving Paris, stayed a short time at Blois, to attend the
meeting of the States-General. We do not know what part he took in that
assembly: but it is known that he was commissioned, about this period, to
negotiate between Henry of Navarre (afterwards Henry IV.) and the Duke of
Guise. His political life is almost a blank; but De Thou assures us that
Montaigne enjoyed the confidence of the principal persons of his time.
De Thou, who calls him a frank man without constraint, tells us that,
walking with him and Pasquier in the court at the Castle of Blois, he
heard him pronounce some very remarkable opinions on contemporary events,
and he adds that Montaigne had foreseen that the troubles in France could
not end without witnessing the death of either the King of Navarre or of
the Duke of Guise. He had made himself so completely master of the views
of these two princes, that he told De Thou that the King of Navarre would
have been prepared to embrace Catholicism, if he had not been afraid of
being abandoned by his party, and that the Duke of Guise, on his part,
had no particular repugnance to the Confession of Augsburg, for which the
Cardinal of Lorraine, his uncle, had inspired him with a liking, if it
had not been for the peril involved in quitting the Romish communion. It
would have been easy for Montaigne to play, as we call it, a great part
in politics, and create for himself a lofty position but his motto was,
'Otio et Libertati'; and he returned quietly home to compose a chapter
for his next edition on inconveniences of Greatness.
The author of the Essays was now fifty-five. The malady which tormented
him grew only worse and worse with years; and yet he occupied himself
continually with reading, meditating, and composition. He employed the
years 1589, 1590, and 1591 in making fresh additions to his book; and
even in the approaches of old age he might fairly anticipate many happy
hours, when he was attacked by quinsy, depriving him of the power
utterance. Pasquier, who has left us some details his last hours,
narrates that he remained three days in full possession of his faculties,
but unable to speak, so that, in order to make known his desires, he was
obliged to resort to writing; and as he felt his end drawing near, he
begged his wife to summon certain of the gentlemen who lived in the
neighbourhood to bid them a last farewell. When they had arrived, he
caused mass to be celebrated in apartment; and just as the priest was
elevating the host, Montaigne fell forward with his arms extended in
front of him, on the bed, and so expired. He was in his sixtieth year.
It was the 13th September 1592.
Montaigne was buried near his own house; but a few years after his
decease, his remains were removed to the church of a Commandery of St.
Antoine at Bordeaux, where they still continue. His monument was
restored in 1803 by a descendant. It was seen about 1858 by an English
traveller (Mr. St. John).'--["Montaigne the Essayist," by Bayle St.
John, 1858, 2 vols. 8vo, is one of most delightful books of the kind.]--
and was then in good preservation.
In 1595 Mademoiselle de Gournay published a new edition of Montaigne's
Essays, and the first with the latest emendations of the author, from a
copy presented to her by his widow, and which has not been recovered,
although it is known to have been in existence some years after the date
of the impression, made on its authority.
Coldly as Montaigne's literary productions appear to have been received
by the generation immediately succeeding his own age, his genius grew
into just appreciation in the seventeenth century, when such great
spirits arose as La Bruyere, Moliere, La Fontaine, Madame de Sevigne.
"O," exclaimed the Chatelaine des Rochers, "what capital company he is,
the dear man! he is my old friend; and just for the reason that he is
so, he always seems new. My God! how full is that book of sense!"
Balzac said that he had carried human reason as far and as high as it
could go, both in politics and in morals. On the other hand, Malebranche
and the writers of Port Royal were against him; some reprehended the
licentiousness of his writings; others their impiety, materialism,
epicureanism. Even Pascal, who had carefully read the Essays, and gained
no small profit by them, did not spare his reproaches. But Montaigne has
outlived detraction. As time has gone on, his admirers and borrowers
have increased in number, and his Jansenism, which recommended him to the
eighteenth century, may not be his least recommendation in the
nineteenth. Here we have certainly, on the whole, a first-class man, and
one proof of his masterly genius seems to be, that his merits and his
beauties are sufficient to induce us to leave out of consideration
blemishes and faults which would have been fatal to an inferior writer.
THE LETTERS OF MONTAIGNE.
I.
To Monsieur de MONTAIGNE
[This account of the death of La Boetie begins imperfectly. It first
appeared in a little volume of Miscellanies in 1571. See Hazlitt, ubi
sup. p. 630.]--As to his last words, doubtless, if any man can
give good account of them, it is I, both because, during the whole of his
sickness he conversed as fully with me as with any one, and also because,
in consequence of the singular and brotherly friendship which we had
entertained for each other, I was perfectly acquainted with the
intentions, opinions, and wishes which he had formed in the course of his
life, as much so, certainly, as one man can possibly be with those of
another man; and because I knew them to be elevated, virtuous, full of
steady resolution, and (after all said) admirable. I well foresaw that,
if his illness permitted him to express himself, he would allow nothing
to fall from him, in such an extremity, that was not replete with good
example. I consequently took every care in my power to treasure what was
said. True it is, Monseigneur, as my memory is not only in itself very
short, but in this case affected by the trouble which I have undergone,
through so heavy and important a loss, that I have forgotten a number of
things which I should wish to have had known; but those which I recollect
shall be related to you as exactly as lies in my power. For to represent
in full measure his noble career suddenly arrested, to paint to you his
indomitable courage, in a body worn out and prostrated by pain and the
assaults of death, I confess, would demand a far better ability than
mine: because, although, when in former years he discoursed on serious
and important matters, he handled them in such a manner that it was
difficult to reproduce exactly what he said, yet his ideas and his words
at the last seemed to rival each other in serving him. For I am sure
that I never knew him give birth to such fine conceptions, or display so
much eloquence, as in the time of his sickness. If, Monseigneur, you
blame me for introducing his more ordinary observations, please to know
that I do so advisedly; for since they proceeded from him at a season of
such great trouble, they indicate the perfect tranquillity of his mind
and thoughts to the last.
On Monday, the 9th day of August 1563, on my return from the Court, I
sent an invitation to him to come and dine with me. He returned word
that he was obliged, but, being indisposed, he would thank me to do him
the pleasure of spending an hour with him before he started for Medoc.
Shortly after my dinner I went to him. He had laid himself down on the
bed with his clothes on, and he was already, I perceived, much changed.
He complained of diarrhoea, accompanied by the gripes, and said that he
had it about him ever since he played with M. d'Escars with nothing but
his doublet on, and that with him a cold often brought on such attacks.
I advised him to go as he had proposed, but to stay for the night at
Germignac, which is only about two leagues from the town. I gave him
this advice, because some houses, near to that where he was ping, were
visited by the plague, about which he was nervous since his return from
Perigord and the Agenois, here it had been raging; and, besides, horse
exercise was, from my own experience, beneficial under similar
circumstances. He set out, accordingly, with his wife and M.
Bouillhonnas, his uncle.