Instead of blowing the child’s nose, this is to take his nose off

altogether. I think the remedy worse than the disease. But, allowing it

to be true that it must of necessity be presumption to entertain people

with discourses of one’s self, I ought not, pursuing my general design,

to forbear an action that publishes this infirmity of mine, nor conceal

the fault which I not only practise but profess. Notwithstanding, to

speak my thought freely, I think that the custom of condemning wine,

because some people will be drunk, is itself to be condemned; a man

cannot abuse anything but what is good in itself; and I believe that this

rule has only regard to the popular vice. They are bits for calves, with

which neither the saints whom we hear speak so highly of themselves, nor

the philosophers, nor the divines will be curbed; neither will I, who am

as little the one as the other, If they do not write of it expressly, at

all events, when the occasions arise, they don’t hesitate to put

themselves on the public highway. Of what does Socrates treat more

largely than of himself? To what does he more direct and address the

discourses of his disciples, than to speak of themselves, not of the

lesson in their book, but of the essence and motion of their souls? We

confess ourselves religiously to God and our confessor; as our

neighbours, do to all the people. But some will answer that we there

speak nothing but accusation against ourselves; why then, we say all; for

our very virtue itself is faulty and penetrable. My trade and art is to

live; he that forbids me to speak according to my own sense, experience,

and practice, may as well enjoin an architect not to speak of building

according to his own knowledge, but according to that of his neighbour;

according to the knowledge of another, and not according to his own. If

it be vainglory for a man to publish his own virtues, why does not Cicero

prefer the eloquence of Hortensius, and Hortensius that of Cicero?

Peradventure they mean that I should give testimony of myself by works

and effects, not barely by words. I chiefly paint my thoughts, a subject

void of form and incapable of operative production; ‘tis all that I can

do to couch it in this airy body of the voice; the wisest and devoutest

men have lived in the greatest care to avoid all apparent effects.

Effects would more speak of fortune than of me; they manifest their own

office and not mine, but uncertainly and by conjecture; patterns of some

one particular virtue. I expose myself entire; ‘tis a body where, at one

view, the veins, muscles, and tendons are apparent, every of them in its

proper place; here the effects of a cold; there of the heart beating,

very dubiously. I do not write my own acts, but myself and my essence.

I am of opinion that a man must be very cautious how he values himself,

and equally conscientious to give a true report, be it better or worse,

impartially. If I thought myself perfectly good and wise, I would rattle

it out to some purpose. To speak less of one’s self than what one really

is is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is under

a man’s value is pusillanimity and cowardice, according to, Aristotle.

No virtue assists itself with falsehood; truth is never matter of error.

To speak more of one’s self than is really true is not always mere

presumption; ‘tis, moreover, very often folly; to, be immeasurably

pleased with what one is, and to fall into an indiscreet self-love, is in

my opinion the substance of this vice. The most sovereign remedy to cure

it, is to do quite contrary to what these people direct who, in

forbidding men to speak of themselves, consequently, at the same time,

interdict thinking of themselves too. Pride dwells in the thought; the

tongue can have but a very little share in it.

They fancy that to think of one’s self is to be delighted with one’s

self; to frequent and converse with one’s self, to be overindulgent; but

this excess springs only in those who take but a superficial view of

themselves, and dedicate their main inspection to their affairs; who call

it mere reverie and idleness to occupy one’s self with one’s self, and

the building one’s self up a mere building of castles in the air; who

look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger. If any one be

in rapture with his own knowledge, looking only on those below him, let

him but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will be

abated, when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample him

under foot. If he enter into a flattering presumption of his personal

valour, let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas; so many

armies, so many nations, that leave him so far behind them. No

particular quality can make any man proud, that will at the same time put

the many other weak and imperfect ones he has in the other scale, and the

nothingness of human condition to make up the weight. Because Socrates

had alone digested to purpose the precept of his god, “to know himself,”

and by that study arrived at the perfection of setting himself at nought,

he only was reputed worthy the title of a sage. Whosoever shall so know

himself, let him boldly speak it out.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

Addresses his voyage to no certain, port

All apprentices when we come to it (death)

Any one may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death

Business to-morrow

Condemning wine, because some people will be drunk

Conscience makes us betray, accuse, and fight against ourselves

Curiosity and of that eager passion for news

Delivered into our own custody the keys of life

Drunkeness a true and certain trial of every one’s nature

I can more hardly believe a man’s constancy than any virtue

“I wish you good health.” “No health to thee,” replied the other

If to philosophise be, as ‘tis defined, to doubt

Improperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair

It’s madness to nourish infirmity

Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man

Living is slavery if the liberty of dying be wanting.

Look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger

Lower himself to the meanness of defending his innocence

Much difference betwixt us and ourselves

No alcohol the night on which a man intends to get children

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness

Not conclude too much upon your mistress’s inviolable chastity

One door into life, but a hundred thousand ways out

Ordinary method of cure is carried on at the expense of life

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age

Shame for me to serve, being so near the reach of liberty

Speak less of one’s self than what one really is is folly

Taught to consider sleep as a resemblance of death

The action is commendable, not the man

The most voluntary death is the finest

The vice opposite to curiosity is negligence

Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect

Thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain

Tis evil counsel that will admit no change

Torture: rather a trial of patience than of truth

We do not go, we are driven

What can they suffer who do not fear to die?

Whoever expects punishment already suffers it

Wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazlitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 10.

VII. Of recompenses of honour.

VIII. Of the affection of fathers to their children.

IX. Of the arms of the Parthians.

X. Of books.

XI. Of cruelty.

XII. Apology for Raimond Sebond.

CHAPTER VII

OF RECOMPENSES OF HONOUR

They who write the life of Augustus Caesar,--[Suetonius, Life of

Augustus, c. 25.]--observe this in his military discipline, that he was

wonderfully liberal of gifts to men of merit, but that as to the true

recompenses of honour he was as sparing; yet he himself had been

gratified by his uncle with all the military recompenses before he had

ever been in the field. It was a pretty invention, and received into

most governments of the world, to institute certain vain and in

themselves valueless distinctions to honour and recompense virtue, such

as the crowns of laurel, oak, and myrtle, the particular fashion of some

garment, the privilege to ride in a coach in the city, or at night with a

torch, some peculiar place assigned in public assemblies, the prerogative

of certain additional names and titles, certain distinctions in the

bearing of coats of arms, and the like, the use of which, according to

the several humours of nations, has been variously received, and yet

continues.

We in France, as also several of our neighbours, have orders of

knighthood that are instituted only for this end. And ‘tis, in earnest,

a very good and profitable custom to find out an acknowledgment for the

worth of rare and excellent men, and to satisfy them with rewards that

are not at all chargeable either to prince or people. And that which has

always been found by ancient experience, and which we have heretofore

observed among ourselves, that men of quality have ever been more jealous

of such recompenses than of those wherein there was gain and profit, is

not without very good ground and reason. If with the reward, which ought

to be simply a recompense of honour, they should mix other commodities

and add riches, this mixture, instead of procuring an increase of

estimation, would debase and abate it. The Order of St. Michael, which

has been so long in repute amongst us, had no greater commodity than that

it had no communication with any other commodity, which produced this

effect, that formerly there was no office or title whatever to which the

gentry pretended with so great desire and affection as they did to that;

no quality that carried with it more respect and grandeur, valour and

worth more willingly embracing and with greater ambition aspiring to a

recompense purely its own, and rather glorious than profitable. For, in

truth, other gifts have not so great a dignity of usage, by reason they

are laid out upon all sorts of occasions; with money a man pays the wages

of a servant, the diligence of a courier, dancing, vaulting, speaking,

and the meanest offices we receive; nay, and reward vice with it too, as

flattery, treachery, and pimping; and therefore ‘tis no wonder if virtue

less desires and less willingly receives this common sort of payment,

than that which is proper and peculiar to her, throughout generous and

noble. Augustus had reason to be more sparing of this than the other,

insomuch that honour is a privilege which derives its principal essence

from rarity; and so virtue itself:

“Cui malus est nemo, quis bonus esse potest?”

[“To whom no one is ill who can be good?”-Martial, xii. 82.]

We do not intend it for a commendation when we say that such a one is

careful in the education of his children, by reason it is a common act,

how just and well done soever; no more than we commend a great tree,

where the whole forest is the same. I do not think that any citizen of

Sparta glorified himself much upon his valour, it being the universal

virtue of the whole nation; and as little upon his fidelity and contempt

of riches. There is no recompense becomes virtue, how great soever, that

is once passed into a custom; and I know not withal whether we can ever

call it great, being common.

Seeing, then, that these remunerations of honour have no other value and

estimation but only this, that few people enjoy them, ‘tis but to be

liberal of them to bring them down to nothing. And though there should

be now more men found than in former times worthy of our order, the

estimation of it nevertheless should not be abated, nor the honour made

cheap; and it may easily happen that more may merit it; for there is no

virtue that so easily spreads as that of military valour. There is

another virtue, true, perfect, and philosophical, of which I do not

speak, and only make use of the word in our common acceptation, much

greater than this and more full, which is a force and assurance of the

soul, equally despising all sorts of adverse accidents, equable, uniform,

and constant, of which ours is no more than one little ray. Use,

education, example, and custom can do all in all to the establishment of

that whereof I am speaking, and with great facility render it common, as

by the experience of our civil wars is manifest enough; and whoever could

at this time unite us all, Catholic and Huguenot, into one body, and set

us upon some brave common enterprise, we should again make our ancient

military reputation flourish. It is most certain that in times past the

recompense of this order had not only a regard to valour, but had a

further prospect; it never was the reward of a valiant soldier but of a

great captain; the science of obeying was not reputed worthy of so

honourable a guerdon. There was therein a more universal military

expertness required, and that comprehended the most and the greatest

qualities of a military man:

“Neque enim eaedem militares et imperatorix artes sunt,”

[“For the arts of soldiery and generalship are not the same.”

--Livy, xxv. 19.]

as also, besides, a condition suitable to such a dignity. But, I say,

though more men were worthy than formerly, yet ought it not to be more

liberally distributed, and it were better to fall short in not giving it

at all to whom it should be due, than for ever to lose, as we have lately

done, the fruit of so profitable an invention. No man of spirit will

deign to advantage himself with what is in common with many; and such of

the present time as have least merited this recompense themselves make

the greater show of disdaining it, in order thereby to be ranked with

those to whom so much wrong has been done by the unworthy conferring and

debasing the distinction which was their particular right.

Now, to expect that in obliterating and abolishing this, suddenly to

create and bring into credit a like institution, is not a proper attempt

for so licentious and so sick a time as this wherein we now are; and it

will fall out that the last will from its birth incur the same

inconveniences that have ruined the other.--[Montaigne refers to the

Order of the Saint-Esprit, instituted by Henry III. in 1578.]--The

rules for dispensing this new order had need to be extremely clipt and

bound under great restrictions, to give it authority; and this tumultuous

season is incapable of such a curb: besides that, before this can be

brought into repute, ‘tis necessary that the memory of the first, and of

the contempt into which it is fallen, be buried in oblivion.

This place might naturally enough admit of some discourse upon the

consideration of valour, and the difference of this virtue from others;

but, Plutarch having so often handled this subject, I should give myself

an unnecessary trouble to repeat what he has said. But this is worth

considering: that our nation places valour, vaillance, in the highest

degree of virtue, as its very word evidences, being derived from valeur,

and that, according to our use, when we say a man of high worth a good

man, in our court style--‘tis to say a valiant man, after the Roman way;

for the general appellation of virtue with them takes etymology from vis,

force. The proper, sole, and essential profession of, the French

noblesse is that of arms: and ‘tis likely that the first virtue that

discovered itself amongst men and has given to some advantage over

others, was that by which the strongest and most valiant have mastered

the weaker, and acquired a particular authority and reputation, whence

came to it that dignified appellation; or else, that these nations, being

very warlike, gave the pre-eminence to that of the virtues which was most

familiar to them; just as our passion and the feverish solicitude we have

of the chastity of women occasions that to say, a good woman, a woman of

worth, a woman of honour and virtue, signifies merely a chaste woman as

if, to oblige them to that one duty, we were indifferent as to all the

rest, and gave them the reins in all other faults whatever to compound

for that one of incontinence.

CHAPTER VIII

OF THE AFFECTION OF FATHERS TO THEIR CHILDREN

To Madame D’Estissac.

MADAM, if the strangeness and novelty of my subject, which are wont to

give value to things, do not save me, I shall never come off with honour

from this foolish attempt: but ‘tis so fantastic, and carries a face so

unlike the common use, that this, peradventure, may make it pass. ‘Tis a

melancholic humour, and consequently a humour very much an enemy to my

natural complexion, engendered by the pensiveness of the solitude into

which for some years past I have retired myself, that first put into

my head this idle fancy of writing. Wherein, finding myself totally

unprovided and empty of other matter, I presented myself to myself for

argument and subject. ‘Tis the only book in the world of its kind, and

of a wild and extravagant design. There is nothing worth remark in this

affair but that extravagancy: for in a subject so vain and frivolous, the

best workman in the world could not have given it a form fit to recommend

it to any manner of esteem.

Now, madam, having to draw my own picture to the life, I had omitted one

important feature, had I not therein represented the honour I have ever

had for you and your merits; which I have purposely chosen to say in the

beginning of this chapter, by reason that amongst the many other

excellent qualities you are mistress of, that of the tender love you have

manifested to your children, is seated in one of the highest places.

Whoever knows at what age Monsieur D’Estissac, your husband, left you a

widow, the great and honourable matches that have since been offered to

you, as many as to any lady of your condition in France, the constancy

and steadiness wherewith, for so many years, you have sustained so many

sharp difficulties, the burden and conduct of affairs, which have

persecuted you in every corner of the kingdom, and are not yet weary of

tormenting you, and the happy direction you have given to all these, by

your sole prudence or good fortune, will easily conclude with me that we

have not so vivid an example as yours of maternal affection in our times.

I praise God, madam, that it has been so well employed; for the great

hopes Monsieur D’Estissac, your son, gives of himself, render sufficient

assurance that when he comes of age you will reap from him all the

obedience and gratitude of a very good man. But, forasmuch as by reason

of his tender years, he has not been capable of taking notice of those

offices of extremest value he has in so great number received from you,

I will, if these papers shall one day happen to fall into his hands, when

I shall neither have mouth nor speech left to deliver it to him, that he

shall receive from me a true account of those things, which shall be more

effectually manifested to him by their own effects, by which he will

understand that there is not a gentleman in France who stands more

indebted to a mother’s care; and that he cannot, in the future, give a

better nor more certain testimony of his own worth and virtue than by

acknowledging you for that excellent mother you are.

If there be any law truly natural, that is to say, any instinct that is

seen universally and perpetually imprinted in both beasts and men (which

is not without controversy), I can say, that in my opinion, next to the

care every animal has of its own preservation, and to avoid that which

may hurt him, the affection that the begetter bears to his offspring

holds the second place in this rank. And seeing that nature appears to

have recommended it to us, having regard to the extension and progression

of the successive pieces of this machine of hers, ‘tis no wonder if, on

the contrary, that of children towards their parents is not so great.

To which we may add this other Aristotelian consideration, that he who

confers a benefit on any one, loves him better than he is beloved by him

again: that he to whom is owing, loves better than he who owes; and that

every artificer is fonder of his work, than, if that work had sense, it

would be of him; by reason that it is dear to us to be, and to be

consists in movement and action; therefore every one has in some sort a

being in his work. He who confers a benefit exercises a fine and honest

action; he who receives it exercises the useful only. Now the useful is

much less lovable than the honest; the honest is stable and permanent,

supplying him who has done it with a continual gratification. The useful

loses itself, easily slides away, and the memory of it is neither so

fresh nor so pleasing. Those things are dearest to us that have cost us

most, and giving is more chargeable than receiving.

Since it has pleased God to endue us with some capacity of reason, to the

end we may not, like brutes, be servilely subject and enslaved to the

laws common to both, but that we should by judgment and a voluntary

liberty apply ourselves to them, we ought, indeed, something to yield to

the simple authority of nature, but not suffer ourselves to be

tyrannically hurried away and transported by her; reason alone should

have the conduct of our inclinations. I, for my part, have a strange

disgust for those propensions that are started in us without the

mediation and direction of the judgment, as, upon the subject I am

speaking of, I cannot entertain that passion of dandling and caressing

infants scarcely born, having as yet neither motion of soul nor shape of

body distinguishable, by which they can render themselves amiable, and

have not willingly suffered them to be nursed near me. A true and

regular affection ought to spring and increase with the knowledge they

give us of themselves, and then, if they are worthy of it, the natural

propension walking hand in hand with reason, to cherish them with a truly

paternal love; and so to judge, also, if they be otherwise, still

rendering ourselves to reason, notwithstanding the inclination of nature.

‘Tis oft-times quite otherwise; and, most commonly, we find ourselves

more taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerile

simplicities of our children, than we do, afterwards, with their most

complete actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys,

and not as men; and some there are, who are very liberal in buying them

balls to play withal, who are very close-handed for the least necessary

expense when they come to age. Nay, it looks as if the jealousy of

seeing them appear in and enjoy the world when we are about to leave it,

rendered us more niggardly and stingy towards them; it vexes us that they

tread upon our heels, as if to solicit us to go out; if this were to be

feared, since the order of things will have it so that they cannot, to

speak the truth, be nor live, but at the expense of our being and life,

we should never meddle with being fathers at all.

For my part, I think it cruelty and injustice not to receive them into

the share and society of our goods, and not to make them partakers in the

intelligence of our domestic affairs when they are capable, and not to

lessen and contract our own expenses to make the more room for theirs,

seeing we beget them to that effect. ‘Tis unjust that an old fellow,

broken and half dead, should alone, in a corner of the chimney, enjoy the

money that would suffice for the maintenance and advancement of many

children, and suffer them, in the meantime, to lose their’ best years for

want of means to advance themselves in the public service and the

knowledge of men. A man by this course drives them to despair, and to

seek out by any means, how unjust or dishonourable soever, to provide for

their own support: as I have, in my time, seen several young men of good

extraction so addicted to stealing, that no correction could cure them of

it. I know one of a very good family, to whom, at the request of a

brother of his, a very honest and brave gentleman, I once spoke on this

account, who made answer, and confessed to me roundly, that he had been

put upon this paltry practice by the severity and avarice of his father;

but that he was now so accustomed to it he could not leave it off. And,

at that very time, he was trapped stealing a lady’s rings, having come

into her chamber, as she was dressing with several others. He put me in

mind of a story I had heard of another gentleman, so perfect and

accomplished in this fine trade in his youth, that, after he came to his

estate and resolved to give it over, he could not hold his hands,

nevertheless, if he passed by a shop where he saw anything he liked, from

catching it up, though it put him to the shame of sending afterwards to

pay for it. And I have myself seen several so habituated to this quality

that even amongst their comrades they could not forbear filching, though

with intent to restore what they had taken. I am a Gascon, and yet there

is no vice I so little understand as that; I hate it something more by

disposition than I condemn it by reason; I do not so much as desire

anything of another man’s. This province of ours is, in plain truth, a

little more decried than the other parts of the kingdom; and yet we have

several times seen, in our times, men of good families of other

provinces, in the hands of justice, convicted of abominable thefts. I

fear this vice is, in some sort, to be attributed to the fore-mentioned

vice of the fathers.

And if a man should tell me, as a lord of very good understanding once

did, that “he hoarded up wealth, not to extract any other fruit and use

from his parsimony, but to make himself honoured and sought after by his

relations; and that age having deprived him of all other power, it was

the only remaining remedy to maintain his authority in his family, and to

keep him from being neglected and despised by all around,” in truth, not

only old age, but all other imbecility, according to Aristotle, is the

promoter of avarice; that is something, but it is physic for a disease

that a man should prevent the birth of. A father is very miserable who

has no other hold on his children’s affection than the need they have of

his assistance, if that can be called affection; he must render himself

worthy to be respected by his virtue and wisdom, and beloved by his

kindness and the sweetness of his manners; even the very ashes of a rich

matter have their value; and we are wont to have the bones and relics of

worthy men in regard and reverence. No old age can be so decrepid in a

man who has passed his life in honour, but it must be venerable,

especially to his children, whose soul he must have trained up to their

duty by reason, not by necessity and the need they have of him, nor by

harshness and compulsion:

“Et errat longe mea quidem sententia

Qui imperium credat esse gravius, aut stabilius,

Vi quod fit, quam illud, quod amicitia adjungitur.”

[“He wanders far from the truth, in my opinion, who thinks that

government more absolute and durable which is acquired by force than

that which is attached to friendship.”--Terence, Adelph., i. I, 40.]

I condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul that is designed

for honour and liberty. There is I know not what of servile in rigour

and constraint; and I am of opinion that what is not to be done by

reason, prudence, and address, is never to be affected by force. I

myself was brought up after that manner; and they tell me that in all my

first age I never felt the rod but twice, and then very slightly. I

practised the same method with my children, who all of them died at

nurse, except Leonora, my only daughter, and who arrived to the age of

five years and upward without other correction for her childish faults

(her mother’s indulgence easily concurring) than words only, and those

very gentle; in which kind of proceeding, though my end and expectation

should be both frustrated, there are other causes enough to lay the fault

on without blaming my discipline, which I know to be natural and just,

and I should, in this, have yet been more religious towards the males, as

less born to subjection and more free; and I should have made it my

business to fill their hearts with ingenuousness and freedom. I have

never observed other effects of whipping than to render boys more

cowardly, or more wilfully obstinate.

Do we desire to be beloved of our children? Will we remove from them all

occasion of wishing our death though no occasion of so horrid a wish can

either be just or excusable?

“Nullum scelus rationem habet.”

[“No wickedness has reason.”--Livy, xxviii. 28]

Let us reasonably accommodate their lives with what is in our power. In

order to this, we should not marry so young that our age shall in a

manner be confounded with theirs; for this inconvenience plunges us into

many very great difficulties, and especially the gentry of the nation,

who are of a condition wherein they have little to do, and who live upon

their rents only: for elsewhere, with people who live by their labour,

the plurality and company of children is an increase to the common stock;

they are so many new tools and instruments wherewith to grow rich.

I married at three-and-thirty years of age, and concur in the opinion of

thirty-five, which is said to be that of Aristotle. Plato will have

nobody marry before thirty; but he has reason to laugh at those who

undertook the work of marriage after five-and-fifty, and condemns their

offspring as unworthy of aliment and life. Thales gave the truest

limits, who, young and being importuned by his mother to marry, answered,

“That it was too soon,” and, being grown into years and urged again,

“That it was too late.” A man must deny opportunity to every inopportune

action. The ancient Gauls’ looked upon it as a very horrid thing for a

man to have society with a woman before he was twenty years of age, and

strictly recommended to the men who designed themselves for war the

keeping their virginity till well grown in years, forasmuch as courage is

abated and diverted by intercourse with women:

“Ma, or congiunto a giovinetta sposa,

E lieto omai de’ figli, era invilito

Negli affetti di padre et di marito.”

[“Now, married to a young wife and happy in children, he was

demoralised by his love as father and husband.”

--Tasso, Gierus., x. 39.]

Muley Hassam, king of Tunis, he whom the Emperor Charles V. restored to

his kingdom, reproached the memory of his father Mahomet with the

frequentation of women, styling him loose, effeminate, and a getter of

children.--[Of whom he had thirty-four.]--The Greek history observes of

Iccus the Tarentine, of Chryso, Astyllus, Diopompos, and others, that to

keep their bodies in order for the Olympic games and such like exercises,

they denied themselves during that preparation all commerce with Venus.

In a certain country of the Spanish Indies men were not permitted to

marry till after forty age, and yet the girls were allowed at ten.

‘Tis not time for a gentleman of thirty years old to give place to his

son who is twenty; he is himself in a condition to serve both in the

expeditions of war and in the court of his prince; has need of all his

appurtenances; and yet, doubtless, he ought to surrender a share, but not

so great an one as to forget himself for others; and for such an one the

answer that fathers have ordinarily in their mouths, “I will not put off

my clothes, before I go to bed,” serves well.

But a father worn out with age and infirmities, and deprived by weakness

and want of health of the common society of men, wrongs himself and his

to amass a great heap of treasure. He has lived long enough, if he be

wise, to have a mind to strip himself to go to bed, not to his very

shirt, I confess, but to that and a good, warm dressing-gown; the

remaining pomps, of which he has no further use, he ought voluntarily to

surrender to those, to whom by the order of nature they belong. ‘Tis

reason he should refer the use of those things to them, seeing that

nature has reduced him to such a state that he cannot enjoy them himself;

otherwise there is doubtless malice and envy in the case. The greatest

act of the Emperor Charles V. was that when, in imitation of some of the

ancients of his own quality, confessing it but reason to strip ourselves

when our clothes encumber and grow too heavy for us, and to lie down when

our legs begin to fail us, he resigned his possessions, grandeur, and

power to his son, when he found himself failing in vigour, and steadiness

for the conduct of his affairs suitable with the glory he had therein

acquired:

“Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne

Peccet ad extremum ridendus, et ilia ducat.”

[“Dismiss the old horse in good time, lest, failing in the lists,

the spectators laugh.”--Horace, Epist., i., I, 8.]

This fault of not perceiving betimes and of not being sensible of the

feebleness and extreme alteration that age naturally brings both upon

body and mind, which, in my opinion, is equal, if indeed the soul has not

more than half, has lost the reputation of most of the great men in the

world. I have known in my time, and been intimately acquainted with

persons of great authority, whom one might easily discern marvellously

lapsed from the sufficiency I knew they were once endued with, by the

reputation they had acquired in their former years, whom I could

heartily, for their own sakes, have wished at home at their ease,

discharged of their public or military employments, which were now grown

too heavy for their shoulders. I have formerly been very familiar in a

gentleman’s house, a widower and very old, though healthy and cheerful

enough: this gentleman had several daughters to marry and a son already

of ripe age, which brought upon him many visitors, and a great expense,

neither of which well pleased him, not only out of consideration of

frugality, but yet more for having, by reason of his age, entered into a

course of life far differing from ours. I told him one day a little

boldly, as I used to do, that he would do better to give us younger folk

room, and to leave his principal house (for he had but that well placed

and furnished) to his son, and himself retire to an estate he had hard

by, where nobody would trouble his repose, seeing he could not otherwise

avoid being importuned by us, the condition of his children considered.

He took my advice afterwards, and found an advantage in so doing.

I do not mean that a man should so instal them as not to reserve to

himself a liberty to retract; I, who am now arrived to the age wherein

such things are fit to be done, would resign to them the enjoyment of my

house and goods, but with a power of revocation if they should give me

cause to alter my mind; I would leave to them the use, that being no

longer convenient for me; and, of the general authority and power over

all, would reserve as much as--I thought good to myself; having always

held that it must needs be a great satisfaction to an aged father himself

to put his children into the way of governing his affairs, and to have

power during his own life to control their behaviour, supplying them with

instruction and advice from his own experience, and himself to transfer

the ancient honour and order of his house into the hands of those who are

to succeed him, and by that means to satisfy himself as to the hopes he

may conceive of their future conduct. And in order to this I would not

avoid their company; I would observe them near at hand, and partake,

according to the condition of my age, of their feasts and jollities.

If I did not live absolutely amongst them, which I could not do without

annoying them and their friends, by reason of the morosity of my age and

the restlessness of my infirmities, and without violating also the rules

and order of living I should then have set down to myself, I would, at

least, live near them in some retired part of my house, not the best in

show, but the most commodious. Nor as I saw some years ago, a dean of

St. Hilary of Poitiers given up to such a solitude, that at the time I

came into his chamber it had been two and twenty years that he had not

stepped one foot out of it, and yet had all his motions free and easy,

and was in good health, saving a cold that fell upon his lungs; he would,

hardly once in a week, suffer any one to come in to see him; he always

kept himself shut up in his chamber alone, except that a servant brought

him, once a day, something to eat, and did then but just come in and go

out again. His employment was to walk up and down, and read some book,

for he was a bit of a scholar; but, as to the rest, obstinately bent to

die in this retirement, as he soon after did. I would endeavour by

pleasant conversation to create in my children a warm and unfeigned

friendship and good-will towards me, which in well-descended natures is

not hard to do; for if they be furious brutes, of which this age of ours

produces thousands, we are then to hate and avoid them as such.

I am angry at the custom of forbidding children to call their father by

the name of father, and to enjoin them another, as more full of respect

and reverence, as if nature had not sufficiently provided for our

authority. We call Almighty God Father, and disdain to have our children

call us so; I have reformed this error in my family.--[As did Henry IV.

of France]--And ‘tis also folly and injustice to deprive children, when

grown up, of familiarity with their father, and to carry a scornful and

austere countenance toward them, thinking by that to keep them in awe and

obedience; for it is a very idle farce that, instead of producing the

effect designed, renders fathers distasteful, and, which is worse,

ridiculous to their own children. They have youth and vigour in

possession, and consequently the breath and favour of the world; and

therefore receive these fierce and tyrannical looks--mere scarecrows--

of a man without blood, either in his heart or veins, with mockery and

contempt. Though I could make myself feared, I had yet much rather make

myself beloved: there are so many sorts of defects in old age, so much

imbecility, and it is so liable to contempt, that the best acquisition a

man can make is the kindness and affection of his own family; command and

fear are no longer his weapons. Such an one I have known who, having

been very imperious in his youth, when he came to be old, though he might

have lived at his full ease, would ever strike, rant, swear, and curse:

the most violent householder in France: fretting himself with unnecessary

suspicion and vigilance. And all this rumble and clutter but to make his

family cheat him the more; of his barn, his kitchen, cellar, nay, and his

very purse too, others had the greatest use and share, whilst he keeps

his keys in his pocket much more carefully than his eyes. Whilst he hugs

himself with the pitiful frugality of a niggard table, everything goes to

rack and ruin in every corner of his house, in play, drink, all sorts of

profusion, making sport in their junkets with his vain anger and

fruitless parsimony. Every one is a sentinel against him, and if, by

accident, any wretched fellow that serves him is of another humour, and

will not join with the rest, he is presently rendered suspected to him,

a bait that old age very easily bites at of itself. How often has this

gentleman boasted to me in how great awe he kept his family, and how

exact an obedience and reverence they paid him! How clearly he saw into

his own affairs!

“Ille solos nescit omnia.”

[“He alone is ignorant of all that is passing.”

--Terence, Adelph., iv. 2, 9.]

I do not know any one that can muster more parts, both natural and

acquired, proper to maintain dominion, than he; yet he is fallen from it

like a child. For this reason it is that I have picked out him, amongst

several others that I know of the same humour, for the greatest example.

It were matter for a question in the schools, whether he is better thus

or otherwise. In his presence, all submit to and bow to him, and give so

much way to his vanity that nobody ever resists him; he has his fill of

assents, of seeming fear, submission, and respect. Does he turn away a

servant? he packs up his bundle, and is gone; but ‘tis no further than

just out of his sight: the steps of old age are so slow, the senses so

troubled, that he will live and do his old office in the same house a

year together without being perceived.

And after a fit interval of time, letters are pretended to come from a

great way off; very humble, suppliant; and full of promises of amendment,

by virtue of which he is again received into favour. Does Monsieur make

any bargain, or prepare any despatch that does not please? ‘tis

suppressed, and causes afterwards forged to excuse the want of execution

in the one or answer in the other. No letters being first brought to

him, he never sees any but those that shall seem fit for his knowledge.

If by accident they fall first into his own hand, being used to trust

somebody to read them to him; he reads extempore what he thinks fit, and

often makes such a one ask him pardon who abuses and rails at him in his

letter. In short, he sees nothing, but by an image prepared and designed

beforehand and the most satisfactory they can invent, not to rouse and

awaken his ill humour and choler. I have seen, under various aspects,

enough of these modes of domestic government, long-enduring, constant, to

the like effect.

Women are evermore addicted to cross their husbands: they lay hold with

both hands on all occasions to contradict and oppose them; the first

excuse serves for a plenary justification. I have seen one who robbed

her husband wholesale, that, as she told her confessor, she might

distribute the more liberal alms. Let who will trust to that religious

dispensation. No management of affairs seems to them of sufficient

dignity, if proceeding from the husband’s assent; they must usurp it

either by insolence or cunning, and always injuriously, or else it has

not the grace and authority they desire. When, as in the case I am

speaking of, ‘tis against a poor old man and for the children, then they

make use of this title to serve their passion with glory; and, as for a

common service, easily cabal, and combine against his government and

dominion. If they be males grown up in full and flourishing health, they

presently corrupt, either by force or favour, steward, receivers, and all

the rout. Such as have neither wife nor son do not so easily fall into

this misfortune; but withal more cruelly and unworthily. Cato the elder

in his time said: So many servants, so many enemies; consider, then,

whether according to the vast difference between the purity of the age he

lived in and the corruption of this of ours, he does not seem to shew us

that wife, son, and servant, are so many enemies to us? ‘Tis well for

old age that it is always accompanied by want of observation, ignorance,

and a proneness to being deceived. For should we see how we are used and

would not acquiesce, what would become of us? especially in such an age

as this, where the very judges who are to determine our controversies are

usually partisans to the young, and interested in the cause. In case the

discovery of this cheating escape me, I cannot at least fail to discern

that I am very fit to be cheated. And can a man ever enough exalt the

value of a friend, in comparison with these civil ties? The very image

of it which I see in beasts, so pure and uncorrupted, how religiously do

I respect it! If others deceive me, yet do I not, at least, deceive

myself in thinking I am able to defend myself from them, or in cudgelling

my brains to make myself so. I protect myself from such treasons in my

own bosom, not by an unquiet and tumultuous curiosity, but rather by

diversion and resolution. When I hear talk of any one’s condition, I

never trouble myself to think of him; I presently turn my eyes upon

myself to see in what condition I am; whatever concerns another relates

to me; the accident that has befallen him gives me caution, and rouses me

to turn my defence that way. We every day and every hour say things of

another that we might properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our

observation to our own concerns, as well as extend it to others. And

several authors have in this manner prejudiced their own cause by running

headlong upon those they attack, and darting those shafts against their

enemies, that are more properly, and with greater advantage, to be turned

upon themselves.

The late Mareschal de Montluc having lost his son, who died in the island

of Madeira, in truth a very worthy gentleman and of great expectation,

did to me, amongst his other regrets, very much insist upon what a sorrow

and heart-breaking it was that he had never made himself familiar with

him; and by that humour of paternal gravity and grimace to have lost the

opportunity of having an insight into and of well knowing, his son, as

also of letting him know the extreme affection he had for him, and the

worthy opinion he had of his virtue. “That poor boy,” said he, “never

saw in me other than a stern and disdainful countenance, and is gone in a

belief that I neither knew how to love him nor esteem him according to

his desert. For whom did I reserve the discovery of that singular

affection I had for him in my soul? Was it not he himself, who ought to

have had all the pleasure of it, and all the obligation? I constrained

and racked myself to put on, and maintain this vain disguise, and have by

that means deprived myself of the pleasure of his conversation, and, I

doubt, in some measure, his affection, which could not but be very cold

to me, having never other from me than austerity, nor felt other than a

tyrannical manner of proceeding.”

[Madame de Sevigne tells us that she never read this passage without

tears in her eyes. “My God!” she exclaims, “how full is this book

of good sense!” Ed.]

I find this complaint to be rational and rightly apprehended: for, as I

myself know by too certain experience, there is no so sweet consolation

in the loss of friends as the conscience of having had no reserve or

secret for them, and to have had with them a perfect and entire

communication. Oh my friend,--[La Boetie.] am I the better for being

sensible of this; or am I the worse? I am, doubtless, much the better.

I am consoled and honoured, in the sorrow for his death. Is it not a

pious and a pleasing office of my life to be always upon my friend’s

obsequies? Can there be any joy equal to this privation?

I open myself to my family, as much as I can, and very willingly let them

know the state of my opinion and good will towards them, as I do to

everybody else: I make haste to bring out and present myself to them; for

I will not have them mistaken in me, in anything. Amongst other

particular customs of our ancient Gauls, this, as Caesar reports,--[De

Bello Gall., vi. r8.]--was one, that the sons never presented

themselves before their fathers, nor durst ever appear in their company

in public, till they began to bear arms; as if they would intimate by

this, that it was also time for their fathers to receive them into their

familiarity and acquaintance.

I have observed yet another sort of indiscretion in fathers of my time,

that, not contented with having deprived their children, during their own

long lives, of the share they naturally ought to have had in their

fortunes, they afterwards leave to their wives the same authority over

their estates, and liberty to dispose of them according to their own

fancy. And I have known a certain lord, one of the principal officers of

the crown, who, having in reversion above fifty thousand crowns yearly

revenue, died necessitous and overwhelmed with debt at above fifty years

of age; his mother in her extremest decrepitude being yet in possession

of all his property by the will of his father, who had, for his part,

lived till near fourscore years old. This appears to me by no means

reasonable. And therefore I think it of very little advantage to a man,

whose affairs are well enough, to seek a wife who encumbers his estate

with a very great fortune; there is no sort of foreign debt that brings

more ruin to families than this: my predecessors have ever been aware of

that danger and provided against it, and so have I. But those who

dissuade us from rich wives, for fear they should be less tractable and

kind, are out in their advice to make a man lose a real commodity for so

frivolous a conjecture. It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass

over one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they are

most wrong. Injustice allures them, as the honour of their virtuous

actions does the good; and the more riches they bring with them, they are

so much the more good-natured, as women, who are handsome, are all the

more inclined and proud to be chaste.

‘Tis reasonable to leave the administration of affairs to the mothers,

till the children are old enough, according to law, to manage them; but

the father has brought them, up very ill, if he cannot hope that, when

they come to maturity, they will have more wisdom and ability in the

management of affairs than his wife, considering the ordinary weakness of

the sex. It were, notwithstanding, to say the truth, more against nature

to make the mothers depend upon the discretion of their children; they

ought to be plentifully provided for, to maintain themselves according to

their quality and age, by reason that necessity and indigence are much

more unbecoming and insupportable to them than to men; the son should

rather be cut short than the mother.

In general, the most judicious distribution of our goods, when we come to

die, is, in my opinion, to let them be distributed according to the

custom of the country; the laws have considered the matter better than we

know how to do, and ‘tis wiser to let them fail in their appointment,

than rashly to run the hazard of miscarrying in ours. Nor are the goods

properly ours, since, by civil prescription and without us, they are all

destined to certain successors. And although we have some liberty beyond

that, yet I think we ought not, without great and manifest cause, to take

away that from one which his fortune has allotted him, and to which the

public equity gives him title; and that it is against reason to abuse

this liberty, in making it serve our own frivolous and private fancies.

My destiny has been kind to me in not presenting me with occasions to

tempt me and divert my affection from the common and legitimate

institution. I see many with whom ‘tis time lost to employ a long

exercise of good offices: a word ill taken obliterates ten years’ merit;

he is happy who is in a position to oil their goodwill at this last

passage. The last action carries it, not the best and most frequent

offices, but the most recent and present do the work. These are people

that play with their wills as with apples or rods, to gratify or chastise

every action of those who pretend to an interest in their care. ‘Tis a

thing of too great weight and consequence to be so tumbled and tossed and

altered every moment, and wherein the wise determine once for all, having

above all things regard to reason and the public observance. We lay

these masculine substitutions too much to heart, proposing a ridiculous

eternity to our names. We are, moreover, too superstitious in vain

conjectures as to the future, that we derive from the words and actions

of children. Peradventure they might have done me an injustice, in

dispossessing me of my right, for having been the most dull and heavy,

the most slow and unwilling at my book, not of all my brothers only, but

of all the boys in the whole province: whether about learning my lesson,

or about any bodily exercise. ‘Tis a folly to make an election out of

the ordinary course upon the credit of these divinations wherein we are

so often deceived. If the ordinary rule of descent were to be violated,

and the destinies corrected in the choice they have made of our heirs,

one might more plausibly do it upon the account of some remarkable and

enormous personal deformity, a permanent and incorrigible defect, and in

the opinion of us French, who are great admirers of beauty, an important

prejudice.

The pleasant dialogue betwixt Plato’s legislator and his citizens will be

an ornament to this place, “What,” said they, feeling themselves about to

die, “may we not dispose of our own to whom we please? God! what

cruelty that it shall not be lawful for us, according as we have been

served and attended in our sickness, in our old age, in our affairs, to

give more or less to those whom we have found most diligent about us, at

our own fancy and discretion!” To which the legislator answers thus:

“My friends, who are now, without question, very soon to die, it is hard

for you in the condition you are, either to know yourselves, or what is

yours, according to the delphic inscription. I, who make the laws, am of

opinion, that you neither are yourselves your own, nor is that yours of

which you are possessed. Both your goods and you belong to your

families, as well those past as those to come; but, further, both your

family and goods much more appertain to the public. Wherefore, lest any

flatterer in your old age or in your sickness, or any passion of your

own, should unseasonably prevail with you to make an unjust will, I shall

take care to prevent that inconvenience; but, having respect both to the

universal interests of the city and that of your particular family, I

shall establish laws, and make it by good reasons appear, that private

convenience ought to give place to the common benefit. Go then

cheerfully where human necessity calls you. It is for me, who regard no

more the one thing than the other, and who, as much as in me lies, am

provident of the public interest, to have a care as to what you leave

behind you.”

To return to my subject: it appears to me that women are very rarely

born, to whom the prerogative over men, the maternal and natural

excepted, is in any sort due, unless it be for the punishment of such,

as in some amorous fever have voluntarily submitted themselves to them:

but that in no way concerns the old ones, of whom we are now speaking.

This consideration it is which has made us so willingly to enact and give

force to that law, which was never yet seen by any one, by which women

are excluded the succession to our crown: and there is hardly a

government in the world where it is not pleaded, as it is here, by the

probability of reason that authorises it, though fortune has given it

more credit in some places than in others. ‘Tis dangerous to leave the

disposal of our succession to their judgment, according to the choice

they shall make of children, which is often fantastic and unjust; for the

irregular appetites and depraved tastes they have during the time of

their being with child, they have at all other times in the mind. We

commonly see them fond of the most weak, ricketty, and deformed children;

or of those, if they have such, as are still hanging at the breast. For,

not having sufficient force of reason to choose and embrace that which is

most worthy, they the more willingly suffer themselves to be carried

away, where the impressions of nature are most alone; like animals that

know their young no longer than they give them suck. As to the rest, it

is easy by experience to be discerned that this natural affection to

which we give so great authority has but very weak roots. For a very

little profit, we every day tear their own children out of the mothers’

arms, and make them take ours in their room: we make them abandon their

own to some pitiful nurse, to whom we disdain to commit ours, or to some

she-goat, forbidding them, not only to give them suck, what danger soever

they run thereby, but, moreover, to take any manner of care of them, that

they may wholly be occupied with the care of and attendance upon ours;

and we see in most of them an adulterate affection, more vehement than

the natural, begotten by custom toward the foster children, and a greater

solicitude for the preservation of those they have taken charge of, than

of their own. And that which I was saying of goats was upon this

account; that it is ordinary all about where I live, to see the

countrywomen, when they want milk of their own for their children, to

call goats to their assistance; and I have at this hour two men-servants

that never sucked women’s milk more than eight days after they were born.

These goats are immediately taught to come to suckle the little children,

know their voices when they cry, and come running to them. If any other

than this foster-child be presented to them, they refuse to let it suck;

and the child in like manner will refuse to suck another goat. I saw one

the other day from whom they had taken away the goat that used to nourish

it, by reason the father had only borrowed it of a neighbour; the child

would not touch any other they could bring, and died, doubtless of

hunger. Beasts as easily alter and corrupt their natural affection as

we: I believe that in what Herodotus relates of a certain district of

Lybia, there are many mistakes; he says that the women are there in

common; but that the child, so soon as it can go, finds him out in the

crowd for his father, to whom he is first led by his natural inclination.

Now, to consider this simple reason for loving our children, that we have

begot them, therefore calling them our second selves, it appears,

methinks, that there is another kind of production proceeding from us,

that is of no less recommendation: for that which we engender by the

soul, the issue of our understanding, courage, and abilities, springs

from nobler parts than those of the body, and that are much more our own:

we are both father and mother in this generation. These cost us a great

deal more and bring us more honour, if they have anything of good in

them. For the value of our other children is much more theirs than ours;

the share we have in them is very little; but of these all the beauty,

all the grace and value, are ours; and also they more vividly represent

us than the others. Plato adds, that these are immortal children that

immortalise and deify their fathers, as Lycurgus, Solon, Minos. Now,

histories being full of examples of the common affection of fathers to

their children, it seems not altogether improper to introduce some few of

this other kind. Heliodorus, that good bishop of Trikka, rather chose to

lose the dignity, profit, and devotion of so venerable a prelacy, than to

lose his daughter; a daughter that continues to this day very graceful

and comely; but, peradventure, a little too curiously and wantonly

tricked, and too amorous for an ecclesiastical and sacerdotal daughter.

There was one Labienus at Rome, a man of great worth and authority, and

amongst other qualities excellent in all sorts of literature, who was, as

I take it, the son of that great Labienus, the chief of Caesar’s captains

in the wars of Gaul; and who, afterwards, siding with Pompey the great,

so valiantly maintained his cause, till he was by Caesar defeated in

Spain. This Labienus, of whom I am now speaking, had several enemies,

envious of his good qualities, and, tis likely, the courtiers and minions

of the emperors of his time who were very angry at his freedom and the

paternal humour which he yet retained against tyranny, with which it is

to be supposed he had tinctured his books and writings. His adversaries

prosecuted several pieces he had published before the magistrates at

Rome, and prevailed so far against him, as to have them condemned to the

fire. It was in him that this new example of punishment was begun, which

was afterwards continued against others at Rome, to punish even writing

and studies with death. There would not be means and matter enough of

cruelty, did we not mix with them things that nature has exempted from

all sense and suffering, as reputation and the products of the mind, and

did we not communicate corporal punishments to the teachings and

monuments of the Muses. Now, Labienus could not suffer this loss, nor

survive these his so dear issue, and therefore caused himself to be

conveyed and shut up alive in the monument of his ancestors, where he

made shift to kill and bury himself at once. ‘Tis hard to shew a more

vehement paternal affection than this. Cassius Severus, a man of great

eloquence and his very intimate friend, seeing his books burned, cried

out that by the same sentence they should as well condemn him to the fire

too, seeing that he carried in his memory all that they contained. The

like accident befel Cremutius Cordus, who being accused of having in his

books commended Brutus and Cassius, that dirty, servile, and corrupt

Senate, worthy a worse master than Tiberius, condemned his writings to

the flame. He was willing to bear them company, and killed himself with

fasting. The good Lucan, being condemned by that rascal Nero, at the

last gasp of his life, when the greater part of his blood was already

spent through the veins of his arms, which he had caused his physician to

open to make him die, and when the cold had seized upon all his

extremities, and began to approach his vital parts, the last thing he had

in his memory was some of the verses of his Battle of Phaysalia, which he

recited, dying with them in his mouth. What was this, but taking a

tender and paternal leave of his children, in imitation of the

valedictions and embraces, wherewith we part from ours, when we come to

die, and an effect of that natural inclination, that suggests to our

remembrance in this extremity those things which were dearest to us

during the time of our life?

Can we believe that Epicurus who, as he says himself, dying of the

intolerable pain of the stone, had all his consolation in the beauty of

the doctrine he left behind him, could have received the same

satisfaction from many children, though never so well-conditioned and

brought up, had he had them, as he did from the production of so many

rich writings? Or that, had it been in his choice to have left behind

him a deformed and untoward child or a foolish and ridiculous book, he,

or any other man of his understanding, would not rather have chosen to

have run the first misfortune than the other? It had been, for example,

peradventure, an impiety in St. Augustin, if, on the one hand, it had

been proposed to him to bury his writings, from which religion has

received so great fruit, or on the other to bury his children, had he had

them, had he not rather chosen to bury his children. And I know not

whether I had not much rather have begot a very beautiful one, through

society with the Muses, than by lying with my wife. To this, such as it

is, what I give it I give absolutely and irrevocably, as men do to their

bodily children. That little I have done for it, is no more at my own

disposal; it may know many things that are gone from me, and from me hold

that which I have not retained; and which, as well as a stranger, I

should borrow thence, should I stand in need. If I am wiser than my

book, it is richer than I. There are few men addicted to poetry, who

would not be much prouder to be the father to the AEneid than to the

handsomest youth of Rome; and who would not much better bear the loss of

the one than of the other. For according to Aristotle, the poet, of all

artificers, is the fondest of his work. ‘Tis hard to believe that

Epaminondas, who boasted that in lieu of all posterity he left two

daughters behind him that would one day do their father honour (meaning

the two victories he obtained over the Lacedaemonians), would willingly

have consented to exchange these for the most beautiful creatures of all

Greece; or that Alexander or Caesar ever wished to be deprived of the

grandeur of their glorious exploits in war, for the convenience of

children and heirs, how perfect and accomplished soever. Nay, I make a

great question, whether Phidias or any other excellent sculptor would be

so solicitous of the preservation and continuance of his natural

children, as he would be of a rare statue, which with long labour and

study he had perfected according to art. And to those furious and

irregular passions that have sometimes inflamed fathers towards their own

daughters, and mothers towards their own sons, the like is also found in

this other sort of parentage: witness what is related of Pygmalion who,

having made the statue of a woman of singular beauty, fell so

passionately in love with this work of his, that the gods in favour of

his passion inspired it with life.

“Tentatum mollescit ebur, positoque rigore,

Subsidit digitis.”

[“The ivory grows soft under his touch and yields to his fingers.”

--Ovid, Metam., x. 283.]

CHAPTER IX

OF THE ARMS OF THE PARTHIANS

‘Tis an ill custom and unmanly that the gentlemen of our time have got,

not to put on arms but just upon the point of the most extreme necessity,

and to lay them by again, so soon as ever there is any show of the danger

being over; hence many disorders arise; for every one bustling and

running to his arms just when he should go to charge, has his cuirass to

buckle on when his companions are already put to rout. Our ancestors

were wont to give their head-piece, lance and gauntlets to be carried,

but never put off the other pieces so long as there was any work to be

done. Our troops are now cumbered and rendered unsightly with the

clutter of baggage and servants who cannot be from their masters, by

reason they carry their arms. Titus Livius speaking of our nation:

“Intolerantissima laboris corpora vix arma humeris gerebant.”

[“Bodies most impatient of labour could scarce endure to wear

their arms on their shoulders.”--Livy, x. 28.]

Many nations do yet, and did anciently, go to war without defensive arms,

or with such, at least, as were of very little proof:

“Tegmina queis capitum, raptus de subere cortex.”

[“To whom the coverings of the heads were the bark of the

cork-tree.”--AEneid, vii. 742.]

Alexander, the most adventurous captain that ever was, very seldom wore

armour, and such amongst us as slight it, do not by that much harm to the

main concern; for if we see some killed for want of it, there are few

less whom the lumber of arms helps to destroy, either by being

overburthened, crushed, and cramped with their weight, by a rude shock,

or otherwise. For, in plain truth, to observe the weight and thickness

of the armour we have now in use, it seems as if we only sought to defend

ourselves, and are rather loaded than secured by it. We have enough to

do to support its weight, being so manacled and immured, as if we were

only to contend with our own arms, and as if we had not the same

obligation to defend them, that they have to defend us. Tacitus gives a

pleasant description of the men-at-arms among our ancient Gauls, who were

so armed as only to be able to stand, without power to harm or to be

harmed, or to rise again if once struck down. Lucullus, seeing certain

soldiers of the Medes, who formed the van of Tigranes’ army, heavily

armed and very uneasy, as if in prisons of iron, thence conceived hopes

with great ease to defeat them, and by them began his charge and victory.

And now that our musketeers are in credit, I believe some invention will

be found out to immure us for our safety, and to draw us to the war in

castles, such as those the ancients loaded their elephants withal.

This humour is far differing from that of the younger Scipio, who sharply

reprehended his soldiers for having planted caltrops under water, in a

ditch by which those of the town he held besieged might sally out upon

him; saying, that those who assaulted should think of attacking, and not

to fear; suspecting, with good reason, that this stop they had put to the

enemies, would make themselves less vigilant upon their guard. He said

also to a young man, who showed him a fine buckler he had, that he was

very proud of, “It is a very fine buckler indeed, but a Roman soldier

ought to repose greater confidence in his right hand than in his left.”

Now ‘tis nothing but the not being used to wear it that makes the weight

of our armour so intolerable:

“L’usbergo in dosso haveano, et l’elmo in testa,

Due di questi guerrier, de’ quali io canto;

Ne notte o di, d’ appoi ch’ entraro in questa

Stanza, gl’haveano mai messi da canto;

Che facile a portar come la vesta

Era lor, perche in uso l’havean tanto:”

[“Two of the warriors, of whom I sing, had on their backs their

cuirass and on their heads their casque, and never had night or day

once laid them by, whilst here they were; those arms, by long

practice, were grown as light to bear as a garment”

--Ariosto, Cant., MI. 30.]

the Emperor Caracalla was wont to march on foot, completely armed, at the

head of his army. The Roman infantry always carried not only a morion, a

sword, and a shield (for as to arms, says Cicero, they were so accustomed

to have them always on, that they were no more trouble to them than their

own limbs):

“Arma enim membra militis esse dicunt.”

but, moreover, fifteen days’ provision, together with a certain number of

stakes, wherewith to fortify their camp, sixty pounds in weight. And

Marius’ soldiers, laden at the same rate, were inured to march in order

of battle five leagues in five hours, and sometimes, upon any urgent

occasion, six.

Their military discipline was much ruder than ours, and accordingly

produced much greater effects. The younger Scipio, reforming his army in

Spain, ordered his soldiers to eat standing, and nothing that was drest.

The jeer that was given a Lacedaemonian soldier is marvellously pat to

this purpose, who, in an expedition of war, was reproached for having

been seen under the roof of a house: they were so inured to hardship

that, let the weather be what it would, it was a shame to be seen under

any other cover than the roof of heaven. We should not march our people

very far at that rate.

As to what remains, Marcellinus, a man bred up in the Roman wars,

curiously observes the manner of the Parthians arming themselves, and the

rather, for being so different from that of the Romans. “They had,” says

he, “armour so woven as to have all the scales fall over one another like

so many little feathers; which did nothing hinder the motion of the body,

and yet were of such resistance, that our darts hitting upon them, would

rebound” (these were the coats of mail our forefathers were so constantly

wont to use). And in another place: “they had,” says he, “strong and

able horses, covered with thick tanned hides of leather, and were

themselves armed ‘cap-a-pie’ with great plates of iron, so artificially

ordered, that in all parts of the limbs, which required bending, they

lent themselves to the motion. One would have said, that they had been

men of iron; having armour for the head so neatly fitted, and so

naturally representing the form of a face, that they were nowhere

vulnerable, save at two little round holes, that gave them a little

light, corresponding with their eyes, and certain small chinks about

their nostrils, through which they, with great difficulty, breathed,”

“Flexilis inductis animatur lamina membris,

Horribilis visu; credas simulacra moveri

Ferrea, cognatoque viros spirare metallo.

Par vestitus equis: ferrata fronte minantur,

Ferratosque movent, securi vulneris, armos.”

[“Plates of steel are placed over the body, so flexible that,

dreadful to be seen, you would think these not living men, but

moving images. The horses are similarly armed, and, secured from

wounds, move their iron shoulders.”--Claud, In Ruf., ii. 358.]

‘Tis a description drawing very near resembling the equipage of the

men-at-arms in France, with their barded horses. Plutarch says, that

Demetrius caused two complete suits of armour to be made for himself and

for Alcimus, a captain of the greatest note and authority about him, of

six score pounds weight each, whereas the ordinary suits weighed but half

as much.

CHAPTER X

OF BOOKS

I make no doubt but that I often happen to speak of things that are much

better and more truly handled by those who are masters of the trade. You

have here purely an essay of my natural parts, and not of those acquired:

and whoever shall catch me tripping in ignorance, will not in any sort

get the better of me; for I should be very unwilling to become

responsible to another for my writings, who am not so to myself, nor

satisfied with them. Whoever goes in quest of knowledge, let him fish

for it where it is to be found; there is nothing I so little profess.

These are fancies of my own, by which I do not pretend to discover things

but to lay open myself; they may, peradventure, one day be known to me,

or have formerly been, according as fortune has been able to bring me in

place where they have been explained; but I have utterly forgotten it;

and if I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retention; so that I

can promise no certainty, more than to make known to what point the

knowledge I now have has risen. Therefore, let none lay stress upon the

matter I write, but upon my method in writing it. Let them observe, in

what I borrow, if I have known how to choose what is proper to raise or

help the invention, which is always my own. For I make others say for

me, not before but after me, what, either for want of language or want of

sense, I cannot myself so well express. I do not number my borrowings,

I weigh them; and had I designed to raise their value by number, I had

made them twice as many; they are all, or within a very few, so famed and

ancient authors, that they seem, methinks, themselves sufficiently to

tell who they are, without giving me the trouble. In reasons,

comparisons, and arguments, if I transplant any into my own soil, and

confound them amongst my own, I purposely conceal the author, to awe the

temerity of those precipitate censors who fall upon all sorts of

writings, particularly the late ones, of men yet living; and in the

vulgar tongue which puts every one into a capacity of criticising and

which seem to convict the conception and design as vulgar also. I will

have them give Plutarch a fillip on my nose, and rail against Seneca when

they think they rail at me. I must shelter my own weakness under these

great reputations. I shall love any one that can unplume me, that is,

by clearness of understanding and judgment, and by the sole distinction

of the force and beauty of the discourse. For I who, for want of memory,

am at every turn at a loss to, pick them out of their national livery, am

yet wise enough to know, by the measure of my own abilities, that my soil

is incapable of producing any of those rich flowers that I there find

growing; and that all the fruits of my own growth are not worth any one

of them. For this, indeed, I hold myself responsible; if I get in my own

way; if there be any vanity and defect in my writings which I do not of

myself perceive nor can discern, when pointed out to me by another; for

many faults escape our eye, but the infirmity of judgment consists in not

being able to discern them, when by another laid open to us. Knowledge

and truth may be in us without judgment, and judgment also without them;

but the confession of ignorance is one of the finest and surest

testimonies of judgment that I know. I have no other officer to put my

writings in rank and file, but only fortune. As things come into my

head, I heap them one upon another; sometimes they advance in whole

bodies, sometimes in single file. I would that every one should see my

natural and ordinary pace, irregular as it is; I suffer myself to jog on

at my own rate. Neither are these subjects which a man is not permitted

to be ignorant in, or casually and at a venture, to discourse of. I

could wish to have a more perfect knowledge of things, but I will not buy

it so dear as it costs. My design is to pass over easily, and not

laboriously, the remainder of my life; there is nothing that I will

cudgel my brains about; no, not even knowledge, of what value soever.

I seek, in the reading of books, only to please myself by an honest

diversion; or, if I study, ‘tis for no other science than what treats of

the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to die and how to live

well.

“Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus.”

[“My horse must work according to my step.”

--Propertius, iv.]

I do not bite my nails about the difficulties I meet with in my reading;

after a charge or two, I give them over. Should I insist upon them, I

should both lose myself and time; for I have an impatient understanding,

that must be satisfied at first: what I do not discern at once is by

persistence rendered more obscure. I do nothing without gaiety;

continuation and a too obstinate endeavour, darkens, stupefies, and tires

my judgment. My sight is confounded and dissipated with poring; I must

withdraw it, and refer my discovery to new attempts; just as, to judge

rightly of the lustre of scarlet, we are taught to pass the eye lightly

over it, and again to run it over at several sudden and reiterated

glances. If one book do not please me, I take another; and I never

meddle with any, but at such times as I am weary of doing nothing.

I care not much for new ones, because the old seem fuller and stronger;

neither do I converse much with Greek authors, because my judgment cannot

do its work with imperfect intelligence of the material.

Amongst books that are simply pleasant, of the moderns, Boccaccio’s

Decameron, Rabelais, and the Basia of Johannes Secundus (if those may be

ranged under the title) are worth reading for amusement. As to the

Amadis, and such kind of stuff, they had not the credit of arresting even

my childhood. And I will, moreover, say, whether boldly or rashly, that

this old, heavy soul of mine is now no longer tickled with Ariosto, no,

nor with the worthy Ovid; his facility and inventions, with which I was

formerly so ravished, are now of no more relish, and I can hardly have

the patience to read them. I speak my opinion freely of all things, even

of those that, perhaps, exceed my capacity, and that I do not conceive to

be, in any wise, under my jurisdiction. And, accordingly, the judgment I

deliver, is to show the measure of my own sight, and not of the things I

make so bold to criticise. When I find myself disgusted with Plato’s

‘Axiochus’, as with a work, with due respect to such an author be it

spoken, without force, my judgment does not believe itself: it is not so

arrogant as to oppose the authority of so many other famous judgments of

antiquity, which it considers as its tutors and masters, and with whom it

is rather content to err; in such a case, it condemns itself either to

stop at the outward bark, not being able to penetrate to the heart, or to

consider it by sortie false light. It is content with only securing

itself from trouble and disorder; as to its own weakness, it frankly

acknowledges and confesses it. It thinks it gives a just interpretation

to the appearances by its conceptions presented to it; but they are weak

and imperfect. Most of the fables of AEsop have diverse senses and

meanings, of which the mythologists chose some one that quadrates well to

the fable; but, for the most part, ‘tis but the first face that presents

itself and is superficial only; there yet remain others more vivid,

essential, and profound, into which they have not been able to penetrate;

and just so ‘tis with me.

But, to pursue the business of this essay, I have always thought that, in

poesy, Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace by many degrees excel the

rest; and signally, Virgil in his Georgics, which I look upon as the most

accomplished piece in poetry; and in comparison of which a man may easily

discern that there are some places in his AEneids, to which the author

would have given a little more of the file, had he had leisure: and the

fifth book of his AEneids seems to me the most perfect. I also love

Lucan, and willingly read him, not so much for his style, as for his own

worth, and the truth and solidity of his opinions and judgments. As for

good Terence, the refined elegance and grace of the Latin tongue, I find

him admirable in his vivid representation of our manners and the

movements of the soul; our actions throw me at every turn upon him; and

I cannot read him so often that I do not still discover some new grace

and beauty. Such as lived near Virgil’s time complained that some should

compare Lucretius to him. I am of opinion that the comparison is, in

truth, very unequal: a belief that, nevertheless, I have much ado to

assure myself in, when I come upon some excellent passage in Lucretius.

But if they were so angry at this comparison, what would they say to the

brutish and barbarous stupidity of those who, nowadays, compare him with

Ariosto? Would not Ariosto himself say?

“O seclum insipiens et inficetum!”

[“O stupid and tasteless age.”--Catullus, xliii. 8.]

I think the ancients had more reason to be angry with those who compared

Plautus with Terence, though much nearer the mark, than Lucretius with

Virgil. It makes much for the estimation and preference of Terence, that

the father of Roman eloquence has him so often, and alone of his class,

in his mouth; and the opinion that the best judge of Roman poets

--[Horace, De Art. Poetica, 279.]--has passed upon his companion. I

have often observed that those of our times, who take upon them to write

comedies (in imitation of the Italians, who are happy enough in that way

of writing), take three or four plots of those of Plautus or Terence to

make one of their own, and , crowd five or six of Boccaccio’s novels into

one single comedy. That which makes them so load themselves with matter

is the diffidence they have of being able to support themselves with

their own strength. They must find out something to lean to; and not

having of their own stuff wherewith to entertain us, they bring in the

story to supply the defect of language. It is quite otherwise with my

author; the elegance and perfection of his way of speaking makes us lose

the appetite of his plot; his refined grace and elegance of diction

everywhere occupy us: he is so pleasant throughout,

“Liquidus, puroque simillimus amni,”

[“Liquid, and likest the pure river.”

--Horace, Ep., ii. s, 120.]

and so possesses the soul with his graces that we forget those of his

fable. This same consideration carries me further: I observe that the

best of the ancient poets have avoided affectation and the hunting after,

not only fantastic Spanish and Petrarchic elevations, but even the softer

and more gentle touches, which are the ornament of all succeeding poesy.

And yet there is no good judgment that will condemn this in the ancients,

and that does not incomparably more admire the equal polish, and that

perpetual sweetness and flourishing beauty of Catullus’s epigrams, than

all the stings with which Martial arms the tails of his. This is by the

same reason that I gave before, and as Martial says of himself:

“Minus illi ingenio laborandum fuit,

in cujus locum materia successerat:”

[“He had the less for his wit to do that the subject itself

supplied what was necessary.”--Martial, praef. ad lib. viii.]

The first, without being moved, or without getting angry, make themselves

sufficiently felt; they have matter enough of laughter throughout, they

need not tickle themselves; the others have need of foreign assistance;

as they have the less wit they must have the more body; they mount on

horseback, because they are not able to stand on their own legs. As in

our balls, those mean fellows who teach to dance, not being able to

represent the presence and dignity of our noblesse, are fain to put

themselves forward with dangerous jumping, and other strange motions and

tumblers tricks; and the ladies are less put to it in dance; where there

are various coupees, changes, and quick motions of body, than in some

other of a more sedate kind, where they are only to move a natural pace,

and to represent their ordinary grace and presence. And so I have seen

good drolls, when in their own everyday clothes, and with the same face

they always wear, give us all the pleasure of their art, when their

apprentices, not yet arrived at such a pitch of perfection, are fain to

meal their faces, put themselves into ridiculous disguises, and make a

hundred grotesque faces to give us whereat to laugh. This conception of

mine is nowhere more demonstrable than in comparing the AEneid with

Orlando Furioso; of which we see the first, by dint of wing, flying in a

brave and lofty place, and always following his point: the latter,

fluttering and hopping from tale to tale, as from branch to branch, not

daring to trust his wings but in very short flights, and perching at

every turn, lest his breath and strength should fail.

“Excursusque breves tentat.”

[“And he attempts short excursions.”

--Virgil, Georgics, iv. 194.]

These, then, as to this sort of subjects, are the authors that best

please me.

As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more profit

with the pleasure, and whence I learn how to marshal my opinions and

conditions, the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch, since

he has been translated into French, and Seneca. Both of these have this

notable convenience suited to my humour, that the knowledge I there seek

is discoursed in loose pieces, that do not require from me any trouble of

reading long, of which I am incapable. Such are the minor works of the

first and the epistles of the latter, which are the best and most

profiting of all their writings. ‘Tis no great attempt to take one of

them in hand, and I give over at pleasure; for they have no sequence or

dependence upon one another. These authors, for the most part, concur in

useful and true opinions; and there is this parallel betwixt them, that

fortune brought them into the world about the same century: they were

both tutors to two Roman emperors: both sought out from foreign

countries: both rich and both great men. Their instruction is the cream

of philosophy, and delivered after a plain and pertinent manner.

Plutarch is more uniform and constant; Seneca more various and waving:

the last toiled and bent his whole strength to fortify virtue against

weakness, fear, and vicious appetites; the other seems more to slight

their power, and to disdain to alter his pace and to stand upon his

guard. Plutarch’s opinions are Platonic, gentle, and accommodated to

civil society; those of the other are Stoical and Epicurean, more remote

from the common use, but, in my opinion, more individually commodious and

more firm. Seneca seems to lean a little to the tyranny of the emperors

of his time, and only seems; for I take it for certain that he speaks

against his judgment when he condemns the action of the generous

murderers of Caesar. Plutarch is frank throughout: Seneca abounds with

brisk touches and sallies; Plutarch with things that warm and move you

more; this contents and pays you better: he guides us, the other pushes

us on.

As to Cicero, his works that are most useful to my design are they that

treat of manners and rules of our life. But boldly to confess the truth

(for since one has passed the barriers of impudence, there is no bridle),

his way of writing appears to me negligent and uninviting: for his

prefaces, definitions, divisions, and etymologies take up the greatest

part of his work: whatever there is of life and marrow is smothered and

lost in the long preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him,

which is a great deal for me, and try to recollect what I have thence

extracted of juice and substance, for the most part I find nothing but

wind; for he is not yet come to the arguments that serve to his purpose,

and to the reasons that properly help to form the knot I seek. For me,

who only desire to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent, these

logical and Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use. I would

have a man begin with the main proposition. I know well enough what

death and pleasure are; let no man give himself the trouble to anatomise

them to me. I look for good and solid reasons, at the first dash, to

instruct me how to stand their shock, for which purpose neither

grammatical subtleties nor the quaint contexture of words and

argumentations are of any use at all. I am for discourses that give the

first charge into the heart of the redoubt; his languish about the

subject; they are proper for the schools, for the bar, and for the

pulpit, where we have leisure to nod, and may awake, a quarter of an hour

after, time enough to find again the thread of the discourse. It is

necessary to speak after this manner to judges, whom a man has a design

to gain over, right or wrong, to children and common people, to whom a

man must say all, and see what will come of it. I would not have an

author make it his business to render me attentive: or that he should cry

out fifty times Oyez! as the heralds do. The Romans, in their religious

exercises, began with ‘Hoc age’ as we in ours do with ‘Sursum corda’;

these are so many words lost to me: I come already fully prepared from my

chamber. I need no allurement, no invitation, no sauce; I eat the meat

raw, so that, instead of whetting my appetite by these preparatives, they

tire and pall it. Will the licence of the time excuse my sacrilegious

boldness if I censure the dialogism of Plato himself as also dull and

heavy, too much stifling the matter, and lament so much time lost by a

man, who had so many better things to say, in so many long and needless

preliminary interlocutions? My ignorance will better excuse me in that

I understand not Greek so well as to discern the beauty of his language.

I generally choose books that use sciences, not such as only lead to

them. The two first, and Pliny, and their like, have nothing of this Hoc

age; they will have to do with men already instructed; or if they have,

‘tis a substantial Hoc age; and that has a body by itself. I also

delight in reading the Epistles to Atticus, not only because they contain

a great deal of the history and affairs of his time, but much more

because I therein discover much of his own private humours; for I have a

singular curiosity, as I have said elsewhere, to pry into the souls and

the natural and true opinions of the authors, with whom I converse. A

man may indeed judge of their parts, but not of their manners nor of

themselves, by the writings they exhibit upon the theatre of the world.

I have a thousand times lamented the loss of the treatise Brutus wrote

upon Virtue, for it is well to learn the theory from those who best know

the practice.

But seeing the matter preached and the preacher are different things,

I would as willingly see Brutus in Plutarch, as in a book of his own.

I would rather choose to be certainly informed of the conference he had

in his tent with some particular friends of his the night before a

battle, than of the harangue he made the next day to his army; and of

what he did in his closet and his chamber, than what he did in the public

square and in the senate. As to Cicero, I am of the common opinion that,

learning excepted, he had no great natural excellence. He was a good

citizen, of an affable nature, as all fat, heavy men, such as he was,

usually are; but given to ease, and had, in truth, a mighty share of

vanity and ambition. Neither do I know how to excuse him for thinking

his poetry fit to be published; ‘tis no great imperfection to make ill

verses, but it is an imperfection not to be able to judge how unworthy

his verses were of the glory of his name. For what concerns his

eloquence, that is totally out of all comparison, and I believe it will

never be equalled. The younger Cicero, who resembled his father in

nothing but in name, whilst commanding in Asia, had several strangers one

day at his table, and, amongst the rest, Cestius seated at the lower end,

as men often intrude to the open tables of the great. Cicero asked one

of his people who that man was, who presently told him his name; but he,

as one who had his thoughts taken up with something else, and who had

forgotten the answer made him, asking three or four times, over and over

again; the same question, the fellow, to deliver himself from so many

answers and to make him know him by some particular circumstance; “‘tis

that Cestius,” said he, “of whom it was told you, that he makes no great

account of your father’s eloquence in comparison of his own.” At which

Cicero, being suddenly nettled, commanded poor Cestius presently to be

seized, and caused him to be very well whipped in his own presence; a

very discourteous entertainer! Yet even amongst those, who, all things

considered, have reputed his, eloquence incomparable, there have been

some, who have not stuck to observe some faults in it: as that great

Brutus his friend, for example, who said ‘twas a broken and feeble

eloquence, ‘fyactam et elumbem’. The orators also, nearest to the age

wherein he lived, reprehended in him the care he had of a certain long

cadence in his periods, and particularly took notice of these words,

‘esse videatur’, which he there so often makes use of. For my part, I

more approve of a shorter style, and that comes more roundly off. He

does, though, sometimes shuffle his parts more briskly together, but ‘tis

very seldom. I have myself taken notice of this one passage:

“Ego vero me minus diu senem mallem,

quam esse senem, antequam essem.”

[“I had rather be old a brief time, than be old before old age.

--“Cicero, De Senect., c. 10.]

The historians are my right ball, for they are pleasant and easy, and

where man, in general, the knowledge of whom I hunt after, appears more

vividly and entire than anywhere else:

[The easiest of my amusements, the right ball at tennis being that

which coming to the player from the right hand, is much easier

played with.--Coste.]

the variety and truth of his internal qualities, in gross and piecemeal,

the diversity of means by which he is united and knit, and the accidents

that threaten him. Now those that write lives, by reason they insist

more upon counsels than events, more upon what sallies from within, than

upon what happens without, are the most proper for my reading; and,

therefore, above all others, Plutarch is the man for me. I am very sorry

we have not a dozen Laertii,--[Diogenes Laertius, who wrote the Lives of

the Philosophers]--or that he was not further extended; for I am equally

curious to know the lives and fortunes of these great instructors of the

world, as to know the diversities of their doctrines and opinions. In

this kind of study of histories, a man must tumble over, without

distinction, all sorts of authors, old and new, French or foreign, there

to know the things of which they variously treat. But Caesar, in my

opinion, particularly deserves to be studied, not for the knowledge of

the history only, but for himself, so great an excellence and perfection

he has above all the rest, though Sallust be one of the number. In

earnest, I read this author with more reverence and respect than is

usually allowed to human writings; one while considering him in his

person, by his actions and miraculous greatness, and another in the

purity and inimitable polish of his language, wherein he not only excels

all other historians, as Cicero confesses, but, peradventure, even

Cicero himself; speaking of his enemies with so much sincerity in his

judgment, that, the false colours with which he strives to palliate his

evil cause, and the ordure of his pestilent ambition excepted, I think

there is no fault to be objected against him, saving this, that he speaks

too sparingly of himself, seeing so many great things could not have been

performed under his conduct, but that his own personal acts must

necessarily have had a greater share in them than he attributes to them.

I love historians, whether of the simple sort, or of the higher order.

The simple, who have nothing of their own to mix with it, and who only

make it their business to collect all that comes to their knowledge, and

faithfully to record all things, without choice or discrimination, leave

to us the entire judgment of discerning the truth. Such, for example,

amongst others, is honest Froissart, who has proceeded in his undertaking

with so frank a plainness that, having committed an error, he is not

ashamed to confess and correct it in the place where the finger has been

laid, and who represents to us even the variety of rumours that were then

spread abroad, and the different reports that were made to him; ‘tis the

naked and inform matter of history, and of which every one may make his

profit, according to his understanding. The more excellent sort of

historians have judgment to pick out what is most worthy to be known;

and, of two reports, to examine which is the most likely to be true: from

the condition of princes and their humours, they conclude their counsels,

and attribute to them words proper for the occasion; such have title to

assume the authority of regulating our belief to what they themselves

believe; but certainly, this privilege belongs to very few. For the

middle sort of historians, of which the most part are, they spoil all;

they will chew our meat for us; they take upon them to judge of, and

consequently, to incline the history to their own fancy; for if the

judgment lean to one side, a man cannot avoid wresting and writhing his

narrative to that bias; they undertake to select things worthy to be

known, and yet often conceal from us such a word, such a private action,

as would much better instruct us; omit, as incredible, such things as

they do not understand, and peradventure some, because they cannot

express good French or Latin. Let them display their eloquence and

intelligence, and judge according to their own fancy: but let them,

withal, leave us something to judge of after them, and neither alter nor

disguise, by their abridgments and at their own choice, anything of the

substance of the matter, but deliver it to us pure and entire in all its

dimensions.

For the most part, and especially in these latter ages, persons are

culled out for this work from amongst the common people, upon the sole

consideration of well-speaking, as if we were to learn grammar from them;

and the men so chosen have fair reason, being hired for no other end and

pretending to nothing but babble, not to be very solicitous of any part

but that, and so, with a fine jingle of words, prepare us a pretty

contexture of reports they pick up in the streets. The only good

histories are those that have been written themselves who held command in

the affairs whereof they write, or who participated in the conduct of

them, or, at least, who have had the conduct of others of the same

nature. Such are almost all the Greek and Roman histories: for, several

eye-witnesses having written of the same subject, in the time when

grandeur and learning commonly met in the same person, if there happen to

be an error, it must of necessity be a very slight one, and upon a very

doubtful incident. What can a man expect from a physician who writes of

war, or from a mere scholar, treating of the designs of princes? If we

could take notice how scrupulous the Romans were in this, there would

need but this example: Asinius Pollio found in the histories of Caesar

himself something misreported, a mistake occasioned; either by reason he

could not have his eye in all parts of his army at once and had given

credit to some individual persons who had not delivered him a very true

account; or else, for not having had too perfect notice given him by his

lieutenants of what they had done in his absence.--[Suetonius, Life of

Caesar, c. 56.]--By which we may see, whether the inquisition after

truth be not very delicate, when a man cannot believe the report of a

battle from the knowledge of him who there commanded, nor from the

soldiers who were engaged in it, unless, after the method of a judicial

inquiry, the witnesses be confronted and objections considered upon the

proof of the least detail of every incident. In good earnest the

knowledge we have of our own affairs, is much more obscure: but that has

been sufficiently handled by Bodin, and according to my own sentiment

--[In the work by jean Bodin, entitled “Methodus ad facilem historiarum

cognitionem.” 1566.]--A little to aid the weakness of my memory (so

extreme that it has happened to me more than once, to take books again

into my hand as new and unseen, that I had carefully read over a few

years before, and scribbled with my notes) I have adopted a custom of

late, to note at the end of every book (that is, of those I never intend

to read again) the time when I made an end on’t, and the judgment I had

made of it, to the end that this might, at least, represent to me the

character and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it;

and I will here transcribe some of those annotations.

I wrote this, some ten years ago, in my Guicciardini (of what language

soever my books speak to me in, I always speak to them in my own): “He is

a diligent historiographer, from whom, in my opinion, a man may learn the

truth of the affairs of his time, as exactly as from any other; in the

most of which he was himself also a personal actor, and in honourable

command. There is no appearance that he disguised anything, either upon

the account of hatred, favour, or vanity; of which the free censures he

passes upon the great ones, and particularly those by whom he was

advanced and employed in commands of great trust and honour, as Pope

Clement VII., give ample testimony. As to that part which he thinks

himself the best at, namely, his digressions and discourses, he has

indeed some very good, and enriched with fine features; but he is too

fond of them: for, to leave nothing unsaid, having a subject so full,

ample, almost infinite, he degenerates into pedantry and smacks a little

of scholastic prattle. I have also observed this in him, that of so many

souls and so many effects, so many motives and so many counsels as he

judges, he never attributes any one to virtue, religion, or conscience,

as if all these were utterly extinct in the world: and of all the

actions, how brave soever in outward show they appear in themselves, he

always refers the cause and motive to some vicious occasion or some

prospect of profit. It is impossible to imagine but that, amongst such

an infinite number of actions as he makes mention of, there must be some

one produced by the way of honest reason. No corruption could so

universally have infected men that some one would not escape the

contagion which makes me suspect that his own taste was vicious, whence

it might happen that he judged other men by himself.”

In my Philip de Commines there is this written: “You will here find the

language sweet and delightful, of a natural simplicity, the narration

pure, with the good faith of the author conspicuous therein; free from

vanity, when speaking of himself, and from affection or envy, when

speaking of others: his discourses and exhortations rather accompanied

with zeal and truth, than with any exquisite sufficiency; and,

throughout, authority and gravity, which bespeak him a man of good

extraction, and brought up in great affairs.”

Upon the Memoirs of Monsieur du Bellay I find this: “‘Tis always pleasant

to read things written by those that have experienced how they ought to

be carried on; but withal, it cannot be denied but there is a manifest

decadence in these two lords--[Martin du Bellay and Guillaume de Langey,

brothers, who jointly wrote the Memoirs.]--from the freedom and liberty

of writing that shine in the elder historians, such as the Sire de

Joinville, the familiar companion of St. Louis; Eginhard, chancellor to

Charlemagne; and of later date, Philip de Commines. What we have here is

rather an apology for King Francis, against the Emperor Charles V., than

history. I will not believe that they have falsified anything, as to

matter of fact; but they make a common practice of twisting the judgment

of events, very often contrary to reason, to our advantage, and of

omitting whatsoever is ticklish to be handled in the life of their

master; witness the proceedings of Messieurs de Montmorency and de Biron,

which are here omitted: nay, so much as the very name of Madame

d’Estampes is not here to be found. Secret actions an historian may

conceal; but to pass over in silence what all the world knows and things

that have drawn after them public and such high consequences, is an

inexcusable defect. In fine, whoever has a mind to have a perfect

knowledge of King Francis and the events of his reign, let him seek it

elsewhere, if my advice may prevail. The only profit a man can reap from

these Memoirs is in the special narrative of battles and other exploits

of war wherein these gentlemen were personally engaged; in some words and

private actions of the princes of their time, and in the treaties and

negotiations carried on by the Seigneur de Langey, where there are

everywhere things worthy to be known, and discourses above the vulgar

strain.”

CHAPTER XI

OF CRUELTY

I fancy virtue to be something else, and something more noble, than good

nature, and the mere propension to goodness, that we are born into the

world withal. Well-disposed and well-descended souls pursue, indeed, the

same methods, and represent in their actions the same face that virtue

itself does: but the word virtue imports, I know not what, more great and

active than merely for a man to suffer himself, by a happy disposition,

to be gently and quietly drawn to the rule of reason. He who, by a

natural sweetness and facility, should despise injuries received, would

doubtless do a very fine and laudable thing; but he who, provoked and

nettled to the quick by an offence, should fortify himself with the arms

of reason against the furious appetite of revenge, and after a great

conflict, master his own passion, would certainly do a great deal more.

The first would do well; the latter virtuously: one action might be

called goodness, and the other virtue; for methinks, the very name of

virtue presupposes difficulty and contention, and cannot be exercised

without an opponent. ‘Tis for this reason, perhaps, that we call God

good, mighty, liberal and just; but we do not call Him virtuous, being

that all His operations are natural and without endeavour.--[Rousseau,

in his Emile, book v., adopts this passage almost in the same words.]--

It has been the opinion of many philosophers, not only Stoics, but

Epicureans--and this addition--

[“Montaigne stops here to make his excuse for thus naming the

Epicureans with the Stoics, in conformity to the general opinion

that the Epicureans were not so rigid in their morals as the Stoics,

which is not true in the main, as he demonstrates at one view. This

involved Montaigne in a tedious parenthesis, during which it is

proper that the reader be attentive, that he may not entirely lose

the thread of the argument. In some later editions of this author,

it has been attempted to remedy this inconvenience, but without

observing that Montaigne’s argument is rendered more feeble and

obscure by such vain repetitions: it is a licence that ought not to

be taken, because he who publishes the work of another, ought to

give it as the other composed ft. But, in Mr Cotton’s translation,

he was so puzzled with this enormous parenthesis that he has quite

left it out”--Coste.]

I borrow from the vulgar opinion, which is false, notwithstanding the

witty conceit of Arcesilaus in answer to one, who, being reproached that

many scholars went from his school to the Epicurean, but never any from

thence to his school, said in answer, “I believe it indeed; numbers of

capons being made out of cocks, but never any cocks out of capons.”

--[Diogenes Laertius, Life of Archesilaus, lib. iv., 43.]--For, in truth,

the Epicurean sect is not at all inferior to the Stoic in steadiness, and

the rigour of opinions and precepts. And a certain Stoic, showing more

honesty than those disputants, who, in order to quarrel with Epicurus,

and to throw the game into their hands, make him say what he never

thought, putting a wrong construction upon his words, clothing his

sentences, by the strict rules of grammar, with another meaning, and a

different opinion from that which they knew he entertained in his mind

and in his morals, the Stoic, I say, declared that he abandoned the

Epicurean sect, upon this among other considerations, that he thought

their road too lofty and inaccessible;

[“And those are called lovers of pleasure, being in effect

lovers of honour and justice, who cultivate and observe all

the virtues.”--Cicero, Ep. Fam., xv. i, 19.]

These philosophers say that it is not enough to have the soul seated in

a good place, of a good temper, and well disposed to virtue; it is not

enough to have our resolutions and our reasoning fixed above all the

power of fortune, but that we are, moreover, to seek occasions wherein to

put them to the proof: they would seek pain, necessity, and contempt to

contend with them and to keep the soul in breath:

“Multum sibi adjicit virtus lacessita.”

[“Virtue is much strengthened by combats.”

or: “Virtue attacked adds to its own force.”

--Seneca, Ep., 13.]

‘Tis one of the reasons why Epaminondas, who was yet of a third sect,

--[The Pythagorean.]--refused the riches fortune presented to him by

very lawful means; because, said he, I am to contend with poverty, in

which extreme he maintained himself to the last. Socrates put himself,

methinks, upon a ruder trial, keeping for his exercise a confounded

scolding wife, which was fighting at sharps. Metellus having, of all the

Roman senators, alone attempted, by the power of virtue, to withstand the

violence of Saturninus, tribune of the people at Rome, who would, by all

means, cause an unjust law to pass in favour of the commons, and, by so

doing, having incurred the capital penalties that Saturninus had

established against the dissentient, entertained those who, in this

extremity, led him to execution with words to this effect: That it was a

thing too easy and too base to do ill; and that to do well where there

was no danger was a common thing; but that to do well where there was

danger was the proper office of a man of virtue. These words of Metellus

very clearly represent to us what I would make out, viz., that virtue

refuses facility for a companion; and that the easy, smooth, and

descending way by which the regular steps of a sweet disposition of

nature are conducted is not that of a true virtue; she requires a rough

and stormy passage; she will have either exotic difficulties to wrestle

with, like that of Metellus, by means whereof fortune delights to

interrupt the speed of her career, or internal difficulties, that the

inordinate appetites and imperfections of our condition introduce to

disturb her.

I am come thus far at my ease; but here it comes into my head that the

soul of Socrates, the most perfect that ever came to my knowledge, should

by this rule be of very little recommendation; for I cannot conceive in

that person any the least motion of a vicious inclination: I cannot

imagine there could be any difficulty or constraint in the course of his

virtue: I know his reason to be so powerful and sovereign over him that

she would never have suffered a vicious appetite so much as to spring in

him. To a virtue so elevated as his, I have nothing to oppose. Methinks

I see him march, with a victorious and triumphant pace, in pomp and at

his ease, without opposition or disturbance. If virtue cannot shine

bright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that

she cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from

her that she derives her reputation and honour? What then, also, would

become of that brave and generous Epicurean pleasure, which makes account

that it nourishes virtue tenderly in her lap, and there makes it play and

wanton, giving it for toys to play withal, shame, fevers, poverty, death,

and torments? If I presuppose that a perfect virtue manifests itself in

contending, in patient enduring of pain, and undergoing the uttermost

extremity of the gout; without being moved in her seat; if I give her

troubles and difficulty for her necessary objects: what will become of a

virtue elevated to such a degree, as not only to despise pain, but,

moreover, to rejoice in it, and to be tickled with the throes of a sharp

colic, such as the Epicureans have established, and of which many of

them, by their actions, have given most manifest proofs? As have several

others, who I find to have surpassed in effects even the very rules of

their discipline. Witness the younger Cato: When I see him die, and

tearing out his own bowels, I am not satisfied simply to believe that he

had then his soul totally exempt from all trouble and horror: I cannot

think that he only maintained himself in the steadiness that the Stoical

rules prescribed him; temperate, without emotion, and imperturbed. There

was, methinks, something in the virtue of this man too sprightly and

fresh to stop there; I believe that, without doubt, he felt a pleasure

and delight in so noble an action, and was more pleased in it than in any

other of his life:

“Sic abiit a vita, ut causam moriendi nactum se esse gauderet.”

[“He quitted life rejoicing that a reason for dying had arisen.”

--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 30.]

I believe it so thoroughly that I question whether he would have been

content to have been deprived of the occasion of so brave an exploit; and

if the goodness that made him embrace the public concern more than his

own, withheld me not, I should easily fall into an opinion that he

thought himself obliged to fortune for having put his virtue upon so

brave a trial, and for having favoured that theif--[Caesar]--in treading

underfoot the ancient liberty of his country. Methinks I read in this

action I know not what exaltation in his soul, and an extraordinary and

manly emotion of pleasure, when he looked upon the generosity and height

of his enterprise:

“Deliberate morte ferocior,”

[“The more courageous from the deliberation to die.”

--Horace, Od., i. 37, 29.]

not stimulated with any hope of glory, as the popular and effeminate

judgments of some have concluded (for that consideration was too mean and

low to possess so generous, so haughty, and so determined a heart as

his), but for the very beauty of the thing in itself, which he who had

the handling of the springs discerned more clearly and in its perfection

than we are able to do. Philosophy has obliged me in determining that so

brave an action had been indecently placed in any other life than that of

Cato; and that it only appertained to his to end so; notwithstanding, and

according to reason, he commanded his son and the senators who

accompanied him to take another course in their affairs:

“Catoni, quum incredibilem natura tribuisset gravitatem,

eamque ipse perpetue constantia roboravisset, semperque

in proposito consilio permansisset, moriendum potius,

quam tyranni vultus aspiciendus, erat.”

[“Cato, whom nature had given incredible dignity, which he had

fortified by perpetual constancy, ever remaining of his

predetermined opinion, preferred to die rather than to look

on the countenance of a tyrant.”--Cicero, De Ofc., i. 31.]

Every death ought to hold proportion with the life before it; we do not

become others for dying. I always interpret the death by the life

preceding; and if any one tell me of a death strong and constant in

appearance, annexed to a feeble life, I conclude it produced by some

feeble cause, and suitable to the life before. The easiness then of his

death and the facility of dying he had acquired by the vigour of his

soul; shall we say that it ought to abate anything of the lustre of his

virtue? And who, that has his brain never so little tinctured with the

true philosophy, can be content to imagine Socrates only free from fear

and passion in the accident of his prison, fetters, and condemnation?

and that will not discover in him not only firmness and constancy (which

was his ordinary condition), but, moreover, I know not what new

satisfaction, and a frolic cheerfulness in his last words and actions?

In the start he gave with the pleasure of scratching his leg when his

irons were taken off, does he not discover an equal serenity and joy in

his soul for being freed from past inconveniences, and at the same time

to enter into the knowledge of the things to come? Cato shall pardon me,

if he please; his death indeed is more tragical and more lingering; but

yet this is, I know not how, methinks, finer. Aristippus, to one that

was lamenting this death: “The gods grant me such an one,” said he.

A man discerns in the soul of these two great men and their imitators

(for I very much doubt whether there were ever their equals) so perfect a

habitude to virtue, that it was turned to a complexion. It is no longer

a laborious virtue, nor the precepts of reason, to maintain which the

soul is so racked, but the very essence of their soul, its natural and

ordinary habit; they have rendered it such by a long practice of

philosophical precepts having lit upon a rich and fine nature; the

vicious passions that spring in us can find no entrance into them; the

force and vigour of their soul stifle and extinguish irregular desires,

so soon as they begin to move.

Now, that it is not more noble, by a high and divine resolution, to

hinder the birth of temptations, and to be so formed to virtue, that the

very seeds of vice are rooted out, than to hinder by main force their

progress; and, having suffered ourselves to be surprised with the first

motions of the passions, to arm ourselves and to stand firm to oppose

their progress, and overcome them; and that this second effect is not

also much more generous than to be simply endowed with a facile and

affable nature, of itself disaffected to debauchery and vice, I do not

think can be doubted; for this third and last sort of virtue seems to

render a man innocent, but not virtuous; free from doing ill, but not apt

enough to do well: considering also, that this condition is so near

neighbour to imperfection and cowardice, that I know not very well how to

separate the confines and distinguish them: the very names of goodness

and innocence are, for this reason, in some sort grown into contempt.

I very well know that several virtues, as chastity, sobriety, and

temperance, may come to a man through personal defects. Constancy in

danger, if it must be so called, the contempt of death, and patience in

misfortunes, may ofttimes be found in men for want of well judging of

such accidents, and not apprehending them for such as they are. Want of

apprehension and stupidity sometimes counterfeit virtuous effects as I

have often seen it happen, that men have been commended for what really

merited blame. An Italian lord once said this, in my presence, to the

disadvantage of his own nation: that the subtlety of the Italians, and

the vivacity of their conceptions were so great, and they foresaw the

dangers and accidents that might befall them so far off, that it was not

to be thought strange, if they were often, in war, observed to provide

for their safety, even before they had discovered the peril; that we

French and the Spaniards, who were not so cunning, went on further, and

that we must be made to see and feel the danger before we would take the

alarm; but that even then we could not stick to it. But the Germans and

Swiss, more gross and heavy, had not the sense to look about them, even

when the blows were falling about their ears. Peradventure, he only

talked so for mirth’s sake; and yet it is most certain that in war raw

soldiers rush into dangers with more precipitancy than after they have

been cudgelled*--(The original has eschauldex--scalded)

“Haud ignarus . . . . quantum nova gloria in armis,

Et praedulce decus, primo certamine possit.”

[“Not ignorant how much power the fresh glory of arms and sweetest

honour possess in the first contest.”--AEneid, xi. 154]

For this reason it is that, when we judge of a particular action, we are

to consider the circumstances, and the whole man by whom it is performed,

before we give it a name.

To instance in myself: I have sometimes known my friends call that

prudence in me, which was merely fortune; and repute that courage and

patience, which was judgment and opinion; and attribute to me one title

for another, sometimes to my advantage and sometimes otherwise. As to

the rest, I am so far from being arrived at the first and most perfect

degree of excellence, where virtue is turned into habit, that even of the

second I have made no great proofs. I have not been very solicitous to

curb the desires by which I have been importuned. My virtue is a virtue,

or rather an innocence, casual and accidental. If I had been born of a

more irregular complexion, I am afraid I should have made scurvy work;

for I never observed any great stability in my soul to resist passions,

if they were never so little vehement: I know not how to nourish quarrels

and debates in my own bosom, and, consequently, owe myself no great

thanks that I am free from several vices:

“Si vitiis mediocribus et mea paucis

Mendosa est natura, alioqui recta, velut si

Egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore naevos:”

[“If my nature be disfigured only with slight and few vices, and is

otherwise just, it is as if you should blame moles on a fair body.”

--Horatius, Sat., i. 6, 65.]

I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason. She has caused me to be

descended of a race famous for integrity and of a very good father; I

know not whether or no he has infused into me part of his humours, or

whether domestic examples and the good education of my infancy have

insensibly assisted in the work, or, if I was otherwise born so:

“Seu Libra, seu me Scorpius adspicit

Formidolosus, pars violentior

Natalis hors, seu tyrannus

Hesperive Capricornus undae:”

[“Whether the Balance or dread Scorpio, more potent over my natal

hour, aspects me, or Capricorn, supreme over the Hesperian sea.”

--Horace, Od., ii. 117.]

but so it is, that I have naturally a horror for most vices. The answer

of Antisthenes to him who asked him, which was the best apprenticeship

“to unlearn evil,” seems to point at this. I have them in horror, I say,

with a detestation so natural, and so much my own, that the same instinct

and impression I brought of them with me from my nurse, I yet retain, and

no temptation whatever has had the power to make me alter it. Not so

much as my own discourses, which in some things lashing out of the common

road might seem easily to license me to actions that my natural

inclination makes me hate. I will say a prodigious thing, but I will say

it, however: I find myself in many things more under reputation by my

manners than by my opinion, and my concupiscence less debauched than my

reason. Aristippus instituted opinions so bold in favour of pleasure and

riches as set all the philosophers against him: but as to his manners,

Dionysius the tyrant, having presented three beautiful women before him,

to take his choice; he made answer, that he would choose them all, and

that Paris got himself into trouble for having preferred one before the

other two: but, having taken them home to his house, he sent them back

untouched. His servant finding himself overladen upon the way, with the

money he carried after him, he ordered him to pour out and throw away

that which troubled him. And Epicurus, whose doctrines were so

irreligious and effeminate, was in his life very laborious and devout;

he wrote to a friend of his that he lived only upon biscuit and water,

entreating him to send him a little cheese, to lie by him against he had

a mind to make a feast. Must it be true, that to be a perfect good man,

we must be so by an occult, natural, and universal propriety, without

law, reason, or example? The debauches wherein I have been engaged, have

not been, I thank God, of the worst sort, and I have condemned them in

myself, for my judgment was never infected by them; on the contrary,

I accuse them more severely in myself than in any other; but that is all,

for, as to the rest. I oppose too little resistance and suffer myself to

incline too much to the other side of the balance, excepting that I

moderate them, and prevent them from mixing with other vices, which for

the most part will cling together, if a man have not a care. I have

contracted and curtailed mine, to make them as single and as simple as I

can:

“Nec ultra

Errorem foveo.”

[“Nor do I cherish error further.”

or: “Nor carry wrong further.”

--Juvenal, viii. 164.]

For as to the opinion of the Stoics, who say, “That the wise man when he

works, works by all the virtues together, though one be most apparent,

according to the nature of the action”; and herein the similitude of a

human body might serve them somewhat, for the action of anger cannot

work, unless all the humours assist it, though choler predominate;

--if they will thence draw a like consequence, that when the wicked man

does wickedly, he does it by all the vices together, I do not believe it

to be so, or else I understand them not, for I by effect find the

contrary. These are sharp, unsubstantial subleties, with which

philosophy sometimes amuses itself. I follow some vices, but I fly

others as much as a saint would do. The Peripatetics also disown this

indissoluble connection; and Aristotle is of opinion that a prudent and

just man may be intemperate and inconsistent. Socrates confessed to some

who had discovered a certain inclination to vice in his physiognomy, that

it was, in truth, his natural propension, but that he had by discipline

corrected it. And such as were familiar with the philosopher Stilpo

said, that being born with addiction to wine and women, he had by study

rendered himself very abstinent both from the one and the other.

What I have in me of good, I have, quite contrary, by the chance of my

birth; and hold it not either by law, precept, or any other instruction;

the innocence that is in me is a simple one; little vigour and no art.

Amongst other vices, I mortally hate cruelty, both by nature and

judgment, as the very extreme of all vices: nay, with so much tenderness

that I cannot see a chicken’s neck pulled off without trouble, and cannot

without impatience endure the cry of a hare in my dog’s teeth, though the

chase be a violent pleasure. Such as have sensuality to encounter,

freely make use of this argument, to shew that it is altogether “vicious

and unreasonable; that when it is at the height, it masters us to that

degree that a man’s reason can have no access,” and instance our own

experience in the act of love,

“Quum jam praesagit gaudia corpus,

Atque in eo est Venus,

ut muliebria conserat arva.”

[None of the translators of the old editions used for this etext

have been willing to translate this passage from Lucretius, iv.

1099; they take a cop out by bashfully saying: “The sense is in the

preceding passage of the text.” D.W.]

wherein they conceive that the pleasure so transports us, that our reason

cannot perform its office, whilst we are in such ecstasy and rapture. I

know very well it may be otherwise, and that a man may sometimes, if he

will, gain this point over himself to sway his soul, even in the critical

moment, to think of something else; but then he must ply it to that bent.

I know that a man may triumph over the utmost effort of this pleasure: I

have experienced it in myself, and have not found Venus so imperious a

goddess, as many, and much more virtuous men than I, declare. I do not

consider it a miracle, as the Queen of Navarre does in one of the Tales

of her Heptameron--[“Vu gentil liure pour son estoffe.”]--(which is a

very pretty book of its kind), nor for a thing of extreme difficulty, to

pass whole nights, where a man has all the convenience and liberty he can

desire, with a long-coveted mistress, and yet be true to the pledge first

given to satisfy himself with kisses and suchlike endearments, without

pressing any further. I conceive that the example of the pleasure of the

chase would be more proper; wherein though the pleasure be less, there is

the higher excitement of unexpected joy, giving no time for the reason,

taken by surprise, to prepare itself for the encounter, when after a long

quest the beast starts up on a sudden in a place where, peradventure, we

least expected it; the shock and the ardour of the shouts and cries of

the hunters so strike us, that it would be hard for those who love this

lesser chase, to turn their thoughts upon the instant another way; and

the poets make Diana triumph over the torch and shafts of Cupid:

“Quis non malarum, quas amor curas habet,

Haec inter obliviscitur?”

[“Who, amongst such delights would not remove out of his thoughts

the anxious cares of love.”--Horace, Epod., ii. 37.]