[“His parts were so pliable to all uses, that one would say he had

been born only to that which he was doing.”--Livy, xxxix. 49.]

Had I liberty to set myself forth after my own mode, there is no so

graceful fashion to which I would be so fixed as not to be able to

disengage myself from it; life is an unequal, irregular and multiform

motion. ‘Tis not to be a friend to one’s self, much less a master ‘tis

to be a slave, incessantly to be led by the nose by one’s self, and to be

so fixed in one’s previous inclinations, that one cannot turn aside nor

writhe one’s neck out of the collar. I say this now in this part of my

life, wherein I find I cannot easily disengage myself from the

importunity of my soul, which cannot ordinarily amuse itself but in

things of limited range, nor employ itself otherwise than entirely and

with all its force; upon the lightest subject offered it expands and

stretches it to that degree as therein to employ its utmost power;

wherefore it is that idleness is to me a very painful labour, and very

prejudicial to my health. Most men’s minds require foreign matter to

exercise and enliven them; mine has rather need of it to sit still and

repose itself,

“Vitia otii negotio discutienda sunt,”

[“The vices of sloth are to be shaken off by business.”

--Seneca, Ep. 56.]

for its chiefest and hardest study is to study itself. Books are to it

a sort of employment that debauch it from its study. Upon the first

thoughts that possess it, it begins to bustle and make trial of its

vigour in all directions, exercises its power of handling, now making

trial of force, now fortifying, moderating, and ranging itself by the way

of grace and order. It has of its own wherewith to rouse its faculties:

nature has given to it, as to all others, matter enough of its own to

make advantage of, and subjects proper enough where it may either invent

or judge.

Meditation is a powerful and full study to such as can effectually taste

and employ themselves; I had rather fashion my soul than furnish it.

There is no employment, either more weak or more strong, than that of

entertaining a man’s own thoughts, according as the soul is; the greatest

men make it their whole business,

“Quibus vivere est cogitare;”

[“To whom to live is to think.”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 28.]

nature has therefore favoured it with this privilege, that there is

nothing we can do so long, nor any action to which we more frequently and

with greater facility addict ourselves. ‘Tis the business of the gods,

says Aristotle,’ and from which both their beatitude and ours proceed.

The principal use of reading to me is, that by various objects it rouses

my reason, and employs my judgment, not my memory. Few conversations

detain me without force and effort; it is true that beauty and elegance

of speech take as much or more with me than the weight and depth of the

subject; and forasmuch as I am apt to be sleepy in all other

communication, and give but the rind of my attention, it often falls out

that in such poor and pitiful discourses, mere chatter, I either make

drowsy, unmeaning answers, unbecoming a child, and ridiculous, or more

foolishly and rudely still, maintain an obstinate silence. I have a

pensive way that withdraws me into myself, and, with that, a heavy and

childish ignorance of many very ordinary things, by which two qualities I

have earned this, that men may truly relate five or six as ridiculous

tales of me as of any other man whatever.

But, to proceed in my subject, this difficult complexion of mine renders

me very nice in my conversation with men, whom I must cull and pick out

for my purpose; and unfits me for common society. We live and negotiate

with the people; if their conversation be troublesome to us, if we

disdain to apply ourselves to mean and vulgar souls (and the mean and

vulgar are often as regular as those of the finest thread, and all wisdom

is folly that does not accommodate itself to the common ignorance),

we must no more intermeddle either with other men’s affairs or our own;

for business, both public and private, has to do with these people. The

least forced and most natural motions of the soul are the most beautiful;

the best employments, those that are least strained. My God! how good

an office does wisdom to those whose desires it limits to their power!

that is the most useful knowledge: “according to what a man can,” was the

favourite sentence and motto of Socrates. A motto of great solidity.

We must moderate and adapt our desires to the nearest and easiest to be

acquired things. Is it not a foolish humour of mine to separate myself

from a thousand to whom my fortune has conjoined me, and without whom I

cannot live, and cleave to one or two who are out of my intercourse; or

rather a fantastic desire of a thing I cannot obtain? My gentle and easy

manners, enemies of all sourness and harshness, may easily enough have

secured me from envy and animosities; to be beloved, I do not say, but

never any man gave less occasion of being hated; but the coldness of my

conversation has, reasonably enough, deprived me of the goodwill of many,

who are to be excused if they interpret it in another and worse sense.

I am very capable of contracting and maintaining rare and exquisite

friendships; for by reason that I so greedily seize upon such

acquaintance as fit my liking, I throw myself with such violence upon

them that I hardly fail to stick, and to make an impression where I hit;

as I have often made happy proof. In ordinary friendships I am somewhat

cold and shy, for my motion is not natural, if not with full sail:

besides which, my fortune having in my youth given me a relish for one

sole and perfect friendship, has, in truth, created in me a kind of

distaste to others, and too much imprinted in my fancy that it is a beast

of company, as the ancient said, but not of the herd.--[Plutarch, On the

Plurality of Friends, c. 2.]--And also I have a natural difficulty of

communicating myself by halves, with the modifications and the servile

and jealous prudence required in the conversation of numerous and

imperfect friendships: and we are principally enjoined to these in this

age of ours, when we cannot talk of the world but either with danger or

falsehood.

Yet do I very well discern that he who has the conveniences (I mean the

essential conveniences) of life for his end, as I have, ought to fly

these difficulties and delicacy of humour, as much as the plague. I

should commend a soul of several stages, that knows both how to stretch

and to slacken itself; that finds itself at ease in all conditions

whither fortune leads it; that can discourse with a neighbour, of his

building, his hunting, his quarrels; that can chat with a carpenter or a

gardener with pleasure. I envy those who can render themselves familiar

with the meanest of their followers, and talk with them in their own way;

and dislike the advice of Plato, that men should always speak in a

magisterial tone to their servants, whether men or women, without being

sometimes facetious and familiar; for besides the reasons I have given,

‘tis inhuman and unjust to set so great a value upon this pitiful

prerogative of fortune, and the polities wherein less disparity is

permitted betwixt masters and servants seem to me the most equitable.

Others study how to raise and elevate their minds; I, how to humble mine

and to bring it low; ‘tis only vicious in extension:

“Narras et genus AEaci,

Et pugnata sacro bella sub Ilio

Quo Chium pretio cadum

Mercemur, quis aquam temperet ignibus,

Quo praebente domum, et quota,

Pelignis caream frigoribus, taces.”

[“You tell us long stories about the race of AEacus, and the battles

fought under sacred Ilium; but what to give for a cask of Chian

wine, who shall prepare the warm bath, and in whose house, and when

I may escape from the Pelignian cold, you do not tell us.”

--Horace, Od., iii. 19, 3.]

Thus, as the Lacedaemonian valour stood in need of moderation, and of the

sweet and harmonious sound of flutes to soften it in battle, lest they

should precipitate themselves into temerity and fury, whereas all other

nations commonly make use of harsh and shrill sounds, and of loud and

imperious cries, to incite and heat the soldier’s courage to the last

degree; so, methinks, contrary to the usual method, in the practice of

our minds, we have for the most part more need of lead than of wings; of

temperance and composedness than of ardour and agitation. But, above all

things, ‘tis in my opinion egregiously to play the fool, to put on the

grave airs of a man of lofty mind amongst those who are nothing of the

sort: ever to speak in print (by the book),

“Favellare in puma di forchetta.”

[“To talk with the point of a fork,” (affectedly)]

You must let yourself down to those with whom you converse; and sometimes

affect ignorance: lay aside power and subtilty in common conversation; to

preserve decorum and order ‘tis enough-nay, crawl on the earth, if they

so desire it.

The learned often stumble at this stone; they will always be parading

their pedantic science, and strew their books everywhere; they have, in

these days, so filled the cabinets and ears of the ladies with them, that

if they have lost the substance, they at least retain the words; so as in

all discourse upon all sorts of subjects, how mean and common soever,

they speak and write after a new and learned way,

“Hoc sermone pavent, hoc iram, gaudia, curas,

Hoc cuncta effundunt animi secreta; quid ultra?

Concumbunt docte;”

[“In this language do they express their fears, their anger, their

joys, their cares; in this pour out all their secrets; what more?

they lie with their lovers learnedly.”--Juvenal, vi. 189.]

and quote Plato and Aquinas in things the first man they meet could

determine as well; the learning that cannot penetrate their souls hangs

still upon the tongue. If people of quality will be persuaded by me, they

shall content themselves with setting out their proper and natural

treasures; they conceal and cover their beauties under others that are

none of theirs: ‘tis a great folly to put out their own light and shine

by a borrowed lustre: they are interred and buried under ‘de capsula

totae”--[Painted and perfumed from head to foot.” (Or:) “as if they were

things carefully deposited in a band-box.”--Seneca, Ep. 115]--It is

because they do not sufficiently know themselves or do themselves

justice: the world has nothing fairer than they; ‘tis for them to honour

the arts, and to paint painting. What need have they of anything but to

live beloved and honoured? They have and know but too much for this:

they need do no more but rouse and heat a little the faculties they have

of their own. When I see them tampering with rhetoric, law, logic, and

other drugs, so improper and unnecessary for their business, I begin to

suspect that the men who inspire them with such fancies, do it that they

may govern them upon that account; for what other excuse can I contrive?

It is enough that they can, without our instruction, compose the graces

of their eyes to gaiety, severity, sweetness, and season a denial with

asperity, suspense, or favour: they need not another to interpret what

we speak for their service; with this knowledge, they command with a

switch, and rule both the tutors and the schools. But if, nevertheless,

it angers them to give place to us in anything whatever, and will, out of

curiosity, have their share in books, poetry is a diversion proper for

them; ‘tis a wanton, subtle, dissembling, and prating art, all pleasure

and all show, like themselves. They may also abstract several

commodities from history. In philosophy, out of the moral part of it,

they may select such instructions as will teach them to judge of our

humours and conditions, to defend themselves from our treacheries, to

regulate the ardour of their own desires, to manage their liberty, to

lengthen the pleasures of life, and gently to bear the inconstancy of a

lover, the rudeness of a husband; and the importunity of years, wrinkles,

and the like. This is the utmost of what I would allow them in the

sciences.

There are some particular natures that are private and retired: my

natural way is proper for communication, and apt to lay me open; I am all

without and in sight, born for society and friendship. The solitude that

I love myself and recommend to others, is chiefly no other than to

withdraw my thoughts and affections into myself; to restrain and check,

not my steps, but my own cares and desires, resigning all foreign

solicitude, and mortally avoiding servitude and obligation, and not so

much the crowd of men as the crowd of business. Local solitude, to say

the truth, rather gives me more room and sets me more at large; I more

readily throw myself upon affairs of state and the world when I am alone.

At the Louvre and in the bustle of the court, I fold myself within my own

skin; the crowd thrusts me upon myself; and I never entertain myself so

wantonly, with so much licence, or so especially, as in places of respect

and ceremonious prudence: our follies do not make me laugh, it is our

wisdom which does. I am naturally no enemy to a court, life; I have

therein passed a part of my own, and am of a humour cheerfully to

frequent great company, provided it be by intervals and at my own time:

but this softness of judgment whereof I speak ties me perforce to

solitude. Even at home, amidst a numerous family, and in a house

sufficiently frequented, I see people enough, but rarely such with whom I

delight to converse; and I there reserve both for myself and others an

unusual liberty: there is in my house no such thing as ceremony,

ushering, or waiting upon people down to the coach, and such other

troublesome ceremonies as our courtesy enjoins (O the servile and

importunate custom!). Every one there governs himself according to his

own method; let who will speak his thoughts, I sit mute, meditating and

shut up in my closet, without any offence to my guests.

The men whose society and familiarity I covet are those they call sincere

and able men; and the image of these makes me disrelish the rest. It is,

if rightly taken, the rarest of our forms, and a form that we chiefly owe

to nature. The end of this commerce is simply privacy, frequentation and

conference, the exercise of souls, without other fruit. In our

discourse, all subjects are alike to me; let there be neither weight, nor

depth, ‘tis all one: there is yet grace and pertinency; all there is

tinted with a mature and constant judgment, and mixed with goodness,

freedom, gaiety, and friendship. ‘Tis not only in talking of the affairs

of kings and state that our wits discover their force and beauty, but

every whit as much in private conferences. I understand my men even by

their silence and smiles; and better discover them, perhaps, at table

than in the council. Hippomachus said, very well, “that he could know

the good wrestlers by only seeing them walk in the street.” If learning

please to step into our talk, it shall not be rejected, not magisterial,

imperious, and importunate, as-it commonly is, but suffragan and docile

itself; we there only seek to pass away our time; when we have a mind to

be instructed and preached to, we will go seek this in its throne; please

let it humble itself to us for the nonce; for, useful and profitable as

it is, I imagine that, at need, we may manage well enough without it, and

do our business without its assistance. A well-descended soul, and

practised in the conversation of men, will of herself render herself

sufficiently agreeable; art is nothing but the counterpart and register

of what such souls produce.

The conversation also of beautiful and honourable women is for me a sweet

commerce:

“Nam nos quoque oculos eruditos habemus.”

[“For we also have eyes that are versed in the matter.”

--Cicero, Paradox, v. 2.]

If the soul has not therein so much to enjoy, as in the first the bodily

senses, which participate more of this, bring it to a proportion next to,

though, in my opinion, not equal to the other. But ‘tis a commerce

wherein a man must stand a little upon his guard, especially those, where

the body can do much, as in me. I there scalded myself in my youth, and

suffered all the torments that poets say befall those who precipitate

themselves into love without order and judgment. It is true that that

whipping has made me wiser since:

“Quicumque Argolica de classe Capharea fugit,

Semper ab Euboicis vela retorquet aquis.”

[“Whoever of the Grecian fleet has escaped the Capharean rocks, ever

takes care to steer from the Euboean sea.”--Ovid, Trist., i. i, 83.]

‘Tis folly to fix all a man’s thoughts upon it, and to engage in it with

a furious and indiscreet affection; but, on the other hand, to engage

there without love and without inclination, like comedians, to play a

common part, without putting anything to it of his own but words, is

indeed to provide for his safety, but, withal, after as cowardly a manner

as he who should abandon his honour, profit, or pleasure for fear of

danger. For it is certain that from such a practice, they who set it on

foot can expect no fruit that can please or satisfy a noble soul. A man

must have, in good earnest, desired that which he, in good earnest,

expects to have a pleasure in enjoying; I say, though fortune should

unjustly favour their dissimulation; which often falls out, because there

is none of the sex, let her be as ugly as the devil, who does not think

herself well worthy to be beloved, and who does not prefer herself before

other women, either for her youth, the colour of her hair, or her

graceful motion (for there are no more women universally ugly, than there

are women universally beautiful, and such of the Brahmin virgins as have

nothing else to recommend them, the people being assembled by the common

crier to that effect, come out into the market-place to expose their

matrimonial parts to public view, to try if these at least are not of

temptation sufficient to get them a husband). Consequently, there is not

one who does not easily suffer herself to be overcome by the first vow

that they make to serve her. Now from this common and ordinary treachery

of the men of the present day, that must fall out which we already

experimentally see, either that they rally together, and separate

themselves by themselves to evade us, or else form their discipline by

the example we give them, play their parts of the farce as we do ours,

and give themselves up to the sport, without passion, care, or love;

“Neque afl’ectui suo, aut alieno, obnoxiae;”

[“Neither amenable to their own affections, nor those of others.”

--Tacitus, Annal., xiii. 45.]

believing, according to the persuasion of Lysias in Plato, that they may

with more utility and convenience surrender themselves up to us the less

we love them; where it will fall out, as in comedies, that the people

will have as much pleasure or more than the comedians. For my part,

I no more acknowledge a Venus without a Cupid than, a mother without

issue: they are things that mutully lend and owe their essence to one

another. Thus this cheat recoils upon him who is guilty of it; it does

not cost him much, indeed, but he also gets little or nothing by it.

They who have made Venus a goddess have taken notice that her principal

beauty was incorporeal and spiritual; but the Venus whom these people

hunt after is not so much as human, nor indeed brutal; the very beasts

will not accept it so gross and so earthly; we see that imagination and

desire often heat and incite them before the body does; we see in both

the one sex and the other, they have in the herd choice and particular

election in their affections, and that they have amongst themselves a

long commerce of good will. Even those to whom old age denies the

practice of their desire, still tremble, neigh, and twitter for love; we

see them, before the act, full of hope and ardour, and when the body has

played its game, yet please themselves with the sweet remembrance of the

past delight; some that swell with pride after they have performed, and

others who, tired and sated, still by vociferation express a triumphing

joy. He who has nothing to do but only to discharge his body of a

natural necessity, need not trouble others with so curious preparations:

it is not meat for a gross, coarse appetite.

As one who does not desire that men should think me better than I am,

I will here say this as to the errors of my youth. Not only from the

danger of impairing my health (and yet I could not be so careful but that

I had two light mischances), but moreover upon the account of contempt,

I have seldom given myself up to common and mercenary embraces: I would

heighten the pleasure by the difficulty, by desire, and a certain kind of

glory, and was of Tiberius’s mind, who in his amours was as much taken

with modesty and birth as any other quality, and of the courtesan Flora’s

humour, who never lent herself to less than a dictator, a consul, or a

censor, and took pleasure in the dignity of her lovers. Doubtless pearls

and gold tissue, titles and train, add something to it.

As to the rest, I had a great esteem for wit, provided the person was not

exceptionable; for, to confess the truth, if the one or the other of

these two attractions must of necessity be wanting, I should rather have

quitted that of the understanding, that has its use in better things;

but in the subject of love, a subject principally relating to the senses

of seeing and touching, something may be done without the graces of the

mind: without the graces of the body, nothing. Beauty is the true

prerogative of women, and so peculiarly their own, that ours, though

naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but

when youthful and beardless, a sort of confused image of theirs. ‘Tis

said that such as serve the Grand Signior upon the account of beauty, who

are an infinite number, are, at the latest, dismissed at two-and-twenty

years of age. Reason, prudence, and the offices of friendship are better

found amongst men, and therefore it is that they govern the affairs of

the world.

These two engagements are fortuitous, and depending upon others; the one

is troublesome by its rarity, the other withers with age, so that they

could never have been sufficient for the business of my life. That of

books, which is the third, is much more certain, and much more our own.

It yields all other advantages to the two first, but has the constancy

and facility of its service for its own share. It goes side by side with

me in my whole course, and everywhere is assisting me: it comforts me in

old age and solitude; it eases me of a troublesome weight of idleness,

and delivers me at all hours from company that I dislike: it blunts the

point of griefs, if they are not extreme, and have not got an entire

possession of my soul. To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, ‘tis

but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them and drive the other

out of my thoughts, and do not mutiny at seeing that I have only recourse

to them for want of other more real, natural, and lively commodities;

they always receive me with the same kindness. He may well go a foot,

they say, who leads his horse in his hand; and our James, King of Naples

and Sicily, who, handsome, young and healthful, caused himself to be

carried about on a barrow, extended upon a pitiful mattress in a poor

robe of grey cloth, and a cap of the same, yet attended withal by a royal

train, litters, led horses of all sorts, gentlemen and officers, did yet

herein represent a tender and unsteady authority: “The sick man has not

to complain who has his cure in his sleeve.” In the experience and

practice of this maxim, which is a very true one, consists all the

benefit I reap from books. As a matter of fact, I make no more use of

them, as it were, than those who know them not. I enjoy them as misers

do their money, in knowing that I may enjoy them when I please: my mind

is satisfied with this right of possession. I never travel without

books, either in peace or war; and yet sometimes I pass over several

days, and sometimes months, without looking on them. I will read

by-and-by, say I to myself, or to-morrow, or when I please; and in the

interim, time steals away without any inconvenience. For it is not to be

imagined to what degree I please myself and rest content in this

consideration, that I have them by me to divert myself with them when I

am so disposed, and to call to mind what a refreshment they are to my

life. ‘Tis the best viaticum I have yet found out for this human

journey, and I very much pity those men of understanding who are

unprovided of it. I the rather accept of any other sort of diversion,

how light soever, because this can never fail me.

When at home, I a little more frequent my library, whence I overlook at

once all the concerns of my family. ‘Tis situated at the entrance into

my house, and I thence see under me my garden, court, and base-court, and

almost all parts of the building. There I turn over now one book, and

then another, on various subjects, without method or design. One while

I meditate, another I record and dictate, as I walk to and fro, such

whimsies as these I present to you here. ‘Tis in the third storey of a

tower, of which the ground-room is my chapel, the second storey a chamber

with a withdrawing-room and closet, where I often lie, to be more

retired; and above is a great wardrobe. This formerly was the most

useless part of the house. I there pass away both most of the days of my

life and most of the hours of those days. In the night I am never there.

There is by the side of it a cabinet handsome enough, with a fireplace

very commodiously contrived, and plenty of light; and were I not more

afraid of the trouble than the expense--the trouble that frights me from

all business--I could very easily adjoin on either side, and on the same

floor, a gallery of an hundred paces long and twelve broad, having found

walls already raised for some other design to the requisite height.

Every place of retirement requires a walk: my thoughts sleep if I sit

still: my fancy does not go by itself, as when my legs move it: and all

those who study without a book are in the same condition. The figure of

my study is round, and there is no more open wall than what is taken up

by my table and my chair, so that the remaining parts of the circle

present me a view of all my books at once, ranged upon five rows of

shelves round about me. It has three noble and free prospects, and is

sixteen paces in diameter. I am not so continually there in winter; for

my house is built upon an eminence, as its name imports, and no part of

it is so much exposed to the wind and weather as this, which pleases me

the better, as being of more difficult access and a little remote, as

well upon the account of exercise, as also being there more retired from

the crowd. ‘Tis there that I am in my kingdom, and there I endeavour to

make myself an absolute monarch, and to sequester this one corner from

all society, conjugal, filial, and civil; elsewhere I have but verbal

authority only, and of a confused essence. That man, in my opinion, is

very miserable, who has not at home where to be by himself, where to

entertain himself alone, or to conceal himself from others. Ambition

sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping them always in show, like

the statue of a public, square:

“Magna servitus est magna fortuna.”

[“A great fortune is a great slavery.”

--Seneca, De Consol. ad. Polyb., c. 26.]

They cannot so much as be private in the watercloset. I have thought

nothing so severe in the austerity of life that our monks affect, as what

I have observed in some of their communities; namely, by rule, to have a

perpetual society of place, and numerous persons present in every action

whatever; and think it much more supportable to be always alone than

never to be so.

If any one shall tell me that it is to undervalue the Muses to make use

of them only for sport and to pass away the time, I shall tell him, that

he does not know so well as I the value of the sport, the pleasure, and

the pastime; I can hardly forbear to add that all other end is

ridiculous. I live from day to day, and, with reverence be it spoken, I

only live for myself; there all my designs terminate. I studied, when

young, for ostentation; since, to make myself a little wiser; and now for

my diversion, but never for any profit. A vain and prodigal humour I had

after this sort of furniture, not only for the supplying my own need,

but, moreover, for ornament and outward show, I have since quite cured

myself of.

Books have many charming qualities to such as know how to choose them;

but every good has its ill; ‘tis a pleasure that is not pure and clean,

no more than others: it has its inconveniences, and great ones too. The

soul indeed is exercised therein; but the body, the care of which I must

withal never neglect, remains in the meantime without action, and grows

heavy and sombre. I know no excess more prejudicial to me, nor more to

be avoided in this my declining age.

These have been my three favourite and particular occupations; I speak

not of those I owe to the world by civil obligation.

CHAPTER IV.

OF DIVERSION

I was once employed in consoling a lady truly afflicted. Most of their

mournings are artificial and ceremonious:

“Uberibus semper lacrymis, semperque paratis,

In statione subatque expectantibus illam,

Quo jubeat manare modo.”

[“A woman has ever a fountain of tears ready to gush up whenever

she requires to make use of them.”--Juvenal, vi. 272.]

A man goes the wrong way to work when he opposes this passion; for

opposition does but irritate and make them more obstinate in sorrow; the

evil is exasperated by discussion. We see, in common discourse, that

what I have indifferently let fall from me, if any one takes it up to

controvert it, I justify it with the best arguments I have; and much more

a thing wherein I had a real interest. And besides, in so doing you

enter roughly upon your operation; whereas the first addresses of a

physician to his patient should be gracious, gay, and pleasing; never did

any ill-looking, morose physician do anything to purpose. On the

contrary, then, a man should, at the first approaches, favour their grief

and express some approbation of their sorrow. By this intelligence you

obtain credit to proceed further, and by a facile and insensible

gradation fall into discourses more solid and proper for their cure.

I, whose aim it was principally to gull the company who had their eyes

fixed upon me, took it into my head only to palliate the disease. And

indeed I have found by experience that I have an unlucky hand in

persuading. My arguments are either too sharp and dry, or pressed too

roughly, or not home enough. After I had some time applied myself to her

grief, I did not attempt to cure her by strong and lively reasons, either

because I had them not at hand, or because I thought to do my business

better another way; neither did I make choice of any of those methods of

consolation which philosophy prescribes: that what we complain of is no

evil, according to Cleanthes; that it is a light evil, according to the

Peripatetics; that to bemoan one’s self is an action neither commendable

nor just, according to Chrysippus; nor this of Epicurus, more suitable to

my way, of shifting the thoughts from afflicting things to those that are

pleasing; nor making a bundle of all these together, to make use of upon

occasion, according to Cicero; but, gently bending my discourse, and by

little and little digressing, sometimes to subjects nearer, and sometimes

more remote from the purpose, according as she was more intent on what I

said, I imperceptibly led her from that sorrowful thought, and kept her

calm and in good-humour whilst I continued there. I herein made use of

diversion. They who succeeded me in the same service did not, for all

that, find any amendment in her, for I had not gone to the root.

I, peradventure, may elsewhere have glanced upon some sort of public

diversions; and the practice of military ones, which Pericles made use of

in the Peloponnesian war, and a thousand others in other places, to

withdraw the adverse forces from their own countries, is too frequent in

history. It was an ingenious evasion whereby Monseigneur d’Hempricourt

saved both himself and others in the city of Liege, into which the Duke

of Burgundy, who kept it besieged, had made him enter to execute the

articles of their promised surrender; the people, being assembled by

night to consider of it, began to mutiny against the agreement, and

several of them resolved to fall upon the commissioners, whom they had in

their power; he, feeling the gusts of this first popular storm, who were

coming to rush into his lodgings, suddenly sent out to them two of the

inhabitants of the city (of whom he had some with him) with new and

milder terms to be proposed in their council, which he had then and there

contrived for his need: These two diverted the first tempest, carrying

back the enraged rabble to the town-hall to hear and consider of what

they had to say. The deliberation was short; a second storm arose as

violent as the other, whereupon he despatched four new mediators of the

same quality to meet them, protesting that he had now better conditions

to present them with, and such as would give them absolute satisfaction,

by which means the tumult was once more appeased, and the people again

turned back to the conclave. In fine, by this dispensation of

amusements, one after another, diverting their fury and dissipating it in

frivolous consultations, he laid it at last asleep till the day appeared,

which was his principal end.

This other story that follows is also of the same category. Atalanta, a

virgin of excelling beauty and of wonderful disposition of body, to

disengage herself from the crowd of a thousand suitors who sought her in

marriage, made this proposition, that she would accept of him for her

husband who should equal her in running, upon condition that they who

failed should lose their lives. There were enough who thought the prize

very well worth the hazard, and who suffered the cruel penalty of the

contract. Hippomenes, about to make trial after the rest, made his

address to the goddess of love, imploring her assistance; and she,

granting his request, gave him three golden apples, and instructed him

how to use them. The race beginning, as Hippomenes perceived his

mistress to press hard up to him; he, as it were by chance, let fall one

of these apples; the maid, taken with the beauty of it, failed not to

step out of her way to pick it up:

“Obstupuit Virgo, nitidique cupidine pomi

Declinat cursus, aurumque volubile tollit.”

[“The virgin, astonished and attracted by the glittering apple,

stops her career, and seizes the rolling gold.”

--Ovid, Metam., x. 666.]

He did the same, when he saw his time, by the second and the third, till

by so diverting her, and making her lose so much ground, he won the race.

When physicians cannot stop a catarrh, they divert and turn it into some

other less dangerous part. And I find also that this is the most

ordinary practice for the diseases of the mind:

“Abducendus etiam nonnunquam animus est ad alia studia,

sollicitudines, curas, negotia: loci denique mutatione,

tanquam aegroti non convalescentes, saepe curandus est.”

[“The mind is sometimes to be diverted to other studies, thoughts,

cares, business: in fine, by change of place, as where sick persons

do not become convalescent.”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 35.]

‘Tis to little effect directly to jostle a man’s infirmities; we neither

make him sustain nor repel the attack; we only make him decline and evade

it.

This other lesson is too high and too difficult: ‘tis for men of the

first form of knowledge purely to insist upon the thing, to consider and

judge it; it appertains to one sole Socrates to meet death with an

ordinary countenance, to grow acquainted with it, and to sport with it;

he seeks no consolation out of the thing itself; dying appears to him a

natural and indifferent accident; ‘tis there that he fixes his sight and

resolution, without looking elsewhere. The disciples of Hegesias, who

starved themselves to death, animated thereunto by his fine lectures, and

in such numbers that King Ptolemy ordered he should be forbidden to

entertain his followers with such homicidal doctrines, did not consider

death in itself, neither did they judge of it; it was not there they

fixed their thoughts; they ran towards and aimed at a new being.

The poor wretches whom we see brought upon the scaffold, full of ardent

devotion, and therein, as much as in them lies, employing all their

senses, their ears in hearing the instructions given them, their eyes and

hands lifted up towards heaven, their voices in loud prayers, with a

vehement and continual emotion, do doubtless things very commendable and

proper for such a necessity: we ought to commend them for their devotion,

but not properly for their constancy; they shun the encounter, they

divert their thoughts from the consideration of death, as children are

amused with some toy or other when the surgeon is going to give them a

prick with his lancet. I have seen some, who, casting their eyes upon

the dreadful instruments of death round about, have fainted, and

furiously turned their thoughts another way; such as are to pass a

formidable precipice are advised either to shut their eyes or to look

another way.

Subrius Flavius, being by Nero’s command to be put to death, and by the

hand of Niger, both of them great captains, when they lead him to the

place appointed for his execution, seeing the grave that Niger had caused

to be hollowed to put him into ill-made: “Neither is this,” said he,

turning to the soldiers who guarded him, “according to military

discipline.” And to Niger, who exhorted him to keep his head firm: “Do

but thou strike as firmly,” said he. And he very well foresaw what would

follow when he said so; for Niger’s arm so trembled that he had several

blows at his head before he could cut it off. This man seems to have had

his thoughts rightly fixed upon the subject.

He who dies in a battle, with his sword in his hand, does not then think

of death; he feels or considers it not; the ardour of the fight diverts

his thought another way. A worthy man of my acquaintance, falling as he

was fighting a duel, and feeling himself nailed to the earth by nine or

ten thrusts of his enemy, every one present called to him to think of his

conscience; but he has since told me, that though he very well heard what

they said, it nothing moved him, and that he never thought of anything

but how to disengage and revenge himself. He afterwards killed his man

in that very duel. He who brought to L. Silanus the sentence of death,

did him a very great kindness, in that, having received his answer, that

he was well prepared to die, but not by base hands, he ran upon him with

his soldiers to force him, and as he, unarmed as he was, obstinately

defended himself with his fists and feet, he made him lose his life in

the contest, by that means dissipating and diverting in a sudden and

furious rage the painful apprehension of the lingering death to which he

was designed.

We always think of something else; either the hope of a better life

comforts and supports us, or the hope of our children’s worth, or the

future glory of our name, or the leaving behind the evils of this life,

or the vengeance that threatens those who are the causes of our death,

administers consolation to us:

“Spero equidem mediis, si quid pia numina possunt,

Supplicia hausurum scopulis, et nomine Dido

Saepe vocaturum . . . .

Audiam; et haec Manes veniet mihi fama sub imos.”

[“I hope, however, if the pious gods have any power, thou wilt feel

thy punishment amid the rocks, and will call on the name of Dido;

I shall hear, and this report will come to me below.”--AEneid, iv.

382, 387.]

Xenophon was sacrificing with a crown upon his head when one came to

bring him news of the death of his son Gryllus, slain in the battle of

Mantinea: at the first surprise of the news, he threw his crown to the

ground; but understanding by the sequel of the narrative the manner of a

most brave and valiant death, he took it up and replaced it upon his

head. Epicurus himself, at his death, consoles himself upon the utility

and eternity of his writings:

“Omnes clari et nobilitati labores fiunt tolerabiles;”

[“All labours that are illustrious and famous become supportable.”

--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 26.]

and the same wound, the same fatigue, is not, says Xenophon, so

intolerable to a general of an army as to a common soldier. Epaminondas

took his death much more cheerfully, having been informed that the

victory remained to him:

“Haec sunt solatia, haec fomenta summorum dolorum;”

[“These are sedatives and alleviations to the greatest pains.”

--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 23.]

and such like circumstances amuse, divert, and turn our thoughts from the

consideration of the thing in itself. Even the arguments of philosophy

are always edging and glancing on the matter, so as scarce to rub its

crust; the greatest man of the first philosophical school, and

superintendent over all the rest, the great Zeno, forms this syllogism

against death: “No evil is honourable; but death is honourable; therefore

death is no evil”; against drunkenness this: “No one commits his secrets

to a drunkard; but every one commits his secrets to a wise man: therefore

a wise man is no drunkard.” Is this to hit the white? I love to see

that these great and leading souls cannot rid themselves of our company:

perfect men as they are, they are yet simply men.

Revenge is a sweet passion, of great and natural impression; I discern it

well enough, though I have no manner of experience of it. From this not

long ago to divert a young prince, I did not tell him that he must, to

him that had struck him upon the one cheek, turn the other, upon account

of charity; nor go about to represent to him the tragical events that

poetry attributes to this passion. I left that behind; and I busied

myself to make him relish the beauty of a contrary image: and, by

representing to him what honour, esteem, and goodwill he would acquire by

clemency and good nature, diverted him to ambition. Thus a man is to

deal in such cases.

If your passion of love be too violent, disperse it, say they, and they

say true; for I have often tried it with advantage: break it into several

desires, of which let one be regent, if you will, over the rest; but,

lest it should tyrannise and domineer over you, weaken and protract, by

dividing and diverting it:

“Cum morosa vago singultiet inguine vena,”

[“When you are tormented with fierce desire, satisfy it with the

first person that presents herself.”--Persius, Sat., vi. 73.]

“Conjicito humorem collectum in corpora quaeque,”

[Lucretius, vi. 1062, to the like effect.]

and provide for it in time, lest it prove troublesome to deal with, when

it has once seized you:

“Si non prima novis conturbes vulnera plagis,

Volgivagaque vagus venere ante recentia cures.”

[“Unless you cure old wounds by new.”-Lucretius, iv. 1064.]

I was once wounded with a vehement displeasure, and withal, more just

than vehement; I might peradventure have lost myself in it, if I had

merely trusted to my own strength. Having need of a powerful diversion

to disengage me, by art and study I became amorous, wherein I was

assisted by my youth: love relieved and rescued me from the evil wherein

friendship had engaged me. ‘Tis in everything else the same; a violent

imagination hath seized me: I find it a nearer way to change than to

subdue it: I depute, if not one contrary, yet another at least, in its

place. Variation ever relieves, dissolves, and dissipates.

If I am not able to contend with it, I escape from it; and in avoiding

it, slip out of the way, and make, my doubles; shifting place, business,

and company, I secure myself in the crowd of other thoughts and fancies,

where it loses my trace, and I escape.

After the same manner does nature proceed, by the benefit of inconstancy;

for time, which she has given us for the sovereign physician of our

passions, chiefly works by this, that supplying our imaginations with

other and new affairs, it loosens and dissolves the first apprehension,

how strong soever. A wise man little less sees his friend dying at the

end of five-and-twenty years than on the first year; and according to

Epicurus, no less at all; for he did not attribute any alleviation of

afflictions, either to their foresight or their antiquity; but so many

other thoughts traverse this, that it languishes and tires at last.

Alcibiades, to divert the inclination of common rumours, cut off the ears

and tail of his beautiful dog, and turned him out into the public place,

to the end that, giving the people this occasion to prate, they might let

his other actions alone. I have also seen, for this same end of

diverting the opinions and conjectures of the people and to stop their

mouths, some women conceal their real affections by those that were only

counterfeit; but I have also seen some of them, who in counterfeiting

have suffered themselves to be caught indeed, and who have quitted the

true and original affection for the feigned: and so have learned that

they who find their affections well placed are fools to consent to this

disguise: the public and favourable reception being only reserved for

this pretended lover, one may conclude him a fellow of very little

address and less wit, if he does not in the end put himself into your

place, and you into his; this is precisely to cut out and make up a shoe

for another to draw on.

A little thing will turn and divert us, because a little thing holds us.

We do not much consider subjects in gross and singly; they are little and

superficial circumstances, or images that touch us, and the outward

useless rinds that peel off from the subjects themselves:

“Folliculos ut nunc teretes aestate cicadae

Linquunt.”

[“As husks we find grasshoppers leave behind them in summer.”

--Lucretius, v. 801.]

Even Plutarch himself laments his daughter for the little apish tricks of

her infancy.--[Consolation to his Wife on the Death of their Daughter,

c. I.]--The remembrance of a farewell, of the particular grace of an

action, of a last recommendation, afflict us. The sight of Caesar’s robe

troubled all Rome, which was more than his death had done. Even the

sound of names ringing in our ears, as “my poor master,”--“my faithful

friend,”--“alas, my dear father,” or, “my sweet daughter,” afflict us.

When these repetitions annoy me, and that I examine it a little nearer,

I find ‘tis no other but a grammatical and word complaint; I am only

wounded with the word and tone, as the exclamations of preachers very

often work more upon their auditory than their reasons, and as the

pitiful eyes of a beast killed for our service; without my weighing or

penetrating meanwhile into the true and solid essence of my subject:

“His se stimulis dolor ipse lacessit.”

[“With these incitements grief provokes itself.”

--Lucretius, ii. 42.]

These are the foundations of our mourning.

The obstinacy of my stone to all remedies especially those in my bladder,

has sometimes thrown me into so long suppressions of urine for three or

four days together, and so near death, that it had been folly to have

hoped to evade it, and it was much rather to have been desired,

considering the miseries I endure in those cruel fits. Oh, that good

emperor, who caused criminals to be tied that they might die for want of

urination, was a great master in the hangman’s’ science! Finding myself

in this condition, I considered by how many light causes and objects

imagination nourished in me the regret of life; of what atoms the weight

and difficulty of this dislodging was composed in my soul; to how many

idle and frivolous thoughts we give way in so great an affair; a dog, a

horse, a book, a glass, and what not, were considered in my loss; to

others their ambitious hopes, their money, their knowledge, not less

foolish considerations in my opinion than mine. I look upon death

carelessly when I look upon it universally as the end of life. I insult

over it in gross, but in detail it domineers over me: the tears of a

footman, the disposing of my clothes, the touch of a friendly hand, a

common consolation, discourages and softens me. So do the complaints in

tragedies agitate our souls with grief; and the regrets of Dido and

Ariadne, impassionate even those who believe them not in Virgil and

Catullus. ‘Tis a symptom of an obstinate and obdurate nature to be

sensible of no emotion, as ‘tis reported for a miracle of Polemon; but

then he did not so much as alter his countenance at the biting of a mad

dog that tore away the calf of his leg; and no wisdom proceeds so far as

to conceive so vivid and entire a cause of sorrow, by judgment that it

does not suffer increase by its presence, when the eyes and ears have

their share; parts that are not to be moved but by vain accidents.

Is it reason that even the arts themselves should make an advantage of

our natural stupidity and weakness? An orator, says rhetoric in the

farce of his pleading, shall be moved with the sound of his own voice and

feigned emotions, and suffer himself to be imposed upon by the passion he

represents; he will imprint in himself a true and real grief, by means of

the part he plays, to transmit it to the judges, who are yet less

concerned than he: as they do who are hired at funerals to assist in the

ceremony of sorrow, who sell their tears and mourning by weight and

measure; for although they act in a borrowed form, nevertheless, by

habituating and settling their countenances to the occasion, ‘tis most

certain they often are really affected with an actual sorrow. I was one,

amongst several others of his friends, who conveyed the body of Monsieur

de Grammont to Spissons from the siege of La Fere, where he was slain;

I observed that in all places we passed through we filled the people we

met with lamentations and tears by the mere solemn pomp of our convoy,

for the name of the defunct was not there so much as known. Quintilian

reports as to have seen comedians so deeply engaged in a mourning part,

that they still wept in the retiring room, and who, having taken upon

them to stir up passion in another, have themselves espoused it to that

degree as to find themselves infected with it, not only to tears, but,

moreover, with pallor and the comportment of men really overwhelmed with

grief.

In a country near our mountains the women play Priest Martin, for as they

augment the regret of the deceased husband by the remembrance of the good

and agreeable qualities he possessed, they also at the same time make a

register of and publish his imperfections; as if of themselves to enter

into some composition, and divert themselves from compassion to disdain.

Yet with much better grace than we, who, when we lose an acquaintance,

strive to give him new and false praises, and to make him quite another

thing when we have lost sight of him than he appeared to us when we did

see him; as if regret were an instructive thing, or as if tears, by

washing our understandings, cleared them. For my part, I henceforth

renounce all favourable testimonies men would give of me, not because I

shall be worthy of them, but because I shall be dead.

Whoever shall ask a man, “What interest have you in this siege?”

--“The interest of example,” he will say, “and of the common obedience to

my prince: I pretend to no profit by it; and for glory, I know how small

a part can affect a private man such as I: I have here neither passion

nor quarrel.” And yet you shall see him the next day quite another man,

chafing and red with fury, ranged in battle for the assault; ‘tis the

glittering of so much steel, the fire and noise of our cannon and drums,

that have infused this new rigidity and fury into his veins. A frivolous

cause, you will say. How a cause? There needs none to agitate the mind;

a mere whimsy without body and without subject will rule and agitate it.

Let me thing of building castles in Spain, my imagination suggests to me

conveniences and pleasures with which my soul is really tickled and

pleased. How often do we torment our mind with anger or sorrow by such

shadows, and engage ourselves in fantastic passions that impair both soul

and body? What astonished, fleeting, confused grimaces does this raving

put our faces into! what sallies and agitations both of members and

voices does it inspire us with! Does it not seem that this individual

man has false visions amid the crowd of others with whom he has to do,

or that he is possessed with some internal demon that persecutes him?

Inquire of yourself where is the object of this mutation? is there

anything but us in nature which inanity sustains, over which it has

power? Cambyses, from having dreamt that his brother should be one day

king of Persia, put him to death: a beloved brother, and one in whom he

had always confided. Aristodemus, king of the Messenians, killed himself

out of a fancy of ill omen, from I know not what howling of his dogs;

and King Midas did as much upon the account of some foolish dream he had

dreamed. ‘Tis to prize life at its just value, to abandon it for a

dream. And yet hear the soul triumph over the miseries and weakness of

the body, and that it is exposed to all attacks and alterations; truly,

it has reason so to speak!

“O prima infelix finger ti terra Prometheo!

Ille parum cauti pectoris egit opus

Corpora disponens, mentem non vidit in arte;

Recta animi primum debuit esse via.”

[“O wretched clay, first formed by Prometheus. In his attempt,

what little wisdom did he shew! In framing bodies, he did not

apply his art to form the mind, which should have been his first

care.”--Propertius, iii. 5, 7.]

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

A little thing will turn and divert us

Abominate that incidental repentance which old age brings

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face

Always be parading their pedantic science

Am as jealous of my repose as of my authority

Anger and hatred are beyond the duty of justice

Beast of company, as the ancient said, but not of the herd

Books go side by side with me in my whole course

Books have many charming qualities to such as know how to choose

But ill proves the honour and beauty of an action by its utility

Childish ignorance of many very ordinary things

Common consolation, discourages and softens me

Consoles himself upon the utility and eternity of his writings

Deceit maintains and supplies most men’s employment

Diverting the opinions and conjectures of the people

Dying appears to him a natural and indifferent accident

Every place of retirement requires a walk

Fault will be theirs for having consulted me

Few men have been admired by their own domestics

Follies do not make me laugh, it is our wisdom which does

Folly to put out their own light and shine by a borrowed lustre

For fear of the laws and report of men

Gently to bear the inconstancy of a lover

Give but the rind of my attention

Grief provokes itself

He may employ his passion, who can make no use of his reason

He may well go a foot, they say, who leads his horse in his hand

I do not consider what it is now, but what it was then

I find no quality so easy to counterfeit as devotion

I lay no great stress upon my opinions; or of others

I look upon death carelessly when I look upon it universally

I receive but little advice, I also give but little

I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare

I understand my men even by their silence and smiles

Idleness is to me a very painful labour

Imagne the mighty will not abase themselves so much as to live

In ordinary friendships I am somewhat cold and shy

Leaving nothing unsaid, how home and bitter soever

Library: Tis there that I am in my kingdom

Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom

Malicious kind of justice

Miserable kind of remedy, to owe one’s health to one’s disease!

Miserable, who has not at home where to be by himself

More supportable to be always alone than never to be so.

My fancy does not go by itself, as when my legs move it

My thoughts sleep if I sit still

Nearest to the opinions of those with whom they have to do

No evil is honourable; but death is honourable

No man is free from speaking foolish things

Noise of arms deafened the voice of laws

None of the sex, let her be as ugly as the devil thinks lovable

Obliged to his age for having weaned him from pleasure

Open speaking draws out discoveries, like wine and love

Perfect men as they are, they are yet simply men.

Preachers very often work more upon their auditory than reasons

Public weal requires that men should betray, and lie

Ridiculous desire of riches when we have lost the use of them

Rowers who so advance backward

Season a denial with asperity, suspense, or favour

So that I could have said no worse behind their backs

Socrates: According to what a man can

Studied, when young, for ostentation, now for diversion

Swim in troubled waters without fishing in them

Take a pleasure in being uninterested in other men’s affairs

The good opinion of the vulgar is injurious

The sick man has not to complain who has his cure in his sleeve

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high

Tis an exact life that maintains itself in due order in private

Tis not the cause, but their interest, that inflames them

Titillation of ill-natured pleasure in seeing others suffer

To be a slave, incessantly to be led by the nose by one’s self

Truly he, with a great effort will shortly say a mighty trifle

We do not so much forsake vices as we change them

We much more aptly imagine an artisan upon his close-stool

What more? they lie with their lovers learnedly

What need have they of anything but to live beloved and honoured

Wisdom is folly that does not accommodate itself to the common

You must let yourself down to those with whom you converse

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazlitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 15.

V. Upon Some verses of Virgil.

CHAPTER V

UPON SOME VERSES OF VIRGIL

CHAPTER V.

By how much profitable thoughts are more full and solid, by so much are

they also more cumbersome and heavy: vice, death, poverty, diseases, are

grave and grievous subjects. A man should have his soul instructed in

the means to sustain and to contend with evils, and in the rules of

living and believing well: and often rouse it up, and exercise it in this

noble study; but in an ordinary soul it must be by intervals and with

moderation; it will otherwise grow besotted if continually intent upon

it. I found it necessary, when I was young, to put myself in mind and

solicit myself to keep me to my duty; gaiety and health do not, they say,

so well agree with those grave and serious meditations: I am at present

in another state: the conditions of age but too much put me in mind, urge

me to wisdom, and preach to me. From the excess of sprightliness I am

fallen into that of severity, which is much more troublesome; and for

that reason I now and then suffer myself purposely a little to run into

disorder, and occupy my mind in wanton and youthful thoughts, wherewith

it diverts itself. I am of late but too reserved, too heavy, and too

ripe; years every day read to me lectures of coldness and temperance.

This body of mine avoids disorder and dreads it; ‘tis now my body’s turn

to guide my mind towards reformation; it governs, in turn, and more

rudely and imperiously than the other; it lets me not an hour alone,

sleeping or waking, but is always preaching to me death, patience, and

repentance. I now defend myself from temperance, as I have formerly done

from pleasure; it draws me too much back, and even to stupidity. Now I

will be master of myself, to all intents and purposes; wisdom has its

excesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly. Therefore, lest

I should wither, dry up, and overcharge myself with prudence, in the

intervals and truces my infirmities allow me:

“Mens intenta suis ne seit usque malis.”

[“That my mind may not eternally be intent upon my ills.”

--Ovid., Trist., iv. i, 4.]

I gently turn aside, and avert my eyes from the stormy and cloudy sky I

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

without meditation and study, and amuse myself in the remembrance of my

better years:

“Animus quo perdidit, optat,

Atque in praeterita se totus imagine versat.”

[“The mind wishes to have what it has lost, and throws itself

wholly into memories of the past.”--Petronius, c. 128.]

Let childhood look forward and age backward; was not this the

signification of Janus’ double face? Let years draw me along if they

will, but it shall be backward; as long as my eyes can discern the

pleasant season expired, I shall now and then turn them that way; though

it escape from my blood and veins, I shall not, however, root the image

of it out of my memory:

“Hoc est

Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui.”

[“‘Tis to live twice to be able to enjoy one’s former life again.”

--Martial, x. 23, 7.]

Plato ordains that old men should be present at the exercises, dances,

and sports of young people, that they may rejoice in others for the

activity and beauty of body which is no more in themselves, and call to

mind the grace and comeliness of that flourishing age; and wills that in

these recreations the honour of the prize should be given to that young

man who has most diverted the company. I was formerly wont to mark

cloudy and gloomy days as extraordinary; these are now my ordinary days;

the extraordinary are the clear and bright; I am ready to leap for joy,

as for an unwonted favour, when nothing happens me. Let me tickle

myself, I cannot force a poor smile from this wretched body of mine;

I am only merry in conceit and in dreaming, by artifice to divert the

melancholy of age; but, in faith, it requires another remedy than a

dream. A weak contest of art against nature. ‘Tis great folly to

lengthen and anticipate human incommodities, as every one does; I had

rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so.’ I seize on

even the least occasions of pleasure I can meet. I know very well, by

hearsay, several sorts of prudent pleasures, effectually so, and glorious

to boot; but opinion has not power enough over me to give me an appetite

to them. I covet not so much to have them magnanimous, magnificent, and

pompous, as I do to have them sweet, facile, and ready:

“A natura discedimus; populo nos damus,

nullius rei bono auctori.”

[“We depart from nature and give ourselves to the people, who

understand nothing.”--Seneca, Ep., 99.]

My philosophy is in action, in natural and present practice, very little

in fancy: what if I should take pleasure in playing at cob-nut or to whip

a top!

“Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem.”

[“He did not sacrifice his health even to rumours.” Ennius, apud

Cicero, De Offic., i. 24]

Pleasure is a quality of very little ambition; it thinks itself rich

enough of itself without any addition of repute; and is best pleased

where most retired. A young man should be whipped who pretends to a

taste in wine and sauces; there was nothing which, at that age, I less

valued or knew: now I begin to learn; I am very much ashamed on’t; but

what should I do? I am more ashamed and vexed at the occasions that put

me upon’t. ‘Tis for us to dote and trifle away the time, and for young

men to stand upon their reputation and nice punctilios; they are going

towards the world and the world’s opinion; we are retiring from it:

“Sibi arma, sibi equos, sibi hastas, sibi clavam, sibi pilam,

sibi natationes, et cursus habeant: nobis senibus, ex lusionibus

multis, talos relinquant et tesseras;”

[“Let them reserve to themselves arms, horses, spears, clubs,

tennis, swimming, and races; and of all the sports leave to us old

men cards and dice.”--Cicero, De Senec., c. 16.]

the laws themselves send us home. I can do no less in favour of this

wretched condition into which my age has thrown me than furnish it with

toys to play withal, as they do children; and, in truth, we become such.

Both wisdom and folly will have enough to do to support and relieve me by

alternate services in this calamity of age:

“Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem.”

[“Mingle with counsels a brief interval of folly.”

--Horace, Od., iv. 12, 27.]

I accordingly avoid the lightest punctures; and those that formerly would

not have rippled the skin, now pierce me through and through: my habit of

body is now so naturally declining to ill:

“In fragili corpore odiosa omnis offensio est;”

[“In a fragile body every shock is obnoxious.”

--Cicero, De Senec., c. 18.]

“Mensque pati durum sustinet aegra nihil.”

[“And the infirm mind can bear no difficult exertion.”

--Ovid, De Ponto., i. 5, 18.]

I have ever been very susceptibly tender as to offences: I am much more

tender now, and open throughout.

“Et minimae vires frangere quassa valent.”

[“And little force suffices to break what was cracked before.”

--Ovid, De Tris., iii. 11, 22.]

My judgment restrains me from kicking against and murmuring at the

inconveniences that nature orders me to endure, but it does not take away

my feeling them: I, who have no other thing in my aim but to live and be

merry, would run from one end of the world to the other to seek out one

good year of pleasant and jocund tranquillity. A melancholic and dull

tranquillity may be enough for me, but it benumbs and stupefies me; I am

not contented with it. If there be any person, any knot of good company

in country or city, in France or elsewhere, resident or in motion, who

can like my humour, and whose humours I can like, let them but whistle

and I will run and furnish them with essays in flesh and bone:

Seeing it is the privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age, I

advise mine to it with all the power I have; let it meanwhile continue

green, and flourish if it can, like mistletoe upon a dead tree. But I

fear ‘tis a traitor; it has contracted so strict a fraternity with the

body that it leaves me at every turn, to follow that in its need. I

wheedle and deal with it apart in vain; I try in vain to wean it from

this correspondence, to no effect; quote to it Seneca and Catullus, and

ladies and royal masques; if its companion have the stone, it seems to

have it too; even the faculties that are most peculiarly and properly its

own cannot then perform their functions, but manifestly appear stupefied

and asleep; there is no sprightliness in its productions, if there be not

at the same time an equal proportion in the body too.

Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the

extraordinary emotions of the soul, besides attributing it to a divine

ecstasy, love, martial fierceness, poesy, wine, they have not also

attributed a part to health: a boiling, vigorous, full, and lazy health,

such as formerly the verdure of youth and security, by fits, supplied me

withal; that fire of sprightliness and gaiety darts into the mind flashes

that are lively and bright beyond our natural light, and of all

enthusiasms the most jovial, if not the most extravagant.

It is, then, no wonder if a contrary state stupefy and clog my spirit,

and produce a contrary effect:

“Ad nullum consurgit opus, cum corpore languet;”

[“When the mind is languishing, the body is good for nothing.”

(Or:) “It rises to no effort; it languishes with the body.”

--Pseudo Gallus, i. 125.]

and yet would have me obliged to it for giving, as it wants to make out,

much less consent to this stupidity than is the ordinary case with men of

my age. Let us, at least, whilst we have truce, drive away incommodities

and difficulties from our commerce:

“Dum licet, obducta solvatur fronte senectus:”

[“Whilst we can, let us banish old age from the brow.”

--Herod., Ep., xiii. 7.]

“Tetrica sunt amcenanda jocularibus.”

[“Sour things are to be sweetened with those that are pleasant.”

--Sidonius Apollin., Ep., i. 9.]

I love a gay and civil wisdom, and fly from all sourness and austerity of

manners, all repellent, mien being suspected by me:

“Tristemque vultus tetrici arrogantiam:”

[“The arrogant sadness of a crabbed face.”--Auctor Incert.]

“Et habet tristis quoque turba cinaedos.”

[“And the dull crowd also has its voluptuaries.” (Or:)

“An austere countenance sometimes covers a debauched mind.”

--Idem.]

I am very much of Plato’s opinion, who says that facile or harsh humours

are great indications of the good or ill disposition of the mind.

Socrates had a constant countenance, but serene and smiling, not sourly

austere, like the elder Crassus, whom no one ever saw laugh. Virtue is a

pleasant and gay quality.

I know very well that few will quarrel with the licence of my writings,

who have not more to quarrel with in the licence of their own thoughts:

I conform myself well enough to their inclinations, but I offend their

eyes. ‘Tis a fine humour to strain the writings of Plato, to wrest his

pretended intercourses with Phaedo, Dion, Stella, and Archeanassa:

“Non pudeat dicere, quod non pudet sentire.”

[“Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think.”]

I hate a froward and dismal spirit, that slips over all the pleasures of

life and seizes and feeds upon misfortunes; like flies, that cannot stick

to a smooth and polished body, but fix and repose themselves upon craggy

and rough places, and like cupping-glasses, that only suck and attract

bad blood.

As to the rest, I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare to

do; even thoughts that are not to be published, displease me; the worst

of my actions and qualities do not appear to me so evil as I find it evil

and base not to dare to own them. Every one is wary and discreet in

confession, but men ought to be so in action; the boldness of doing ill

is in some sort compensated and restrained by the boldness of confessing

it. Whoever will oblige himself to tell all, should oblige himself to do

nothing that he must be forced to conceal. I wish that this excessive

licence of mine may draw men to freedom, above these timorous and mincing

virtues sprung from our imperfections, and that at the expense of my

immoderation I may reduce them to reason. A man must see and study his

vice to correct it; they who conceal it from others, commonly conceal it

from themselves; and do not think it close enough, if they themselves see

it: they withdraw and disguise it from their own consciences:

“Quare vitia sua nemo confitetur? Quia etiam nunc in

illia est; somnium narrare vigilantis est.”

[“Why does no man confess his vices? because he is yet in them;

‘tis for a waking man to tell his dream.”--Seneca, Ep., 53.]

The diseases of the body explain themselves by their increase; we find

that to be the gout which we called a rheum or a strain; the diseases of

the soul, the greater they are, keep, themselves the most obscure;

the most sick are the least sensible; therefore it is that with an

unrelenting hand they most often, in full day, be taken to task, opened,

and torn from the hollow of the heart. As in doing well, so in doing

ill, the mere confession is sometimes satisfaction. Is there any

deformity in doing amiss, that can excuse us from confessing ourselves?

It is so great a pain to me to dissemble, that I evade the trust of

another’s secrets, wanting the courage to disavow my knowledge. I can

keep silent, but deny I cannot without the greatest trouble and violence

to myself imaginable to be very secret, a man must be so by nature, not

by obligation. ‘Tis little worth, in the service of a prince, to be

secret, if a man be not a liar to boot. If he who asked Thales the

Milesian whether he ought solemnly to deny that he had committed

adultery, had applied himself to me, I should have told him that he ought

not to do it; for I look upon lying as a worse fault than the other.

Thales advised him quite contrary, bidding him swear to shield the

greater fault by the less;

[Montaigne’s memory here serves him ill, for the question being put

to Thales, his answer was: “But is not perjury worse than

adultery?”--Diogenes Laertius, in vita, i. 36.]

nevertheless, this counsel was not so much an election as a

multiplication of vice. Upon which let us say this in passing, that we

deal liberally with a man of conscience when we propose to him some

difficulty in counterpoise of vice; but when we shut him up betwixt two

vices, he is put to a hard choice as Origen was either to idolatrise or

to suffer himself to be carnally abused by a great Ethiopian slave they

brought to him. He submitted to the first condition, and wrongly, people

say. Yet those women of our times are not much out, according to their

error, who protest they had rather burden their consciences with ten men

than one mass.

If it be indiscretion so to publish one’s errors, yet there is no great

danger that it pass into example and custom; for Ariston said, that the

winds men most fear are those that lay them open. We must tuck up this

ridiculous rag that hides our manners: they send their consciences to the

stews, and keep a starched countenance: even traitors and assassins

espouse the laws of ceremony, and there fix their duty. So that neither

can injustice complain of incivility, nor malice of indiscretion. ‘Tis

pity but a bad man should be a fool to boot, and that outward decency

should palliate his vice: this rough-cast only appertains to a good and

sound wall, that deserves to be preserved and whited.

In favour of the Huguenots, who condemn our auricular and private

confession, I confess myself in public, religiously and purely: St.

Augustin, Origeti, and Hippocrates have published the errors of their

opinions; I, moreover, of my manners. I am greedy of making myself

known, and I care not to how many, provided it be truly; or to say

better, I hunger for nothing; but I mortally hate to be mistaken by those

who happen to learn my name. He who does all things for honour and

glory, what can he think to gain by shewing himself to the world in a

vizor, and by concealing his true being from the people? Praise a

humpback for his stature, he has reason to take it for an affront:

if you are a coward, and men commend you for your valour, is it of you

they speak? They take you for another. I should like him as well who

glorifies himself in the compliments and congees that are made him as if

he were master of the company, when he is one of the least of the train.

Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw

water on his head, which they who were with him said he ought to punish:

“Aye, but,” said he, “whoever it was, he did not throw the water upon me,

but upon him whom he took me to be.” Socrates being told that people

spoke ill of him, “Not at all,” said he, “there is nothing, in me of what

they say.”

For my part, if any one should recommend me as a good pilot, as being

very modest or very chaste, I should owe him no thanks; and so, whoever

should call me traitor, robber, or drunkard, I should be as little

concerned. They who do not rightly know themselves, may feed themselves

with false approbations; not I, who see myself, and who examine myself

even to my very bowels, and who very well know what is my due. I am

content to be less commended, provided I am better known. I may be

reputed a wise man in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly.

I am vexed that my Essays only serve the ladies for a common piece of

furniture, and a piece for the hall; this chapter will make me part of

the water-closet. I love to traffic with them a little in private;

public conversation is without favour and without savour. In farewells,

we oftener than not heat our affections towards the things we take leave

of; I take my last leave of the pleasures of this world: these are our

last embraces.

But let us come to my subject: what has the act of generation, so

natural, so necessary, and so just, done to men, to be a thing not to

be spoken of without blushing, and to be excluded from all serious and

moderate discourse? We boldly pronounce kill, rob, betray, and that we

dare only to do betwixt the teeth. Is it to say, the less we expend in

words, we may pay so much the more in thinking? For it is certain that

the words least in use, most seldom written, and best kept in, are the

best and most generally known: no age, no manners, are ignorant of them,

no more than the word bread they imprint themselves in every one without

being, expressed, without voice, and without figure; and the sex that

most practises it is bound to say least of it. ‘Tis an act that we have

placed in the franchise of silence, from which to take it is a crime even

to accuse and judge it; neither dare we reprehend it but by periphrasis

and picture. A great favour to a criminal to be so execrable that

justice thinks it unjust to touch and see him; free, and safe by the

benefit of the severity of his condemnation. Is it not here as in matter

of books, that sell better and become more public for being suppressed?

For my part, I will take Aristotle at his word, who says, that

“bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.” These

verses are preached in the ancient school, a school that I much more

adhere to than the modern: its virtues appear to me to be greater, and

the vices less:

“Ceux qui par trop fuyant Venus estrivent,

Faillent autant que ceulx qui trop la suyvent.”

[“They err as much who too much forbear Venus, as they who are too

frequent in her rites.”--A translation by Amyot from Plutarch, A

philosopher should converse with princes.]

“Tu, dea, rerum naturam sola gubernas,

Nec sine to quicquam dias in luminis oras

Exoritur, neque fit laetum, nec amabile quidquam.”

[“Goddess, still thou alone governest nature, nor without thee

anything comes into light; nothing is pleasant, nothing joyful.”

--Lucretius, i. 22.]

I know not who could set Pallas and the Muses at variance with Venus, and

make them cold towards Love; but I see no deities so well met, or that

are more indebted to one another. Who will deprive the Muses of amorous

imaginations, will rob them of the best entertainment they have, and of

the noblest matter of their work: and who will make Love lose the

communication and service of poesy, will disarm him of his best weapons:

by this means they charge the god of familiarity and good will, and the

protecting goddesses of humanity and justice, with the vice of

ingratitude and unthankfulness. I have not been so long cashiered from

the state and service of this god, that my memory is not still perfect in

his force and value:

“Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae;”

[“I recognise vestiges of my old flame.”--AEneid., iv. 23.]

There are yet some remains of heat and emotion after the fever:

“Nec mihi deficiat calor hic, hiemantibus annis!”

[“Nor let this heat of youth fail me in my winter years.”]

Withered and drooping as I am, I feel yet some remains of the past

ardour:

“Qual l’alto Egeo, per the Aquilone o Noto

Cessi, the tutto prima il volse et scosse,

Non ‘s accheta ei pero; ma’l suono e’l moto

Ritien del l’onde anco agitate e grosse:”

[“As Aegean seas, when storms be calmed again,

That rolled their tumbling waves with troublous blasts,

Do yet of tempests passed some show retain,

And here and there their swelling billows cast.”--Fairfax.]

but from what I understand of it, the force and power of this god are

more lively and animated in the picture of poesy than in their own

essence:

“Et versus digitos habet:”

[“Verse has fingers.”--Altered from Juvenal, iv. 196.]

it has I know not what kind of air, more amorous than love itself. Venus

is not so beautiful, naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil:

“Dixerat; et niveis hinc atque hinc Diva lacertis

Cunctantem amplexu molli fovet. Ille repente

Accepit solitam flammam; notusque medullas

Intravit calor, et labefacta per ossa cucurrit

Non secus atque olim tonitru, cum rupta corusco

Ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos.

. . . . . . Ea verba loquutus,

Optatos dedit amplexus; placidumque petivit

Conjugis infusus gremio per membra soporem.”

[“The goddess spoke, and throwing round him her snowy arms in soft

embraces, caresses him hesitating. Suddenly he caught the wonted

flame, and the well-known warmth pierced his marrow, and ran

thrilling through his shaken bones: just as when at times, with

thunder, a stream of fire in lightning flashes shoots across the

skies. Having spoken these words, he gave her the wished embrace,

and in the bosom of his spouse sought placid sleep.”

--AEneid, viii. 387 and 392.]

All that I find fault with in considering it is, that he has represented

her a little too passionate for a married Venus; in this discreet kind of

coupling, the appetite is not usually so wanton, but more grave and dull.

Love hates that people should hold of any but itself, and goes but

faintly to work in familiarities derived from any other title, as

marriage is: alliance, dowry, therein sway by reason, as much or more

than grace and beauty. Men do not marry for themselves, let them say

what they will; they marry as much or more for their posterity and

family; the custom and interest of marriage concern our race much more

than us; and therefore it is, that I like to have a match carried on by a

third hand rather than a man’s own, and by another man’s liking than that

of the party himself; and how much is all this opposite to the

conventions of love? And also it is a kind of incest to employ in this

venerable and sacred alliance the heat and extravagance of amorous

licence, as I think I have said elsewhere. A man, says Aristotle, must

approach his wife with prudence and temperance, lest in dealing too

lasciviously with her, the extreme pleasure make her exceed the bounds of

reason. What he says upon the account of conscience, the physicians say

upon the account of health: “that a pleasure excessively lascivious,

voluptuous, and frequent, makes the seed too hot, and hinders

conception”: ‘tis said, elsewhere, that to a languishing intercourse, as

this naturally is, to supply it with a due and fruitful heat, a man must

do it but seldom and at appreciable intervals:

“Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat.”

[“But let him thirstily snatch the joys of love and enclose them in

his bosom.”--Virg., Georg., iii. 137.]

I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails than

those that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires;

there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should

proceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardour is worth

nothing.

They who think they honour marriage by joining love to it, do, methinks,

like those who, to favour virtue, hold that nobility is nothing else but

virtue. They are indeed things that have some relation to one another,

but there is a great deal of difference; we should not so mix their names

and titles; ‘tis a wrong to them both so to confound them. Nobility is a

brave quality, and with good reason introduced; but forasmuch as ‘tis a

quality depending upon others, and may happen in a vicious person, in

himself nothing, ‘tis in estimate infinitely below virtue’;

[“If nobility be virtue, it loses its quality in all things wherein

not virtuous: and if it be not virtue, ‘tis a small matter.”

--La Byuyere.]

‘tis a virtue, if it be one, that is artificial and apparent, depending

upon time and fortune: various in form, according to the country; living

and mortal; without birth, as the river Nile; genealogical and common;

of succession and similitude; drawn by consequence, and a very weak one.

Knowledge, strength, goodness, beauty, riches, and all other qualities,

fall into communication and commerce, but this is consummated in itself,

and of no use to the service of others. There was proposed to one of our

kings the choice of two candidates for the same command, of whom one was

a gentleman, the other not; he ordered that, without respect to quality,

they should choose him who had the most merit; but where the worth of the

competitors should appear to be entirely equal, they should have respect

to birth: this was justly to give it its rank. A young man unknown,

coming to Antigonus to make suit for his father’s command, a valiant man

lately dead: “Friend,” said he, “in such preferments as these, I have not

so much regard to the nobility of my soldiers as to their prowess.”

And, indeed, it ought not to go as it did with the officers of the kings

of Sparta, trumpeters, fiddlers, cooks, the children of whom always

succeeded to their places, how ignorant soever, and were preferred before

the most experienced in the trade. They of Calicut make of nobles a sort

of superhuman persons: they are interdicted marriage and all but warlike

employments: they may have of concubines their fill, and the women as

many lovers, without being jealous of one another; but ‘tis a capital and

irremissible crime to couple with a person of meaner conditions than

themselves; and they think themselves polluted, if they have but touched

one in walking along; and supposing their nobility to be marvellously

interested and injured in it, kill such as only approach a little too

near them: insomuch that the ignoble are obliged to cry out as they walk,

like the gondoliers of Venice, at the turnings of streets for fear of

jostling; and the nobles command them to step aside to what part they

please: by that means these avoid what they repute a perpetual ignominy,

those certain death. No time, no favour of the prince, no office, or

virtue, or riches, can ever prevail to make a plebeian become noble: to

which this custom contributes, that marriages are interdicted betwixt

different trades; the daughter of one of the cordwainers’ gild is not

permitted to marry a carpenter; and parents are obliged to train up their

children precisely in their own callings, and not put them to any other

trade; by which means the distinction and continuance of their fortunes

are maintained.

A good marriage, if there be any such, rejects the company and conditions

of love, and tries to represent those of friendship. ‘Tis a sweet

society of life, full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of

useful and solid services and mutual obligations; which any woman who has

a right taste:

“Optato quam junxit lumine taeda”--

[“Whom the marriage torch has joined with the desired light.”

--Catullus, lxiv. 79.]

would be loth to serve her husband in quality of a mistress. If she be

lodged in his affection as a wife, she is more honourably and securely

placed. When he purports to be in love with another, and works all he

can to obtain his desire, let any one but ask him, on which he had rather

a disgrace should fall, his wife or his mistress, which of their

misfortunes would most afflict him, and to which of them he wishes the

most grandeur, the answer to these questions is out of dispute in a sound

marriage.

And that so few are observed to be happy, is a token of its price and

value. If well formed and rightly taken, ‘tis the best of all human

societies; we cannot live without it, and yet we do nothing but decry it.

It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in, and those

within despair of getting out. Socrates being asked, whether it was more

commodious to take a wife or not, “Let a man take which course he will,”

said he; “he will repent.” ‘Tis a contract to which the common

saying:

“Homo homini aut deus aut lupus,”

[“Man to man is either a god or a wolf.”--Erasmus, Adag.]

may very fitly be applied; there must be a concurrence of many qualities

in the construction. It is found nowadays more convenient for simple and

plebeian souls, where delights, curiosity, and idleness do not so much

disturb it; but extravagant humours, such as mine, that hate all sorts of

obligation and restraint, are not so proper for it:

“Et mihi dulce magis resoluto vivere collo.”

[“And it is sweet to me to live with a loosened neck.”

--Pseudo Gallus, i. 61.]

Might I have had my own will, I would not have married Wisdom herself, if

she would have had me. But ‘tis to much purpose to evade it; the common

custom and usance of life will have it so. The most of my actions are

guided by example, not by choice, and yet I did not go to it of my own

voluntary motion; I was led and drawn to it by extrinsic occasions; for

not only things that are incommodious in themselves, but also things

however ugly, vicious, and to be avoided, may be rendered acceptable by

some condition or accident; so unsteady and vain is all human resolution!

and I was persuaded to it, when worse prepared and less tractable than I

am at present, that I have tried what it is: and as great a libertine as

I am taken to be, I have in truth more strictly observed the laws of

marriage, than I either promised or expected. ‘Tis in vain to kick, when

a man has once put on his fetters: a man must prudently manage his

liberty; but having once submitted to obligation, he must confine himself

within the laws of common duty, at least, do what he can towards it.

They who engage in this contract, with a design to carry themselves in it

with hatred and contempt, do an unjust and inconvenient thing; and the

fine rule that I hear pass from hand to hand amongst the women, as a

sacred oracle:

[“Serve thy husband as thy master, but guard thyself against him as

from a traitor.”]

which is to say, comport thyself towards him with a dissembled, inimical,

and distrustful reverence (a cry of war and defiance), is equally

injurious and hard. I am too mild for such rugged designs: to say the

truth, I am not arrived to that perfection of ability and refinement of

wit, to confound reason with injustice, and to laugh at all rule and

order that does not please my palate; because I hate superstition, I do

not presently run into the contrary extreme of irreligion.

(If a man hate superstition he cannot love religion. D.W.)

If a man does not always perform his duty, he ought at least to love and

acknowledge it; ‘tis treachery to marry without espousing.

Let us proceed.

Our poet represents a marriage happy in a good accord wherein

nevertheless there is not much loyalty. Does he mean, that it is not

impossible but a woman may give the reins to her own passion, and yield

to the importunities of love, and yet reserve some duty toward marriage,

and that it may be hurt, without being totally broken? A serving man may

cheat his master, whom nevertheless he does not hate. Beauty,

opportunity, and destiny (for destiny has also a hand in’t),

“Fatum est in partibus illis

Quas sinus abscondit; nam, si tibi sidera cessent,

Nil faciet longi mensura incognita nervi;”

[“There is a fatality about the hidden parts: let nature have

endowed you however liberally, ‘tis of no use, if your good star

fails you in the nick of time.”--Juvenal, ix. 32.]

have attached her to a stranger; though not so wholly, peradventure, but

that she may have some remains of kindness for her husband. They are two

designs, that have several paths leading to them, without being

confounded with one another; a woman may yield to a man she would by no

means have married, not only for the condition of his fortune, but for

those also of his person. Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who

have not repented it. And even in the other world, what an unhappy life

does Jupiter lead with his, whom he had first enjoyed as a mistress!

‘Tis, as the proverb runs, to befoul a basket and then put it upon one’s

head. I have in my time, in a good family, seen love shamefully and

dishonestly cured by marriage: the considerations are widely different.

We love at once, without any tie, two things contrary in themselves.

Socrates was wont to say, that the city of Athens pleased, as ladies do

whom men court for love; every one loved to come thither to take a turn,

and pass away his time; but no one liked it so well as to espouse it,

that is, to inhabit there, and to make it his constant residence. I have

been vexed to see husbands hate their wives only because they themselves

do them wrong; we should not, at all events, methinks, love them the less

for our own faults; they should at least, upon the account of repentance

and compassion, be dearer to us.

They are different ends, he says, and yet in some sort compatible;

marriage has utility, justice, honour, and constancy for its share;

a flat, but more universal pleasure: love founds itself wholly upon

pleasure, and, indeed, has it more full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure

inflamed by difficulty; there must be in it sting and smart: ‘tis no

longer love, if without darts and fire. The bounty of ladies is too

profuse in marriage, and dulls the point of affection and desire: to

evade which inconvenience, do but observe what pains Lycurgus and Plato

take in their laws.

Women are not to blame at all, when they refuse the rules of life that

are introduced into the world, forasmuch as the men make them without

their help. There is naturally contention and brawling betwixt them and

us; and the strictest friendship we have with them is yet mixed with

tumult and tempest. In the opinion of our author, we deal

inconsiderately with them in this: after we have discovered that they

are, without comparison, more able and ardent in the practice of love

than we, and that the old priest testified as much, who had been one

while a man, and then a woman:

“Venus huic erat utraque nota:”

[“Both aspects of love were known to him,”

--Tiresias. Ovid. Metam., iii. 323.]

and moreover, that we have learned from their own mouths the proof that,

in several ages, was made by an Emperor and Empress of Rome,--[Proclus.]

--both famous for ability in that affair! for he in one night deflowered

ten Sarmatian virgins who were his captives: but she had five-and-twenty

bouts in one night, changing her man according to her need and liking;

“Adhuc ardens rigidae tentigine vulvae

Et lassata viris, nondum satiata, recessit:”

[“Ardent still, she retired, fatigued, but not satisfied.”

--Juvenal, vi. 128.]

and that upon the dispute which happened in Cataluna, wherein a wife

complaining of her husband’s too frequent addresses to her, not so much,

as I conceive, that she was incommodated by it (for I believe no miracles

out of religion) as under this pretence, to curtail and curb in this,

which is the fundamental act of marriage, the authority of husbands over

their wives, and to shew that their frowardness and malignity go beyond

the nuptial bed, and spurn under foot even the graces and sweets of

Venus; the husband, a man truly brutish and unnatural, replied, that even

on fasting days he could not subsist with less than ten courses:

whereupon came out that notable sentence of the Queen of Arragon, by

which, after mature deliberation of her council, this good queen, to give

a rule and example to all succeeding ages of the moderation required in

a just marriage, set down six times a day as a legitimate and necessary

stint; surrendering and quitting a great deal of the needs and desires of

her sex, that she might, she said, establish an easy, and consequently, a

permanent and immutable rule. Hereupon the doctors cry out: what must

the female appetite and concupiscence be, when their reason, their

reformation and virtue, are taxed at such a rate, considering the divers

judgments of our appetites? for Solon, master of the law school, taxes

us but at three a month,--that men may not fail in point of conjugal

frequentation: after having, I say, believed and preached all this, we go

and enjoin them continency for their particular share, and upon the last

and extreme penalties.

There is no passion so hard to contend with as this, which we would have

them only resist, not simply as an ordinary vice, but as an execrable

abomination, worse than irreligion and parricide; whilst we, at the same

time, go to’t without offence or reproach. Even those amongst us who

have tried the experiment have sufficiently confessed what difficulty, or

rather impossibility, they have found by material remedies to subdue,

weaken, and cool the body. We, on the contrary, would have them at once

sound, vigorous plump, high-fed, and chaste; that is to say, both hot and

cold; for the marriage, which we tell them is to keep them from burning,

is but small refreshment to them, as we order the matter. If they take

one whose vigorous age is yet boiling, he will be proud to make it known

elsewhere;

“Sit tandem pudor; aut eamus in jus;

Multis mentula millibus redempta,

Non est haec tua, Basse; vendidisti;”

[“Let there be some shame, or we shall go to law: your vigour,

bought by your wife with many thousands, is no longer yours: thou

hast sold it.--“Martial, xii. 90.]

Polemon the philosopher was justly by his wife brought before the judge

for sowing in a barren field the seed that was due to one that was

fruitful: if, on the other hand, they take a decayed fellow, they are in

a worse condition in marriage than either maids or widows. We think them

well provided for, because they have a man to lie with, as the Romans

concluded Clodia Laeta, a vestal nun, violated, because Caligula had

approached her, though it was declared he did no more but approach her:

but, on the contrary, we by that increase their necessity, forasmuch as

the touch and company of any man whatever rouses their desires, that in

solitude would be more quiet. And to the end, ‘tis likely, that they

might render their chastity more meritorious by this circumstance and

consideration, Boleslas and Kinge his wife, kings of Poland, vowed it by

mutual consent, being in bed together, on their very wedding day, and

kept their vow in spite of all matrimonial conveniences.

We train them up from their infancy to the traffic of love; their grace,

dressing, knowledge, language, and whole instruction tend that way: their

governesses imprint nothing in them but the idea of love, if for nothing

else but by continually representing it to them, to give them a distaste

for it. My daughter, the only child I have, is now of an age that

forward young women are allowed to be married at; she is of a slow, thin,

and tender complexion, and has accordingly been brought up by her mother

after a retired and particular manner, so that she but now begins to be

weaned from her childish simplicity. She was reading before me in a

French book where the word ‘fouteau’, the name of a tree very well known,

occurred;--[The beech-tree; the name resembles in sound an obscene

French word.]--the woman, to whose conduct she is committed, stopped her

short a little roughly, and made her skip over that dangerous step. I

let her alone, not to trouble their rules, for I never concern myself in

that sort of government; feminine polity has a mysterious procedure; we

must leave it to them; but if I am not mistaken the commerce of twenty

lacquies could not, in six months’ time, have so imprinted in her memory

the meaning, usage, and all the consequence of the sound of these wicked

syllables, as this good old woman did by reprimand and interdiction.

“Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos

Matura virgo, et frangitur artibus;

Jam nunc et incestos amores

De tenero, meditatur ungui.”

[“The maid ripe for marriage delights to learn Ionic dances, and to

imitate those lascivious movements. Nay, already from her infancy

she meditates criminal amours.”--Horace, Od., iii. 6, 21., the text

has ‘fingitur’.]

Let them but give themselves the rein a little, let them but enter into

liberty of discourse, we are but children to them in this science. Hear

them but describe our pursuits and conversation, they will very well make

you understand that we bring them nothing they have not known before, and

digested without our help.

[This sentence refers to a conversation between some young women in

his immediate neighbourhood, which the Essayist just below informs

us that he overheard, and which was too shocking for him to repeat.

It must have been tolerably bad.--Remark by the editor of a later

edition.]

Is it, perhaps, as Plato says, that they have formerly been debauched

young fellows? I happened one day to be in a place where I could hear

some of their talk without suspicion; I am sorry I cannot repeat it.

By’rlady, said I, we had need go study the phrases of Amadis, and the

tales of Boccaccio and Aretin, to be able to discourse with them: we

employ our time to much purpose indeed. There is neither word, example,

nor step they are not more perfect in than our books; ‘tis a discipline

that springs with their blood,

“Et mentem ipsa Venus dedit,”

[“Venus herself made them what they are,”

--Virg., Georg., iii. 267.]

which these good instructors, nature, youth, and health, are continually

inspiring them with; they need not learn, they breed it:

“Nec tantum niveo gavisa est ulla columbo,

Compar, vel si quid dicitur improbius,

Oscula mordenti semper decerpere rostro,

Quantum praecipue multivola est mulier.”

[“No milk-white dove, or if there be a thing more lascivious,

takes so much delight in kissing as woman, wishful for every man

she sees.”--Catullus, lxvi. 125.]

So that if the natural violence of their desire were not a little

restrained by fear and honour, which were wisely contrived for them, we

should be all shamed. All the motions in the world resolve into and tend

to this conjunction; ‘tis a matter infused throughout: ‘tis a centre to

which all things are directed. We yet see the edicts of the old and wise

Rome made for the service of love, and the precepts of Socrates for the

instruction of courtezans:

“Noncon libelli Stoici inter sericos

Jacere pulvillos amant:”

[“There are writings of the Stoics which we find lying upon

silken cushions.”--Horace, Epod., viii. 15.]

Zeno, amongst his laws, also regulated the motions to be observed in

getting a maidenhead. What was the philosopher Strato’s book Of Carnal

Conjunction?--[ Diogenes Laertius, v. 59.]--And what did Theophrastus

treat of in those he intituled, the one ‘The Lover’, and the other ‘Of

Love?’ Of what Aristippus in his ‘Of Former Delights’? What do the so

long and lively descriptions in Plato of the loves of his time pretend

to? and the book called ‘The Lover’, of Demetrius Phalereus? and

‘Clinias’, or the ‘Ravished Lover’, of Heraclides; and that of

Antisthenes, ‘Of Getting Children’, or, ‘Of Weddings’, and the other,

‘Of the Master or the Lover’? And that of Aristo: ‘Of Amorous Exercises’

What those of Cleanthes: one, ‘Of Love’, the other, ‘Of the Art of

Loving’? The amorous dialogues of Sphaereus? and the fable of Jupiter

and Juno, of Chrysippus, impudent beyond all toleration? And his fifty

so lascivious epistles? I will let alone the writings of the

philosophers of the Epicurean sect, protectress of voluptuousness. Fifty

deities were, in time past, assigned to this office; and there have been

nations where, to assuage the lust of those who came to their devotion,

they kept men and women in their temples for the worshippers to lie with;

and it was an act of ceremony to do this before they went to prayers:

“Nimirum propter continentiam incontinentia necessaria est;

incendium ignibus extinguitur.”

[“Forsooth incontinency is necessary for continency’s sake; a

conflagration is extinguished by fire.”]

In the greatest part of the world, that member of our body was deified;

in the same province, some flayed off the skin to offer and consecrate a

piece; others offered and consecrated their seed. In another, the young

men publicly cut through betwixt the skin and the flesh of that part in

several places, and thrust pieces of wood into the openings as long and

thick as they would receive, and of these pieces of wood afterwards made

a fire as an offering to their gods; and were reputed neither vigorous

nor chaste, if by the force of that cruel pain they seemed to be at all

dismayed. Elsewhere the most sacred magistrate was reverenced and

acknowledged by that member and in several ceremonies the effigy of it

was carried in pomp to the honour of various divinities. The Egyptian

ladies, in their Bacchanalia, each carried one finely-carved of wood

about their necks, as large and heavy as she could so carry it; besides

which, the statue of their god presented one, which in greatness

surpassed all the rest of his body.--[Herodotus, ii. 48, says “nearly

as large as the body itself.”]--The married women, near the place where

I live, make of their kerchiefs the figure of one upon their foreheads,

to glorify themselves in the enjoyment they have of it; and coming to be

widows, they throw it behind, and cover it with their headcloths. The

most modest matrons of Rome thought it an honour to offer flowers and

garlands to the god Priapus; and they made the virgins, at the time of

their espousals, sit upon his shameful parts. And I know not whether I

have not in my time seen some air of like devotion. What was the meaning

of that ridiculous piece of the chaussuye of our forefathers, and that is

still worn by our Swiss? [“Cod-pieces worn”--Cotton]--To what end do we

make a show of our implements in figure under our breeches, and often,

which is worse, above their natural size, by falsehood and imposture?

I have half a mind to believe that this sort of vestment was invented in

the better and more conscientious ages, that the world might not be

deceived, and that every one should give a public account of his

proportions: the simple nations wear them yet, and near about the real

size. In those days, the tailor took measure of it, as the shoemaker

does now of a man’s foot. That good man, who, when I was young, gelded

so many noble and ancient statues in his great city, that they might not

corrupt the sight of the ladies, according to the advice of this other

ancient worthy:

“Flagitii principium est, nudare inter gives corpora,”

[“‘Tis the beginning of wickedness to expose their persons among the

citizens”--Ennius, ap. Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 33.]

should have called to mind, that, as in the mysteries of the Bona Dea,

all masculine appearance was excluded, he did nothing, if he did not geld

horses and asses, in short, all nature:

“Omne adeo genus in terris, hominumque, ferarumque,

Et genus aequoreum, pecudes, pictaeque volucres,

In furias ignemque ruunt.”

[“So that all living things, men and animals, wild or tame,

and fish and gaudy fowl, rush to this flame of love.”

--Virgil, Georg., iii. 244.]

The gods, says Plato, have given us one disobedient and unruly member

that, like a furious animal, attempts, by the violence of its appetite,

to subject all things to it; and so they have given to women one like a

greedy and ravenous animal, which, if it be refused food in season, grows

wild, impatient of delay, and infusing its rage into their bodies, stops

the passages, and hinders respiration, causing a thousand ills, till,

having imbibed the fruit of the common thirst, it has plentifully bedewed

the bottom of their matrix. Now my legislator--[The Pope who, as

Montaigne has told us, took it into his head to geld the statues.]--

should also have considered that, peradventure, it were a chaster and

more fruitful usage to let them know the fact as it is betimes, than

permit them to guess according to the liberty and heat of their own

fancy; instead of the real parts they substitute, through hope and

desire, others that are three times more extravagant; and a certain

friend of mine lost himself by producing his in place and time when the

opportunity was not present to put them to their more serious use. What

mischief do not those pictures of prodigious dimension do that the boys

make upon the staircases and galleries of the royal houses? they give the

ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture. And what do we know

but that Plato, after other well-instituted republics, ordered that the

men and women, old and young, should expose themselves naked to the view

of one another, in his gymnastic exercises, upon that very account? The

Indian women who see the men in their natural state, have at least cooled

the sense of seeing. And let the women of the kingdom of Pegu say what

they will, who below the waist have nothing to cover them but a cloth

slit before, and so strait, that what decency and modesty soever they

pretend by it, at every step all is to be seen, that it is an invention

to allure the men to them, and to divert them from boys, to whom that

nation is generally inclined; yet, peradventure they lose more by it than

they get, and one may venture to say, that an entire appetite is more

sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes. Livia was wont to say,

that to a virtuous woman a naked man was but a statue. The Lacedaemonian

women, more virgins when wives than our daughters are, saw every day the

young men of their city stripped naked in their exercises, themselves

little heeding to cover their thighs in walking, believing themselves,

says Plato, sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe.

But those, of whom St. Augustin speaks, have given nudity a wonderful

power of temptation, who have made it a doubt, whether women at the day

of judgment shall rise again in their own sex, and not rather in ours,

for fear of tempting us again in that holy state. In brief, we allure

and flesh them by all sorts of ways: we incessantly heat and stir up

their imagination, and then we find fault. Let us confess the truth;

there is scarce one of us who does not more apprehend the shame that

accrues to him by the vices of his wife than by his own, and that is not

more solicitous (a wonderful charity) of the conscience of his virtuous

wife than of his own; who had not rather commit theft and sacrilege, and

that his wife was a murderess and a heretic, than that she should not be

more chaste than her husband: an unjust estimate of vices. Both we and

they are capable of a thousand corruptions more prejudicial and unnatural

than lust: but we weigh vices, not according to nature, but according to

our interest; by which means they take so many unequal forms.

The austerity of our decrees renders the application of women to this

vice more violent and vicious than its own condition needs, and engages

it in consequences worse than their cause: they will readily offer to go

to the law courts to seek for gain, and to the wars to get reputation,

rather than in the midst of ease and delights, to have to keep so

difficult a guard. Do not they very well see that there is neither

merchant nor soldier who will not leave his business to run after this

sport, or the porter or cobbler, toiled and tired out as they are with

labour and hunger?

“Num tu, qux tenuit dives Achaemenes,

Aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes,

Permutare velis crine Licymnim?

Plenas aut Arabum domos,

Dum fragrantia detorquet ad oscula

Cervicem, aut facili sxvitia negat,

Quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi,

Interdum rapere occupet?”

[“Wouldst thou not exchange all that the wealthy Arhaemenes had,

or the Mygdonian riches of fertile Phrygia, for one ringlet of

Licymnia’s hair? or the treasures of the Arabians, when she turns

her head to you for fragrant kisses, or with easily assuaged anger

denies them, which she would rather by far you took by force, and

sometimes herself snatches one!”--Horace, Od., ii. 12, 21.]

I do not know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpass

the resolution of a beautiful young woman, bred up after our fashion, in

the light and commerce of the world, assailed by so many contrary

examples, and yet keeping herself entire in the midst of a thousand

continual and powerful solicitations. There is no doing more difficult

than that not doing, nor more active:

I hold it more easy to carry a suit of armour all the days of one’s life

than a maidenhead; and the vow of virginity of all others is the most

noble, as being the hardest to keep:

“Diaboli virtus in lumbis est,”

says St. Jerome. We have, doubtless, resigned to the ladies the most

difficult and most vigorous of all human endeavours, and let us resign to

them the glory too. This ought to encourage them to be obstinate in it;

‘tis a brave thing for them to defy us, and to spurn under foot that vain

pre-eminence of valour and virtue that we pretend to have over them; they

will find if they do but observe it, that they will not only be much more

esteemed for it, but also much more beloved. A gallant man does not give

over his pursuit for being refused, provided it be a refusal of chastity,

and not of choice; we may swear, threaten, and complain to much purpose;

we therein do but lie, for we love them all the better: there is no

allurement like modesty, if it be not rude and crabbed. ‘Tis stupidity

and meanness to be obstinate against hatred and disdain; but against a

virtuous and constant resolution, mixed with goodwill, ‘tis the exercise

of a noble and generous soul. They may acknowledge our service to a

certain degree, and give us civilly to understand that they disdain us

not; for the law that enjoins them to abominate us because we adore them,

and to hate us because we love them, is certainly very cruel, if but for

the difficulty of it. Why should they not give ear to our offers and

requests, so long as they are kept within the bounds of modesty?

wherefore should we fancy them to have other thoughts within, and to be

worse than they seem? A queen of our time said with spirit, “that to

refuse these courtesies is a testimony of weakness in women and a

self-accusation of facility, and that a lady could not boast of her

chastity who was never tempted.”

The limits of honour are not cut so short; they may give themselves a

little rein, and relax a little without being faulty: there lies on the

frontier some space free, indifferent, and neuter. He that has beaten

and pursued her into her fort is a strange fellow if he be not satisfied

with his fortune: the price of the conquest is considered by the

difficulty. Would you know what impression your service and merit have

made in her heart? Judge of it by her behaviour. Such an one may grant

more, who does not grant so much. The obligation of a benefit wholly

relates to the good will of those who confer it: the other coincident

circumstances are dumb, dead, and casual; it costs her dearer to grant

you that little, than it would do her companion to grant all. If in

anything rarity give estimation, it ought especially in this: do not

consider how little it is that is given, but how few have it to give;

the value of money alters according to the coinage and stamp of the

place. Whatever the spite and indiscretion of some may make them say in

the excess of their discontent, virtue and truth will in time recover all

the advantage. I have known some whose reputation has for a great while

suffered under slander, who have afterwards been restored to the world’s

universal approbation by their mere constancy without care or artifice;

every one repents, and gives himself the lie for what he has believed and

said; and from girls a little suspected they have been afterward advanced

to the first rank amongst the ladies of honour. Somebody told Plato that

all the world spoke ill of him. “Let them talk,” said he; “I will live

so as to make them change their note.” Besides the fear of God, and the

value of so rare a glory, which ought to make them look to themselves,

the corruption of the age we live in compels them to it; and if I were

they, there is nothing I would not rather do than intrust my reputation

in so dangerous hands. In my time the pleasure of telling (a pleasure

little inferior to that of doing) was not permitted but to those who had

some faithful and only friend; but now the ordinary discourse and common

table-talk is nothing but boasts of favours received and the secret

liberality of ladies. In earnest, ‘tis too abject, too much meanness of

spirit, in men to suffer such ungrateful, indiscreet, and giddy-headed

people so to persecute, forage, and rifle those tender and charming

favours.

This our immoderate and illegitimate exasperation against this vice

springs from the most vain and turbulent disease that afflicts human

minds, which is jealousy:

“Quis vetat apposito lumen de lumine sumi?

Dent licet assidue, nil tamen inde perit;”

[“Who says that one light should not be lighted from another light?

Let them give ever so much, as much ever remains to lose.”--Ovid, De

Arte Amandi, iii. 93. The measure of the last line is not good;

but the words are taken from the epigram in the Catalecta entitled

Priapus.]