examine into a disease for which there is no physic that does not inflame
and make it worse; of which the shame grows still greater and more public
by jealousy, and of which the revenge more wounds our children than it
heals us. You wither and die in the search of so obscure a proof. How
miserably have they of my time arrived at that knowledge who have been so
unhappy as to have found it out? If the informer does not at the same
time apply a remedy and bring relief, 'tis an injurious information, and
that better deserves a stab than the lie. We no less laugh at him who
takes pains to prevent it, than at him who is a cuckold and knows it not.
The character of cuckold is indelible: who once has it carries it to his
grave; the punishment proclaims it more than the fault. It is to much
purpose to drag out of obscurity and doubt our private misfortunes,
thence to expose them on tragic scaffolds; and misfortunes that only hurt
us by being known; for we say a good wife or a happy marriage, not that
they are really so, but because no one says to the contrary. Men should
be so discreet as to evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge:
and the Romans had a custom, when returning from any expedition, to send
home before to acquaint their wives with their coming, that they might
not surprise them; and to this purpose it is that a certain nation has
introduced a custom, that the priest shall on the wedding-day open the
way to the bride, to free the husband from the doubt and curiosity of
examining in the first assault, whether she comes a virgin to his bed, or
has been at the trade before.
But the world will be talking. I know, a hundred honest men cuckolds,
honestly and not unbeseemingly; a worthy man is pitied, not disesteemed
for it. Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune; that
good men may curse the occasion, and that he who wrongs you may tremble
but to think on't. And, moreover, who escapes being talked of at the
same rate, from the least even to the greatest?
"Tot qui legionibus imperitivit
Et melior quam to multis fuit, improbe, rebus."
["Many who have commanded legions, many a man much better far than
you, you rascal."--Lucretius, iii. 1039, 1041.]
Seest thou how many honest men are reproached with this in thy presence;
believe that thou art no more spared elsewhere. But, the very ladies
will be laughing too; and what are they so apt to laugh at in this
virtuous age of ours as at a peaceable and well-composed marriage? Each
amongst you has made somebody cuckold; and nature runs much in parallel,
in compensation, and turn for turn. The frequency of this accident ought
long since to have made it more easy; 'tis now passed into custom.
Miserable passion! which has this also, that it is incommunicable,
"Fors etiam nostris invidit questibus aures;"
["Fortune also refuses ear to our complaints."
--Catullus, lxvii.]
for to what friend dare you intrust your griefs, who, if he does not
laugh at them, will not make use of the occasion to get a share of the
quarry? The sharps, as well as the sweets of marriage, are kept secret
by the wise; and amongst its other troublesome conditions this to a
prating fellow, as I am, is one of the chief, that custom has rendered it
indecent and prejudicial to communicate to any one all that a man knows
and all that a man feels. To give women the same counsel against
jealousy would be so much time lost; their very being is so made up of
suspicion, vanity, and curiosity, that to cure them by any legitimate way
is not to be hoped. They often recover of this infirmity by a form of
health much more to be feared than the disease itself; for as there are
enchantments that cannot take away the evil but by throwing it upon
another, they also willingly transfer this ever to their husbands, when
they shake it off themselves. And yet I know not, to speak truth,
whether a man can suffer worse from them than their jealousy; 'tis the
most dangerous of all their conditions, as the head is of all their
members. Pittacus used to say,--[Plutarch, On Contentment, c. II.]--
that every one had his trouble, and that his was the jealous head of his
wife; but for which he should think himself perfectly happy. A mighty
inconvenience, sure, which could poison the whole life of so just, so
wise, and so valiant a man; what must we other little fellows do? The
senate of Marseilles had reason to grant him his request who begged leave
to kill himself that he might be delivered from the clamour of his wife;
for 'tis a mischief that is never removed but by removing the whole
piece; and that has no remedy but flight or patience, though both of them
very hard. He was, methinks, an understanding fellow who said, 'twas a
happy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband.
Let us also consider whether the great and violent severity of obligation
we enjoin them does not produce two effects contrary to our design
namely, whether it does not render the pursuants more eager to attack,
and the women more easy to yield. For as to the first, by raising the
value of the place, we raise the value and the desire of the conquest.
Might it not be Venus herself, who so cunningly enhanced the price of her
merchandise, by making the laws her bawds; knowing how insipid a delight
it would be that was not heightened by fancy and hardness to achieve?
In short, 'tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces, as Flaminius' host
said. Cupid is a roguish god, who makes it his sport to contend with
devotion and justice: 'tis his glory that his power mates all powers, and
that all other rules give place to his:
"Materiam culpae prosequiturque suae."
["And seeks out a matter (motive) for his crimes."
--Ovid, Trist., iv. I. 34.]
As to the second point; should we not be less cuckolds, if we less feared
to be so? according to the humour of women whom interdiction incites, and
who are more eager, being forbidden:
"Ubi velis, nolunt; ubi nolis, volunt ultro;
Concessa pudet ire via."
["Where thou wilt, they won't; where thou wilt not, they
spontaneously agree; they are ashamed to go in the permitted path."
--Terence, Eunuchus, act iv., sc. 8, v 43]
What better interpretation can we make of Messalina's behaviour? She,
at first, made her husband a cuckold in private, as is the common use;
but, bringing her business about with too much ease, by reason of her
husband's stupidity, she soon scorned that way, and presently fell to
making open love, to own her lovers, and to favour and entertain them in
the sight of all: she would make him know and see how she used him. This
animal, not to be roused with all this, and rendering her pleasures dull
and flat by his too stupid facility, by which he seemed to authorise and
make them lawful; what does she? Being the wife of a living and
healthful emperor, and at Rome, the theatre of the world, in the face of
the sun, and with solemn ceremony, and to Silius, who had long before
enjoyed her, she publicly marries herself one day that her husband was
gone out of the city. Does it not seem as if she was going to become
chaste by her husband's negligence? or that she sought another husband
who might sharpen her appetite by his jealousy, and who by watching
should incite her? But the first difficulty she met with was also the
last: this beast suddenly roused these sleepy, sluggish sort of men are
often the most dangerous: I have found by experience that this extreme
toleration, when it comes to dissolve, produces the most severe revenge;
for taking fire on a sudden, anger and fury being combined in one,
discharge their utmost force at the first onset,
"Irarumque omnes effundit habenas:"
["He let loose his whole fury."--AEneid, xii. 499.]
he put her to death, and with her a great number of those with whom she
had intelligence, and even one of them who could not help it, and whom
she had caused to be forced to her bed with scourges.
What Virgil says of Venus and Vulcan, Lucretius had better expressed of a
stolen enjoyment betwixt her and Mars:
"Belli fera moenera Mavors
Armipotens regit, ingremium qui saepe tuum se
Rejictt, aeterno devinctus vulnere amoris
............................
Pascit amore avidos inhians in te, Dea, visus,
Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore
Hunc tu, Diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto
Circumfusa super, suaveis ex ore loquelas
Funde."
["Mars, the god of wars, who controls the cruel tasks of war, often
reclines on thy bosom, and greedily drinks love at both his eyes,
vanquished by the eternal wound of love: and his breath, as he
reclines, hangs on thy lips; bending thy head over him as he lies
upon thy sacred person, pour forth sweet and persuasive words."
--Lucretius, i. 23.]
When I consider this rejicit, fiascit, inhians, ynolli, fovet, medullas,
labefacta, pendet, percurrit, and that noble circumfusa, mother of the
pretty infuses; I disdain those little quibbles and verbal allusions that
have since sprung up. Those worthy people stood in need of no subtlety
to disguise their meaning; their language is downright, and full of
natural and continued vigour; they are all epigram; not only the tail,
but the head, body, and feet. There is nothing forced, nothing
languishing, but everything keeps the same pace:
"Contextus totes virilis est; non sunt circa flosculos occupati."
["The whole contexture is manly; they don't occupy themselves with
little flowers of rhetoric."--Seneca, Ep., 33.]
'Tis not a soft eloquence, and without offence only; 'tis nervous and
solid, that does not so much please, as it fills and ravishes the
greatest minds. When I see these brave forms of expression, so lively,
so profound, I do not say that 'tis well said, but well thought. 'Tis
the sprightliness of the imagination that swells and elevates the words:
"Pectus est quod disertum Tacit."
["The heart makes the man eloquent."--Quintilian, x. 7.]
Our people call language, judgment, and fine words, full conceptions.
This painting is not so much carried on by dexterity of hand as by having
the object more vividly imprinted in the soul. Gallus speaks simply
because he conceives simply: Horace does not content himself with a
superficial expression; that would betray him; he sees farther and more
clearly into things; his mind breaks into and rummages all the magazine
of words and figures wherewith to express himself, and he must have them
more than ordinary, because his conception is so. Plutarch says' that he
sees the Latin tongue by the things: 'tis here the same: the sense
illuminates and produces the words, no more words of air, but of flesh
and bone; they signify more than they say. Moreover, those who are not
well skilled in a language present some image of this; for in Italy I
said whatever I had a mind to in common discourse, but in more serious
talk, I durst not have trusted myself with an idiom that I could not wind
and turn out of its ordinary pace; I would have a power of introducing
something of my own.
The handling and utterance of fine wits is that which sets off language;
not so much by innovating it, as by putting it to more vigorous and
various services, and by straining, bending, and adapting it to them.
They do not create words, but they enrich their own, and give them weight
and signification by the uses they put them to, and teach them unwonted
motions, but withal ingeniously and discreetly. And how little this
talent is given to all is manifest by the many French scribblers of this
age: they are bold and proud enough not to follow the common road, but
want of invention and discretion ruins them; there is nothing seen in
their writings but a wretched affectation of a strange new style, with
cold and absurd disguises, which, instead of elevating, depress the
matter: provided they can but trick themselves out with new words, they
care not what they signify; and to bring in a new word by the head and
shoulders, they leave the old one, very often more sinewy and significant
than the other.
There is stuff enough in our language, but there is a defect in cutting
out: for there is nothing that might not be made out of our terms of
hunting and war, which is a fruitful soil to borrow from; and forms of
speaking, like herbs, improve and grow stronger by being transplanted.
I find it sufficiently abundant, but not sufficiently pliable and
vigorous; it commonly quails under a powerful conception; if you would
maintain the dignity of your style, you will often perceive it to flag
and languish under you, and there Latin steps in to its relief, as Greek
does to others. Of some of these words I have just picked out we do not
so easily discern the energy, by reason that the frequent use of them has
in some sort abased their beauty, and rendered it common; as in our
ordinary language there are many excellent phrases and metaphors to be
met with, of which the beauty is withered by age, and the colour is
sullied by too common handling; but that nothing lessens the relish to an
understanding man, nor does it derogate from the glory of those ancient
authors who, 'tis likely, first brought those words into that lustre.
The sciences treat of things too refinedly, after an artificial, very
different from the common and natural, way. My page makes love, and
understands it; but read to him Leo Hebraeus--[Leo the Jew, Ficinus,
Cardinal Bembo, and Mario Equicola all wrote Treatises on Love.]--
and Ficinus, where they speak of love, its thoughts and actions, he
understands it not. I do not find in Aristotle most of my ordinary
motions; they are there covered and disguised in another robe for the use
of the schools. Good speed them! were I of the trade, I would as much
naturalise art as they artificialise nature. Let us let Bembo and
Equicola alone.
When I write, I can very well spare both the company and the remembrance
of books, lest they should interrupt my progress; and also, in truth, the
best authors too much humble and discourage me: I am very much of the
painter's mind, who, having represented cocks most wretchedly ill,
charged all his boys not to suffer any natural cock to come into his
shop; and had rather need to give myself a little lustre, of the
invention of Antigenides the musician, who, when he was asked to sing or
play, took care beforehand that the auditory should, either before or
after, be satiated with some other ill musicians. But I can hardly be
without Plutarch; he is so universal and so full, that upon all
occasions, and what extravagant subject soever you take in hand, he will
still be at your elbow, and hold out to you a liberal and not to be
exhausted hand of riches and embellishments. It vexes me that he is so
exposed to be the spoil of those who are conversant with him: I can
scarce cast an eye upon him but I purloin either a leg or a wing.
And also for this design of mine 'tis convenient for me for me to write
at home, in a wild country, where I have nobody to assist or relieve me;
where I hardly see a man who understands the Latin of his Paternoster,
and of French a little less. I might have made it better elsewhere, but
then the work would have been less my own; and its principal end and
perfection is to be exactly mine. I readily correct an accidental error,
of which I am full, as I run carelessly on; but for my ordinary and
constant imperfections, it were a kind of treason to put them out. When
another tells me, or that I say to myself, "Thou art too thick of
figures: this is a word of rough Gascon: that is a dangerous phrase (I do
not reject any of those that are used in the common streets of France;
they who would fight custom with grammar are triflers): this is an
ignorant discourse: this is a paradoxical discourse: that is going too
far: thou makest thyself too merry at times: men will think thou sayest a
thing in good earnest which thou only speakest in jest."--"Yes, I know,
but I correct the faults of inadvertence, not those of custom. Do I not
talk at the same rate throughout? Do I not represent myself to the life?
'Tis enough that I have done what I designed; all the world knows me in
my book, and my book in me."
Now I have an apish, imitative quality: when I used to write verses (and
I never made any but Latin), they evidently discovered the poet I had
last read, and some of my first essays have a little exotic taste: I
speak something another kind of language at Paris than I do at Montaigne.
Whoever I steadfastly look upon easily leaves some impression of his upon
me; whatever I consider I usurp, whether a foolish countenance, a
disagreeable look, or a ridiculous way of speaking; and vices most of
all, because they seize and stick to me, and will not leave hold without
shaking. I swear more by imitation than by complexion: a murderous
imitation, like that of the apes so terrible both in stature and
strength, that Alexander met with in a certain country of the Indies, and
which he would have had much ado any other way to have subdued; but they
afforded him the means by that inclination of theirs to imitate whatever
they saw done; for by that the hunters were taught to put on shoes in
their sight, and to tie them fast with many knots, and to muffle up their
heads in caps all composed of running nooses, and to seem to anoint their
eyes with glue; so did those poor beasts employ their imitation to their
own ruin they glued up their own eyes, haltered and bound themselves.
The other faculty of playing the mimic, and ingeniously acting the words
and gestures of another, purposely to make people merry and to raise
their admiration, is no more in me than in a stock. When I swear my own
oath, 'tis only, by God! of all oaths the most direct. They say that
Socrates swore by the dog; Zeno had for his oath the same interjection at
this time in use amongst the Italians, Cappari! Pythagoras swore By
water and air. I am so apt, without thinking of it, to receive these
superficial impressions, that if I have Majesty or Highness in my mouth
three days together, they come out instead of Excellency and Lordship
eight days after; and what I say to-day in sport and fooling I shall say
the same to-morrow seriously. Wherefore, in writing, I more unwillingly
undertake beaten arguments, lest I should handle them at another's
expense. Every subject is equally fertile to me: a fly will serve the
purpose, and 'tis well if this I have in hand has not been undertaken at
the recommendation of as flighty a will. I may begin, with that which
pleases me best, for the subjects are all linked to one another.
But my soul displeases me, in that it ordinarily produces its deepest and
most airy conceits and which please me best, when I least expect or study
for them, and which suddenly vanish, having at the instant, nothing to
apply them to; on horseback, at table, and in bed: but most on horseback,
where I am most given to think. My speaking is a little nicely jealous
of silence and attention: if I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me,
stops me. In travelling, the necessity of the way will often put a stop
to discourse; besides which I, for the most part, travel without company
fit for regular discourses, by which means I have all the leisure I would
to entertain myself. It falls out as it does in my dreams; whilst
dreaming I recommend them to my memory (for I am apt to dream that I
dream), but, the next morning, I may represent to myself of what
complexion they were, whether gay, or sad, or strange, but what they
were, as to the rest, the more I endeavour to retrieve them, the deeper I
plunge them in oblivion. So of thoughts that come accidentally into my
head, I have no more but a vain image remaining in my memory; only enough
to make me torment myself in their quest to no purpose.
Well, then, laying books aside, and more simply and materially speaking,
I find, after all, that Love is nothing else but the thirst of enjoying
the object desired, or Venus any other thing than the pleasure of
discharging one's vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives in
discharging other parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretion
become vicious. According to Socrates, love is the appetite of
generation by the mediation of beauty. And when I consider the
ridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, crack-brained, wild
motions with which it inspires Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage,
the countenance inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects of
love, and then that austere air, so grave, severe, ecstatic, in so wanton
an action; that our delights and our excrements are promiscuously
shuffled together; and that the supreme pleasure brings along with it, as
in pain, fainting and complaining; I believe it to be true, as Plato
says, that the gods made man for their sport:
"Quaenam ista jocandi
Saevitia!"
["With a sportive cruelty" (Or:) "What an unkindness there is in
jesting!"--Claudian in Eutrop. i. 24.]
and that it was in mockery that nature has ordered the most agitative of
actions and the most common, to make us equal, and to put fools and wise
men, beasts and us, on a level. Even the most contemplative and prudent
man, when I imagine him in this posture, I hold him an impudent fellow to
pretend to be prudent and contemplative; they are the peacocks' feet that
abate his pride:
"Ridentem dicere verum
Quid vetat?"
["What prevents us from speaking truth with a smile?"
--Horace, Sat., i. I, 24.]
They who banish serious imaginations from their sports, do, says one,
like him who dares not adore the statue of a saint, if not covered with a
veil. We eat and drink, indeed, as beasts do; but these are not actions
that obstruct the functions of the soul, in these we maintain our
advantage over them; this other action subjects all other thought,
and by its imperious authority makes an ass of all Plato's divinity and
philosophy; and yet there is no complaint of it. In everything else a
man may keep some decorum, all other operations submit to the rules of
decency; this cannot so much as in imagination appear other than vicious
or ridiculous: find out, if you can, therein any serious and discreet
procedure. Alexander said, that he chiefly knew himself to be mortal by
this act and sleeping; sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of
the soul; the familiarity with women likewise dissipates and exhausts
them: doubtless 'tis a mark, not only of our original corruption, but
also of our vanity and deformity.
On the one side, nature pushes us on to it, having fixed the most noble,
useful, and pleasant of all her functions to this desire: and, on the
other side, leaves us to accuse and avoid it, as insolent and indecent,
to blush at it, and to recommend abstinence. Are we not brutes to call
that work brutish which begets us? People of so many differing religions
have concurred in several proprieties, as sacrifices, lamps, burning
incense, fasts, and offerings; and amongst others, in the condemning this
act: all opinions tend that way, besides the widespread custom of
circumcision, which may be regarded as a punishment. We have,
peradventure, reason to blame ourselves for being guilty of so foolish
a production as man, and to call the act, and the parts that are employed
in the act, shameful (mine, truly, are now shameful and pitiful). The
Essenians, of whom Pliny speaks, kept up their country for several ages
without either nurse or baby-clouts, by the arrival of strangers who,
following this pretty humour, came continually to them: a whole nation
being resolute, rather to hazard a total extermination, than to engage
themselves in female embraces, and rather to lose the succession of men,
than to beget one. 'Tis said, that Zeno never had to do with a woman but
once in his life, and then out of civility, that he might not seem too
obstinately to disdain the sex.
[Diogenes Laertius, vii. 13.--What is there said, however, is that
Zeno seldom had commerce with boys, lest he should be deemed a very
misogynist.]
Every one avoids seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die; to
destroy him a spacious field is sought out in the face of the sun, but,
to make him, we creep into as dark and private a corner as we can: 'tis a
man's duty to withdraw himself bashfully from the light to create; but
'tis glory and the fountain of many virtues to know how to destroy what
we have made: the one is injury, the other favour: for Aristotle says
that to do any one a kindness, in a certain phrase of his country, is to
kill him. The Athenians, to couple the disgrace of these two actions,
having to purge the Isle of Delos, and to justify themselves to Apollo,
interdicted at once all births and burials in the precincts thereof:
"Nostri nosmet paenitet."
["We are ashamed of ourselves."--Terence, Phoymio, i. 3, 20.]