at the request of Sir Edward Wotton, Florio had first Englished one
chapter, doing it in the house of Lady Bedford, a great lover of art.
In that preface, Florio, in most extravagant and euphuistic style,
describes how this noblewoman, after having 'dayned to read it (the
first chapter) without pitty of my fasting, my fainting, my
laboring, my langishing, my gasping for some breath ... yet commaunded
me on'--namely, to turn the whole work into English. It was a heavy
task for the poor schoolmaster. He says:--'I sweat, I wept, and I went
on sea-tosst, weather-beaten ... shippe-wrackt--almost drowned.'
'I say not,' the polite maestro adds, 'you took pleasure at shore'
(as those in this author, iii. 1). No; my lady was 'unmercifull,
but not so cruell;' she ever and anon upheld his courage, bringing
'to my succour the forces of two deare friends.' One of them
was Theodore Diodati, tutor of Lady Bedford's brother, the eldest
son of Lady Harrington whose husband also was a poet.
The grateful Florio calls this worthy colleague, 'Diodati as in name,
so indeed God's gift to me,' and a 'guide-fish' who in this
'rockie-rough ocean' helped him to capture the 'Whale'--that is,
Montaigne. He also compares him to a 'bonus genius sent to
me, as the good angel to Raimond in "Tasso," for my assistant to
combat this great Argante.'
The other welcome fellow-worker was 'Maister Doctor Guinne;' according
to Florio, 'in this perilous, crook't passage a monster-quelling
Theseus or Herkules;' aye, in his eyes the best orator, poet,
philosopher, and medical man (_non so se meglior oratore e poeta,
o philosopho e medico_), and well versed in Greek, Latin, Italian,
and French poetry. It was he who succeeded in tracing the many
passages from classic and modern writers which are strewn all over
Montaigne's Essays to the divers authors, and the several places
where they occur, so as to properly classify them.
Samuel Daniel, a well-known and much respected poet of that time, and a
brother-in-law of Florio, also made his contribution. He opens this
powerful, highly important work with a eulogistic poem. Florio, in his
bombastic style, says:--'I, in this, serve but as Vulcan to hatchet
this Minerva from that Jupiter's bigge braine.' He calls himself 'a
fondling foster-father, having transported it from France to England,
put it in English clothes, taught it to talke our tongue, though many
times with a jerke of French jargon.'
The 'Essais' consist of three different books. Each of them is
dedicated to two noblewomen, the foremost of this country. The
first book isdedicated to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and her mother,
Lady Anne Harrington. The second to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland,
daughter of the famous poet Sir Philip Sidney, therefore a near
relation of Shakspere's youthful friend, William Herbert, the later
Earl of Pembroke ('the only begetter' of the 'Sonnets'), whose mother
also was a daughter of that much-admired poet.
The second book is dedicated to the renowned as well as evilly notorious
Lady Penelope Rich, sister of the unfortunate Earl of Essex. She shone
by her extraordinary beauty as well as by her intellectual gifts. Of
her Sir Philip Sidney was madly enamoured, but she married a Croesus,
Lord Rich. This union was a most unhappy one. Her husband, a man far
below her in strength of mind, did not know how to value the jewel
that had come into his possession. A crowd of admirers flocked around
her, among whom was William Herbert, much younger in years than herself.
It is suspected that Shakspere's last sonnets (127-152) touch upon
this connection, with the object of warning the friend against the
true character of that sinful woman.
The last book is dedicated to Lady Elizabeth Grey, the wife of Henry
Grey, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and to Lady Mary Nevill,
the latter being the daughter of the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and wife of Sir Henry Nevill of Abergavenny.
Each of the noblewomen mentioned is praised in a sonnet. No book of
that period had such a number of aristocratic sponsors. Yet it was
of foreign origin, and for the first time a French philosopher had
appeared in an English version on this side of the Channel. His easy,
chatty tone must have created no small sensation. The welcome given
to him by a great number of men is proved by the fact of the 'Essais'
soon reaching their third edition, a rare occurrence with a book so
expensive as this. [19]
We will endeavour to sketch the character of Michel Montaigne and his
writings. His individuality, owing to the minute descriptions he gives
of his own self in the Essays, comes out with rare distinctness from
the dark environs of his time--more clearly so than the personality
of any other author, even of that seventeenth century which is so much
nearer to us.
This French nobleman devoted the last thirty years of his life to
philosophical speculations, if that expression is allowable; for
fanciful inclination and changing sentiment, far more than strict
logic and sound common sense, decided the direction of his thoughts.
The book in which he tries to render his ideas is meant to be the
flesh and blood of his own self. The work and the author--so he
says--are to be one. 'He who touches one of them, attacks both.'
In the words of Florio's translation, he observes:--'Authors communicate
themselves unto the world by some speciall and strange marke, I the
first by my generall disposition as Michael Montaigne; not as a
Grammarian, or a Poet, or a Lawyer.'
Few writers have been considered from such different points of view as
Montaigne. The most passionate controversies have arisen about him.
Theologians have endeavoured to make him one of their own; but the
more far seeing ones soon perceived that there was too much scepticism
in his work. Some sceptics would fain attach him to their own ranks;
but the more consistent among them declined the companionship of one
who was too bigoted for them. The great mass of men, as usual, plucked,
according to each one's taste and fancy, some blossom or leaf from his
'nosegay of strange flowers,' [20] and then classified him from that
casual selection.
Montaigne, a friend of truth, admonishes posterity, if it would judge
him, to do so truthfully and justly. With gladsome heart, he says,
he would come back from the other world in order to give the lie to
those who describe him different from what he is, 'even if it were
done to his honour.'
We shall strive to comply with his wish by drawing the picture of this
most interesting, and in his intellectual features thoroughly modern,
man, from the contours furnished by his own hand. We shall exert
ourselves to lay stress on those characteristics by which he must
have created most surprise among his logically more consistent
contemporaries on the other side of the Channel.
In taking up Montaigne's 'Essais' for perusal we are presently under
the spell of a feeling as though we were listening to the words of a
most versatile man of the world, in whom we become more and more
interested. We find in him not only an amiable representative of the
upper classes, but also a man who has deeply entered into the spirit
of classic antiquity. Soon he convinces us that he is honestly
searching after truth; that he pursues the noble aim of placing
himself in harmony with God and the world. Does he succeed in this?
Does he arrive at a clear conclusion? What are the fruits of his
thoughts? what his teachings? In what relation did he stand to his
century?
As in no other epoch, men had, especially those who came out into the
fierce light of publicity, to take sides in party warfare during the
much-agitated time of the Reformation. To which party did Montaigne
belong? Was he one of the Humanists, who, averse to all antiquated
dogmas, preached a new doctrine, which was to bring mankind once more
into unison with the long despised laws of Nature?
We hope to show successfully that Shakspere wrote his 'Hamlet' for
the great and noble object of warning his contemporaries against the
disturbing inconsistencies of the philosophy of Montaigne who preached
the rights of Nature, whilst yet clinging to dogmatic tenets which
cannot be reconciled with those rights.
We hope to prove that Shakspere who made it his task 'to hold the mirror
up to Nature,' and who, like none before him, caught up her innermost
secrets, rendering them with the chastest expression; that Shakspere,
who denied in few but impressive words the vitality of any art or
culture which uses means not consistent with the intentions of Nature:
Yet Nature is made better by no mean,
But Nature makes that mean; so o'er that art
Which, you say, adds to Nature, is an art
That Nature makes; [21]--
we hope to prove successfully that Shakspere, this true apostle of
Nature, held it to be sufficient, ay, most godly, to be a champion
of 'natural things;' that he advocated a true and simple obedience
to her laws, and a renunciation of all transcendental dogmas,
miscalled 'holy and reverent,' which domineer over human nature,
and hinder the free development of its nobler faculties.
Let us then impartially examine the character and the work of Montaigne.
If we discover contradictions in both, we shall not endeavour to argue
them away, but present them with matter-of-fact fidelity; for it is
on those very contradictions that the enigmatic, as yet unexplained,
character of Hamlet reposes.
1: Collier's _Drama_, i. 265.
2: _Kind-hartes Dreame_, 1592.
3: Act v. sc. 4.
4: Act v sc. 4.
5: Act iii sc. 5.
6: _The Return from Parnassus_, act v. sc. I.
7: _Ibid._, act iv. sc. 3.
8: _The Pardoner and the Friar_: 1533.
9: Collier's _Drama_, i. 104.
10: _The Political Use of the Stage in Shakspere's Time_.
New Shakspere Society: 1874, ii. p. 371.
Henry Stalbrydge, _Epistle Exhortatory_, &c.: 1544.
11: This threat was uttered against Chapman, Ben Jonson, and Marston
on account of _Eastward Hoe_.
12: Von Raumer, ii. p. 219.
13: Marston's _Malcontent_: Dedication.
14: Act i. sc. I.
15: It is very characteristic that, in this serious piece also, low
humour was still largely employed. In printing--the publisher
remarks--the passages in question were left out, as derogatory 'to
so honourable and stately a history.'
16: _The Politics of Shakspere's Historical Plays_. New
Shakspere Society, ii. 1874.
17: _Antonius and Cleopatra_, act i. sc. 4.
18: We mean the usually received text, seeing that the folio edition
of 1623 contains some passages which are wanting in the quarto
edition, and _vice versâ_.
19: Montaigne's _Essays_, which were published in folio, may have
had the same price as Shakspere's folio of 1623. The latter was only
re-issued in 1632 and 1664, whilst the former came out in new
editions in 1613 and 1632.
20: 'Icy un amas de fleur estrangieres, n'y ayant fourny du mien
que le filet à les lier' (iii. 12).
21: _Winter's Tale_, act iv. sc. 3.
III.
MONTAIGNE.
Michel Montaigne was favoured by birth as few writers have been. He
was the son of a worthy nobleman who gave him, from early childhood, a
most carefully conducted education. He never tires in praising
the good qualities of his father, who had followed Francis I. to his
Italian campaigns, and, like that monarch, had conceived a preference
for those classical studies which were then again reviving. Even as
his king, he, too, wished to promote the new knowledge, and was bent
upon so initiating young Michel into it as to make him in the fullest
manner conversant with the conquests of Greece and Rome in the realm
of intellect.
In this, as a practical man who felt the greatest respect for erudition
without personally possessing a proper share of it, he allowed himself
to be thoroughly guided by 'men of learning and judgment.' He had been
told that the only reason why we do not 'attain to the greatness
of soul and intellect of the ancient Greeks and Romans was the length of
time we give to learning these languages which cost them nothing.' In
bringing up the boy, to whom the best masters were given, the procedures
chosen were therefore such that young Michel, in his sixth year, spoke
Latin thoroughly before he was able to converse in his own mother-tongue.
Montaigne relates [1] that he was much more at home on the banks of the
Tiber than on the Seine. Before he knew the Louvre, his mind's eye
rested on the Forum and the Capitol. He boasts of having always been
more occupied with the life and the qualities of Lucullus, of Metellus,
and Scipio, than with the fate of any of his own countrymen. Of the
hey-day of classic Rome he, who otherwise uses such measured terms,
speaks with a glowing enthusiasm. He often avers that he belongs to
no special school of thought; that he advocates no theory; that he is
not the adherent of any party or sect. To him--so he asserts--an
unprejudiced examination of all knowledge is sufficient. His endeavour
was, to prove the devise of his escutcheon: 'Que sçais-je?'
Have the humanistic studies not given to him, as to so many of his
contemporaries, a distinctive mental bent? Have Greek and Roman
philosophy and poetry remained without any influence upon him? Has
his character not been formed by them? Does he not once reckon himself
among 'nous autres naturalistes?' [2]
Once only, it is true, he does this; but even if he who would not belong
to any special school of thought, and who would rather be 'a good
equerry than a logician,' [3] had not ascribed to himself this
designation, a hundred passages of his work would bear witness to
the fact of his having been one of the Humanists, on whose banner
'Nature' was written as the parole. Ever and anon he says (I here
direct attention more specially to his last Essays) that we ought
willingly to follow her prescriptions; and incessantly he asserts
that, in doing so, we cannot err. He designates her as a guide as
mild as she is just, whose footprints, blurred over as they are by
artificial ones, we ought everywhere to trace anew. 'Is it not folly,'
he asks with Seneca, [4] 'to bend the body this way, and the mind that
way, and thus to stand distorted between two movements utterly at
variance with each other?'
To bring up and to guide man in accordance with his capacities, is
with him a supreme law. 'Le glorieux chef-d'oeuvre de l'homme,
c'est de vivre a propos.' He, the sage, is already so much in advance
of his century that he yearns for laws and religions which are not
arbitrarily founded, but drawn from the roots and the buds of a
universal Reason, contained in every person not degenerate or
divorced from nature _desnature_. A mass of passages in the
Essays strengthen the opinion that Montaigne was an upright,
noble-minded Humanist, a disciple of free thought, who wished to
fathom human nature, and was anxious to help in delivering mankind
from the fetters of manifold superstitions. Read his Essay on Education;
and the conviction will force itself upon you that in many things he
was far in advance of his time.
But now to the reverse of the medal--to Montaigne as the adherent of
Romanist dogmas!
'The bond,' he says--and here we quote Florio's translation, [5] only
slightly changed into modern orthography--'which should bind our
judgment, tie our will, enforce and join our souls to our Creator,
should be a bond taking his doublings and forces, not from our
considerations, reasons, and passions, but from a divine and
supernatural compulsion, having but one form; one countenance, and
one grace; which is the authority and grace of God.' The latter, be
it well understood, are to Montaigne identical with the Church of
Rome, to which he thinks it best blindly to submit.
Men--he observes--who make bold to sit in judgment upon their judges,
are never faithful and obedient to them. As a warning example he points
to England, which, since his birth, had already three or four times
changed its laws, not only in matters political, in which constancy is
not insisted upon, but in the most important matter imaginable--namely,
in religion. He declares himself all the more ashamed of, and vexed by,
this, as his own family were allied by close private ties with the
English nation.
An attempt has been made to show [6] that in Montaigne's 'Apologie
de Raymond Sebond,' in which he expounds his theological opinions
in the most explicit manner, a hidden attack is contained upon the
Church. But it bespeaks an utter misconception of the character of
this writer to hold him capable of such perfidious craftiness; for
he calls it 'a cowardly and servile humour if a man disguises and
hides his thoughts under a mask, not daring to let himself be seen
under his true aspect.' [7]
We know of not a few, especially Italian, Humanists who publicly
made a deep bow before the altar, whilst behind it they cynically
laughed, in company with their friends; making sport of the silly
crowd that knelt down in profound reverence. Montaigne was no such
double-dealer. We can fully believe him when he states that it is to
him no small satisfaction and pleasure to 'have been preserved from
the contagion of so corrupt an age; to have never brought affliction
and ruin upon any person; not to have felt a desire for vengeance,
or any envy; nor to have become a defaulter to his word.' [8]
His word, his honour, were to him the most sacred treasure. He never
would have descended so low as to fling them to the winds. Let us,
therefore, not endeavour to deny any logical inconsistencies in his
writings--inconsistencies which many other men since his time have
equally shown. Let us rather institute a strict and close inquiry
into these two modes of thought of his, which, contradictory as they
are, yet make up his very character and individuality.
We can fully believe in Montaigne's sincerity when elsewhere he asserts
that we must not travel away from the paths marked down by the Roman
Catholic Church, lest we should be driven about helplessly and aimlessly
on the unbounded sea of human opinions. He tells us [9] that 'he, too,
had neglected the observance of certain ceremonies of the Church,
which seemed to him somewhat vain and strange; but that, when he
communicated on that subject with learned men, he found that these
things had a very massive and solid foundation, and that it is only
silliness and ignorance which make us receive them with less reverence
than the other doctrines of religion.' Hence he concludes that we must
put ourselves wholly under the protection of ecclesiastical authority,
or completely break with it.
He never made a single step to withdraw himself from that authority.
He rather prides himself on having never allowed himself, by any
philosophy, to be turned away from his first and natural sic
opinions, and from the condition in which God had placed him; being
well aware of his own variability _volubilité_. 'Thus I have,
by the grace of God, remained wholly attached, without internal
agitation and troubles of conscience, to the ancient beliefs of our
religion, during the conflict of so many sects and party divisions
which our century has produced.' [10]
Receiving the holy Host, he breathed his last.
In the 'Apologie de Raymond Sebond,' Montaigne defends the 'Theologia
Naturalis' of the latter--a book in which the author, who was a medical
man, a philosopher, and a theologian, endeavours to prove that the Roman
Catholic dogmas are in harmony with the laws of nature. That which is
to be received in full faith, Sebond exerts himself to make
comprehensible by arguments of the reason. This book--so Montaigne
relates--had been given to his father, at the time when Luther's new
doctrines began to be popular, by a man of great reputation for
learning, Pierre Bunel, who 'well foresaw, by his penetration, [11]
that this budding disease would easily degenerate into an execrable
atheism.' Old Pierre Montaigne, a very pious man, esteemed this work
very highly; and a few days before his death, having fortunately found
it among a lot of neglected papers, commanded his son to translate it
from 'that kind of Spanish jargon with Latin endings,' in which it
was written.
Michel, with filial piety, fulfilled his task. He translated the work,
and in the above-mentioned Essay--the largest of the series--he
advocates its philosophy. The essence of this panegyric of the Church
(for logic would in vain be sought for in that Essay) is: that
knowledge and curiosity are simply plagues of mankind, and that the
Roman Catholic religion, therefore, with great wisdom, recommends
ignorance. Man would be most likely to attain happiness if, like
the animal, he were to allow himself to be guided by his simple
instinct. All philosophising is declared to be of no use. Faith only
is said to afford security to the weakest of all beings, to man, who
more than any other creature is exposed to the most manifold dangers.
No elephant, no whale, or crocodile, was required to overcome him who
proudly calls himself the 'lord of creation.' 'Little lice are
sufficient to make Sylla give up his dictatorship. The heart and the
life of a mighty and triumphant emperor form but the breakfast of a
little worm.' [12] (Compare 'Hamlet,' iv. 3).
Montaigne, who, in his thirty-eighth year, 'long weary of the bondage
of Court and of public employment, while yet in the vigour of life,
hath withdrawn himself into the bosom of the Learned Virgins (Doctarum
Virginum),' [13] so as to be able to spend the rest of his days in
his ancestral home, in peaceful, undisturbed devotion to ennobling
studies, and to present the world with a new book, in which he means
to give expression to his innermost thoughts--Montaigne, in his Essay
'On Prayers,' calls his writings 'rhapsodies,' which he submits
to the judgment of the Church, so that it may deal with anything he,
'either ignorantly or unadvisedly, may have set down contrary to the
sacred decrees, and repugnant to the holy prescriptions of the Catholic,
Apostolic, and Roman Church, wherein I die, and in which I was born.'
Let us not dwell too long on the contradictions of a man who professes
to think independently, and who yet is content with having a
mind-cramping dogmatic creed imposed upon him. Let us look at a few
other, not less irreconcilable, inconsistencies of his logic.
Montaigne, the Humanist, advocates toleration. Justice, he says, is
to be done to every party, to every opinion. 'Men are different in
feeling and in strength; they must be directed to their good, according
to themselves, and by diverse ways.' [14] He bears no grudge to anyone
of heterodox faith; he feels no indignation against those who differ
from him in ideas. The ties of universal humanity he values more than
those of national connection. He has some good words for the Mexicans,
so cruelly persecuted by the Spaniards. 'I hold all men to be my
compatriots; I feel the same love for a Pole as for a Frenchman.' [15]
But when we read what the Roman Catholic Montaigne writes, there is a
different tone:--
'Now that which, methinks, brings so much disorder into our
consciences--namely, in these troubles of religion in which we are--is
the easy way with which Catholics treat their faith. They suppose they
show themselves properly moderate and skilful when they yield to
their adversaries some of the articles that are under debate.
But--besides that they do not see what an advantage it is to your
antagonist if you once begin making a concession, thus encouraging
him to follow up his point--it may further be said that the articles
which they choose as apparently the lightest, are sometimes most
important indeed.' [16]
Again, the humane nobleman who looks with pity and kindliness upon
'the poor, toiling with heads bent, in their hard work;' he who calls
the application of the torture 'a trial of patience rather than of
truth'--he maintains that 'the public weal requires that one should
commit treachery, use falsehoods, and perform massacres.' [17]
Personally, he shrinks from such a mission. His softer heart is not
strong enough for these deeds. He relates [18] that he 'never could
see without displeasure an innocent and defenceless beast pursued
and killed, from which we have received no offence at all.' He is
moved by the aspect of 'the hart when it is embossed and out of
breath, and, finding its strength gone, has no other resource left
but to yield itself up to us who pursue it, asking for mercy from us by
its tears. He calls this 'a deplorable spectacle.'
Yet, this sentimental nobleman advocates the commission of treachery
and cruelty, in the interest of the State, by certain more energetic,
less timorous men. Nor does he define their functions so as to raise a
bar against a second St. Bartholomew massacre. A deed of this kind he
would submissively take to be an act of Heaven, shirking all
responsibility for, or discussion of, anything that 'begins to molest
him.' He merely says:--'Like those ancients who sacrificed their lives
for the welfare of their country, so they (the guardians of the State)
must be ready to sacrifice their honour and their conscience. We who
are weaker, take easier, less risky parts.' [19]