Chapter III: Epilogue: 288 (2)

And, therefore, to make an end of this Prologue, even as I give
myself to an hundred thousand panniers-full of fair devils, body
and soul,... in case that I lie so much as one single word in this
whole history; after the like manner, St. Anthony's fire burn you,
Mahoom's disease whirl you, the squinance with a stitch in your
side, and the wolf in your stomach truss you, the bloody flux seize
upon you, the cursed sharp inflammations of wild fire, as slender
and thin as cow's hair strengthened with quicksilver, enter into
you,... and, like those of Sodom and Gomorrha, may you fall into
sulphur, fire, and bottomless pits, in case you do not firmly
believe all that I shall relate unto you in this present Chronicle.

So much for Rabelais's prologues. Our readers must now see something of what, under pains and penalties denounced so dire, they are bound to believe. We condense and defecate for this purpose the thirty-eighth chapter of the first book, which is staggeringly entitled, "How Gargantua did eat up Six Pilgrims in a Sallad":--

The story requireth that we relate that which happened unto six
pilgrims, who came from Sebastian near to Nantes; and who, for
shelter that night, being afraid of the enemy, had hid themselves
in the garden upon the chickling peas, among the cabbages and
lettuces. Gargantua, finding himself somewhat dry, asked whether
they could get any lettuce to make him a salad; and, hearing that
there were the greatest and fairest in the country,--for they were
as great as plum trees, or as walnut trees,--he would go thither
himself, and brought thence in his hand what he thought good, and
withal carried away the six pilgrims, who were in so great fear
that they did not dare to speak nor cough. Washing them, therefore,
first at the fountain, the pilgrims said one to another, softly,
"What shall we do? We are almost drowned here amongst these
lettuce: shall we speak? But, if we speak, he will kill us for
spies." And, as they were thus deliberating what to do, Gargantua
put them, with the lettuce, into a platter of the house, as large
as the huge tun of the White Friars of the Cistertian order; which
done, with oil, vinegar, and salt, he ate them up, to refresh
himself a little before supper, and had already swallowed up five
of the pilgrims, the sixth being in the platter, totally hid under
a lettuce, except his bourbon, or staff, that appeared, and nothing
else. Which Grangousier [Gargantua's father] seeing, said to
Gargantua, "I think that is the horn of a shell snail: do not eat
it."--"Why not?" said Gargantua; "they are good all this month:"
which he no sooner said, but, drawing up the staff, and therewith
taking up the pilgrim, he ate him very well, then drank a terrible
draught of excellent white wine. The pilgrims, thus devoured, made
shift to save themselves, as well as they could, by drawing their
bodies out of the reach of the grinders of his teeth, but could
not escape from thinking they had been put in the lowest dungeon of
a prison. And, when Gargantua whiffed the great draught, they
thought to have drowned in his mouth, and the flood of wine had
almost carried them away into the gulf of his stomach.
Nevertheless, skipping with their bourbons, as St. Michael's
palmers used to do, they sheltered themselves from the danger of
that inundation under the banks of his teeth. But one of them, by
chance, groping, or sounding the country with his staff, to try
whether they were in safety or no, struck hard against the cleft of
a hollow tooth, and hit the mandibulary sinew or nerve of the jaw,
which put Gargantua to very great pain, so that he began to cry for
the rage that he felt. To ease himself, therefore, of his smarting
ache, he called for his tooth-picker, and, rubbing towards a young
walnut-tree, where they lay skulking, unnestled you my gentlemen
pilgrims. For he caught one by the legs, another by the scrip,
another by the pocket, another by the scarf, another by the band of
the breeches; and the poor fellow that had hurt him with the
bourbon, him he hooked to him by [another part of his clothes]....
The pilgrims, thus dislodged, ran away.

Rabelais closes his story with jocose irreverent application of Scripture,--a manner of his which gives some color to the tradition of a biblical pun made by him on his death-bed.

The closest English analogue to Rabelais is undoubtedly Dean Swift. We probably never should have had "Gulliver's Travels" from Swift, if we had not first had Gargantua and Pantagruel from Rabelais. Swift, however, differs from Rabelais as well as resembles him. Whereas Rabelais is simply monstrous in invention, Swift in invention submits himself loyally to law. Give Swift his world of Liliput and Brobdingnag respectively, and all, after that, is quite natural and probable. The reduction or the exaggeration is made upon a mathematically calculated scale. For such verisimilitude Rabelais cares not a straw. His various inventions are recklessly independent one of another. A characteristic of Swift thus is scrupulous conformity to whimsical law. Rabelais is remarkable for whimsical disregard of even his own whimseys. Voltaire put the matter with his usual felicity,--Swift is Rabelais in his senses.

One of the most celebrated--justly celebrated--of Rabelais's imaginations is that of the Abbey of Theleme [Thelema]. This constitutes a kind of Rabelaisian Utopia. It was proper of the released monk to give his Utopian dream the form of an abbey, but an abbey in which the opposite should obtain of all that he had so heartily hated in his own monastic experience. A humorously impossible place and state was the Abbey of Theleme,--a kind of sportive Brook Farm set far away in a world unrealized. How those Thelemites enjoyed life, to be sure! It was like endless plum pudding--for everybody to eat, and nobody to prepare:--

All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but
according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of
their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labor,
sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None
did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor
to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all
their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this
one clause to be observed,--

DO WHAT THOU WILT.

...By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation, to
do all of them what they saw did please one. If any of the gallants
or ladies should say, Let us drink, they would all drink. If any
one of them said, Let us play, they all played. If one said, Let us
go a walking into the fields, they went all.... There was neither
he nor she amongst them, but could read, write, sing, play upon
several musical instruments, speak five or six several languages,
and compose in them all very quaintly, both in verse and prose.
Never were seen so valiant knights, so noble and worthy, so
dextrous and skilful both on foot and a horseback, more brisk and
lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all manner of
weapons than were there. Never were seen ladies so proper and
handsome, so miniard and dainty, less forward, or more ready with
their hand, and with their needle, in every honest and free action
belonging to that sex, than were there. For this reason, when the
time came, that any man of the said abbey, either at the request of
his parents, or for some other cause, had a mind to go out of it,
he carried along with him one of the ladies, namely her who had
before that accepted him as her lover, and they were married
together.

The foregoing is one of the most purely sweet imaginative passages in Rabelais's works. The representation, as a whole, sheathes, of course, a keen satire on the religious houses. Real religion, Rabelais nowhere attacks.

The same colossal Gargantua who had that eating adventure with the six pilgrims, is made, in Rabelais's second book, to write his youthful son Pantagruel--also a giant, but destined to be, when mature, a model of all princely virtues--a letter on education, in which the most pious paternal exhortation occurs. The whole letter reads like some learned Puritan divine's composition. Here are a few specimen sentences:--

Fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, Arabian,
and Latin physicians, not despising the Talmudists and Cabalists;
and by frequent anatomies get thee the perfect knowledge of that
other world, called the microcosm, which is man. And at some of the
hours of the day apply thy mind to the study of the Holy
Scriptures: first, in Greek, the New Testament, with the Epistles
of the Apostles; and then the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief,
let me see thee an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge....

...It behoveth thee to serve, to love, to fear God, and on him to
cast all thy thoughts and all thy hope, and, by faith formed in
charity, to cleave unto him, so that thou mayst never be separated
from him by thy sins. Suspect the abuses of the world. Set not thy
heart upon vanity, for this life is transitory; but the Word of the
Lord endureth forever.

"Friar John" is a mighty man of valor, who figures equivocally in the story of Gargantua and Pantagruel. The Abbey of Theleme is given him in reward of his services. Some have identified this fighting monk with Martin Luther. The representation is, on the whole, so conducted as to leave the reader's sympathies at least half enlisted in favor of the fellow, rough and roistering as he is.

Panurge is the hero of the romance of Pantagruel,--almost more than Pantagruel himself. It would be unpardonable to dismiss Rabelais without first making our readers know Panurge by, at least, a few traits of his character and conduct. Panurge was a shifty but unscrupulous adventurer, whom Pantagruel, pious prince as he was, coming upon him by chance, took and kept under his patronage. Panurge was an arch-imp of mischief,--mischief indulged in the form of obscene and malicious practical jokes. Rabelais describes his accomplishments in a long strain of discourse, from which we purge our selection to follow,--thereby transforming Panurge into a comparatively proper and virtuous person:--

He had threescore and three tricks to come by it [money] at his
need, of which the most honorable and most ordinary was in manner
of thieving, secret purloining, and filching, for he was a wicked,
lewd rogue, a cozener, drinker, roysterer, rover, and a very
dissolute and debauched fellow, if there were any in Paris;
otherwise, and in all matters else, the best and most virtuous man
in the world; and he was still contriving some plot, and devising
mischief against the serjeants and the watch.

At one time he assembled three or four especial good hacksters and
roaring boys; made them in the evening drink like Templars,
afterwards led them till they came under St. Genevieve, or about
the college of Navarre, and, at the hour that the watch was coming
up that way,--which he knew by putting his sword upon the pavement,
and his ear by it, and, when he heard his sword shake, it was an
infallible sign that the watch was near at that instant,--then he
and his companions took a tumbrel or garbage-cart, and gave it the
brangle, hurling it with all their force down the hill, and then
ran away upon the other side; for in less than two days he knew all
the streets, lanes, and turnings in Paris, as well as his _Deus
det._

At another time he laid, in some fair place where the said watch
was to pass, a train of gunpowder, and, at the very instant that
they went along, set fire to it, and then made himself sport to see
what good grace they had in running away, thinking that St.
Anthony's fire had caught them by the legs.... In one of his
pockets he had a great many little horns full of fleas and lice,
which he borrowed from the beggars of St. Innocent, and cast them,
with small canes or quills to write with, into the necks of the
daintiest gentlewomen that he could find, yea, even in the church;
for he never seated himself above in the choir, but always in the
body of the church amongst the women, both at mass, at vespers, and
at sermon.

Coleridge, in his metaphysical way, keen at the moment on the scent of illustrations for the philosophy of Kant, said, "Pantagruel is the Reason; Panurge the Understanding." Rabelais himself, in the fourth book of his romance, written in the last years of his life, defines the spirit of the work. This fourth book, the English translator says, is "justly thought his masterpiece." The same authority adds with enthusiasm, "Being wrote with more spirit, salt, and flame than the first part." Here, then, is Rabelais's own expression, sincere or jocular, as you choose to take it, for what constitutes the essence of his writing. We quote from the "Prologue":--

By the means of a little Pantagruelism (which, you know, is _a
certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of fortune_), you see
me now ["at near seventy years of age," his translator says], hale
and cheery, as sound as a bell, and ready to drink, if you will.

It is impossible to exaggerate the mad, rollicking humor, sticking at nothing, either in thought or in expression, with which especially this last book of Rabelais's work is written. But we have no more space for quotation.

Coleridge's theory of interpretation for Rabelais's writings is hinted in his "Table Talk," as follows: "After any particularly deep thrust,... Rabelais, as if to break the blow, and to appear unconscious of what he has done, writes a chapter or two of pure buffoonery."

The truth seems to us to be, that Rabelais's supreme taste, like his supreme power, lay in the line of humorous satire. He hated monkery, and he satirized the system as openly as he dared,--this, however, not so much in the love of truth and freedom, as in pure fondness for exercising his wit. That he was more than willing to make his ribald drollery the fool's mask from behind which he might aim safely his shafts of ridicule at what he despised and hated, is indeed probable. But in this is supplied to him no sufficient excuse for his obscene and blasphemous pleasantry. Nor yet are the manners of the age an excuse sufficient. Erasmus belonged to the same age, and he disliked the monks not less. But what a contrast, in point of decency, between Rabelais and Erasmus!

IV.

MONTAIGNE.

1533-1592.

Montaigne is signally the author of one book. His "Essays" are the whole of him. He wrote letters, to be sure, and he wrote journals of travel in quest of health and pleasure. But these are chiefly void of interest. Montaigne the Essayist alone is emphatically the Montaigne that survives. "Montaigne the Essayist,"--that has become, as it were, a personal name in literary history.

The "Essays" are one hundred and seven in number, divided into three books. They are very unequal in length; and they are on the most various topics,--topics often the most whimsical in character. We give a few of his titles, taking them as found in Cotton's translation:--

That men by various ways arrive at the same end; Whether the
governor of a place ought himself to go out to parley; Of liars; Of
quick or slow speech; A proceeding of some ambassadors; Various
events from the same counsel; Of cannibals; That we laugh and cry
from the same thing; Of smells; That the mind hinders itself; Of
thumbs; Of virtue; Of coaches; Of managing the will; Of cripples;
Of experience.

Montaigne's titles cannot be trusted to indicate the nature of the essays to which they belong. The author's pen will not be bound. It runs on at its own pleasure. Things the most unexpected are incessantly turning up in Montaigne,--things, probably, that were as unexpected to the writer when he was writing, as they will be to the reader when he is reading. The writing, on whatever topic, in whatever vein, always revolves around the writer for its pivot. Montaigne, from no matter what apparent diversion, may constantly be depended upon to bring up in due time at himself. The tether is long and elastic, but it is tenacious, and it is securely tied to Montaigne. This, as we shall presently let the author himself make plain, is no accident, of which Montaigne was unconscious. It is the express idea on which the "Essays" were written. Montaigne, in his "Essays," is a pure and perfect egotist, naked, and not ashamed. Egotism is Montaigne's note, his _differentia_, in the world of literature. Other literary men have been egotists--since. But Montaigne may be called the first, and he is the greatest.

Montaigne was a Gascon, and Gasconisms adulterate the purity of his French. But his style--a little archaic now, and never finished to the nail--had virtues of its own which have exercised a wholesome influence on classic French prose. It is simple, direct, manly, genuine. It is fresh and racy of the writer. It is flexible to every turn, it is sensitive to every rise or fall, of the thought. It is a steadfast rebuke to rant and fustian. It quietly laughs to scorn the folly of that style which writhes in an agony of expression, with neither thought nor feeling present to be expressed. Montaigne's "Essays" have been a great and a beneficent formative force in the development of prose style in French.

For substance, Montaigne is rich in practical wisdom, his own by original reflection, or by discreet purveyal. He had read much, he had observed much, he had experienced much. The result of all, digested in brooding thought, he put into his "Essays." These grew as he grew. He got himself transferred whole into them. Out of them, in turn, the world has been busy ever since dissolving Montaigne.

Montaigne's "Essays" are, as we have said, himself. Such is his own way of putting the fact. To one admiring his essays to him, he frankly replied, "You will like me, if you like my essays, for they are myself." The originality, the creative character and force, of the "Essays," lies in this autobiographical quality in them. Their fascination, too, consists in the self-revelation they contain. This was, first, self-revelation on the part of the writer; but no less it becomes, in each case, self-revelation in the experience of the reader. For, as face answereth to face in the glass, so doth the heart of man to man,--from race to race, and from generation to generation. If Montaigne, in his "Essays," held the mirror up to himself, he, in the same act, held up the mirror to you and to me. The image that we, reading, call Montaigne, is really ourselves. We never tire of gazing on it. We are all of us Narcissuses. This is why Montaigne is an immortal and a universal writer.

Here is Montaigne's Preface to his "Essays;" "The Author to the Reader," it is entitled:--

Reader, thou hast here an honest book; it doth at the outset
forewarn thee that, in contriving the same, I have proposed to
myself no other than a domestic and private end: I have had no
consideration at all either to thy service or to my glory. My
powers are not capable of any such design. I have dedicated it to
the particular commodity of my kinsfolk and friends, so that,
having lost me (which they must do shortly), they may therein
recover some traits of my conditions and humors, and by that means
preserve more whole, and more life-like, the knowledge they had of
me. Had my intention been to seek the world's favor, I should
surely have adorned myself with borrowed beauties. I desire therein
to be viewed as I appear in mine own genuine, simple, and ordinary
manner, without study and artifice; for it is myself I paint. My
defects are therein to be read to the life, and my imperfections
and my natural form, so far as public reverence hath permitted me.
If I had lived among those nations which (they say) yet dwell under
the sweet liberty of nature's primitive laws, I assure thee I would
most willingly have painted myself quite fully, and quite naked.
Thus, reader, myself am the matter of my book. There's no reason
thou shouldst employ thy leisure about so frivolous and vain a
subject. Therefore, farewell.

From Montaigne, the 12th of June, 1580.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, our author, as the foregoing date will have suggested, derived his most familiar name from the place at which he was born and at which he lived. Readers are not to take too literally Montaigne's notice of his dispensing with "borrowed beauties." He was, in fact, a famous borrower. He himself warns his readers to be careful how they criticise him; they may be flouting unawares Seneca, Plutarch, or some other, equally redoubtable, of the reverend ancients. Montaigne is perhaps as signal an example as any in literature, of the man of genius exercising his prescriptive right to help himself to his own wherever he may happen to find it. But Montaigne has in turn been freely borrowed from. Bacon borrowed from him, Shakspeare borrowed from him, Dryden, Pope, Hume, Burke, Byron,--these, with many more, in England; and, in France, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Voltaire, Rousseau,--directly or indirectly, almost every writer since his day. No modern writer, perhaps, has gone in solution into subsequent literature more widely than Montaigne. But no writer remains more solidly and insolubly entire.

We go at once to chapter twenty-five of the first book of the "Essays," entitled, in the English translation, "Of the education of children." The translation we use henceforth throughout is the classic one of Charles Cotton, in a text of it edited by Mr. William Carew Hazlitt. The "preface," already given, Cotton omitted to translate. We have allowed Mr. Hazlitt to supply the deficiency. Montaigne addresses his educational views to a countess. Several others of his essays are similarly inscribed to women. Mr. Emerson's excuse of Montaigne for his coarseness,--that he wrote for a generation in which women were not expected to be readers,--is thus seen to be curiously impertinent to the actual case that existed. Of a far worse fault in Montaigne than his coarseness,--we mean his outright immorality,--Mr. Emerson makes no mention, and for it, therefore, provides no excuse. We shall ourselves, in due time, deal more openly with our readers on this point.

It was for a "boy of quality" that Montaigne aimed to adapt his suggestions on the subject of education. In this happy country of ours, all boys are boys of quality; and we shall go nowhere amiss in selecting from the present essay:--

For a boy of quality, then, I say, I would also have his friends
solicitous to find him out a tutor who has rather a well-made than
a well-filled head, seeking, indeed, both the one and the other,
but rather of the two to prefer manners and judgment to mere
learning, and that this man should exercise his charge after a new
method.

'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their
pupil's ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the
business of the pupil is only to repeat what the others have said:
now, I would have a tutor to correct this error, and that, at the
very first, he should, according to the capacity he has to deal
with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste
things, and of himself to discern and choose them, sometimes
opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving him to open it for
himself; that is, I would not have him alone to invent and speak,
but that he should also hear his pupil speak in turn.... Let him
make him put what he has learned into a hundred several forms, and
accommodate it to so many several subjects, to see if he yet
rightly comprehends it, and has made it his own.... 'Tis a sign of
crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the same
condition it was swallowed: the stomach has not performed its
office, unless it have altered the form and condition of what was
committed to it to concoct....

Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift every thing he reads,
and lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon
trust. Aristotle's principles will then be no more principles to
him than those of Epicurus and the Stoics: let this diversity of
opinions be propounded to, and laid before, him; he will himself
choose, if he be able; if not, he will remain in doubt.

"Che, non men che saper, dubbiar m'aggrata." DANTE, _Inferno_, xl.
93.

["That doubting pleases me, not less than knowing." LONGFELLOW'S
_Translation_.]

For, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by his own
reason, they will no more be theirs, but become his own. Who
follows another, follows nothing, finds nothing, nay, is
inquisitive after nothing. "Non sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se
vindicet." ["We are under no king; let each look to
himself."--SENECA, _Ep._ 33.] Let him, at least, know that he
knows. It will be necessary that he imbibe their knowledge, not
that he be corrupted with their precepts; and no matter if he
forget where he had his learning, provided he know how to apply it
to his own use. Truth and reason are common to every one, and are
no more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them after;
'tis no more according to Plato, than according to me, since both
he and I equally see and understand them. Bees cull their several
sweets from this flower and that blossom, here and there where they
find them; but themselves afterward make the honey, which is all
and purely their own, and no more thyme and marjoram: so the
several fragments he borrows from others he will transform and
shuffle together, to compile a work that shall be absolutely his
own; that is to say, his judgment: his instruction, labor, and
study tend to nothing else but to form that.... Conversation with
men is of very great use, and travel into foreign countries;... to
be able chiefly to give an account of the humors, manners, customs,
and laws of those nations where he has been, and that we may whet
and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those of others....

In this conversing with men, I mean also, and principally, those
who live only in the records of history: he shall, by reading those
books, converse with the great and heroic souls of the best ages.

It is difficult to find a stopping-place in discourse so wise and so sweet. We come upon sentences like Plato for height and for beauty. An example: "The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene." But the genius of Montaigne does not often soar, though even one little flight like that shows that it has wings. Montaigne's garnishes of quotation from foreign tongues are often a cold-blooded device of afterthought with him. His first edition was without them, in many places where subsequently they appear. Readers familiar with Emerson will be reminded of him in perusing Montaigne. Emerson himself said, "It seemed to me [in reading the "Essays" of Montaigne] as if I had myself written the book in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thoughts and experience." The rich old English of Cotton's translation had evidently a strong influence on Emerson, to mould his own style of expression. Emerson's trick of writing "'tis," was apparently caught from Cotton. The following sentence, from the present essay of Montaigne, might very well have served Mr. Emerson for his own rule of writing: "Let it go before, or come after, a good sentence, or a thing well said, is always in season; if it neither suit well with what went before, nor has much coherence with what follows after, it is good in itself." Montaigne, at any rate, wrote his "Essays" on that easy principle. The logic of them is the logic of mere chance association in thought. But, with Montaigne,--whatever is true of Emerson,--the association at least is not occult; and it is such as pleases the reader, not less than it pleased the writer. So this Gascon gentleman of the olden time never tires us, and never loses us out of his hand. We go with him cheerfully where he so blithely leads.

Montaigne tells us how he was himself trained under his father. The elder Montaigne, too, had his ideas on education,--the subject which his son, in this essay, so instructively treats. The essayist leads up to his autobiographical episode by an allusion to the value of the classical languages, and to the question of method in studying them. He says:--

In my infancy, and before I began to speak, he [my father]
committed me to the care of a German,... totally ignorant of our
language, but very fluent, and a great critic, in Latin. This man,
whom he had fetched out of his own country, and whom he entertained
with a very great salary, for this only end, had me continually
with him: to him there were also joined two others, of inferior
learning, to attend me, and to relieve him, who all of them spoke
to me in no other language but Latin. As to the rest of his family,
it was an inviolable rule, that neither himself nor my mother, man
nor maid, should speak any thing in my company, but such Latin
words as every one had learned only to gabble with me. It is not to
be imagined how great an advantage this proved to the whole family:
my father and my mother by this means learned Latin enough to
understand it perfectly well, and to speak it to such a degree as
was sufficient for any necessary use, as also those of the servants
did, who were most frequently with me. In short, we Latined it at
such a rate, that it overflowed to all the neighboring villages,
where there yet remain, that have established themselves by custom,
several Latin appellations of artisans and their tools. As for what
concerns myself, I was above six years of age before I understood
either French or Perigordin ["Perigordin" is Montaigne's name for
the dialect of his province, Perigord (Gascony)], any more than
Arabic; and, without art, book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or
the expense of a tear, I had, by that time, learned to speak as
pure Latin as my master himself, for I had no means of mixing it up
with any other.

We are now to see how, helped by his wealth, the father was able to gratify a pleasant whimsey of his own in the nurture of his boy. Highly aesthetic was the matin _reveille_ that broke the slumbers of this hopeful young heir of Montaigne:--

Some being of opinion that it troubles and disturbs the brains of
children suddenly to wake them in the morning, and to snatch them
violently and over-hastily from sleep, wherein they are much more
profoundly involved than we, he [the father] caused me to be
wakened by the sound of some musical instrument, and was never
unprovided of a musician for that purpose.... The good man, being
extremely timorous of any way failing in a thing he had so wholly
set his heart upon, suffered himself at last to be overruled by the
common opinions:... he sent me, at six years of age, to the College
of Guienne, at that time the best and most flourishing in France.

In short, as in the case of Mr. Tulliver, the world was "too many" for Eyquem _pere_; and, in the education of his son, the stout Gascon, having started out well as dissenter, fell into dull conformity at last.

We ought to give some idea of the odd instances, classic and other, with which Montaigne plentifully bestrews his pages. He is writing of the "Force of Imagination." He says:--

A woman, fancying she had swallowed a pin in a piece of bread,
cried and lamented as though she had an intolerable pain in her
throat, where she thought she felt it stick; but an ingenious
fellow that was brought to her, seeing no outward tumor nor
alteration, supposing it to be only a conceit taken at some crust
of bread that had hurt her as it went down, caused her to vomit,
and, unseen, threw a crooked pin into the basin, which the woman no
sooner saw, but, believing she had cast it up, she presently found
herself eased of her pain....

Such as are addicted to the pleasures of the field, have, I make
no question, heard the story of the falconer, who, having earnestly
fixed his eyes upon a kite in the air, laid a wager that he would
bring her down with the sole power of his sight, and did so, as it
was said; for _the tales I borrow, I charge upon the consciences of
those from whom I have them_.

We italicize the last foregoing words, to make readers see that Montaigne is not to be read for the truth of his instances. He uses what comes to hand. He takes no trouble to verify. "The discourses are my own," he says; but even this, as we have hinted, must not be pressed too hard in interpretation. Whether a given reflection of Montaigne's is strictly his own, in the sense of not having been first another's, who gave it to him, is not to be determined except upon very wide reading, very well remembered, in all the books that Montaigne could have got under his eye. That was full fairly his own, he thought, which he had made his own by intelligent appropriation. And this, perhaps, expresses in general the sound law of property in the realm of mind. At any rate, Montaigne will wear no yoke of fast obligation. He will write as pleases him. Above all things else, he likes his freedom.

Here is one of those sagacious historical scepticisms, in which Montaigne was so fond of poising his mind between opposite views. It occurs in his essay entitled, "Of the Uncertainty of our Judgments."

Amongst other oversights Pompey is charged withal at the battle of
Pharsalia, he is condemned for making his army stand still to
receive the enemy's charge, "by reason that" (I shall here steal
Plutarch's own words, which are better than mine) "he by so doing
deprived himself of the violent impression the motion of running
adds to the first shock of arms, and hindered that clashing of the
combatants against one another, which is wont to give them greater
impetuosity and fury, especially when they come to rush in with
their utmost vigor, their courages increasing by the shouts and the
career; 'tis to render the soldiers' ardor, as a man may say, more
reserved and cold." This is what he says. But, if Caesar had come by
the worse, why might it not as well have been urged by another,
that, on the contrary, the strongest and most steady posture of
fighting is that wherein a man stands planted firm, without motion;
and that they who are steady upon the march, closing up, and
reserving their force within themselves for the push of the
business, have a great advantage against those who are disordered,
and who have already spent half their breath in running on
precipitately to the charge? Besides that, an army is a body made
up of so many individual members, it is impossible for it to move
in this fury with so exact a motion as not to break the order of
battle, and that the best of them are not engaged before their
fellows can come on to help them.

The sententiousness of Montaigne may be illustrated by transferring here a page of brief excerpts from the "Essays," collected by Mr. Bayle St. John in his biography of the author. This apothegmatic or proverbial quality in Montaigne had a very important sequel of fruitful influence on subsequent French writers, as chapters to follow in this volume will abundantly show. In reading the sentences subjoined, you will have the sensation of coming suddenly upon a treasure-trove of coined proverbial wisdom:--

Our minds are never at home, but ever beyond home.

I will take care, if possible, that my death shall say nothing that
my life has not said.

Life in itself is neither good nor bad: it is the place of what is
good or bad.

Knowledge should not be stuck on to the mind, but incorporated in
it.

Irresolution seems to me the most common and apparent vice of our
nature.

Age wrinkles the mind more than the face.

Habit is a second nature.

Hunger cures love.

It is easier to get money than to keep it.

Anger has often been the vehicle of courage.

It is more difficult to command than to obey.

A liar should have a good memory.

Ambition is the daughter of presumption.

To serve a prince, you must be discreet and a liar.

We learn to live when life has passed.

The mind is ill at ease when its companion has the colic.

We are all richer than we think, but we are brought up to go
a-begging.

The greatest masterpiece of man is... to be born at the right time.

We append a saying of Montaigne's not found in Mr. St. John's collection:--

There is no so good man who so squares all his thoughts and actions
to the laws, that he is not faulty enough to deserve hanging ten
times in his life.

Montaigne was too intensely an egotist, in his character as man no less than in his character as writer, to have many personal relations that exhibit him in aspects engaging to our love. But one friendship of his is memorable,--is even historic. The name of La Boetie is forever associated with the name of Montaigne. La Boetie is remarkable for being, as we suppose, absolutely the first voice raised in France against the idea of monarchy. His little treatise "Contr' Un" (literally, "Against One"), or "Voluntary Servitude," is by many esteemed among the most important literary productions of modern times. Others, again, Mr. George Saintsbury for example, consider it an absurdly overrated book. For our own part, we are inclined to give it conspicuous place in the history of free thought in France. La Boetie died young; and his "Contr' Un" was published posthumously,--first by the Protestants, after the terrible day of St. Bartholomew. Our readers may judge for themselves whether a pamphlet in which such passages as the following could occur, must not have had an historic effect upon the inflammable sentiment of the French people. We take Mr. Bayle St. John's translation, bracketing a hint or two of correction suggested by comparison of the original French. The treatise of La Boetie is sometimes now printed with Montaigne's "Essays," in French editions of our author's works: La Boetie says:--

You sow your fruits [crops] that he [the king] may ravage them; you
furnish and fill your houses that he may have something to steal;
you bring up your daughters that he may slake his luxury; you bring
up your sons that he may take them to be butchered in his wars, to
be the ministers of his avarice, the executors of his vengeance;
you disfigure your forms by labor [your own selves you inure to
toil] that he may cocker himself in delight, and wallow in nasty
and disgusting pleasure.

Montaigne seems really to have loved this friend of his, whom he reckoned the greatest man in France. His account of La Boetie's death is boldly, and not presumptuously, paralleled by Mr. St. John with the "Phaedon" of Plato. Noble writing, it certainly is, though its stateliness is a shade too self-conscious, perhaps.

We have thus far presented Montaigne in words of his own such as may fairly be supposed likely to prepossess the reader in his favor. We could multiply our extracts indefinitely in a like unexceptionable vein of writing. But to do so, and to stop with these, would misrepresent Montaigne. Montaigne is very far from being an innocent writer. His moral tone generally is low, and often it is execrable. He is coarse, but coarseness is not the worst of him. Indeed, he is cleanliness itself compared with Rabelais. But Rabelais is morality itself compared with Montaigne. Montaigne is corrupt and corrupting. This feature of his writings, we are necessarily forbidden to illustrate. In an essay written in his old age,--which we will not even name, its general tenor is so evil,--Montaigne holds the following language:--

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 quod perdidit, optat, Atque in praeterita se totus imagine
versat."

PETRONIUS, c. 128.

["The mind desires what it has lost, and in fancy flings itself
wholly into the past."]

Let childhood look forward, and age backward: is not this the
signification of Janus' double face? Let years haul 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."

MARTIAL, x. 23, 7.

["'Tis to live twice to be able to enjoy former life again."]

Harmlessly, even engagingly, pensive seems the foregoing strain of sentiment. Who could suppose it a prelude to detailed reminiscence on the author's part of sensual pleasures--the basest--enjoyed in the past? The venerable voluptuary keeps himself in countenance for his lascivious vein, by writing as follows:--

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....

...I am greedy of making myself known, and I care not to how many,
provided it be truly.... Many things that I would not say to a
particular individual, I say to the people; and, as to my most
secret thoughts, send my most intimate friends to my book.... 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 [because
the recommendation would be false].

We must leave it--as, however, Montaigne himself is far enough from leaving it--to the imagination of readers to conjecture what "pleasures" they are, of which this worn-out debauchee (nearing death, and thanking God that he nears it "without fear") speaks in the following sentimental strain:--

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.

Mr. Emerson, in his "Representative Men," makes Montaigne stand for The Sceptic. Sceptic Montaigne was. He questioned, he considered, he doubted. He stood poised in equilibrium, in indifference, between contrary opinions. He saw reasons on this side, but he saw reasons also on that, and he did not clear his mind. "_Que scai-je?_" was his motto ("What know I?"), a question as of hopeless ignorance,--nay, as of ignorance also void of desire to know. His life was one long interrogation, a balancing of opposites, to the end.

Such, speculatively, was Montaigne. Such, too, speculatively, was Pascal. The difference, however, was greater than the likeness, between these two minds. Pascal, doubting, gave the world of spiritual things the benefit of his doubt. Montaigne, on the other hand, gave the benefit of his doubt to the world of sense. He was a sensualist, he was a glutton, he was a lecher. He, for his portion, chose the good things of this life. His body he used to get him pleasures of the body. In pleasures of the body he sunk and drowned his conscience,--if he ever had a conscience. But his intelligence survived. He became, at last,--if he was not such from the first,--almost pure sense, without soul.

Yet we have no doubt Montaigne was an agreeable gentleman. We think we should have got on well with him as a neighbor of ours. He was a tolerably decent father, provided the child were grown old enough to be company for him. His own lawful children, while infants, had to go out of the house for their nursing; so it not unnaturally happened that all but one died in their infancy. Five of such is the number that you can count in his own journalistic entries of family births and deaths. But, speaking as "moral philosopher," in his "Essays," he says, carelessly, that he had lost "two or three" "without repining." This, perhaps, is affectation. But what affectation!

Montaigne was well-to-do; and he ranked as a gentleman, if not as a great nobleman. He lived in a castle, bequeathed to him, and by him bequeathed,--a castle still standing, and full of personal association with its most famous owner. He occupied a room in the tower, fitted up as a library. Over the door of this room may still, we believe, be read Montaigne's motto, "_Que scai-je?_" Votaries of Montaigne perform their pious pilgrimages to this shrine of their idolatry, year after year, century after century.

For, remember, it is now three centuries since Montaigne wrote. He was before Bacon and Shakspeare. He was contemporary with Charles IX., and with Henry of Navarre. But date has little to do with such a writer as Montaigne. His quality is sempiternal. He overlies the ages, as the long hulk of "The Great Eastern" overlay the waves of the sea, stretching from summit to summit. Not that, in the form of his literary work, he was altogether independent of time and of circumstance. Not that he was uninfluenced by his historic place, in the essential spirit of his work. But, more than often happens, Montaigne may fairly be judged out of himself alone. His message he might, indeed, have delivered differently; but it would have been substantially the same message if he had been differently placed in the world, and in history. We need hardly, therefore, add any thing about Montaigne's outward life. His true life is in his book.

Montaigne the Essayist is the consummate, the ideal, expression, practically incapable of improvement, of the spirit and wisdom of the world. This characterization, we think, fairly and sufficiently sums up the good and the bad of Montaigne. We might seem to describe no very mischievous thing. But to have the spirit and wisdom of this world expressed, to have it expressed as in a last authoritative form, a form to commend it, to flatter it, to justify it, to make it seem sufficient, to erect it into a kind of gospel,--that means much. It means hardly less than to provide the world with a new Bible,--a Bible of the world's own, a Bible that shall approve itself as better than the Bible of the Old and New Testaments. Montaigne's "Essays" constitute, in effect, such a book. The man of the world may,--and, to say truth, does,--in this volume, find all his needed texts. Here is _viaticum_--daily manna--for him, to last the year round, and to last year after year; an inexhaustible breviary for the church of this world! It is of the gravest historical significance that Rabelais and Montaigne, but especially Montaigne, should, to such an extent, for now three full centuries, have been furnishing the daily intellectual food of Frenchmen.

Pascal, in an interview with M. de Saci (carefully reported by the latter), in which the conversation was on the subject of Montaigne and Epictetus contrasted,--these two authors Pascal acknowledged to be the ones most constantly in his hand,--said gently of Montaigne, "Montaigne is absolutely pernicious to those who have any inclination toward irreligion, or toward vicious indulgences." We, for our part, are prepared, speaking more broadly than Pascal, to say that, to a somewhat numerous class of naturally dominant minds, Montaigne's "Essays," in spite of all that there is good in them,--nay, greatly because of so much good in them,--are, by their subtly insidious persuasion to evil, upon the whole quite the most powerfully pernicious book known to us in literature, either ancient or modern.

V.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: 1613-1680 (La Bruyere: 1646 (?)-1696; Vauvenargues: 1715-1747).

In La Rochefoucauld we meet another eminent example of the author of one book. "Letters," "Memoirs," and "Maxims" indeed name productions in three kinds, productions all of them notable, and all still extant, from La Rochefoucauld's pen. But the "Maxims" are so much more famous than either the "Letters" or the "Memoirs," that their author may be said to be known only by those. If it were not for the "Maxims," the "Letters" and the "Memoirs" would probably now be forgotten. We here may dismiss these from our minds, and concentrate our attention exclusively upon the "Maxims." Voltaire said, "The 'Memoirs' of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld are read, but we know his 'Maxims' by heart."

La Rochefoucauld's "Maxims" are detached sentences of reflection and wisdom on human character and conduct. They are about seven hundred in number, but they are all comprised in a very small volume; for they generally are each only two or three lines in length, and almost never does a single maxim occupy more than the half of a moderate-sized page. The "Maxims," detached, as we have described them, have no very marked logical sequence in the order in which they stand. They all, however, have a profound mutual relation. An unvarying monotone of sentiment, in fact, runs through them. They are so many different expressions, answering to so many different observations taken at different angles, of one and the same persisting estimate of human nature. 'Self-love is the mainspring and motive of every thing we do, or say, or feel, or think:' that is the total result of the "Maxims" of La Rochefoucauld.

The writer's qualifications for treating his theme were unsurpassed. He had himself the right character, moral and intellectual; his scheme of conduct in life corresponded; he wrote in the right language, French; and he was rightly situated in time, in place, and in circumstance. He needed but to look closely within him and without him,--which he was gifted, with eyes to do,--and then report what he saw, in the language to which he was born. This he did, and his "Maxims" are the fruit. His method was largely the sceptical method of Montaigne. His result, too, was much the same result as his master's. But the pupil surpassed the master in the quality of his work. There is a fineness, an exquisiteness, in the literary form of La Rochefoucauld, which Montaigne might indeed have disdained to seek, but which he could never, even with seeking, have attained. Each maxim of La Rochefoucauld is a "gem of purest ray serene," wrought to the last degree of perfection in form with infinite artistic pains. Purity, precision, clearness, density, point, are perfectly reconciled in La Rochefoucauld's style with ease, grace, and brilliancy of expression. The influence of such literary finish, well bestowed on thought worthy to receive it, has been incalculably potent in raising the standard of French production in prose. It was Voltaire's testimony, "One of the works which has most contributed to form the national taste, and give it a spirit of accuracy and precision, was the little collection of 'Maxims' by Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld."

There is a high-bred air about La Rochefoucauld the writer, which well accords with the rank and character of the man La Rochefoucauld. He was of one of the noblest families in France. His instincts were all aristocratic. His manners and his morals were those of his class. Brave, spirited, a touch of chivalry in him, honorable and amiable as the world reckons of its own, La Rochefoucauld ran a career consistent throughout with his own master-principle, self-love. He had a wife whose conjugal fidelity her husband seems to have thought a sufficient supply in that virtue for both himself and her. He behaved himself accordingly. His illicit relations with other women were notorious. But they unhappily did not make La Rochefoucauld in that respect at all peculiar among the distinguished men of his time. His brilliant female friends collaborated with him in working out his "Maxims." These were the labor of years. They were published in successive editions, during the lifetime of the author; and some final maxims were added from his manuscripts after his death.