insensibly falls into dullness and insipidity. When I have no more to say to you, you will like me no longer. How dreadful is that view! You will reflect, for my sake you have abandoned the conversation of a friend that you liked, and your situation in a country where all things would have contributed to make your life pass in (the true volupte) a smooth tranquillity. I shall lose the vivacity which should entertain you, and you will have nothing to recompense you for what you have lost. Very few people that have settled entirely in the country but have grown at length weary of one another. The lady's conversation generally falls into a thousand impertinent effects of idleness; and the gentleman falls in love with his dogs and his horses, and out of love with everything else. I am not now arguing in favor of the town; you have answered me as to that point. In respect of your health, 'tis the first thing to be considered, and I shall never ask you to do anything injurious to that. But 'tis my opinion, 'tis necessary to be happy, that we neither of us think any place more agreeable than that where we are.

From a "Letter" to E. W. Montagu.

P

ON TRAINING YOUNG GIRLS

EOPLE commonly educate their children as they build their houses, according to some plan they think beautiful, without considering whether it is suited to the purposes for which they are designed. Almost all girls of quality are educated as if they were to be great ladies, which is often as little to be expected as an immoderate heat of the sun in the north of Scotland. You should teach yours to confine their desires to probabilities, to be as useful as is possible to themselves, and to think privacy (as it is) the happiest state of life. I do not doubt your giving them all the instructions necessary to form them to a virtuous life: but 'tis a fatal mistake to do this without proper restrictions. Vices are often hid under the name of virtues, and the practice of them followed by the worst of consequences. Sincerity, friendship, piety, disinterestedness, and generosity are all great virtues; but pursued without discretion become criminal. I have seen ladies indulge their own ill-humor by being very rude and impertinent, and think they deserved approbation by saying I love to speak truth. One of your acquaintance made a ball the day after her

mother died, to show she was sincere. I believe your own reflection will furnish you with but too many examples of the ill effects of the rest of the sentiments I have mentioned, when too warmly embraced. They are generally recommended to young people without limits or distinction, and this prejudice hurries. them into great misfortunes, while they are applauding themselves in the noble practice (as they fancy) of very eminent virtues. From a "Letter to the Countess of Bute.

M

MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE

(1533-1592)

ONTAIGNE was the first great essayist of modern times, and, except in Bacon, modern times have scarcely produced a greater. His master was Plutarch, whose amiable discursiveness he reproduces in all its charm as Bacon does the intensity of Aristotle in all its severity. In the great art of digression Montaigne is unrivaled, far surpassing Plutarch, who alone could have suggested to him its possibilities. Although he frequently devotes. no inconsiderable attention to what he professes to be talking about, his professions are still more frequently mere pretexts which conceal his real purpose of digressing into a hundred subjects on which he is well assured that he knows something worth saying. His essay on "Certain Verses of Virgil" not only illustrates this habit, but also the attractive egotism which enabled him to put so much of himself into his work. We learn thus, much that is of singular interest concerning him. He was the product of an educational system. His father began experimenting on him from the cradle, intending to make a great man of him. Thus he was taught Latin as one of his "mother tongues" and much of what is usually considered "higher education," and difficult of attainment, he learned as a child without having opportunity to suspect its difficulty. In addition to this home education, he graduated from the college at Bordeaux and studied law. From 1559, when he went to the court of Francis II., until 1580, when his "Essays" appeared at Bordeaux, he amused himself, traveled, or idled, and wrote in retirement on his estate. The second volume of the "Essays" appeared in 1588. In 1581, when in Rome, he was summoned to France by the news of his election as Mayor of Bordeaux. He did not make a bad mayor as appears from the fact that he was elected for a second term, but he made no pretense of being enthusiastic in the public service. He defined the object of his "Essays" as self-expression, without regard to utility or reputation. He wished to express what he had in himself with its flaws unconcealed. His life seems to have had the same purpose as his "Essays,” and in this he does not seem to have differed in principle from Goethe, who had much the same theory of the object of existence. Montaigne, however, had nothing of Goethe's concentrated power and intensity.

He went through the world as an inquisitive but well-trained child goes through a strange flower garden, examining every flower with earnest curiosity, but plucking none. Emerson chooses him as the type of the "skeptic," but his was not the skepticism of mere negation and unfaith. He examined all things for the pleasure the examination gave him, but he was not an agnostic and he had a singularly clear conception of the difference between the rational and the absurd. In him is drawn for the first time a clearly defined line between the medieval and the modern. He may be called with justice the first great writer of modern prose, and he might be called the first great modern thinker but for his persistent habit of avoiding conclusions. He meditates, studies, reflects, and reasons, but think he does not, that is, if we are to understand by "thought" that concentrated and determined effort in which every faculty of the mind co-operates to co-ordinate its knowledge and through co-ordination to reach a conclusion. Montaigne's knowledge was vast, uncoördinated, vague, centrifugal, tending always to lose itself in the Infinite to which he so manifestly belongs. If any one else had written much of what is his, we might wish it changed for the better! Yet who could change Montaigne except for the worse?

W. V. B.

I

OF BOOKS*

MAKE no doubt, but that I oft happen to speak of things that are much better, and more truly handled by those who are masters of the trade. This here is purely an essay of my natural parts, and not of those acquir'd: and whoever shall take me tripping in my ignorance will not in any sort displease me; for I should be very unwilling to become responsible to another for my writings, who am not so to my self, nor satisfied with them. Whoever goes in quest of knowledge, let him fish for it where it is to be found; there is nothing I so little profess. These are fancies of my own, by which I do not pretend to discover things, but to lay open my self: they may, peradventure, one day be known to me, or have formerly been, according as my fortune has been able to bring me in place where they have been explained; but I have utterly forgot them: and if I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retention: so that I can promise no certainty, if not to make known to what certain

*In using Cotton's translation his spelling has been retained as far as possible.

mark the knowledge I now have does rise. Therefore let no body insist upon the matter I write, but my method in writing. Let them observe in what I borrow, if I have known how to chuse what is proper to raise, or relieve the invention, which is always my own: for I make others say for me, what, either for want of language, or want of sense, I cannot my self well express. I do not number my borrowings, I weigh them. And had I design'd to raise their estimate by their number, I had made them twice as many. They are all, or within a very few, So fam'd and ancient authors, that they seem, methinks, themselves sufficiently to tell who they are, without giving me the trouble. In reasons, comparisons, and arguments, if I transplant any into my own soil, and confound them amongst my own, I purposely conceal the author to awe the temerity of those precipitous censures, that fall upon all sorts of writings; particularly the late ones, of men yet living, and in the vulgar tongue, which put every one into a capacity of censuring, and which seem to convince the authors themselves of vulgar conception and design. I will have them wound Plutarch through my sides, and rail against Seneca when they think they rail at me. I must shelter my own weakness under these great reputations; I shall love any one that can plume me, that is, by clearness of understanding and judgment, and by the sole distinction of the force and beauty of discourse. For I, who, for want of memory, am at every turn at a loss to pick them out of their national livery, am yet wise enough to know, by the measure of my own abilities, that my soil is incapable of producing any of those rich flowers, that I there find set, and growing; and that all the fruits of my own growth are not worth any one of them. For this, indeed, I hold my self very responsible, tho' the confession makes against me; if there be any vanity and vice in my writings, which I do not of my self perceive, nor can discern, when pointed out to me by another; for many faults escape the eye, but the infirmity of judgment consists in not being able to discern them, when, by another, laid open to us. Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment, and judgment also without them; but the confession of ignorance is one of the fairest and surest testimonies of judgment that I know; I have no other officer to put my writings in rank and file, but only fortune. As things come into my head, I heap them one upon another, which sometimes advance in whole bodies, sometimes.