CHA P. XXXVII. Of the Refemblance of Children to their Fathers. N compounding this farrago of fo many different pieces, I never fet pen to paper, but when I have too much idle time, and never any where but at home; fo that it is the work of feveral paufes and intervals, as occafions keep me fometimes many months abroad. As to the reft, I never correct my first by any fecond conceptions; I perhaps may alter a word or fo, but it is only to vary the phrafe, and not to cancel my meaning: I have a mind to reprefent the progrefs of my humours, that every piece, as it comes from the brain, may be feen: I could with I had begun fooner, and taken notice of the courfe of my mutations. A fervant of mine, that I employed to tranfcribe for me, thought he had got a prize by ftealing feveral pieces, which beft pleafed his fancy; but it is my comfort, that he will be no greater a gainer, than I fhall be a lofer by the theft. dreaded. I am grown older, by feven or eight years, fince I began; neither has it been without some new Montaigne's patience in the acquifition: I have, in that time, been acdifeafe which quainted with the cholic, and a long he always courfe of years hardly wears off without fome fuch inconvenience. I could have been glad, that, of other infirmities age has to prefent long-lived men, it had chofen fome one that would have been more welcome to me, for it could not poffibly have laid upon me a difeafe, for which, even from my infancy, I have had a greater horror; and it is, in truth, of all the accidents of old-age, the very diftemper of which I have ever been moft afraid. I have often thought with myself, that I went on too far, and that, in fo long a voyage, I fhould infallibly, at laft, meet with fome fcurvy fhock; I perceived, and oft enough declared, that it was time to knock off; that life was to be cut to the quick, according to the furgeons rule in the ampu tation of a limb; and that nature ufually made him pay very dear intereft, who did not, in due time, reftore the principal. Yet I was fo far from being then ready, that in eighteen months time, or thereabouts, I have been in this uneafy condition, I have inured myself to it, I have compounded with this cholic, and have found therein to comfort myfelf, and to hope: fo much are men enflaved to their miferable being, that there is no condition fo wretched that they will not accept, for preferving it, according to that of Mecenas. Debilem facito manu, Vita dum fupereft, bene eft *. Maim both my hands and feet, break legs and Knock out my teeth, and bore out both my eyes; And Tamerlane, with a foolish humanity, palliated the fantastic cruelty he exercifed upon lepers, when he put all he could hear of to death, by pretending to deliver them from a painful life: for there was not one of them who would not rather have undergone a triple leprofy, than be deprived of their being. Antifthenes, the Stoic, being very fick; and crying out, "who will "deliver me from thefe evils?" Diogenes, who was come to vifit him, "This, faid he, prefenting him a knife, "prefently, if thou wilt:" I do not fay, from my life, " he replied, but from my difeafe " The fufferings that only attack the mind, I am not fo fenfible of, as most other men, and that partly out of judgment: for the world looks upon feveral things as dreadful, or to be avoided at the expence of life, that are almoft indifferent ' to me; partly through a stupid and infenfible complexion I have in accidents which do not hit me point blank; Senec. Epift. 101. + Or rather, the Cynic, of which fect he was the head, though, in the main, there is no great difference betwixt the two fects, as to their doctrine. Diog. Laertius, in the life of Antifthenes, lib. v. sect. 18, 19. and and that infenfibility I look upon as one of the best parts of my natural conftitution; but effential and corporeal fufferings I am very fenfible of. Yet having, long fince, foreseen them, though with a fight weak and delicate, and foftened with the long and happy health and quiet that God has been pleafed to give me the greatest part of my time, I had, in my imagination, fancied them fo infupportable, that, in truth, I was more afraid than I have fince found I had caufe; by which I am still more fortified in this belief, that most of the faculties of the foul, as we employ them, more disturb the repose of life, than any way promote it. The ftonecholic the most painful of all difeafes. I am in conflict with the worst, the most sudden, the most painful, the most mortal, and the most incurable of all difeafes: I have already had five or fix very long and painful fits, and yet I either flatter myfelf, or there is even in this state, what is very well to be endured by a man who has his foul free from the fear of death, and from the menaces, conclufions, and confequences, which we are alarmed with by phyfic. But the effect of the pain itself is not fo very acute and intolerable as to drive a folid man into fury and despair. I have, at leaft, this advantage by my cholic, that what I could not hitherto wholly prevail with myfelf to refolve upon, as to reconciling and acquainting myfelf with death, it will perfect; for, the more it preffes upon and importunes me, I fhall be fo much the lefs afraid to die. I have already gone fo far as only to love life for life's fake, but my pain will alfo diffolve this correfpondence; and God grant, that, in the end, fhould the fharpness of it prove greater than I fhall be able to bear, it may not throw me into the other not lefs vicious extreme, to defire and wifh to die. Summum nec metuas diem, nec optes *. They are two paffions to be feared, but the one has its remedy much nearer at hand than the other. As to the Mart. lib. x. epig. 47. ver. ult. 1 rcft, Complaint may, freely be indulged in the agony of pain, reft, I have always found the precept, which fo ftrictly enjoins a conftant good countenance, and a ferene comportment in the fufferance of pain, to be merely ceremonial. Why fhould philofophy, which only has refpect to life and its effects, trouble itfelf about these external appearances? Let it leave that care to ftageplayers, and mafters of rhetoric, fo much practifed in our geftures. Let it, in God's name, allow this vocal frailty, if it be neither cordial nor ftomachic, to the difcafe; and permit the ordinary ways of expreffing grief by fighs, fobs, palpitations, and turning pale, that nature has put out of our power to hinder: and provided the courage be undaunted, and the expreffion not founding of defpair, let it be fatisfied. What matters it though we wring our hands, if we do not wring our thoughts? philofophy forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to feem. Let it be fatisfied with governing our understandings, which it has taken the care of inftructing; that, in the fury of the cholic, it may maintain the foul in a condition to examine itself, and to follow its accustomed way: contending with, and fupporting, not meanly crouching under the pain; moved and heated by the ftruggle, not utterly dejected, but capable of converfation, and other amufements, to a certain degree. In accidents fo extreme, it is cruelty to require of us a frame fo very compofed. It is no great matter what faces we make, if we find any eafe by it: if the body find itself relieved by complaining, well and good if agitation eafes it, "let it tumble and tofs at pleasure ;" if it finds the disease evaporate (as fome physicians hold, that it helps women in delivery by crying out extremely, or if it amufes its torment, "let it roar aloud:" let us not command the voice to fally, but permit it. Epicurus not only forgives his wife man for crying out in torments, but advifes him to it. Fugiles etiam quum feriunt adverfarium, in jalandis caftibus ingemifcunt, quia profundenda v ce omne corpus intenditur, venitque plaga vebementior; "when men fight with clubs, they groan Cic. Tufc. lib. ii. cap. 23. 66 in laying on, becaufe all the ftrength of the body is "exerted with the voice, and the blow is laid on with greater force." We have enough to do to deal with the disease, without troubling ourselves with these fuperfluous rules. Montaigne kept his temper in the height of his pain. I say this in excufe of thofe whom we ordinarily fee impatient in the affaults and fhocks of this infirmity; for as to myfelf, I have paffed it over, hitherto, with a little better counte nance, and contented myself with grunting, without roaring out. Not, however, that I put any great task upon myself to maintain this exterior decency, for I make little account of fuch an advantage : I allow herein as much as the pain requires, but either my pains are not fo exceffive, or I have more than ordinary refolution to fupport them. I complain, and fret, in a very sharp fit, but not to fuch a degree of defpair, as he who with Ejulatu, queftu, gemitu, fremitibus Refonando multum flebiles voces refert †. Howling, roaring, and a thousand groans I found myself in the worst of my fits, and have always found, that I was in a capacity to fpeak, think, and give as rational an anfwer as at any other time, but not with fuch steadiness, being troubled and interrupted by the pain. When I am looked upon, by my vifitors, to be almost spent, and that they therefore forbear to talk, I oft try my own ftrength, and broach fome difcourfe myself, on fubjects the most remote I can contrive from my prefent condition: I can do any thing by a fudden effort, but not hold long. What pity it is I have not the faculty of that dreamer in Cicero; " who, dreaming he was "lying with a wench, found he had discharged his ftone in the fheets!" My pains do ftrangely take off my appetite that way. In the intervals from this exceffive torment, when my ureters languish without gnawing, I prefently recover my wonted ftate, forafmuch as my foul † Cic, Tufc. lib. ii. cap. 14. takes |