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ESSAYS

OF

MICHAEL SEIGNEUR DE MONTAIGNE.

I

CHAPTER I.

Of Books.

MAKE no doubt but I often happen to speak of things that are much better and more truly handled by those who are masters of the profession. This is purely an essay of my natural parts, and not of those which are acquired; and whoever shall catch me tripping in my ignorance, will do me no manner of harm; for I, who am not responsible to myself for my writings, nor pleased with them, should be loth to be answerable for them to another. He that seeks after knowledge, let him fish for it where it is to be found; there being nothing which I so little profess. These are fancies of my own, by which I do not aim to discover things, but myself. They will, perhaps, be known to me one day or other, or have formerly been so, according as my fortune brought me to the places where they were manifested, but now I have forgot them and, though I am a man of some reading, yet I am a man of no retention; so that I can promise nothing certain, unless it be to discover at what degree the barometer of my knowledge now stands. Let not the subjects I write on be so much attended to, as my manner of treating them. Let B

VOL. II.

Why Mon. taigne did

it be observed whether, in what I borrow from others, I have chosen what tends to set off or support the invention, which is always my own: for I make others say for me what, either for want of language, or of sense, I cannot, myself, so well express. I do not count what I borrow, but I weigh it. And, if I had aimed to make a merit by the quantity, I should have borrowed twice as much as I have. They are all, or within a few, such celebrated ancient authors, as, I think, are too well known for me to mention them.*

In reasons, comparisons, and arguments, if I not choose transplant any, from elsewhere, into my soil, and to name the confound them with my own, I purposely conceal from whom the author, to check the presumption of those hasty be quoted. censures that are cast upon all kind of writings, par

authors

ticularly the juvenile, of men yet living, and composed in the vulgar tongue, which capacitates every man to speak of them, and seems to intimate, that there is nothing but what is vulgar, both as to design and conception, in those works. I am content that they give Plutarch a rap upon my knuckles, and that they burn their fingers by lashing Seneca through my sides. There was a necessity of screening my weakness by those great characters. I shall love the man that can strip me of my plumage, I mean, by the clearness of discernment, and by the strength and beauty of the arguments. For I, who, for want of memory, am, every now and then, at a loss to choose them by an exact knowledge of the places where they are to be found in the originals, am yet wise enough to know, by the measure of my own abilities, that my soil is incapable of producing any

* It was not till after Montaigne's death, that his editors undertook to name the authors whose words he had quoted. But I will presume to say, this was rather attempted than executed before this edition; which not only shows the places from whence Montaigne quoted those passages, but also many others, which he had only referred to in a very loose manner, though he had inserted the sense of them in his work.

of those rich flowers that I see planted there, and that they are worth more than all the fruits of my own growth. For this I hold myself responsible, though the confession makes against me, if there be any vanity and vice in my discourses, which I do not of myself perceive, or which I am not capable of perceiving when pointed out to me by another; for many faults escape our eye, but the infirmity of judgment consists in not being able to discern them when detected to us by another. We may possess knowledge and truth without judgment, and judgment without them; nay, the confession of ignorance is one of the fairest and surest testimonies of judgment that I know of. I have no herald to marshal my essays but chance. As fast as thoughts come into my head, which sometimes they do in whole bodies, and sometimes in single files, I pile them one upon another. I am content that every one should see my natural and ordinary pace, be it ever so much out of the way. I suffer myself to jog on in my old track: nor are these such subjects that a man shall be condemned. for being ignorant of them, and for treating them casually and presumptuously. I could wish to have a more perfect know ledge of things, but I do not care to purchase it at so dear a rate. I would fain pass the remainder of my days easily and not laboriously. There is nothing that I choose to cudgel my brains about, no, not for science, how valuable soever.

aimed to

All that I read books for, is to divert myself by What he an honest amusement; or, if I study, it is for no in other science than what teaches me to know myself, books. and how to live and die well:

Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus.*

This is the only course

In which I think I ought to breathe my horse.

If any difficulties occur in reading, I do not bite

* Propert. lib. iv. eleg. 1.

ancients to the mo

deros.

my nails about them, but after an essay or two to explain them, I give them over were I to insist upon them, I would lose both myself and my time, for I have a genius that is extremely volatile; and what I do not discern at the first essay, becomes the more obscure to me the longer I pore on it. I do nothing without gaiety. Perseverance, and a too obstinate contention, darken, stupify, and tire my judgment. My sight is therein confounded and dissipated. I must withdraw it, and leave it to make new discoveries, just as, in order to judge rightly of the lustre of scarlet, we are ordered to pass it lightly with the eye, and to run it over at several sudden repeated views. If one book does not please me, I take another; but never meddle with any, except at those times when I begin to be weary of doing nothing.

Montaigne I do not much relish the writings of the moderns, preferred the writ because I think the ancients fuller and more substanings of the tial; neither am I fond of the Greek authors, my knowledge in that language being too superficial to read them with delight. Among the books that are merely entertaining, I think those of the moderns, viz. Boccace's Decameron, Rabelais,* and the Basiat of Johannes Secundus (if these may be ranged under that title) are worth reading. As to Amadis de Gaul, and such kind of writings, they had not the credit to take with me so much as in my childish years.

* I must declare here, by the way, that no body better understood the copiousness and energy of the French language, and so well found his account in it, as Rabelais. This, which I take to be a very important remark, I borrow from Rousseau, one of the best poets of this age. It was also undoubtedly known to La Fontaine, who has made a very good use of it.

This is a collection of epigrams on the subject of kissing, by a Dutch author, of which there have been several editions, particularly one at Lyons, by Seb. Gryphius, in 1539, now become very scarce which I do not mention to encourage another impression of them, for I have no great relish for any Latin poetry composed by the moderns, not even for the poetry of Buchanan, Grotius, Heinsius, &c. I mean with regard to the versification.

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