best at, namely, his digressions and discourses, he has indeed very good ones, and enriched with fine expressions; but he is too fond of them; for to leave nothing unsaid, having a subject so full, ample, and almost infinite, he degenerates into pedantry, and relishes a little of the scholastic prattle. I have also observed this in him; that of so many persons, and so many effects, so many motives and so many counsels as he judges of, he never attributes any one of them to virtue, religion, or conscience; as if all those were utterly extinct in the world. And of all the actions, how brave and fair an outward show soever they make of themselves, he always throws the cause and motive upon some vicious occasion or some prospect of profit. It is impossible to imagine but that, amongst such an infinite number of actions as he makes mention of, there must be some one produced by the way of reason. No corruption could so universally have infected men that some of them would not have escaped the contagion; which makes me suspect that his own taste was vicious; whence it might happen that he judged other men by himself." of Philip de Comines; In my Philip de Comines there is this written: "You will here find the language soft, delightful, and full of simplicity; the narration pure, in which the veracity of the author evidently shines; free from vanity when speaking of himself, and from affection or envy when speaking of others. His discourses and exhortations more accompanied with zeal and truth than with any exquisite selfsufficiency; and throughout authority and gravity, which speak him a man of extraction and bred up in great affairs." Upon the Memoirs of Monsieur du Bellay,' I find this: ""Tis always pleasant to read things writ by those that have experienced how they ought to of du Bellay. 1 These Memoirs, published by Martin du Bellay, consist of ten books, of which the first four and last three are Martin du Bellay's, and the others his brother William de Langey's, and were taken from his fifth Ogdoade, from the years 1536 to 1540. They are entitled Memoirs of Martin du Bellay, containing accounts of several things that happened in France from 1513 to the death of Francis I. in 1547. This accounts for Montaigne's speaking of two lords du Bellay, after he had mentioned only Monsieur du Bellay. be carried on; but withal it cannot be denied but there is a manifest falling off in these two lords from the freedom and liberty of writing that shines in the older historians of their class, such as the Sire de Jouinville, a domestic to St. Louis; Eginhard, chancellor to Charlemagne; and of later date in Philip de Comines. We have here rather an apology for King Francis against the Emperor Charles the Fifth than a history. I will not believe that they have falsified any thing as to matter of fact; but they make a common practice of wresting the judgment of events (very often contrary to reason) to our advantage, and of omitting every thing that is ticklish to be handled in the life of their master; witness the affairs of Messieurs de Montmorency and de Biron, which are here omitted; nay, so much as the very name of Madame d'Estampes is not here to be found. Secret actions an historian may conceal; but to pass over in silence what all the world knows, and things that have drawn after them important public consequences, is an inexcusable defect. In fine, whoever has a mind to have a perfect knowledge of King Francis, and what happened in his reign, let him seek it elsewhere, if my advice may prevail. The only profit a man can reap here is from the particular narrative of battles and other exploits of war wherein those gentlemen were personally engaged; some words and private actions of the princes of their time, and the practices and negotiations carried on by the Seigneur de Langey; where, indeed, there are everywhere things worthy to be known, and discourses above the vulgar strain." CHAPTER XI. OF CRUELTY. goodness. I TAKE virtue to be distinct from, and something more Virtue better than noble than, those inclinations to generosity and good nature which we are born with. Well disposed and well descended souls pursue, indeed, the same methods, and represent the same face that virtue itself does; but the word virtue imports something, I know not what, more great and active than merely for a man to suffer himself, by a happy dispensation, to be gently and quietly drawn in the train of reason. He who, from a natural sweetness and facility of temper, should despise injuries received, would doubtless do a very great and a very laudable thing; but he who, provoked and nettled to the quick by an offence, should fortify himself with the arms of reason against the furious appetite of revenge, and, after a great conflict, master his own passion, would doubtless do a very great deal more. The first would do well; the latter virtuously. One action might be called goodness, and the other virtue; for methinks the very name of virtue presupposes difficulty exercised without and contention, and that it cannot be exercised without opposition. "Tis for this reason, perhaps, that we call God good, mighty, liberal, and just; but we do not call him virtuous,1 being that all his operations are natural and without endeavour. Many philosophers, not only Stoics, but Epicureans,2 (and this distinction I borrow Virtue cannot be some difficulty. 1 "Quoique nous appellions Dieu bon, nous ne l'appelons pas vertueux, parce qu'il n'a pas besoin d effort pour bien faire."-ROUSSEAU, Emile, v. 2 Montaigne stops here to make his excuse for thus naming the Epicureans with the Stoics, in conformity to the general opinion that the Epicureans were not so rigid in their morals as the Stoics, which is not true in the main, as he demonstrates at one view. This involved Montaigne in a long parenthesis, during which it is proper that the reader be attentive, that he may not entirely lose the thread of the argument. In some latter editions of this author it has been at from the common opinion, which is a wrong one, notwithstanding that subtle quip of Arcesilaus to him who reproached him, "That many persons went from his school to the Epicurean, but never from the Epicurean to his ; ""It may well be so," said he; "cocks make many capons, but capons never make cocks." For, in truth, in firmness and austerity of opinions and precepts the Epicurean sect yields in no degree to the Stoic; and a Stoic, exhibiting better faith than those disputants who, to combat Epicurus and give themselves an advantage, make him say things he never thought of, twisting his words awry, and making use of the laws of grammar to deduce another sense from his way of speaking, and another doctrine than what, they well knew, he had in his heart and manifested in his manners, tells us that he declined to become an Epicurean for this consideration, among others, that he thought their ways too high and rugged; Et ii qui φιλήδονοι vocantur, sunt φιλόκαλοι et φιλοδίκαιοι, omnesque virtutes et colunt et retinent);1 of the philosophers, Stoic and Epicurean, I say, there are several who were of opinion that it is not enough to have the soul seated in a good place, of a good temper, and well disposed to virtue ;—it is not enough to have our resolution and our reason fixed above all the power of fortune, but we are, moreover, to seek occasions wherein to put them to the proof. We are to covet pain, necessity, and contempt, to contend with them, and to keep the soul in breath: Multum sibi adjicit virtus lacessita. "Virtue perfectionates herself by resisting assaults." "Tis one of the reasons why Epaminondas, who was yet of a third sect,3 refused the riches which fortune presented to him by very lawful means, "In order," said he, "to contend with poverty;" in the extreme of which he maintained himself to the tempted to remedy this inconvenience by some vain and unauthorized repetition; but, without observing that Montaigne's argument is rendered somewhat feeble and obscure by these, it is a license that ought not to be taken, because he, who publishes the work of another ought to give it as the other composed it. Mr. Cotton was so puzzled with the enormous 1 Cicero, Epist. Fam. xv. 19. See Cicero, de last. Socrates, methinks, put himself upon a still harder trial, keeping for his exercise a termagant scolding wife, which was fighting at sharps. Metellus having, of all the Roman senators, alone attempted, by the power of virtue, to withstand the violence of Saturninus, tribune of the people at Rome, who sought forcibly to cause an unjust law to pass in favour of the commons, and by so doing having incurred the capital penalties that Saturninus had established against dissentients, entertained those who in this extremity led him to execution, with words to this effect: "That it was a thing too easy and too base to do ill, and that to do well where there was no danger was a common thing; but that to do well where there was danger was the proper office of a man of virtue." These words of Metellus very clearly represent to us what I would make out, that virtue refuses facility for a companion; and that that easy, smooth, and descending way, by which the regular steps of a sweet disposition of nature are conducted, is not that of a true virtue. She requires a rough and stormy passage; she will have either outward difficulties to wrestle with, like that of Metellus, by means of which fortune delights to interrupt the speed of her career; or internal difficulties, which our inordinate appetites and imperfections introduce to disturb her. I am come thus far at my ease; but here it comes into my head that the soul of Socrates, the most perfect that ever came to my knowledge, should, by this rule, be of very little account; for I cannot conceive in that person any the least motion of a vicious inclination; I cannot imagine there could be any difficulty or constraint in the course of his virtue; I know his reason to be so powerful and sovereign over him that she would never have suffered a vicious appetite so much as to spring in him. To a virtue so elevated as his I have nothing to oppose. Methinks I see him march, with a victorious and triumphant pace, in pomp, and at his ease, without opposition or disturbance. If virtue cannot shine bright 1 Plutarch, Life of Marius. |