CHAPTER V ON CERTAIN VERSES OF VIRGIL VIRGIL'S lines, though so hidden away in the body of it, are in every sense the heart of this flux de caquet, flux impetueux par fois et nuisible (Montaigne's own words); or, if not nuisible, at least indelicate-lacking in the open reserve that wisely avoids speech concerning “the sacred secrets known to all." nature The emotion that led Montaigne to "free" speech here and elsewhere (an emotion, I think, entirely removed from personal coarseness of almost indeed the result of the opposite) was the mistaken belief that, as he says in Latin, non pudet dicere, quod non pudet sentire. He did not recognise and perhaps his constant contact with heathen conceptions of the relations of man and woman somewhat stood in the way of his recognising — that the greatest mystery of human nature, the blending of the spiritual and the physical in sexual intercourse, the workings of the angel and the animal, that this mystery of human nature is but the environment of the divine mystery of the creation of life. Montaigne's eyes were attracted by the splendid parti-coloured clouds of the environment; he seems never to have gazed long at the central sun, that "alma Venus" of which Lucretius so magnificently sang. Quæ, quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas Exoritur, neque fit lætum, neque amabile quidquam.1 Montaigne's constant contemplation of the coming of death seems never to have turned his thoughts, as it well might have done, to the preceding coming of life. He had no intimations of immortality from perceiving any trailing clouds of glory about himself; and it was simply man here man neither before nor after his earthly birth and death — that interested him. With all his conviction that we can know nothing with certainty, it was what we can (imperfectly) know that was his object of study. "Mysteries" were outside the scope of his consideration, and when his way was blocked by the great and awful mysteries that do exist, he simply took another path: Je gauchis tout doucement. This renders his treatment, always, of the subject of these vers de Virgile trivial and uninteresting, exaggerated and paradoxical; but it is never gross, never repulsive, save in the licentiousness of his illustrations 1 1 Quoted by Montaigne with some changes. "Since thou then art sole mistress of the nature of things and without thee nothing rises up into the divine borders of light, nothing grows to be glad or lovely." and especially his quotations, for which his times, more than he, may be blamed. He handles with neither strength nor delicacy the whole question of the place of women in the world; and nevertheless from his own day to ours, women have been his warmest friends; because, I think, they value, more than any high appreciation of themselves, the qualities which he depicts himself as showing — and I believe truly — in his personal relations with them: honesty, fidelity, sincerity, and even generosity and respectfulness. And there is real delicacy of perception in such phrases as this in this Essay: "It costs her more to give this little than it costs another to give every thing." There is also truthfulness and discernment in the thought here expressed: "We are almost always incompetent judges of their actions, as they are of ours." I think this Essay may have come about in this way. Reading Virgil, in what seemed to him his old age, and these verses recalling to him the rapturous heats of youth, he dwelt on them with pleasure, even any small occasions of pleasure that I meet with, I seize upon them," dwelt on them with a delightful literary, as well as physical, pleasure; and then he began to question: "Why should n't I write of this pleasure, as well as feel it?" and from that there was but one step be taken to "I will write of it." And he wrote with "the glowing of such fire As on the ashes of his youth did lie.” sure to A few special passages are perhaps worth remarking on, some of them for the sake of noting such connection with passages in others of the Essays as indicates the permanence in Montaigne's mind of the opinion expressed. Very near the beginning he says: "Wisdom has her excesses, and has no less need than folly of moderation"; and we are reminded that one of the inscriptions in his library was: Ne plus sapias quam necesse est, ne obstupiscas. In an earlier Essay, Montaigne criticises as regards its sound· - its "numbers" — a sentence of Cicero in the De Senectute: Ego vero me minus diu senem esse mallem, quam esse senem antequam essem. That he sympathised with the thought is proved by his here translating the sentence and accepting it as his own since he gives no hint that it is quoted: J'aime mieux estre moins long temps vieil que d'estre vieil avant de l'estre. When Montaigne exclaims, on this same page, "Would I could take pleasure in playing with nuts or with a top! Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem," he drolly diminishes the sense, the weight, that this line has in the original. Cicero (De Officiis, I, 24) quotes it (from Ennius) when contrasting the conduct of Quintus Maximus (Fabius) with that of Cleombrotus, who, fearing odium, rashly gave battle to Epaminondas, whereby the power of the Lacedæmonians perished: Quanto 2. Fabius Maximus melius! de quo Ennius: Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem: Ergo postque magisque viri nunc gloria claret.1 Montaigne's humorously familiar use of this quotation suggests that it was a phrase that had sunk into his mind from the force of its serious meaning. It may be remembered that he says in another place: "My citations do not always serve simply as comment. I do not regard them solely in the light of the use that I make of them; they often have in them, beyond what I say, the seed of a richer and bolder meaning; and often indirectly a more subtle suggestion, both for me who do not wish to express myself more fully and for those readers who enter into my thought." One of the most animated expressions of Montaigne's eager love of society of companionship — occurs here: "If there be any one, any pleasant party, in country, in city, in France, or elsewhere, resident or travelling, to whom my temperament may be agreeable and whose temperaments may be agreeable to me, they have but to whistle and I will go to them and supply them with essays in flesh and bone." With this passage may be connected another in a later Essay, where, after repeating what he says here, that if he came to the knowledge of any man of worth who liked his writings he would readily go to him even if he were far off, "for the delightfulness of an agreeable companion can not be too highly bought, to my thinking," he adds that no long familiarity would be necessary for friendship, since ce registre completely reveals him. What he says of the virtue of chastity concerning itself only with the will is a text which might be considered with advantage to-day. And the way in which in these pages, and the following ones on jealousy, he sets forth the conditions of social life may suggest the most serious considerations regarding the undesirableness of holding theories that are at variance with facts. The eloquent page on le bien dire, and the following ones, are a vigorous enlargement of the same thought in the Essay "Of the Education of Children." The passage immediately following, on his conditions in writing and on what "I have said to myself," can not be too carefully read and pondered as shewing not only his philosophy of his own authorship, but his singularly careful and discerning judgement of his own writings; and I think special stress should be laid on the "You often trifle deceptively," all the more that it is a posthumous addition. It seems to me to indicate that he had perceived himself to be often misunderstood in this respect. 1 How preferable was the conduct of Quintus Maximus, of whom Ennius says: "One man, by temporising, set right our affairs; he indeed did not consider public sayings as much as the safety of the country, and therefore the glory of that man shines now and hereafter, and ever more brightly." When he says, "Some of my earliest Essays have a borrowed flavour," we must wonder whether he meant that they were derived from the ancients or his contemporaries. What he says of the impromptu character of the activity of his mind, of his deepest and his gayest thoughts coming to him unexpectedly, usually in conversation, and when he could not put them on paper, is extremely interesting. What a loss to the world that he had no Boswell! The "leaving books aside" connects itself logically with the "Let us leave Bembo and Equicola" of a previous page; the intermediate personal passage is quite a thing apart. Skipping four or five pages, we come to the passage beginning: "What a monstrous animal" (is the man who shuns health and cheerfulness), which conveys in its very effective phrasing a warning of striking character to all the Pascal class of minds. It connects itself in feeling with a later page in this same Essay, where Montaigne declares that it is only reasonable for us to accept pleasure as readily as we do pain. And in one of the last pages he dwells on the double power of the soul, both to cherish bodily pleasure and to infuse into the body enjoyment of pleasure of her own. P ROFITABLE thoughts, the more pithy and solid they are, are also the more troublesome and burdensome. Vice, death, poverty, maladies are grave and grievous matters. The soul must needs be instructed as to the means of supporting and combatting ills, and instructed as to the rule for right living and right thinking, and must often be aroused and exercised in this noble study; but with a common sort of soul this must needs be with intervals and moderation: such a one is weakened by being kept too continually strained. In my youth I had need to admonish myself and look carefully after myself, to keep me to my duty; good spirits and health do not consist so well, they say, with serious and wise reflections. I am now in a different condition; the accompaniments of old age admonish me only too much, teach me wisdom, and preach to me. From excess of gaiety I have fallen into the more irksome excess of gravity; therefore, I now allow myself designedly to indulge a little in disorderly ways, and sometimes employ my soul in lively and youthful thoughts, where it makes holiday. I am at present only too sober, too pondering, and too mature: my years daily instruct me in insensibility and temperance. This body shuns and fears irregularity; it is taking its turn to lead the mind toward reformation; in its turn it holds sway, and more harshly and imperiously; not for a single hour, sleeping or waking, does it leave me at rest from teaching about death, endurance, and repentance. I guard myself from temperance as I used to do from enjoyment; it draws me too far back, even to dulness; now I desire to be master of myself in all ways. Wisdom has her excesses, and has no less need than folly of moderation. And so, for fear lest I dry up, wither, and wax mouldy from prudence, I quietly turn aside in the intervals of my bodily ills, Mens intenta suis ne siet usque malis,1 and avert my eyes from that stormy and cloudy sky which I have before me, and which, God be praised! I regard quite without fear but not without debate and meditation; and I set about to amusing myself with the remembrance of follies. Animus quod perdidit optat, Atque in præterita se totus imagine versat.2 past Let childhood look forward, old age backward; was not that the significance of the double face of Janus? The years drag me along if they will, but with backward steps. So long as my eyes can discern that pleasant lost season, I now and then turn them thither. Though it escapes from my blood and my veins, at least I will not uproot its image from my memory; hoc est Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui.3 (c) Plato advises old men to be present at the exercises, dances, and games of the young, in order to be gladdened by the agility and beauty of the body in others which is theirs no longer, and to recall to their memory the charms and comeliness of that blooming age; and desires that in those sports they should attribute the honour of victory to the youth who 1 Lest my mind be intent on its own troubles. - Ovid, Tristia, IV, 1.4. The original has ne foret, instead of ne siet. 2 The mind longs for what it has lost, and in imagination throws itself altogether into the past. - Petronius, Satyricon, 128. * To be able to enjoy one's past life is to live twice. — Martial, X, 23.7. |