of love, a matter principally relating to the senses of seeing and touching, something may be done without the graces of the mind; without the graces of the body, nothing. Beauty is the true prerogative of women; and so peculiarly their own, that ours, though naturally requiring another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but when puerile and beardless, confused and mixed with theirs. "Tis said that such youths as are preferred by the grand signior upon the account of beauty, which are an infinite number, are at the farthest dismissed at two and twenty years of age. Reason, prudence, and offices of friendship, are better found amongst men, and therefore it is that they govern the affairs of the world.

versation.

These two commerces are fortuitous, and depending upon others; the one is troublesome by its rarity, of reading, or the the other withers by age; so that they could third sort of connever have been sufficient for the business of my life. That of books, which is the third, is much more certain, and much more our own; it yields all other advantages to the other two; but has the constancy and facility of its service for its own share. It goes side by side with me in my whole course, and everywhere is assisting to me; it comforts me in my age and solitude; it eases me of a troublesome weight of idleness, and delivers me at all hours from company that I dislike; and it blunts the point of griefs if they are not extreme, and have not got an entire possession of my soul. To divert myself from a troublesome fancy 'tis but to run to my books; they presently fix me to them, and drive the other out of my thoughts; and do not mutiny, at seeing I have only recourse to them for want of other more real, natural, and lively conveniences; they always receive me with the same kindness. "He may well go a-foot," say they, "who leads his horse in his hand;" and our James, King of Naples and Sicily, who, handsome, young, and healthy, caused himself to be carried up and down on a hand-barrow, reclining on a pitiful feather pillow, and clad

in a robe of coarse gray cloth, with a cap of the same, but attended nevertheless by a royal train of litters, led horses of all sorts, gentlemen and officers, therein showed but a weak and unsteady austerity; the sick man is not to be pitied who has his cure in his sleeve. In the experience and practice of this sentence, which is a very true one, all the benefit I reap from books consists; and yet I make as little use of it almost as those who know it not; I enjoy it as a miser does his money, in knowing that I may enjoy it when I please; my mind is satisfied with this right of possession. I never travel without books, either in peace or war; and yet sometimes I pass over several days, and sometimes months, without looking at them; I will read by and by, say I to myself, or to-morrow, or when I please, and time meanwhile steals away without any inconvenience; for it is not to be imagined to what degree I please myself, and rest content in this consideration, that I have them by me, to divert myself with them when I am so disposed, and call to mind what an ease and assistance they are to my life. 'Tis the best viaticum I have yet found out for this human journey, and I very much pity those men of understanding who are unprovided with it. I rather accept of any sort of diversion, how light soever, in the feeling that this can never fail me.

The situation of

ry.

When at home, I a little more frequent my library, from whence I at once survey all the whole concerns of my family. As I enter it, I thence see under me my garMontaigne's libra- den, court, and base-court, and into all the parts of the building. There I turn over now one book, and then another, of various subjects, without method or design. One while I meditate; another I record, and dictate as I walk to and fro, such whimsies as these with which I here present you. 'Tis in the third story of a tower, of which the ground-room is my chapel, the second story an apartment with a withdrawing-room and closet, where I often lie to be more retired; above it is this great wardrobe, which formerly was the most useless part of the house. In that

room I pass away most of the days of my life, and most of the hours of the day; in the night I am never there. There is within it a cabinet handsome and neat enough, with a very convenient fireplace for the winter, and windows that afford a great deal of light, and very pleasant prospects; and were I not afraid, less of the expense than of the trouble, that frights me from all business, I could very easily adjoin on either side, and on the same floor, a gallery of an hundred paces long, and twelve broad, having sound walls already raised for some other design, to the requisite height. Every place of retirement requires a walk; my thoughts sleep if I sit still; my fancy does not go by itself, my legs must move it; and all those who study without a book are in the same condition. The figure of my study is round, and has no more bare wall than what is taken up by my table and chair; so that the remaining parts of the circle present me a view of all my books at once, set upon five rows of shelves round about me. It has three noble and wide prospects, and is sixteen paces in diameter. I am not so continually there in winter; for my house is built upon an eminence, as its name imports, and no part of it is so much exposed to the wind and weather as that, which pleases me the better for being of troublesome access and a little remote, as well upon the account of exercise, as being also there more retired from the crowd. 'Tis there that I am in my kingdom, and there I endeavour to make myself an absolute monarch, and to sequester this one corner from all society, whether conjugal, filial, or social; elsewhere I have but verbal authority only, and of a confused essence. That man, in my opinion, is very miserable, who has not at home where to be by himself, where to entertain himself alone, or to conceal himself from others. Ambition sufficiently plagues her votaries by keeping them always in show, like the statue in a market-place: Magna servitus est magna fortuna: 1 "A great fortune is a great slavery" they have not so much as a retreat for the neces

1 Seneca, Consol. ad Polyb. c. 26.

sities of nature. I have thought nothing so severe in the austerity of life that our religions affect, as what I have observed in some of their orders; namely, to have a perpetual society of place by rule, and numerous assistants among them, in every action whatever; and think it much more supportable to be always alone, than never to be so.

If any one shall tell me that it is to degrade the muses to make use of them only for sport, and to pass away the time, I shall tell him that he does not know the value of that sport and pastime so well as I do; I can hardly forbear to add further, that all other end is ridiculous. I live from hand to mouth, and, with reverence be it spoken, only live for myself; to that all my designs tend, and in that terminate. I studied when young for ostentation; since, to make myself wise; and now for my diversion; never for gain. A vain and prodigal humour that I had after this sort of furniture, not only for supplying my own need, but moreover for ornament and outward show, I have long ago quite abandoned. Books have many charming qualities to such as know how to choose them; but every good has its ill; 'tis

The inconveniences attached to the pleasure a pleasure that is not pure and unmixed any which books give. more than others; it has its inconveniences, and great ones too; the mind, indeed, is exercised by it, but the body, the care of which I have not forgotten, remains in the mean time without action, grows heavy and melancholy. I know no excess more prejudicial to me, nor more to be avoided in this my declining age.

These are my three favourite and particular occupations; I speak not of those which I owe to the world by civil obligation.

CHAPTER IV.

OF DIVERSION.1

mournings com

I was formerly employed to console a lady What women's under a real affliction; for most of their mourn- monly are. ings are merely artificial and a matter of ceremony.

Uberibus semper lacrymis, semperque paratis

In statione suâ, atque expectantibus illam,
Quo jubeat manare modo.2

"And bids

Th' impassioned showers fall copious from her lids,
For at their posts like marshall'd troops they stand,
Prepar'd to flow, to pour, at her command."

A man goes the wrong way to work when he opposes this passion; for opposition does but irritate and make them more obstinate in sorrow; the evil is exasperated by being contended with. We see, in common discourse, that the same thing that I have let fall from me with indifference, if a man controverts what I have said, I insist upon it earnestly, and with the best arguments I can find; and much more a thing wherein I have a real interest. And besides, in so doing, you enter rudely upon your operation; whereas the first addresses of a physician to his patient should be gracious, gay, and pleasing; never did any ill-looking, morose How consolation physician do any thing to the purpose. On the ought to be praccontrary, then, a man should at the first approaches favour their grief, and express some approbation of their sorrow. By this intelligence you obtain credit to proceed farther, and after an easy and insensible manner fall into discourses more solid and proper for their cure. I, whose aim it was principally to gull those present, who had their

tised.

2 Juvenal vi. 272.