'Tis

the conduct of fortune, private ones upon our own. rather a judgment than a deduction1 of history; there are in it more precepts than stories: it is not a book to read, 'tis a book to study and learn; 'tis full of sententious opinions, right or wrong; 'tis a nursery of ethic and politic discourses, for the use and ornament of those who have any place in the government of the world. He always argues by strong and solid reasons, after a pointed and subtle manner, according to the affected style of that age, which was so in love with an inflated manner, that where point and subtlety were wanting in things it supplied these with lofty and swelling words. 'Tis not much unlike the style of Seneca: I look upon Tacitus as more sinewy, and Seneca as more sharp. His pen seems most proper for a troubled and sick state, as ours at present is; you would often say that he paints and pinches us.

They who doubt his good faith sufficiently accuse themselves of being his enemy upon some other account. His opinions are sound, and lean to the right side in the Roman affairs. And yet I am angry at him for judging more severely of Pompey than consists with the opinion of those worthy men who lived in the same time, and had dealings with him; and to have reputed him on a par with Marius and Sylla, excepting that he was more close.2 Other writers have not acquitted his intention in the government of affairs from ambition and revenge; and even his friends were afraid that victory would have transported him beyond the bounds of reason, but not to so immeasurable a degree as theirs ;' nothing in his life threatened such express cruelty and tyranny. Neither ought we to set suspicion against evidence; and therefore I do not believe Plutarch in this matter. That his narrations were genuine and straightforward may, perhaps,

1 "Narration."-Ed. of 1588. 2 Hist., ii. 38. 3 Marius and Sylla.

VOL. III.

be argued from this very thing, that they do not always apply to the conclusions of his judgments, which he follows according to the bias he has taken, very often beyond the matter he presents us withal, which he has not deigned to alter in the least degree. He needs no excuse for having approved the religion of his time, according as the laws enjoined, and to have been ignorant of the true; this was his misfortune, not his fault.

I have principally considered his judgment, and am not very well satisfied therewith throughout; as these words in the letter that Tiberius, old and sick, sent to the senate.1 “What shall I write to you, sirs, or how should I write to you, or what should I not write to you at this time? May the gods and the goddesses lay a worse punishment upon me than I am every day tormented with, if I know!" I do not see why he should so positively apply them to a sharp remorse that tormented the conscience of Tiberius; at least, when I was in the same condition, I perceived no such thing.

And this also seemed to me a little mean in him that, having to say that he had borne an honourable office in Rome, he excuses himself that he does not say it out of ostenta

2

tion; this seems, I say, mean for such a soul as his; for not to speak roundly of a man's self implies some want of courage; a man of solid and lofty judgment, who judges soundly and surely, makes use of his own example upon all occasions, as well as those of others; and gives evidence as freely of himself as of a third person. We are to pass by these common rules of civility, in favour of truth and liberty. I dare not only speak of myself, but to speak only of myself: when I write of anything, else I miss my way and wander from my subject. I am not so indiscreetly enamoured

1 Annal., vi. 6.

* Ibid., xi. II.

of myself, so wholly mixed up with, and bound to myself, that I cannot distinguish and consider myself apart, as I do a neighbour or a tree: 'tis equally a fault not to discern how far a man's worth extends, and to say more than a man discovers in himself. We owe more love to God than to ourselves, and know Him less; and yet speak of Him as much as we will.

If the writings of Tacitus indicate anything true of his qualities, he was a great personage, upright and bold, not of a superstitious but of a philosophical and generous virtue. One may think him a little too bold in his relations; as where he tells us, that a soldier carrying a burden of wood, his hands were so frozen and so stuck to the load that they there remained closed and dead, being severed from his arms.1 I always in such things bow to the authority of so great witnesses.

What also he says, that Vespasian, by the favour of the god Serapis, cured a blind woman at Alexandria by anointing her eyes with his spittle, and I know not what other miracle, he says by the example and duty of all good historians. They record all events of importance; and amongst public incidents are the popular rumours and opinions. 'Tis their part to relate common beliefs, not to regulate them: that part concerns divines and philosophers, directors of consciences; and therefore it was that this companion of his, and a great man like himself, very wisely said: “Equidem plura transcribo, quam credo: nam nec affirmare sustineo, de quibus dubito, nec subducere quæ accepi; and this other: "Hæc neque affirmare, neque refellere operæ

"3

1 Annal., xiii. 35.

2 Hist., iv. 81.

3 "Truly, I set down more things than I believe, for I can neither affirm things whereof I doubt, nor suppress what I have heard."-Quintus Curtius,

pretium est; famæ rerum standum est."1 And writing in an age wherein the belief of prodigies began to decline, he says he would not, nevertheless, forbear to insert in his Annals, and to give a relation of things received by so many worthy men, and with so great reverence of antiquity; 'tis very well said. Let them deliver to us history, more as they receive it than as they believe it. I, who am monarch of the matter whereof I treat, and who am accountable to none, do not, nevertheless, always believe myself; I often hazard sallies of my own wit, wherein I very much suspect myself, and certain verbal quibbles, at which I shake my ears; but I let them go at a venture. I see that others get reputation by such things: 'tis not for me alone to judge. I present myself standing and lying, before and behind, my right side and my left, and in all my natural postures. Wits, though equal in force, are not always equal in taste and application.

This is what my memory presents to me in gross, and with uncertainty enough; all judgments in gross, are weak and imperfect.

CHAPTER IX.

2

OF VANITY.

THERE is, peradventure, no more manifest vanity than to write of it so vainly. That which divinity has so divinely expressed to us ought to be carefully and continually meditated by understanding men. Who does not see that I have taken a road, in which, incessantly and without

1 "Tis neither worth the while to affirm or to refute these things; we must stand to report."-Livy, i. Præf., and viii. 6.

"Vanity of vanities; all is vanity."-Eccles. i. 2.

labour, I shall proceed so long as there shall be ink and paper in the world? I can give no account of my life by my actions; fortune has placed them too low: I must do it by my fancies. And yet I have seen a gentleman who only communicated his life by the workings of his belly: you might see in his house a show of a row of basins of seven or eight days' excrements; that was all his study, all his discourse; all other talk stunk in his nostrils. Here, but not so nauseous, are the excrements of an old mind, sometimes thick, sometimes thin, and always indigested. And when shall I have done representing the continual agitation and mutation of my thoughts, as they come into my head, seeing that Diomedes wrote six thousand books upon the sole subject of grammar?1 What, then, ought prating to produce, since prattling and the first beginning to speak, stuffed the world with such a horrible number of volumes ? So many words about words only. O Pythagoras, why didst not thou allay this tempest? They accused one Galba of old for living idly; he made answer, “That every one ought to give account of his actions, but not of his leisure. He was mistaken, for justice has also cognisance and correction over holiday-makers.3

2

But there should be some restraint of law against foolish and impertinent scribblers, as well as against vagabonds and idle persons; which if there were, both I and a hundred others would be banished the kingdom. I do not speak this in jest scribbling seems to be a sign of a disordered and licentious age: When did we write so much as since

1 Here Montaigne's memory again plays him a scurvy trick. It was not Diomedes, but Didymus, the grammarian, who, as Seneca (Ep. 88) tells us, wrote four thousand books on questions of vain literature, which was the principal study of the ancient grammarian (Coste).

2 This was the Emperor Galba.-Suetonius, in vita, c. 9.

3 "Ceulx qui choment," which Cotton renders, "Will have an account even of those that glean, which is one of the laziest employments."