6

merely using the contradictions of judges and the uncertainties of medicine, to enforce his favourite topic of the feebleness of human judgment. It is as great a fallacy to class him with the enlightened publicists, who saw and laboured to remedy the monstrous evils of the French judicial system, as it would be to class him among the revolutionists of the practice of physic. The Montaigne adorers exaggerate their idol in every direction. He is great enough: he is a man of universal sympathies, but they want to make him a man of profound acquirement, which he was not-not even in his own profession. We suspect that his professional history was the common one where strong literary tastes are early imbibed. Buchanan may have had something to do with this-may have laid the groundwork of classic predilections which made steady application to law impossible. He followed it as a career; he got a place, discharged its duties; he never had a vocation for it, and gave it up as soon as he wanted it no longer.

a law reformer; they ascribe to him an
enlightened jurist's view of the contradic-
tions of the customary law, and predilec-
tion for the luminous simplicity of the civil.
This again is to read the sixteenth century
by the reflected light of '89. Montaigne
imbibed the views and aims of the more
enlightened jurists of his own time, but he
did not project the Code Napoléon. The
opinions he has left on record on this sub-
ject are very general, but they are those
of a wise and humane moralist, not of a
jurist. They show how much of a philo-
sopher and how little of a magistrate' he
was. He has first an abhorrence of litiga-
tion, not less for others than himself; he
declares against the multiplication of en-
artments, the contradictory judgments, the
glosses of the commentators; but all this
is in the spirit of a man of taste; revolted
at the bad Latin of the Digest, and wishing
to be reading his Cicero.' It is a decla-
ration against the language of law altoge-
ther rather than against its abuse in chicane.
He condemns torture and the horrible mu-
tilations which were practised on the bodies
of the unhappy criminals. But in this he
only echoed the opinion of all the moralists
of all time, and had with him all the great
and wise of his own day. Against him,
however, were the churchmen and Rome.
Those passages in his Essays in which he
pleads that all beyond simple death is pure
cruelty, presented one of the chief obsta-
cles to its passing the censure; the other,
we way mention, was his assigning a high
rank among Latin poets to Theodore Beza.
He eloquently denounces the practice of
selling the places in the courts of justice;
and, to complete the list, he ridicules en-
tails, or, as he calls them, masculine sub-
stitutions.' Sir W. Hamilton wishes to
trace this opinion of Montaigne to the tui-istic frankness never to conceal it. But he
tion of Buchanan.* Buchanan having
quitted the college at Bordeaux in 1544,
his pupil was only eleven years old-an
age at which we may doubt if he under-
stood what masculine substitution' was.

In truth we believe Montaigne, when he
says of himself (i. 24) that he knew there
was such a science as jurisprudence, and
that that was all he did know. His amus-
ing pleading against the lawyers (iii. 13) is
nothing more than one of the many popular
diatribes on that traditional butt. If it
proves anything, it proves that he was no
lawyer; as his vituperation in the same
Essay of the medical practitioners does,
that he was no physician. He is, in fact,

Note in Hamilton's excellent edition of 'Dugald
Stewart,' vol. i. p. 100. ali oda.
VOL. XCIX.

15

The second cause of distaste for his Parliamentary functions, to which allusion has been already made, was the violence of religious faction which disturbed it. In no quarter of France had Protestantism made more progress than in Guienne and Gascony. Everywhere the Parlements showed themselves the strenuous supporters of the Church. None was more untiring in the zeal for persecution than that of Bordeaux. Their registers for some years are one series of edicts, each more cruel than the last, against the professors of the new opinions. Montaigne was at-, tached throughout to the Catholic and Royalist party. In this adhesion he never wavered, and it belonged to his character

was of too moderate a temper to be carried away by the passionate fanaticism of his party; too good-hearted not to execrate their cruelty; and too wise not to see that the violence of the Catholics only provoked the more obstinate resistance of the Huguenots. But wisdom and moderation are no titles to the respect of religious faction. We shall not wonder then that Montaigne, whose spirit of tolerance went far beyond even that of tolerant men in that age, was glad to terminate his connexion with a court of justice, which seems to have totally forgotten the duty of judicial impartiality, and to have made itself the organ of an infuriated party.

All the zeal of the antiquaries has not been able to retrieve a history for the thirteen or more years during which Mon

taigne occupied his seat in the Parlement walls; it was sixteen paces in diameter. of Bordeaux. M. Grün goes through the Opening into the library was a smaller principal transactions of the Court during cabinet; this was more elegantly furnishthat period-a useful resumé aud a very ed; it was fitted with a fire-place, to which proper part of a complete life, but too ex- he might retire in the winter. The only tensive for our purpose. The single sen- want he regretted was a long gallery, or tence in De Thou's history, Olim in promeuoir," to agitate his thoughts in by senatu Burdigalensi assessor dignissimus,' walking up and down. He could not reis nearly the whole that is known of solve on adding this: not the cost, but the thirteen years of Montaigne's life.. fuss of building, deterred him. In this tower ho passed the greater part of his time. There was his throne; there his rule was absolute. That only corner he preserved from the invasion of wife, children, or acquaintance. Elsewhere he possessed but a divided authority; for this reason he rejoiced that the access to his retreat was difficult, and of itself defended him from intruders. Here he lived, not studied; he did not so much read books, he says, as turn them over-he did not so much meditate as allow his reverie to follow its own course. The retirement was so strict at first as to produce melancholy and engender fantastic chimeras in his imagination. It was to allay these that he first betook himself to note down his thoughts on paper. Such was the parentage of the Essais.'

The second period extends from 1570 to 1582, ætat. 37-49, and is that portion of Montaigne's life to which he owes his immortality. This period is really marked by a long and absolute retirement in the château of Montaigne, by the composition of the Essais,' and by two or three journeys to Paris, chiefly connected with their publication. It is concluded by a long tour into Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. M. Grün, who will not resign even this period from his public life,' interpolates into it two visits to Court, which are wholly imaginary; a campaign against Henri of Navarre, which is in the highest degree improbable; and, by way of mingling pleasure with business, he exhibits his hero at the fêtes and galas which marked the progress of Catherine de Medicis in the south, in the year 1578.

The hypothetical history here spoils the authentic. The legend misleads instead of assisting the imagination. This retirement in the château of Périgueux, the solitary meditation in the turret chamber, is the canonical fact. A biographer would do good service who could paint for us in its true colours this Gascon interior. Communicative, garrulous even as Montaigne has been about himself, what he has told us has only given us a reason for desiring to know the things he has not told us. He has made us so much his friends that we require to know all his secrets. He has drawn for us himself, his library; it is on the third floor of one of the turrets of the château. There are four stories in the turret. The first floor is the chapel; above the chapel is a bed-room with suite, appropriated to his own use. The library is above the lodging-rooms. From its three bay windows it commanded a view of nearly the entire premises, including the garden, the front as well as the base court. In the distance the elevation on which the château stood afforded a very extensive view over a flat country. The shape of the room was that of the tower, round-all but one straight side where the chair and table were placed. From this seat the eye could command all the books as they stood ranged in five tiers of shelving round the

The library, however, the imagination heated by solitary musing, the melancholy grown of long seclusion, should have given birth to a very different progeny. We might have had a Pilgrim's Progress,' or a Castle of Otranto,' or a third part of

Huon de Bordeaulx,' but for one quality which Montaigne brought with him into his retreat. This is the thorough good sense, the tone of the man of the world, which pervades, without being paraded, every page of the book. It is not a mere rectitude of judgment about men and things, but a judgment which has been exercised and tempered by actual trials and collisions-'a learned spirit of human dealing.' But for this life-giving flavour, the Essais' would not have been the book they are. They might still have shown the varied reading of the scholar or the amusing gossip of the egotist, but they would not have been the univer sal favourite of courts, camps, and country mansions.' It is this which, with all their whimsical paradox, and often common-place moralising, makes them still instructive. In tracing this element, M. Grün's chapter, Montaigne in his relations with the court,' affords all the materials that are to be had. We cannot adopt his theory, which turns Montaigne into a courtier, and cuts out of his Life that period of privacy almost cynical, which we think necessary to the conception of the Essais.' But there is

1

A

evidence enough to show, what the Essays themselves require, that Montaigne had seen much of court and courtiers before he wrote them.

perforce to privacy. Yea, even in mine own house I see people more than a good many, yet few such as I love to converse or communicate withal. Herein I exercise an unusual privilege of liberty. I cry a truce to the established courtesies so distressing to all parties, of being with my guests, and conducting them about; but each one employs himself as he pleases, and entertaineth what his thoughts affect. If I please, I remain silent, musing, and reserved, without offence to my guests or friends.iii. 3.

The Kings of France in the middle age were surrounded by the high officers attached to their person. Their court was constituted by great functionaries. The nobles of the provinces who had no employments never approached the King except when they fought by his side, or were summoned by his order. The decay of the feudal manners, and the policy of Francis This piece of self-portraiture is at once I., broke through this estrangement. He true to history and to nature. loved to surround himself with a brilliant court. The gentlemen flocked to it. They laid aside the rudeness of their manners, but they lost at the same time the independence of their character. The rivalry in luxury and expense ruined them. To maintain their fortunes they were obliged to seek office. Places were created on purpose, and the once haughty nobles fought like hungry hounds for these grants at the hands of an absolute monarch who dispensed them. This revolution was gradual. It was only in progress in the sixteenth century. But Montaigne found established the usage for French gentlemen to present themselves to the Sovereign without being officially placed about his person. On succeeding to the family estates, Montaigne did like the rest. He was even appointed 'gentleman in ordinary of the bedchamber,' an office which did not demand residence at court, but was much sought after, and for which nobility was an indispensable qualification. His complexion, he tells us (iii. 3), was not averse to the movement of a court. He went gladly into company; he liked city life, especially Paris. Paris bad possessed his affections from his earliest youth (iii. 9); but these social impulses were combined with another impulse urging him to seclusion :

'The solitude I love and preach is no more than what serves to retire my affections and to redeem my thoughts. I would circumscribe not my steps, but my desires. I would shun not so much the throng of men as the importunity of affairs. Local solitariness, to say truth, doth rather extend and enlarge me outwardly. I give my mind more readily to state matters, and to the world, when I am alone. At the Louvre, and in the crowd, I am apt to slink into my own skin (je me contrains en ma peau). Assemblies thrust me back within my self. I never commune with my own spirit so fondly, freely, and so much apart, as in the resorts of grand company and lordly ceremonial. I go gaily into great assemblies, yet doth this coyness of judgment of which I spoke attach me

it the parentage of the Essais,' to which the agitation of courts and the stillness of the recluse's cell each gave their portion. And we find in it-and in none of his selfdisclosures more so we find in it one of the secrets of genius. Nay, not only of great, but of all sound, minds this is true, that for their sustentation and due nurture they require the two elements, society and solitude. No healthy life is ever lived in which either of these is wanting. And if we turn to books-to judge of mind by its most enduring products-we see the same experience repeated from age to age. There are books enough left us by those who, having never tried to live, have shut themselves within the circle of their own meditations. Wonderful in its variety and richness is the literature of mysticism and sentiment! What a wealth of thought and feeling drawn from the pure depths of human consciousness! Again turn to the memoir-writers and court gossips. What keen observation of manners, what infinite webs of intrigue they unravel before us, what countless character they have distinguished! But what are the books that instruct us, that speak to us as men, that raise us, but raise us not too high for our duties and destiny? Between the frivolous and the divine lies the truly human. Wisdom that is from above, yet that can give us light in this world! Theory without facts is not science, and moralising without experience is not wisdom. A pallid and dreary jargon is the metaphysic of the schools by the side of the tangible and experimented maxim which flowers out naturally from the intellect that has lived. But unless to this experience be added the maturing influences of meditation and selfknowledge, the result is equally one-sided. We get then that unspiritual and debasing physiology of human conduct that socalled philosophy of courts which leaves out of the computation of motive all that separates man from any other species of mammal. In no writer perhaps are these

6

reste de vie.' Even if then the inscription
were put up by a successor, the sentiment
in it is derived from Montaigne himself,
who more than once in the Essais' enters
into this engagement with himself to con-
secrate the remainder of his days to studi-
ous repose. The insertion of his age, and
the solemn mention of his birthday, which
M. Grün thinks puerile,' appear to us ex-
actly in Montaigne's character. Dr. Payen
has justly remarked that he is fond of not-
ing his age at different epochs of his com-
position; that his Natural Theology' is
dated the day of his father's death, to
whom it is dedicated; and reminds us that
Montaigne liked to use his father's cloak,
not because it fitted him, but because il
lui semblait s'envelopper de lui.'
must, however, express our surprise that
the date of this inscription should still be
left matter of argument. Surely the shape
of the letters, the style and colouring, or
other indications, would serve to ascertain
if the epigraph were or were not contem-
porary with Montaigne.

two elements that make up wisdom mingled | de passer en repos et à part le peu qui me in happier proportion than in Montaigne. Little has been added by the diligence of the collectors to the glimpses of his retreat which the Essais' themselves supply. We need not wonder that the château of Montaigne has been repeatedly visited by enthusiastic pilgrims; some of these, among whom may be included poor John Sterling, have described what they saw. But they seem to have carried with them more enthusiasm than powers of accurate observation; at least they were not able to copy correctly the sentences which Montaigne had inscribed on the cornices of his library. Some of them are characteristic and Dr. Payen has done good service by reproducing them, as they are fast being obliterated. Quid superbis, Terra et Cinis? Væ qui sapientes estis in oculis vestris ! Ne plus sapias quam necesse est, ne obstupescas.' The first six are Scripture texts. After them come the classical, of which we may give-... nostra vagatur. In tenebris, nec cœca potest mens cernere verum,' from Lucretius; Tavri λóyw λόγος ἴσος ἀντίκειται, from Sextus Empiricus. Still more interest attaches to an inscription in the cabinet du travail; this is in Latin, and also in a state of decay. It is to the following effect, when the gaps have been conjecturally supplied :

:

6

'In the year of Christ 1571, the 38th year of his age, on his birthday, to wit, the last day of February, Michel de Montaigne, long wearied of court slavery and public employments, has with drawn himself into the bosom of the Sisters of Learning, where, in peace and freed from care, he will pass through what little may yet remain of a life of which the most part hath already passed away, if only fate permit. This narrow abode and loved ancestral retreat he hath consecrated to his liberty, reposc, and tranquillity.'

If these lines be genuine they are autobiographical, and decisive against M. Grün's theory; he naturally, therefore, wishes to think them the product of some later hand. But he does not offer one critical argument for the suspicion he throws on them. The sentiment they express is too puerile for Montaigne, and not in keeping with his habits. To bring up a loose analogy of this kind against epigraphic evidence is simply childish in the eyes of those who know what historical criticism is; but in this instance it happens that the analogy itself is not good. The inscription does but repeat that passage in the Essais' which we have already quoted: Je me retirai chez moi, délibéré autant que je pourrais ne me mesler d'autre chose que

We

The mention of the five tiers of shelving has naturally suggested to our painstaking friends an inquiry after the books which once filled them. For though the shelves are there, and the mottoes on the rafters above them are dimly visible, the books are gone. Dr. Payen has here had wonderful success. He has traced or recovered upwards of thirty volumes which were in the possession of Montaigne, and contain his autograph, or other notes. The history of his twenty years' siege and final capture of Montaigne's Cæsar,' forms of itself a little epic, which we read in the 'Débats' not long since (Journal des Débats, Mars, 1856), and which is too glad to talk of Montaigne's Cæsar,' since the other Cæsar is interdicted ground. It tells how M. Parison, the distinguished bibliophile, who, with an income of 250l. a-year, left behind him the astonishing collection of books which has just been dispersed by public auction, picked up the Cæsar' in one of the quais bookstalls; how he guarded it five years-not thirty-five, as the Débats exaggerate-without breathing the existence of the treasure-how, in 1837, Dr. Payen, the chief of the Montaignologues,' got scent of its existence-how he laid siege to M. Parison's citadel on the fourth floor of a house on the Quai des Augustins, by a series of dedications, notes, allusions sometimes flattering sometimes caustic, till the final triumph in 1838, when the stubborn possessor surrendered at discretion, yielded up the Cæsar,' took to his bed,