need to add nothing of his own, but the connection only, as it were the solder of another metal; and might by this means embody a great many true events of all sorts, disposing and diversifying them according as the beauty of the work should require, after the same manner, almost, as Ovid has made up his Metamorphoses1 of the infinite number of various fables.

In the last couple, this is, moreover, worthy of consideration, that Paulina voluntarily offered to lose her life for the love of her husband, and that her husband had formerly also forborne to die for the love of her. We may think there is no just counterpoise in this exchange; but, according to his stoical humour, I fancy he thought he had done as much for her, in prolonging his life upon her account, as if he had died for her. In one of his letters to Lucilius, after he has given him to understand that, being seized with an ague in Rome, he presently took coach to go to a house he had in the country, contrary to his wife's opinion, who would have him stay, and that he had told her that the ague he was seized with was not a fever of the body but of the place, it follows thus: "She let me go," says he, "giving me a strict charge of my health. Now I, who know that her life is involved in mine, begin to make much of myself, that I may preserve her. And I lose the privilege my age has given me, of being more constant and resolute in many things, when I call to mind that in this old fellow there is a young girl who is interested in his health. And since I cannot persuade her to love me more courageously, she makes me more solicitously love myself; for we must allow something to honest affections, and, sometimes, though occasions importune us to the contrary, we must call back life, even though it be with torment: we must hold the soul fast in our teeth, since the rule of living, amongst good men, is not so long as they please, but as long as they ought. He that loves not his wife or his friend so well as to pro

1 The edition of 1588 has, "as Ariosto has ranged in a series that vast number of divers fables."

long his life for them, but will obstinately die, is too delicate and too effeminate: the soul must impose this upon itself, when the utility of our friends so requires; we must sometimes lend ourselves to our friends, and when we would die for ourselves must break that resolution for them. "Tis a testimony of grandeur of courage to return to life for the consideration of another, as many excellent persons have done and 'tis a mark of singular good nature to preserve old age (of which the greatest convenience is the indifference as to its duration, and a more stout and disdainful use of life), when a man perceives that this office is pleasing, agreeable, and useful to some person by whom he is very much beloved. And a man reaps by it a very pleasing reward; for what can be more delightful than to be so dear to his wife, as upon her account he shall become dearer to himself? Thus has my Paulina loaded me not only with her fears, but my own; it has not been sufficient to consider how resolutely I could die, but I have also considered how irresolutely she would bear my death. I am enforced to live, and sometimes to live is magnanimity." These are his own words, as excellent as they everywhere are.

CHAPTER XXXVI

OF THE MOST EXCELLENT MEN

IF I should be asked my choice among all the men who have come to my knowledge, I should make answer, that methinks I find three more excellent than all the rest.

One of them Homer: not that Aristotle and Varro, for example, were not, peradventure, as learned as he; nor that possibly Virgil was not equal to him in his own art, which I leave to be determined by such as know them both. I who, for my part, understand but one of them, can only say this, according to my poor talent, that I do not believe the Muses themselves could ever go beyond the Roman :

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"Tale facit carmen doctâ testudine, quale
Cynthius impositis temperat articulis :"1

and yet in this judgment we are not to forget that it is chiefly from Homer that Virgil derives his excellence, that he is his guide and teacher; and that one touch of the Iliad has supplied him with body and matter out of which to compose his great and divine Æneid. I do not reckon upon that, but mix several other circumstances that render to me this poet admirable, even as it were above human condition. And, in truth, I often wonder that he who has produced, and, by his authority, given reputation in the world to so many deities, was not deified himself. Being blind and poor, living before the sciences were reduced into rule and certain observation, he was so well acquainted with them, that all those who have since taken upon them to establish governments, to carry on wars, and to write either of religion or philosophy, of what sect soever, or of the arts, have made use of him as of a most perfect instructor in the knowledge of all things, and of his books as of a treasury of all sorts of learning :

"Qui, quid sit pulcrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
Planius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit :"2

and as this other says:—

"A quo, ceu fonte perenni, Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis;"

and the other :

"3

"Adde Heliconiadum comites, quorum unus Homerus
Sceptra potitus ; 4

1 66 He plays on his learned lute a verse such as Cynthian Apollo modulates with his imposed fingers."-Propertius, ii. 34, 79.

2 "Who tells us what is good, what evil, what useful, what not, more clearly and better than Chrysippus and Crantor?"-Horace, Ep., i. 2, 3.

3 "From which, as from a perennial spring, the lips of the poets are moistened by Pierian waters."—Ovid, Amor., iii. 9, 25.

4"Add the companions of the Muses, whose sceptre Homer has solely obtained."-Lucretius, iii. 1050.

and the other :

3

"Cujusque ex ore profusos

Omnis posteritas latices in carmina duxit,

Amnemque in tenues ausa est deducere rivos.

Unius fœcunda bonis :-"1

'Tis contrary to the order of nature that he has made the most excellent production that can possibly be; for the ordinary birth of things is imperfect; they thrive and gather strength by growing, whereas he rendered the infancy of poesy and several other sciences mature, perfect, and accomplished at first. And for this reason he may be called the first and the last of the poets, according to the fine testimony antiquity has left us of him, "that as there was none before him whom he could imitate, so there has been none since that could imitate him."2 His words, according to Aristotle, are the only words that have motion and action, the only substantial words. Alexander the Great, having found a rich cabinet amongst Darius' spoils, gave order it should be reserved for him to keep his Homer in, saying: that he was the best and most faithful counsellor he had in his military affairs.5 For the same reason it was that Cleomenes, the son of Anaxandridas, said that he was the poet of the Lacedæmonians, for that he was an excellent master for the discipline of war.6 This singular and particular commendation is also left of him in the judgment of Plutarch, that he is the only author in the world that never glutted nor disgusted his readers, presenting himself always another thing, and always flourishing in some new grace. That wanton Alcibiades, having asked one, who pretended to learning, for a book of Homer, gave him a box of the ear because he had none, which he thought as scandal

1 "From whose mouth all posterity has drawn out copious streams of verse, and has made bold to turn the mighty river into its little rivulets, fertile in the property of one man."-Manilius, Astron., ii. 8.

2 Velleius Paterculus, i. 5.

4 Pliny, Nat. Hist., vii. 29.

3 Poëtics, c. 24.

5 Plutarch, Life of Alexander, c. 2.

Idem, Apothegms of the Lacedæmonians. 7 In his Treatise on Loquacity, c. 5, 8. 8 Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades, c. 3.

ous as we should if we found one of our priests without a Breviary. Xenophanes complained one day to Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, that he was so poor he had not wherewithal to maintain two servants. "What!" replied he, "Homer, who was much poorer than thou art, keeps above ten thousand, though he is dead." What did Panatius leave unsaid when he called Plato the Homer of the philosophers? 2 Besides what glory can be compared to his? Nothing is so frequent in men's mouths as his name and works, nothing so known and received as Troy, Helen, and the war about her, when perhaps there was never any such thing. Our children are still called by names that he invented above three thousand years ago; who does not know Hector and Achilles ? Not only some particular families, but most nations also seek their origin in his inventions. Mohammed, the second of that name, emperor of the Turks, writing to our Pope Pius II., "I am astonished," says he, "that the Italians should appear against me, considering that we have our common descent from the Trojans, and that it concerns me as well as it does them to revenge the blood of Hector upon the Greeks, whom they countenance against me. Is it not a noble farce wherein kings, republics, and emperors have so many ages played their parts, and to which the vast universe serves for a theatre? Seven Grecian cities contended for his birth, so much honour even his obscurity brought him :—

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66 Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenæ."4 The other 5 is Alexander the Great. For whoever will consider the age at which he began his enterprises, the small means by which he effected so glorious a design, the authority he obtained in such mere youth with the greatest and most experienced captains of the world, by whom he was

1 Plutarch, Apothegms of the Kings Hiero.

2 Cicero, Tusc. Quæs., i. 32.

3 The letter is, however, altogether problematical.

4 Aulus Gellius, iii. 11.

"That is, Montaigne's second great man.