them, who will present him with an indifferent countenance, and suffer him to govern himself, and to complain according to his own method."

The succeeding paragraph contains some very excellent observations.

"I wean myself daily by my reason from this childish and inhumane humour, of desiring by our sufferings to move the compassion and mourning of our friends. We stretch our inconveniencies beyond their just extent when we extract tears from them, and the constancy which we commend in every one, in supporting his own adverse fortune, we accuse and reproach in our friends when the case is our own; we are not satisfied that they should be sensible of our condition only, unless they be moreover afflicted. A man should publish and communicate his joy, but as much as he can conceal and smother his grief: he that makes himself lamented without reason, is a man not to be lamented when there shall be real cause. To be always complaining, is the way never to be lamented; by making himself always in so pitiful a taking, he is never commiserated by any. He that makes himself dead when he is alive, is subject to be thought likely to live when he is dying. I have seen some, who have taken it ill when they have been told that they looked well, and that their pulse was temperate, contain their smiles, because they betrayed a recovery, and be angry at their health, because it was not to be lamented; and, which is a great deal more, they were not women neither.”

Montaigne abounds with shrewd remarks and pithy sentences, written with the brevity and point of proverbs. A few which occur to us we have thrown together.

66

Montaigne would have philosophy instilled early into the youthful mind. They begin," says he, " to teach us to live when we have almost done living."

"A man cannot so soon get his lesson by heart, as he may practice it: he will repeat it in his actions."

"The premeditation of death, is the premeditation of liberty; who has learnt to die, has forgot to serve."

"Whosoever despises his own life, is always master of that of another man."

"Nothing noble can be performed without danger."

Of a mob, he says;

"There is nothing so little to be expected or hoped for from this many-headed monster, when so incensed, as humanity and goodnature: it is much more capable of reverence than fear."

"All other knowledge is hurtful to him, who has not the science of honesty and good-nature."

"Knowledge is an excellent drug, but no drug has virtue enough

to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep."

"I do not think that we are so unhappy as we are vain, or have so much malice as folly."

"A word ill taken obliterates ten years' merit-the last action carries it—not the best and most frequent offices, but the most recent and present do the work."

The following is a singular, and not very amiable opinion.

"I approve of a man that is the less fond of his child for having a scald head or being crooked; and not only when he is ill-natured, but also when he is unhappy and imperfect in his limbs, (for God himself has abated that from his value and real estimation), provided he carry himself in this coldness of affection with moderation and exact justice."

Nothing but the Essays themselves of our old confabulator, can convey an adequate idea of their unrestrained vivacity, energy, and fancy, of their boldness and attractive simplicity. He says rightly, that it is the only book in the world of its kind. All the world, however, may know his book in him, and him in his book. The character of each is the same; and we shall, therefore, make a short summary of one to serve for both. It requires more courage to tittle-tattle of a man's foibles, vanities, and little imperfections, than to expose heinous defects or wicked inclinations; as the man, who shrinks from small inconveniences, will yet rush into " the pelting, pitiless storm," with a feeling of exultation. The former is a confession of weakness; in the latter there is an audacity and semblance of manliness. For the one he might be mocked and ridiculed; for the other he would be feared and scorned, which is the more tolerable of the two. In the latter there is a conscious power and daring, which is some sort of compensation for the risk; for the former he runs a chance of gaining nothing but contempt. The little vanities and oddities disclosed by Montaigne are, however, accompanied by too many amiable qualities to excite any thing of this feeling. The President Bouhier says of him: "It is true, that he sometimes avows his defects; but if we pay attention to them, we shall find they are only those which philosophers, or people of fashion, are not ashamed to assume, or imperfections which turn upon indifferent things."* Montaigne had a natural and invincible repugnance to falsehood; and, as he assures us, that he has painted himself as he was, whole and entire, it is fair to consider, that he had no great vices to confess. At the same time, there are things in his book which cannot

* Malebranche

says nearly the same thing of him,

be justified. His singular education, and early intimacy with the writers of antiquity, tinged his mind with that bold and paradoxical spirit, which is so continually displayed in his discourses. He formed a strict alliance and friendship with the ancient worthies. Rome, in the time of her free and flourishing estate, (for he loved her neither in her birth nor decay), became to him "a passion and a feeling." He paid more homage to the dead than the living. He entered the lists more chivalrously for the defence of Pompey, or in the cause of Brutus, than of either of the religious factions which distracted his own country. These early attachments never left him, and it was with singular satisfaction that he had the honor of Roman Citizenship conferred upon him, during one of his visits to Rome. The elements were strangely compounded in him-there was an odd mixture of philosophical thought and trifling speculationof acute reasoning and inconclusiveness-of force of mind and erratic and ungoverned fancy. He was, at the same time, idle and impatient-thoughtful and gay, and by turns reflected upon and laughed at himself and all the world. Fond of travelling, he was as difficult to be moved in the first instance, as to be stopped when once in motion. Of a frank and courteous deportment, of a hospitable disposition, and an amiable temper— a despiser of ceremony, and eminently sociable-he appears to have been, in general, as sluggish in his feelings as he was cold in the constitution of his mind: but, for the memory of his father he cherished a deep and lasting veneration and regard; and for his friend, De Boetie, he felt as sacred a friendship as ever had birth in the human heart. Himself hating to be obliged to any other, or by any other, than himself; he was, nevertheless, ready enough to confer an obligation, more especially if it did not call upon him for any great care or trouble, to which he most assuredly had a mortal aversion. In fact, his whole study was to be careless, easy, and contented, and he made haste to seize pleasure lest it should take wing and fly. But he was, upon the whole, a kind-hearted and amiable man, and of a large and capacious soul, superior to most of the prejudices of his age, although he doubtless had some peculiar to himself. To him all men were compatriots-the universal tie, superior to all national ties whatever-and the relations of friendship to those of kindred. He was nice, even to superstition, in keeping his promises.

"The knot," says he, " that binds me by the laws of courtesie, pinches me more than that of legal constraint, and I am much more at ease when bound by a scrivener, than by myself. Is it not reason that my conscience should be much more engaged when men simply rely upon it? In a bond, my faith owes nothing, because it has nothing lent it. Let them trust to the security they have taken without me; I

had much rather break the wall of a prison, and the laws themselves, than my own word."

Even in actions free and indifferent, if he breathed a promise, even in whispers to himself, it assumed the shape of an obligation; but if he had once made it known to others, he considered himself positively enjoined to the performance of it. It was pleasant to him, because it was voluntary-it was of his own free will and bounty; for, "if the action has not some splendour of liberty, it has neither grace nor honor."

Of his reflections he fancied those the best which he made on horseback; and a sprightly thought never came into his head, on such an occasion, that he did not regret there was nobody to whom he could communicate it; and yet the reins of his bridle being wrong put on, or a strap flapping against his leg, was enough to keep him out of humour for a day together. Although of a studious turn of mind, he delighted more in contemplation than reading, to which he seldom applied for more than an hour together; and that, when he had nothing else to do, or it may be for the purpose of culling the flowers with which he has garnished his disquisitions; for he tells us, over and over again, that he could retain nothing in his memory for any length of time. Indeed, the treachery of this faculty is a standing subject of complaint with him; but even from this real or imaginary defect, (for, considering his extraordinary familiarity with, and the use he makes of Roman authors, it is difficult to believe it was so imperfect as he represents it), he contrives to raise up some pleasant consolations; as, when he that, from his want of memory, he less remembers the injuries he has received; and that the places he revisits, and the books he reads over again, still smile upon him with a fresh novelty. Such is the prerogative of genius-it can extract consolation from want and privation, and deck the barren wilderness with beauty.

says,

Human nature is a wayward and variable thing, and where a man perseveres in putting down every crude and fugitive thought that occurs to him, we must expect to find that his mind has undergone changes similar to those of his body, and that what he thinks to-day he will not think to-morrow. The opinions of a mutable nature cannot be immutable. Doubts will arise, contradictions will occur, and one opinion displace another, in its turn to be deposed. Montaigne wrote without system and without classification, rambling from one subject to another, without order or connection, like the bee which now hardly settles upon one flower, and anon takes deeper draughts of another, as its taste or humour sways it. These aberrations are rather the result of design than accident; and, it is true,

give a conversational ease, a reality and grace, to his Essays, which engages the interest of the reader too deeply in the feelings of the author, to allow him to think any thing, but that he is the most agreeable and original writer in the world. He is now a Stoic and now an Epicurean. He is carried away with every wind that blows-" accident can play what stop it pleases" upon him. He now argues on one side of the question, and now on the other, and at last leaves it without coming to a conclusion.- He is too hard for himself." He is every thing by turns, and nothing long." His book is censured in severe terms by Malebranche, not for what we should conceive its most objectionable passages, but for the vanity and Pyrrhonism of the author. Like most speculative men, Montaigne was fond of raising doubts against established propositions. He hinted opinions, which have since been expanded into systems. But, if he was an enemy to superstition, his scepticism did not terminate in irreligion. The strong, as well as the weak in intellect, are subject to fluctuations of opinion, especially on matters of faith. Montaigne was open to the reception of arguments, or rather created them on all subjects; and it is not surprising, that, in the religious contests which agitated his country, he should waver in the creed of his forefathers. A man may doubt the fallibility of human establishments, without being either wicked or irreligious. The force of arguments depends upon a thousand accidents-the education, the experience, the associations of thought or feeling, the timidity, or the fearlessness of the individual to whom they are applied. The reasons that will convince one man may undeceive another; and the advocate for a system, while he prevails over his opponent, often raises doubts in his own mind which he is unable to satisfy. A remarkable instance of which our readers will pardon us for introducing here. William Raynolds was at first a Protestant of the Church of England; and his brother, Dr. John Raynolds, was trained up in Popery beyond the seas. William, out of an honest zeal to reduce his brother to his Church, made a journey to him, when, in a conference between them, it fell out, that John, being overcome by his brother's arguments, returned into England, where he became one of the most rigid sort of the English Protestants; and William, being convinced by the reasons of his brother John, stayed beyond the seas, where he proved a very violent and virulent Papist. Of which strange accident Dr. Alabaster, who had made trial of both religions, and amongst many notable whimsies had some fine abilities, made the following epigram :-*