



Produced by David Widger





ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877



CONTENTS OF VOLUME 8.

XLVIII.   Of war-horses, or destriers.
XLIX.     Of ancient customs.
L.        Of Democritus and Heraclitus.
LI.       Of the vanity of words.
LII.      Of the parsimony of the Ancients.
LIII.     Of a saying of Caesar.
LIV.      Of vain subtleties.
LV.       Of smells.
LVI.      Of prayers.
LVII.     Of age.



CHAPTER XLVIII

OF WAR HORSES, OR DESTRIERS

I here have become a grammarian, I who never learned any language but by
rote, and who do not yet know adjective, conjunction, or ablative.  I
think I have read that the Romans had a sort of horses by them called
'funales' or 'dextrarios', which were either led horses, or horses laid
on at several stages to be taken fresh upon occasion, and thence it is
that we call our horses of service 'destriers'; and our romances commonly
use the phrase of 'adestrer' for 'accompagner', to accompany.  They also
called those that were trained in such sort, that running full speed,
side by side, without bridle or saddle, the Roman gentlemen, armed at all
pieces, would shift and throw themselves from one to the other,
'desultorios equos'.  The Numidian men-at-arms had always a led horse in
one hand, besides that they rode upon, to change in the heat of battle:

    "Quibus, desultorum in modum, binos trahentibus equos, inter
     acerrimam saepe pugnam, in recentem equum, ex fesso, armatis
     transultare mos erat: tanta velocitas ipsis, tamque docile
     equorum genus."

     ["To whom it was a custom, leading along two horses, often in the
     hottest fight, to leap armed from a tired horse to a fresh one; so
     active were the men, and the horses so docile."--Livy, xxiii. 29.]

There are many horses trained to help their riders so as to run upon any
one, that appears with a drawn sword, to fall both with mouth and heels
upon any that front or oppose them: but it often happens that they do
more harm to their friends than to their enemies; and, moreover, you
cannot loose them from their hold, to reduce them again into order, when
they are once engaged and grappled, by which means you remain at the
mercy of their quarrel.  It happened very ill to Artybius, general of the
Persian army, fighting, man to man, with Onesilus, king of Salamis, to be
mounted upon a horse trained after this manner, it being the occasion of
his death, the squire of Onesilus cleaving the horse down with a scythe
betwixt the shoulders as it was reared up upon his master.  And what the
Italians report, that in the battle of Fornova, the horse of Charles
VIII., with kicks and plunges, disengaged his master from the enemy that
pressed upon him, without which he had been slain, sounds like a very
great chance, if it be true.

     [In the narrative which Philip de Commines has given of this battle,
     in which he himself was present (lib. viii.  ch. 6), he tells us
     of wonderful performances by the horse on which the king was
     mounted.  The name of the horse was Savoy, and it was the most
     beautiful horse he had ever seen.  During the battle the king was
     personally attacked, when he had nobody near him but a valet de
     chambre, a little fellow, and not well armed.  "The king," says
     Commines, "had the best horse under him in the world, and therefore
     he stood his ground bravely, till a number of his men, not a great
     way from him, arrived at the critical minute."]

The Mamalukes make their boast that they have the most ready horses of
any cavalry in the world; that by nature and custom they were taught to
know and distinguish the enemy, and to fall foul upon them with mouth and
heels, according to a word or sign given; as also to gather up with their
teeth darts and lances scattered upon the field, and present them to
their riders, on the word of command.  'T is said, both of Caesar and
Pompey, that amongst their other excellent qualities they were both very
good horsemen, and particularly of Caesar, that in his youth, being
mounted on the bare back, without saddle or bridle, he could make the
horse run, stop, and turn, and perform all its airs, with his hands
behind him.  As nature designed to make of this person, and of Alexander,
two miracles of military art, so one would say she had done her utmost to
arm them after an extraordinary manner for every one knows that
Alexander's horse, Bucephalus, had a head inclining to the shape of a
bull; that he would suffer himself to be mounted and governed by none but
his master, and that he was so honoured after his death as to have a city
erected to his name.  Caesar had also one which had forefeet like those
of a man, his hoofs being divided in the form of fingers, which likewise
was not to be ridden, by any but Caesar himself, who, after his death,
dedicated his statue to the goddess Venus.

I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback, for it is the
place where, whether well or sick, I find myself most at ease.  Plato
recommends it for health, as also Pliny says it is good for the stomach
and the joints.  Let us go further into this matter since here we are.

We read in Xenophon a law forbidding any one who was master of a horse to
travel on foot.  Trogus Pompeius and Justin say that the Parthians were
wont to perform all offices and ceremonies, not only in war but also all
affairs whether public or private, make bargains, confer, entertain, take
the air, and all on horseback; and that the greatest distinction betwixt
freemen and slaves amongst them was that the one rode on horseback and
the other went on foot, an institution of which King Cyrus was the
founder.

There are several examples in the Roman history (and Suetonius more
particularly observes it of Caesar) of captains who, on pressing
occasions, commanded their cavalry to alight, both by that means to take
from them all hopes of flight, as also for the advantage they hoped in
this sort of fight.

               "Quo baud dubie superat Romanus,"

     ["Wherein the Roman does questionless excel."--Livy, ix. 22.]

says Livy.  And so the first thing they did to prevent the mutinies and
insurrections of nations of late conquest was to take from them their
arms and horses, and therefore it is that we so often meet in Caesar:

          "Arma proferri, jumenta produci, obsides dari jubet."

     ["He commanded the arms to be produced, the horses brought out,
     hostages to be given."--De Bello Gall., vii. II.]

The Grand Signior to this day suffers not a Christian or a Jew to keep a
horse of his own throughout his empire.

Our ancestors, and especially at the time they had war with the English,
in all their greatest engagements and pitched battles fought for the most
part on foot, that they might have nothing but their own force, courage,
and constancy to trust to in a quarrel of so great concern as life and
honour.  You stake (whatever Chrysanthes in Xenophon says to the
contrary) your valour and your fortune upon that of your horse; his
wounds or death bring your person into the same danger; his fear or fury
shall make you reputed rash or cowardly; if he have an ill mouth or will
not answer to the spur, your honour must answer for it.  And, therefore,
I do not think it strange that those battles were more firm and furious
than those that are fought on horseback:

               "Caedebant pariter, pariterque ruebant
          Victores victique; neque his fuga nota, neque illis."

     ["They fought and fell pell-mell, victors and vanquished; nor was
     flight thought of by either."--AEneid, x. 756.]

Their battles were much better disputed.  Nowadays there are nothing but
routs:

          "Primus clamor atque impetus rem decernit."

     ["The first shout and charge decides the business."--Livy, xxv. 41.]

And the means we choose to make use of in so great a hazard should be as
much as possible at our own command: wherefore I should advise to choose
weapons of the shortest sort, and such of which we are able to give the
best account.  A man may repose more confidence in a sword he holds in
his hand than in a bullet he discharges out of a pistol, wherein there
must be a concurrence of several circumstances to make it perform its
office, the powder, the stone, and the wheel: if any of which fail it
endangers your fortune.  A man himself strikes much surer than the air
can direct his blow:

          "Et, quo ferre velint, permittere vulnera ventis
          Ensis habet vires; et gens quaecumque virorum est,
          Bella gerit gladiis."

     ["And so where they choose to carry [the arrows], the winds allow
     the wounds; the sword has strength of arm: and whatever nation of
     men there is, they wage war with swords."--Lucan, viii. 384.]

But of that weapon I shall speak more fully when I come to compare the
arms of the ancients with those of modern use; only, by the way, the
astonishment of the ear abated, which every one grows familiar with in a
short time, I look upon it as a weapon of very little execution, and hope
we shall one day lay it aside.  That missile weapon which the Italians
formerly made use of both with fire and by sling was much more terrible:
they called a certain kind of javelin, armed at the point with an iron
three feet long, that it might pierce through and through an armed man,
Phalarica, which they sometimes in the field darted by hand, sometimes
from several sorts of engines for the defence of beleaguered places; the
shaft being rolled round with flax, wax, rosin, oil, and other
combustible matter, took fire in its flight, and lighting upon the body
of a man or his target, took away all the use of arms and limbs.  And
yet, coming to close fight, I should think they would also damage the
assailant, and that the camp being as it were planted with these flaming
truncheons, would produce a common inconvenience to the whole crowd:

          "Magnum stridens contorta Phalarica venit,
          Fulminis acta modo."

     ["The Phalarica, launched like lightning, flies through
     the air with a loud rushing sound."--AEneid, ix. 705.]

They had, moreover, other devices which custom made them perfect in
(which seem incredible to us who have not seen them), by which they
supplied the effects of our powder and shot.  They darted their spears
with so great force, as ofttimes to transfix two targets and two armed
men at once, and pin them together.  Neither was the effect of their
slings less certain of execution or of shorter carriage:

     ["Culling round stones from the beach for their slings; and with
     these practising over the waves, so as from a great distance to
     throw within a very small circuit, they became able not only to
     wound an enemy in the head, but hit any other part at pleasure."
     --Livy, xxxviii. 29.]

Their pieces of battery had not only the execution but the thunder of our
cannon also:

          "Ad ictus moenium cum terribili sonitu editos,
          pavor et trepidatio cepit."

     ["At the battery of the walls, performed with a terrible noise,
     the defenders began to fear and tremble."--Idem, ibid., 5.]

The Gauls, our kinsmen in Asia, abominated these treacherous missile
arms, it being their use to fight, with greater bravery, hand to hand:

     ["They are not so much concerned about large gashes-the bigger and
     deeper the wound, the more glorious do they esteem the combat but
     when they find themselves tormented by some arrow-head or bullet
     lodged within, but presenting little outward show of wound,
     transported with shame and anger to perish by so imperceptible a
     destroyer, they fall to the ground."---Livy, xxxviii.  21.]

A pretty description of something very like an arquebuse-shot.  The ten
thousand Greeks in their long and famous retreat met with a nation who
very much galled them with great and strong bows, carrying arrows so long
that, taking them up, one might return them back like a dart, and with
them pierce a buckler and an armed man through and through.  The engines,
that Dionysius invented at Syracuse to shoot vast massy darts and stones
of a prodigious greatness with so great impetuosity and at so great a
distance, came very near to our modern inventions.

But in this discourse of horses and horsemanship, we are not to forget
the pleasant posture of one Maistre Pierre Pol, a doctor of divinity,
upon his mule, whom Monstrelet reports always to have ridden sideways
through the streets of Paris like a woman.  He says also, elsewhere, that
the Gascons had terrible horses, that would wheel in their full speed,
which the French, Picards, Flemings, and Brabanters looked upon as a
miracle, "having never seen the like before," which are his very words.

Caesar, speaking of the Suabians: "in the charges they make on
horseback," says he, "they often throw themselves off to fight on foot,
having taught their horses not to stir in the meantime from the place,
to which they presently run again upon occasion; and according to their
custom, nothing is so unmanly and so base as to use saddles or pads, and
they despise such as make use of those conveniences: insomuch that, being
but a very few in number, they fear not to attack a great many."  That
which I have formerly wondered at, to see a horse made to perform all his
airs with a switch only and the reins upon his neck, was common with the
Massilians, who rid their horses without saddle or bridle:

          "Et gens, quae nudo residens Massylia dorso,
          Ora levi flectit, fraenorum nescia, virga."

     ["The Massylians, mounted on the bare backs of their horses,
     bridleless, guide them by a mere switch."--Lucan, iv.  682.]

               "Et Numidae infraeni cingunt."

     ["The Numidians guiding their horses without bridles."
     --AEneid, iv.  41.]

          "Equi sine fraenis, deformis ipse cursus,
          rigida cervice et extento capite currentium."

     ["The career of a horse without a bridle is ungraceful; the neck
     extended stiff, and the nose thrust out."--Livy, xxxv. II.]

King Alfonso,--[Alfonso XI., king of Leon and Castile, died 1350.]--
he who first instituted the Order of the Band or Scarf in Spain, amongst
other rules of the order, gave them this, that they should never ride
mule or mulet, upon penalty of a mark of silver; this I had lately out of
Guevara's Letters.  Whoever gave these the title of Golden Epistles had
another kind of opinion of them than I have.  The Courtier says, that
till his time it was a disgrace to a gentleman to ride on one of these
creatures: but the Abyssinians, on the contrary, the nearer they are to
the person of Prester John, love to be mounted upon large mules, for the
greatest dignity and grandeur.

Xenophon tells us, that the Assyrians were fain to keep their horses
fettered in the stable, they were so fierce and vicious; and that it
required so much time to loose and harness them, that to avoid any
disorder this tedious preparation might bring upon them in case of
surprise, they never sat down in their camp till it was first well
fortified with ditches and ramparts.  His Cyrus, who was so great a
master in all manner of horse service, kept his horses to their due work,
and never suffered them to have anything to eat till first they had
earned it by the sweat of some kind of exercise.  The Scythians when in
the field and in scarcity of provisions used to let their horses blood,
which they drank, and sustained themselves by that diet:

               "Venit et epoto Sarmata pastus equo."

          ["The Scythian comes, who feeds on horse-flesh"
          --Martial, De Spectaculis Libey, Epigr. iii. 4.]

Those of Crete, being besieged by Metellus, were in so great necessity
for drink that they were fain to quench their thirst with their horses
urine.--[Val.  Max., vii. 6, ext. 1.]

To shew how much cheaper the Turkish armies support themselves than our
European forces, 'tis said that besides the soldiers drink nothing but
water and eat nothing but rice and salt flesh pulverised (of which every
one may easily carry about with him a month's provision), they know how
to feed upon the blood of their horses as well as the Muscovite and
Tartar, and salt it for their use.

These new-discovered people of the Indies [Mexico and Yucatan  D.W.],
when the Spaniards first landed amongst them, had so great an opinion
both of the men and horses, that they looked upon the first as gods and
the other as animals ennobled above their nature; insomuch that after
they were subdued, coming to the men to sue for peace and pardon, and to
bring them gold and provisions, they failed not to offer of the same to
the horses, with the same kind of harangue to them they had made to the
others: interpreting their neighing for a language of truce and
friendship.

In the other Indies, to ride upon an elephant was the first and royal
place of honour; the second to ride in a coach with four horses; the
third to ride upon a camel; and the last and least honour to be carried
or drawn by one horse only.  Some one of our late writers tells us that
he has been in countries in those parts where they ride upon oxen with
pads, stirrups, and bridles, and very much at their ease.

Quintus Fabius Maximus Rullianus, in a battle with the Samnites, seeing
his horse, after three or four charges, had failed of breaking into the
enemy's battalion, took this course, to make them unbridle all their
horses and spur their hardest, so that having nothing to check their
career, they might through weapons and men open the way to his foot, who
by that means gave them a bloody defeat.  The same command was given by
Quintus Fulvius Flaccus against the Celtiberians:

     ["You will do your business with greater advantage of your horses'
     strength, if you send them unbridled upon the enemy, as it is
     recorded the Roman horse to their great glory have often done; their
     bits being taken off, they charged through and again back through
     the enemy's ranks with great slaughter, breaking down all their
     spears."--Idem, xl. 40.]

The Duke of Muscovy was anciently obliged to pay this reverence to the
Tartars, that when they sent an embassy to him he went out to meet them
on foot, and presented them with a goblet of mares' milk (a beverage of
greatest esteem amongst them), and if, in drinking, a drop fell by chance
upon their horse's mane, he was bound to lick it off with his tongue.
The army that Bajazet had sent into Russia was overwhelmed with so
dreadful a tempest of snow, that to shelter and preserve themselves from
the cold, many killed and embowelled their horses, to creep into their
bellies and enjoy the benefit of that vital heat.  Bajazet, after that
furious battle wherein he was overthrown by Tamerlane,  was in a hopeful
way of securing his own person by the fleetness of an Arabian mare he had
under him, had he not been constrained to let her drink her fill at the
ford of a river in his way, which rendered her so heavy and indisposed,
that he was afterwards easily overtaken by those that pursued him.  They
say, indeed, that to let a horse stale takes him off his mettle, but as
to drinking, I should rather have thought it would refresh him.

Croesus, marching his army through certain waste lands near Sardis, met
with an infinite number of serpents, which the horses devoured with great
appetite, and which Herodotus says was a prodigy of ominous portent to
his affairs.

We call a horse entire, that has his mane and ears so, and no other will
pass muster.  The Lacedaemonians, having defeated the Athenians in
Sicily, returning triumphant from the victory into the city of Syracuse,
amongst other insolences, caused all the horses they had taken to be
shorn and led in triumph.  Alexander fought with a nation called Dahas,
whose discipline it was to march two and two together armed on one horse,
to the war; and being in fight, one of them alighted, and so they fought
on horseback and on foot, one after another by turns.

I do not think that for graceful riding any nation in the world excels
the French.  A good horseman, according to our way of speaking, seems
rather to have respect to the courage of the man than address in riding.
Of all that ever I saw, the most knowing in that art, who had the best
seat and the best method in breaking horses, was Monsieur de Carnavalet,
who served our King Henry II.

I have seen a man ride with both his feet upon the saddle, take off his
saddle, and at his return take it up again and replace it, riding all the
while full speed; having galloped over a cap, make at it very good shots
backwards with his bow; take up anything from the ground, setting one
foot on the ground and the other in the stirrup: with twenty other ape's
tricks, which he got his living by.

There has been seen in my time at Constantinople two men upon one horse,
who, in the height of its speed, would throw themselves off and into the
saddle again by turn; and one who bridled and saddled his horse with
nothing but his teeth; an other who betwixt two horses, one foot upon one
saddle and the other upon another, carrying the other man upon his
shoulders, would ride full career, the other standing bolt upright upon
and making very good shots with his bow; several who would ride full
speed with their heels upward, and their heads upon the saddle betwixt
several scimitars, with the points upwards, fixed in the harness.  When I
was a boy, the prince of Sulmona, riding an unbroken horse at Naples,
prone to all sorts of action, held reals--[A small coin of Spain, the
Two Sicilies, &c.]--under his knees and toes, as if they had been nailed
there, to shew the firmness of his seat.




CHAPTER XLIX

OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS

I should willingly pardon our people for admitting no other pattern or
rule of perfection than their own peculiar manners and customs; for 'tis
a common vice, not of the vulgar only, but almost of all men, to walk in
the beaten road their ancestors have trod before them.  I am content,
when they see Fabricius or Laelius, that they look upon their countenance
and behaviour as barbarous, seeing they are neither clothed nor fashioned
according to our mode.  But I find fault with their singular indiscretion
in suffering themselves to be so blinded and imposed upon by the
authority of the present usage as every month to alter their opinion, if
custom so require, and that they should so vary their judgment in their
own particular concern.  When they wore the busk of their doublets up as
high as their breasts, they stiffly maintained that they were in their
proper place; some years after it was slipped down betwixt their thighs,
and then they could laugh at the former fashion as uneasy and
intolerable.  The fashion now in use makes them absolutely condemn the
other two with so great resolution and so universal consent, that a man
would think there was a certain kind of madness crept in amongst them,
that infatuates their understandings to this strange degree.  Now, seeing
that our change of fashions is so prompt and sudden, that the inventions
of all the tailors in the world cannot furnish out new whim-whams enow to
feed our vanity withal, there will often be a necessity that the despised
forms must again come in vogue, these immediately after fall into the
same contempt; and that the same judgment must, in the space of fifteen
or twenty years, take up half-a-dozen not only divers but contrary
opinions, with an incredible lightness and inconstancy; there is not any
of us so discreet, who suffers not himself to be gulled with this
contradiction, and both in external and internal sight to be insensibly
blinded.

I wish to muster up here some old customs that I have in memory, some of
them the same with ours, the others different, to the end that, bearing
in mind this continual variation of human things, we may have our
judgment more clearly and firmly settled.

The thing in use amongst us of fighting with rapier and cloak was in
practice amongst the Romans also:

          "Sinistras sagis involvunt, gladiosque distringunt,"

     ["They wrapt their cloaks upon the left arm, and drew their
     swords."--De Bello Civili, i. 75.]

says Caesar; and he observes a vicious custom of our nation, that
continues yet amongst us, which is to stop passengers we meet upon the
road, to compel them to give an account who they are, and to take it for
an affront and just cause of quarrel if they refuse to do it.

At the Baths, which the ancients made use of every day before they went
to dinner, and as frequently as we wash our hands, they at first only
bathed their arms and legs; but afterwards, and by a custom that has
continued for many ages in most nations of the world, they bathed stark
naked in mixed and perfumed water, looking upon it as a great simplicity
to bathe in mere water.  The most delicate and affected perfumed
themselves all over three or four times a day.  They often caused their
hair to be pinched off, as the women of France have some time since taken
up a custom to do their foreheads,

          "Quod pectus, quod crura tibi, quod brachia veilis,"

     ["You pluck the hairs out of your breast, your arms, and thighs."
     --Martial, ii.  62, i.]

though they had ointments proper for that purpose:

          "Psilotro nitet, aut acids latet oblita creta."

     ["She shines with unguents, or with chalk dissolved in vinegar."
     --Idem, vi.  93, 9.]

They delighted to lie soft, and alleged it as a great testimony of
hardiness to lie upon a mattress.  They ate lying upon beds, much after
the manner of the Turks in this age:

          "Inde thoro pater AEneas sic orsus ab alto."

     ["Thus Father AEneas, from his high bed of state, spoke."
     --AEneid, ii. 2.]

And 'tis said of the younger Cato, that after the battle of Pharsalia,
being entered into a melancholy disposition at the ill posture of the
public affairs, he took his repasts always sitting, assuming a strict and
austere course of life.  It was also their custom to kiss the hands of
great persons; the more to honour and caress them.  And meeting with
friends, they always kissed in salutation, as do the Venetians:

          "Gratatusque darem cum dulcibus oscula verbis."

          ["And kindest words I would mingle with kisses."
          --Ovid, De Pont., iv. 9, 13]

In petitioning or saluting any great man, they used to lay their hands
upon his knees.  Pasicles the philosopher, brother of Crates, instead of
laying his hand upon the knee laid it upon the private parts, and being
roughly repulsed by him to whom he made that indecent compliment:
"What," said he, "is not that part your own as well as the other?"
--[Diogenes Laertius, vi. 89.]--They used to eat fruit, as we do, after
dinner.  They wiped their fundaments (let the ladies, if they please,
mince it smaller) with a sponge, which is the reason that 'spongia' is a
smutty word in Latin; which sponge was fastened to the end of a stick, as
appears by the story of him who, as he was led along to be thrown to the
wild beasts in the sight of the people, asking leave to do his business,
and having no other way to despatch himself, forced the sponge and stick
down his throat and choked himself.--[Seneca, Ep., 70.] They used to
wipe, after coition, with perfumed wool:

          "At tibi nil faciam; sed Iota mentula lana."

They had in the streets of Rome vessels and little tubs for passengers to
urine in:

          "Pusi saepe lacum propter se, ac dolia curta.
          Somno devincti, credunt extollere vestem."

     ["The little boys in their sleep often think they are near the
     public urinal, and raise their coats to make use of it."
     --Lucretius, iv.]

They had collation betwixt meals, and had in summer cellars of snow to
cool their wine; and some there were who made use of snow in winter, not
thinking their wine cool enough, even at that cold season of the year.
The men of quality had their cupbearers and carvers, and their buffoons
to make them sport.  They had their meat served up in winter upon chafing
dishes, which were set upon the table, and had portable kitchens (of
which I myself have seen some) wherein all their service was carried
about with them:

               "Has vobis epulas habete, lauti
               Nos offendimur ambulante caena."

     ["Do you, if you please, esteem these feasts: we do not like the
     ambulatory suppers."--Martial, vii. 48, 4.]

In summer they had a contrivance to bring fresh and clear rills through
their lower rooms, wherein were great store of living fish, which the
guests took out with their own hands to be dressed every man according to
his own liking.  Fish has ever had this pre-eminence, and keeps it still,
that the grandees, as to them, all pretend to be cooks; and indeed the
taste is more delicate than that of flesh, at least to my fancy.  But in
all sorts of magnificence, debauchery, and voluptuous inventions of
effeminacy and expense, we do, in truth, all we can to parallel them;
for our wills are as corrupt as theirs: but we want ability to equal
them.  Our force is no more able to reach them in their vicious, than in
their virtuous, qualities, for both the one and the other proceeded from
a vigour of soul which was without comparison greater in them than in us;
and souls, by how much the weaker they are, by so much have they less
power to do either very well or very ill.

The highest place of honour amongst them was the middle.  The name going
before, or following after, either in writing or speaking, had no
signification of grandeur, as is evident by their writings; they will as
soon say Oppius and Caesar, as Caesar and Oppius; and me and thee, as
thee and me.  This is the reason that made me formerly take notice in the
life of Flaminius, in our French Plutarch, of one passage, where it seems
as if the author, speaking of the jealousy of honour betwixt the
AEtolians and Romans, about the winning of a battle they had with their
joined forces obtained, made it of some importance, that in the Greek
songs they had put the AEtolians before the Romans: if there be no
amphibology in the words of the French translation.

The ladies, in their baths, made no scruple of admitting men amongst
them, and moreover made use of their serving-men to rub and anoint them:

          "Inguina succinctus nigri tibi servus aluta
          Stat, quoties calidis nuda foveris aquis."

     ["A slave--his middle girded with a black apron--stands before you,
     when, naked, you take a hot bath."--Martial, vii. 35, i.]

They all powdered themselves with a certain powder, to moderate their
sweats.

The ancient Gauls, says Sidonius Apollinaris, wore their hair long before
and the hinder part of the head shaved, a fashion that begins to revive
in this vicious and effeminate age.

The Romans used to pay the watermen their fare at their first stepping
into the boat, which we never do till after landing:

               "Dum aes exigitur, dum mula ligatur,
               Tota abit hora."

     ["Whilst the fare's paying, and the mule is being harnessed, a whole
     hour's time is past."--Horace, Sat. i. 5, 13.]

The women used to lie on the side of the bed next the wall: and for that
reason they called Caesar,

                    "Spondam regis Nicomedis,"

     ["The bed of King Nicomedes."--Suetonius, Life of Caesar, 49.]

They took breath in their drinking, and watered their wine

                   "Quis puer ocius
                    Restinguet ardentis Falerni
                    Pocula praetereunte lympha?"

     ["What boy will quickly come and cool the heat of the Falernian
     wine with clear water?"--Horace, Od., ii. z, 18.]

And the roguish looks and gestures of our lackeys were also in use
amongst them:

          "O Jane, a tergo quern nulls ciconia pinsit,
          Nec manus, auriculas imitari est mobilis albas,
          Nec lingua, quantum sitiat canis Appula, tantum."

     ["O Janus, whom no crooked fingers, simulating a stork, peck at
     behind your back, whom no quick hands deride behind you, by
     imitating the motion of the white ears of the ass, against whom no
     mocking tongue is thrust out, as the tongue of the thirsty Apulian
     dog."--Persius, i. 58.]

The Argian and Roman ladies mourned in white, as ours did formerly and
should do still, were I to govern in this point.  But there are whole
books on this subject.




CHAPTER L

OF DEMOCRITUS AND HERACLITUS

The judgment is an utensil proper for all subjects, and will have an oar
in everything: which is the reason, that in these Essays I take hold of
all occasions where, though it happen to be a subject I do not very well
understand, I try, however, sounding it at a distance, and finding it too
deep for my stature, I keep me on the shore; and this knowledge that a
man can proceed no further, is one effect of its virtue, yes, one of
those of which it is most proud.  One while in an idle and frivolous
subject, I try to find out matter whereof to compose a body, and then to
prop and support it; another while, I employ it in a noble subject, one
that has been tossed and tumbled by a thousand hands, wherein a man can
scarce possibly introduce anything of his own, the way being so beaten on
every side that he must of necessity walk in the steps of another: in
such a case, 'tis the work of the judgment to take the way that seems
best, and of a thousand paths, to determine that this or that is the
best.  I leave the choice of my arguments to fortune, and take that she
first presents to me; they are all alike to me, I never design to go
through any of them; for I never see all of anything: neither do they who
so largely promise to show it others.  Of a hundred members and faces
that everything has, I take one, onewhile to look it over only, another
while to ripple up the skin, and sometimes to pinch it to the bones: I
give a stab, not so wide but as deep as I can, and am for the most part
tempted to take it in hand by some new light I discover in it.  Did I
know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to
the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here
one word and there another, patterns cut from several pieces and
scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not
responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without
varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and
uncertainty, and to my own governing method, ignorance.

All motion discovers us: the very same soul of Caesar, that made itself
so conspicuous in marshalling and commanding the battle of Pharsalia, was
also seen as solicitous and busy in the softer affairs of love and
leisure.  A man makes a judgment of a horse, not only by seeing him when
he is showing off his paces, but by his very walk, nay, and by seeing him
stand in the stable.

Amongst the functions of the soul, there are some of a lower and meaner
form; he who does not see her in those inferior offices as well as in
those of nobler note, never fully discovers her; and, peradventure, she
is best shown where she moves her simpler pace.  The winds of passions
take most hold of her in her highest flights; and the rather by reason
that she wholly applies herself to, and exercises her whole virtue upon,
every particular subject, and never handles more than one thing at a
time, and that not according to it, but according to herself.  Things in
respect to themselves have, peradventure, their weight, measures, and
conditions; but when we once take them into us, the soul forms them as
she pleases.  Death is terrible to Cicero, coveted by Cato, indifferent
to Socrates.  Health, conscience, authority, knowledge, riches, beauty,
and their contraries, all strip themselves at their entering into us, and
receive a new robe, and of another fashion, from the soul; and of what
colour, brown, bright, green, dark, and of what quality, sharp, sweet,
deep, or superficial, as best pleases each of them, for they are not
agreed upon any common standard of forms, rules, or proceedings; every
one is a queen in her own dominions.  Let us, therefore, no more excuse
ourselves upon the external qualities of things; it belongs to us to give
ourselves an account of them.  Our good or ill has no other dependence
but on ourselves.  'Tis there that our offerings and our vows are due,
and not to fortune she has no power over our manners; on the contrary,
they draw and make her follow in their train, and cast her in their own
mould.  Why should not I judge of Alexander at table, ranting and
drinking at the prodigious rate he sometimes used to do?

Or, if he played at chess?  what string of his soul was not touched by
this idle and childish game?  I hate and avoid it, because it is not play
enough, that it is too grave and serious a diversion, and I am ashamed to
lay out as much thought and study upon it as would serve to much better
uses.  He did not more pump his brains about his glorious expedition into
the Indies, nor than another in unravelling a passage upon which depends
the safety of mankind.  To what a degree does this ridiculous diversion
molest the soul, when all her faculties are summoned together upon this
trivial account! and how fair an opportunity she herein gives every one
to know and to make a right judgment of himself?  I do not more
thoroughly sift myself in any other posture than this: what passion are
we exempted from in it?  Anger, spite, malice, impatience, and a vehement
desire of getting the better in a concern wherein it were more excusable
to be ambitious of being overcome; for to be eminent, to excel above the
common rate in frivolous things, nowise befits a man of honour.  What I
say in this example may be said in all others.  Every particle, every
employment of man manifests him equally with any other.

Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first,
finding human condition ridiculous and vain, never appeared abroad but
with a jeering and laughing countenance; whereas Heraclitus commiserating
that same condition of ours, appeared always with a sorrowful look, and
tears in his eyes:

               "Alter
               Ridebat, quoties a limine moverat unum
               Protuleratque pedem; flebat contrarius alter."

     ["The one always, as often as he had stepped one pace from his
     threshold, laughed, the other always wept."--Juvenal, Sat., x. 28.]

          [Or, as Voltaire: "Life is a comedy to those who think;
          a tragedy to those who feel."  D.W.]

I am clearly for the first humour; not because it is more pleasant to
laugh than to weep, but because it expresses more contempt and
condemnation than the other, and I think we can never be despised
according to our full desert.  Compassion and bewailing seem to imply
some esteem of and value for the thing bemoaned; whereas the things we
laugh at are by that expressed to be of no moment.  I do not think that
we are so unhappy as we are vain, or have in us so much malice as folly;
we are not so full of mischief as inanity; nor so miserable as we are
vile and mean.  And therefore Diogenes, who passed away his time in
rolling himself in his tub, and made nothing of the great Alexander,
esteeming us no better than flies or bladders puffed up with wind, was a
sharper and more penetrating, and, consequently in my opinion, a juster
judge than Timon, surnamed the Man-hater; for what a man hates he lays to
heart.  This last was an enemy to all mankind, who passionately desired
our ruin, and avoided our conversation as dangerous, proceeding from
wicked and depraved natures: the other valued us so little that we could
neither trouble nor infect him by our example; and left us to herd one
with another, not out of fear, but from contempt of our society:
concluding us as incapable of doing good as evil.

Of the same strain was Statilius' answer, when Brutus courted him into
the conspiracy against Caesar; he was satisfied that the enterprise was
just, but he did not think mankind worthy of a wise man's concern';
according to the doctrine of Hegesias, who said, that a wise man ought to
do nothing but for himself, forasmuch as he only was worthy of it: and to
the saying of Theodorus, that it was not reasonable a wise man should
hazard himself for his country, and endanger wisdom for a company of
fools.  Our condition is as ridiculous as risible.




CHAPTER LI

OF THE VANITY OF WORDS

A rhetorician of times past said, that to make little things appear great
was his profession.  This was a shoemaker, who can make a great shoe for
a little foot.--[A saying of Agesilaus.]--They would in Sparta have
sent such a fellow to be whipped for making profession of a tricky and
deceitful act; and I fancy that Archidamus, who was king of that country,
was a little surprised at the answer of Thucydides, when inquiring of
him, which was the better wrestler, Pericles, or he, he replied, that it
was hard to affirm; for when I have thrown him, said he, he always
persuades the spectators that he had no fall and carries away the prize.
--[Quintilian, ii.  15.]--The women who paint, pounce, and plaster up
their ruins, filling up their wrinkles and deformities, are less to
blame, because it is no great matter whether we see them in their natural
complexions; whereas these make it their business to deceive not our
sight only but our judgments, and to adulterate and corrupt the very
essence of things.  The republics that have maintained themselves in a
regular and well-modelled government, such as those of Lacedaemon and
Crete, had orators in no very great esteem.  Aristo wisely defined
rhetoric to be "a science to persuade the people;" Socrates and Plato
"an art to flatter and deceive."  And those who deny it in the general
description, verify it throughout in their precepts.  The Mohammedans
will not suffer their children to be instructed in it, as being useless,
and the Athenians, perceiving of how pernicious consequence the practice
of it was, it being in their city of universal esteem, ordered the
principal part, which is to move the affections, with their exordiums and
perorations, to be taken away.  'Tis an engine invented to manage and
govern a disorderly and tumultuous rabble, and that never is made use of,
but like physic to the sick, in a discomposed state.  In those where the
vulgar or the ignorant, or both together, have been all-powerful and able
to give the law, as in those of Athens, Rhodes, and Rome, and where the
public affairs have been in a continual tempest of commotion, to such
places have the orators always repaired.  And in truth, we shall find few
persons in those republics who have pushed their fortunes to any great
degree of eminence without the assistance of eloquence.

Pompey, Caesar, Crassus, Lucullus, Lentulus, Metellus, thence took their
chiefest spring, to mount to that degree of authority at which they at
last arrived, making it of greater use to them than arms, contrary to the
opinion of better times; for, L. Volumnius speaking publicly in favour of
the election of Q. Fabius and Pub. Decius, to the consular dignity:
"These are men," said he, "born for war and great in execution; in the
combat of the tongue altogether wanting; spirits truly consular.  The
subtle, eloquent, and learned are only good for the city, to make
praetors of, to administer justice."--[Livy, x. 22.]

Eloquence most flourished at Rome when the public affairs were in the
worst condition and most disquieted with intestine commotions; as a free
and untilled soil bears the worst weeds.  By which it should seem that a
monarchical government has less need of it than any other: for the
stupidity and facility natural to the common people, and that render them
subject to be turned and twined and, led by the ears by this charming
harmony of words, without weighing or considering the truth and reality
of things by the force of reason: this facility, I say, is not easily
found in a single person, and it is also more easy by good education and
advice to secure him from the impression of this poison.  There was never
any famous orator known to come out of Persia or Macedon.

I have entered into this discourse upon the occasion of an Italian I
lately received into my service, and who was clerk of the kitchen to the
late Cardinal Caraffa till his death.  I put this fellow upon an account
of his office: when he fell to discourse of this palate-science, with
such a settled countenance and magisterial gravity, as if he had been
handling some profound point of divinity.  He made a learned distinction
of the several sorts of appetites; of that a man has before he begins to
eat, and of those after the second and third service; the means simply to
satisfy the first, and then to raise and actuate the other two; the
ordering of the sauces, first in general, and then proceeded to the
qualities of the ingredients and their effects; the differences of salads
according to their seasons, those which ought to be served up hot, and
which cold; the manner of their garnishment and decoration to render them
acceptable to the eye.  After which he entered upon the order of the
whole service, full of weighty and important considerations:

               "Nec minimo sane discrimine refert,
               Quo gestu lepores, et quo gallina secetur;"

     ["Nor with less discrimination observes how we should carve a hare,
     and how a hen." or, ("Nor with the least discrimination relates how
     we should carve hares, and how cut up a hen.)"
     --Juvenal, Sat., v. 123.]

and all this set out with lofty and magnificent words, the very same we
make use of when we discourse of the government of an empire.  Which
learned lecture of my man brought this of Terence into my memory:

         "Hoc salsum est, hoc adustum est, hoc lautum est, parum:
          Illud recte: iterum sic memento: sedulo
          Moneo, qux possum, pro mea sapientia.
          Postremo, tanquam in speculum, in patinas,
          Demea, Inspicere jubeo, et moneo, quid facto usus sit."

     ["This is too salt, that's burnt, that's not washed enough; that's
     well; remember to do so another time.  Thus do I ever advise them to
     have things done properly, according to my capacity; and lastly,
     Demea, I command my cooks to look into every dish as if it were a
     mirror, and tell them what they should do."
     --Terence, Adelph., iii. 3, 71.]

And yet even the Greeks themselves very much admired and highly applauded
the order and disposition that Paulus AEmilius observed in the feast he
gave them at his return from Macedon.  But I do not here speak of
effects, I speak of words only.

I do not know whether it may have the same operation upon other men that
it has upon me, but when I hear our architects thunder out their bombast
words of pilasters, architraves, and cornices, of the Corinthian and
Doric orders, and suchlike jargon, my imagination is presently possessed
with the palace of Apollidon; when, after all, I find them but the paltry
pieces of my own kitchen door.

To hear men talk of metonomies, metaphors, and allegories, and other
grammar words, would not one think they signified some rare and exotic
form of speaking?  And yet they are phrases that come near to the babble
of my chambermaid.

And this other is a gullery of the same stamp, to call the offices of our
kingdom by the lofty titles of the Romans, though they have no similitude
of function, and still less of authority and power.  And this also, which
I doubt will one day turn to the reproach of this age of ours, unworthily
and indifferently to confer upon any we think fit the most glorious
surnames with which antiquity honoured but one or two persons in several
ages.  Plato carried away the surname of Divine, by so universal a
consent that never any one repined at it, or attempted to take it from
him; and yet the Italians, who pretend, and with good reason, to more
sprightly wits and sounder sense than the other nations of their time,
have lately bestowed the same title upon Aretin, in whose writings, save
tumid phrases set out with smart periods, ingenious indeed but
far-fetched and fantastic, and the eloquence, be it what it may, I see
nothing in him above the ordinary writers of his time, so far is he from
approaching the ancient divinity.  And we make nothing of giving the
surname of great to princes who have nothing more than ordinary in them.




CHAPTER LII

OF THE PARSIMONY OF THE ANCIENTS

Attilius Regulus, general of the Roman army in Africa, in the height of
all his glory and victories over the Carthaginians, wrote to the Republic
to acquaint them that a certain hind he had left in trust with his
estate, which was in all but seven acres of land, had run away with all
his instruments of husbandry, and entreating therefore, that they would
please to call him home that he might take order in his own affairs, lest
his wife and children should suffer by this disaster.  Whereupon the
Senate appointed another to manage his business, caused his losses to be
made good, and ordered his family to be maintained at the public expense.

The elder Cato, returning consul from Spain, sold his warhorse to save
the money it would have cost in bringing it back by sea into Italy; and
being Governor of Sardinia, he made all his visits on foot, without other
train than one officer of the Republic who carried his robe and a censer
for sacrifices, and for the most part carried his trunk himself.  He
bragged that he had never worn a gown that cost above ten crowns, nor had
ever sent above tenpence to the market for one day's provision; and that
as to his country houses, he had not one that was rough-cast on the
outside.

Scipio AEmilianus, after two triumphs and two consulships, went an
embassy with no more than seven servants in his train.  'Tis said that
Homer had never more than one, Plato three, and Zeno, founder of the sect
of Stoics, none at all.  Tiberius Gracchus was allowed but fivepence
halfpenny a day when employed as public minister about the public
affairs, and being at that time the greatest man of Rome.




CHAPTER LIII

OF A SAYING OF CAESAR

If we would sometimes bestow a little consideration upon ourselves, and
employ the time we spend in prying into other men's actions, and
discovering things without us, in examining our own abilities we should
soon perceive of how infirm and decaying material this fabric of ours is
composed.  Is it not a singular testimony of imperfection that we cannot
establish our satisfaction in any one thing, and that even our own fancy
and desire should deprive us of the power to choose what is most proper
and useful for us?  A very good proof of this is the great dispute that
has ever been amongst the philosophers, of finding out man's sovereign
good, that continues yet, and will eternally continue, without solution
or accord:

              "Dum abest quod avemus, id exsuperare videtur
               Caetera; post aliud, quum contigit illud, avemus,
               Et sitis aequa tenet."

     ["While that which we desire is wanting, it seems to surpass all the
     rest; then, when we have got it, we want something else; 'tis ever
     the same thirst"--Lucretius, iii. 1095.]

Whatever it is that falls into our knowledge and possession, we find that
it satisfies not, and we still pant after things to come and unknown,
inasmuch as those present do not suffice for us; not that, in my
judgment, they have not in them wherewith to do it, but because we seize
them with an unruly and immoderate haste:

         "Nam quum vidit hic, ad victum qux flagitat usus,
          Et per quae possent vitam consistere tutam,
          Omnia jam ferme mortalibus esse parata;
          Divitiis homines, et honore, et laude potentes
          Aflluere, atque bona natorum excellere fama;
          Nec minus esse domi cuiquam tamen anxia corda,
          Atque animi ingratis vitam vexare querelis
          Causam, quae infestis cogit saevire querelis,
          Intellegit ibi; vitium vas efficere ipsum,
          Omniaque, illius vitio, corrumpier intus,
          Qux collata foris et commoda quomque venirent."

     ["For when he saw that almost all things necessarily required for
     subsistence, and which may render life comfortable, are already
     prepared to their hand, that men may abundantly attain wealth,
     honour, praise, may rejoice in the reputation of their children, yet
     that, notwithstanding, every one has none the less in his heart and
     home anxieties and a mind enslaved by wearing complaints, he saw
     that the vessel itself was in fault, and that all good things which
     were brought into it from without were spoilt by its own
     imperfections."--Lucretius, vi. 9.]

Our appetite is irresolute and fickle; it can neither keep nor enjoy
anything with a good grace: and man concluding it to be the fault of the
things he is possessed of, fills himself with and feeds upon the idea of
things he neither knows nor understands, to which he devotes his hopes
and his desires, paying them all reverence and honour, according to the
saying of Caesar:

          "Communi fit vitio naturae, ut invisis, latitantibus
          atque incognitis rebus magis confidamas,
          vehementiusque exterreamur."

     ["'Tis the common vice of nature, that we at once repose most
     confidence, and receive the greatest apprehensions, from things
     unseen, concealed, and unknown."--De Bello Civil, xi. 4.]




CHAPTER LIV

OF VAIN SUBTLETIES

There are a sort of little knacks and frivolous subtleties from which men
sometimes expect to derive reputation and applause: as poets, who compose
whole poems with every line beginning with the same letter; we see the
shapes of eggs, globes, wings, and hatchets cut out by the ancient Greeks
by the measure of their verses, making them longer or shorter, to
represent such or such a figure.  Of this nature was his employment who
made it his business to compute into how many several orders the letters
of the alphabet might be transposed, and found out that incredible number
mentioned in Plutarch.  I am mightily pleased with the humour of him,

     ["Alexander, as may be seen in Quintil., Institut.  Orat., lib.
     ii., cap. 20, where he defines Maratarexvia to be a certain
     unnecessary imitation of art, which really does neither good nor
     harm, but is as unprofitable and ridiculous as was the labour of
     that man who had so perfectly learned to cast small peas through the
     eye of a needle at a good distance that he never missed one, and was
     justly rewarded for it, as is said, by Alexander, who saw the
     performance, with a bushel of peas."--Coste.]

who having a man brought before him that had learned to throw a grain of
millet with such dexterity and assurance as never to miss the eye of a
needle; and being afterwards entreated to give something for the reward
of so rare a performance, he pleasantly, and in my opinion justly,
ordered a certain number of bushels of the same grain to be delivered to
him, that he might not want wherewith to exercise so famous an art.  'Tis
a strong evidence of a weak judgment when men approve of things for their
being rare and new, or for their difficulty, where worth and usefulness
are not conjoined to recommend them.

I come just now from playing with my own family at who could find out the
most things that hold by their two extremities; as Sire, which is a title
given to the greatest person in the nation, the king, and also to the
vulgar, as merchants, but never to any degree of men between.  The women
of great quality are called Dames, inferior gentlewomen, Demoiselles, and
the meanest sort of women, Dames, as the first.  The cloth of state over
our tables is not permitted but in the palaces of princes and in taverns.
Democritus said, that gods and beasts had sharper sense than men, who are
of a middle form.  The Romans wore the same habit at funerals and feasts.
It is most certain that an extreme fear and an extreme ardour of courage
equally trouble and relax the belly.  The nickname of Trembling with
which they surnamed Sancho XII., king of Navarre, tells us that valour
will cause a trembling in the limbs as well as fear.  Those who were
arming that king, or some other person, who upon the like occasion was
wont to be in the same disorder, tried to compose him by representing the
danger less he was going to engage himself in: "You understand me ill,"
said he, "for could my flesh know the danger my courage will presently
carry it into, it would sink down to the ground."  The faintness that
surprises us from frigidity or dislike in the exercises of Venus are also
occasioned by a too violent desire and an immoderate heat.  Extreme
coldness and extreme heat boil and roast.  Aristotle says, that sows of
lead will melt and run with cold and the rigour of winter just as with a
vehement heat.  Desire and satiety fill all the gradations above and
below pleasure with pain.  Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre
of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.  The
wise control and triumph over ill, the others know it not: these last
are, as a man may say, on this side of accidents, the others are beyond
them, who after having well weighed and considered their qualities,
measured and judged them what they are, by virtue of a vigorous soul leap
out of their reach; they disdain and trample them underfoot, having a
solid and well-fortified soul, against which the darts of fortune, coming
to strike, must of necessity rebound and blunt themselves, meeting with a
body upon which they can fix no impression; the ordinary and middle
condition of men are lodged betwixt these two extremities, consisting of
such as perceive evils, feel them, and are not able to support them.
Infancy and decrepitude meet in the imbecility of the brain; avarice and
profusion in the same thirst and desire of getting.

A man may say with some colour of truth that there is an Abecedarian
ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes
after it: an ignorance that knowledge creates and begets, at the same
time that it despatches and destroys the first.  Of mean understandings,
little inquisitive, and little instructed, are made good Christians, who
by reverence and obedience simply believe and are constant in their
belief.  In the average understandings and the middle sort of capacities,
the error of opinion is begotten; they follow the appearance of the first
impression, and have some colour of reason on their side to impute our
walking on in the old beaten path to simplicity and stupidity, meaning us
who have not informed ourselves by study.  The higher and nobler souls,
more solid and clear-sighted, make up another sort of true believers, who
by a long and religious investigation of truth, have obtained a clearer
and more penetrating light into the Scriptures, and have discovered the
mysterious and divine secret of our ecclesiastical polity; and yet we see
some, who by the middle step, have arrived at that supreme degree with
marvellous fruit and confirmation, as to the utmost limit of Christian
intelligence, and enjoy their victory with great spiritual consolation,
humble acknowledgment of the divine favour, reformation of manners, and
singular modesty.  I do not intend with these to rank those others, who
to clear themselves from all suspicion of their former errors and to
satisfy us that they are sound and firm, render themselves extremely
indiscreet and unjust, in the carrying on our cause, and blemish it with
infinite reproaches of violence and oppression.  The simple peasants are
good people, and so are the philosophers, or whatever the present age
calls them, men of strong and clear reason, and whose souls are enriched
with an ample instruction of profitable sciences.  The mongrels who have
disdained the first form of the ignorance of letters, and have not been
able to attain to the other (sitting betwixt two stools, as I and a great
many more of us do), are dangerous, foolish, and importunate; these are
they that trouble the world.  And therefore it is that I, for my own
part, retreat as much as I can towards the first and natural station,
whence I so vainly attempted to advance.

Popular and purely natural poesy

     ["The term poesie populaire was employed, for the first time, in the
     French language on this occasion.  Montaigne created the expression,
     and indicated its nature."--Ampere.]

has in it certain artless graces, by which she may come into comparison
with the greatest beauty of poetry perfected by art: as we see in our
Gascon villanels and the songs that are brought us from nations that have
no knowledge of any manner of science, nor so much as the use of writing.
The middle sort of poesy betwixt these two is despised, of no value,
honour, or esteem.

But seeing that the path once laid open to the fancy, I have found, as it
commonly falls out, that what we have taken for a difficult exercise and
a rare subject, prove to be nothing so, and that after the invention is
once warm, it finds out an infinite number of parallel examples.  I shall
only add this one--that, were these Essays of mine considerable enough to
deserve a critical judgment, it might then, I think, fall out that they
would not much take with common and vulgar capacities, nor be very
acceptable to the singular and excellent sort of men; the first would not
understand them enough, and the last too much; and so they may hover in
the middle region.



CHAPTER LV

OF SMELLS

It has been reported of some, as of Alexander the Great, that their sweat
exhaled an odoriferous smell, occasioned by some rare and extraordinary
constitution, of which Plutarch and others have been inquisitive into the
cause.  But the ordinary constitution of human bodies is quite otherwise,
and their best and chiefest excellency is to be exempt from smell.  Nay,
the sweetness even of the purest breath has nothing in it of greater
perfection than to be without any offensive smell, like those of
healthful children, which made Plautus say of a woman:

               "Mulier tum bene olet, ubi nihil olet."

          ["She smells sweetest, who smells not at all."
          --Plautus, Mostel, i. 3, 116.]

And such as make use of fine exotic perfumes are with good reason to be
suspected of some natural imperfection which they endeavour by these
odours to conceal.  To smell, though well, is to stink:

              "Rides nos, Coracine, nil olentes
               Malo, quam bene olere, nil olere."

     ["You laugh at us, Coracinus, because we are not scented; I would,
     rather than smell well, not smell at all."--Martial, vi. 55, 4.]

And elsewhere:

          "Posthume, non bene olet, qui bene semper olet."

     ["Posthumus, he who ever smells well does not smell well."
     --Idem, ii. 12, 14.]

I am nevertheless a great lover of good smells, and as much abominate the
ill ones, which also I scent at a greater distance, I think, than other
men:

              "Namque sagacius unus odoror,
               Polypus, an gravis hirsutis cubet hircus in aliis
               Quam canis acer, ubi latest sus."

     ["My nose is quicker to scent a fetid sore or a rank armpit, than a
     dog to smell out the hidden sow."--Horace, Epod., xii.  4.]

Of smells, the simple and natural seem to me the most pleasing.  Let the
ladies look to that, for 'tis chiefly their concern: amid the most
profound barbarism, the Scythian women, after bathing, were wont to
powder and crust their faces and all their bodies with a certain
odoriferous drug growing in their country, which being cleansed off, when
they came to have familiarity with men they were found perfumed and
sleek.  'Tis not to be believed how strangely all sorts of odours cleave
to me, and how apt my skin is to imbibe them.  He that complains of
nature that she has not furnished mankind with a vehicle to convey smells
to the nose had no reason; for they will do it themselves, especially to
me; my very mustachios, which are full, perform that office; for if I
stroke them but with my gloves or handkerchief, the smell will not out a
whole day; they manifest where I have been, and the close, luscious,
devouring, viscid melting kisses of youthful ardour in my wanton age left
a sweetness upon my lips for several hours after.  And yet I have ever
found myself little subject to epidemic diseases, that are caught, either
by conversing with the sick or bred by the contagion of the air, and have
escaped from those of my time, of which there have been several sorts in
our cities and armies.  We read of Socrates, that though he never
departed from Athens during the frequent plagues that infested the city,
he only was never infected.

Physicians might, I believe, extract greater utility from odours than
they do, for I have often observed that they cause an alteration in me
and work upon my spirits according to their several virtues; which makes
me approve of what is said, that the use of incense and perfumes in
churches, so ancient and so universally received in all nations and
religions, was intended to cheer us, and to rouse and purify the senses,
the better to fit us for contemplation.

I could have been glad, the better to judge of it, to have tasted the
culinary art of those cooks who had so rare a way of seasoning exotic
odours with the relish of meats; as it was particularly observed in the
service of the king of Tunis, who in our days--[Muley-Hassam, in 1543.]
--landed at Naples to have an interview with Charles the Emperor.  His
dishes were larded with odoriferous drugs, to that degree of expense that
the cookery of one peacock and two pheasants amounted to a hundred ducats
to dress them after their fashion; and when the carver came to cut them
up, not only the dining-room, but all the apartments of his palace and
the adjoining streets were filled with an aromatic vapour which did not
presently vanish.

My chiefest care in choosing my lodgings is always to avoid a thick and
stinking air; and those beautiful cities, Venice and Paris, very much
lessen the kindness I have for them, the one by the offensive smell of
her marshes, and the other of her dirt.




CHAPTER LVI

OF PRAYERS

I propose formless and undetermined fancies, like those who publish
doubtful questions, to be after a disputed upon in the schools, not to
establish truth but to seek it; and I submit them to the judgments of
those whose office it is to regulate, not my writings and actions only,
but moreover my very thoughts.  Let what I here set down meet with
correction or applause, it shall be of equal welcome and utility to me,
myself beforehand condemning as absurd and impious, if anything shall be
found, through ignorance or inadvertency, couched in this rhapsody,
contrary to the holy resolutions and prescriptions of the Catholic
Apostolic and Roman Church, into which I was born and in which I will
die.  And yet, always submitting to the authority of their censure, which
has an absolute power over me, I thus rashly venture at everything, as in
treating upon this present subject.

I know not if or no I am wrong, but since, by a particular favour of the
divine bounty, a certain form of prayer has been prescribed and dictated
to us, word by word, from the mouth of God Himself, I have ever been of
opinion that we ought to have it in more frequent use than we yet have;
and if I were worthy to advise, at the sitting down to and rising from
our tables, at our rising from and going to bed, and in every particular
action wherein prayer is used, I would that Christians always make use of
the Lord's Prayer, if not alone, yet at least always.  The Church may
lengthen and diversify prayers, according to the necessity of our
instruction, for I know very well that it is always the same in substance
and the same thing: but yet such a privilege ought to be given to that
prayer, that the people should have it continually in their mouths; for
it is most certain that all necessary petitions are comprehended in it,
and that it is infinitely proper for all occasions.  'Tis the only prayer
I use in all places and conditions, and which I still repeat instead of
changing; whence it also happens that I have no other so entirely by
heart as that.

It just now came into my mind, whence it is we should derive that error
of having recourse to God in all our designs and enterprises, to call Him
to our assistance in all sorts of affairs, and in all places where our
weakness stands in need of support, without considering whether the
occasion be just or otherwise; and to invoke His name and power, in what
state soever we are, or action we are engaged in, howsoever vicious.  He
is indeed, our sole and unique protector, and can do all things for us:
but though He is pleased to honour us with this sweet paternal alliance,
He is, notwithstanding, as just as He is good and mighty; and more often
exercises His justice than His power, and favours us according to that,
and not according to our petitions.

Plato in his Laws, makes three sorts of belief injurious to the gods;
"that there are none; that they concern not themselves about our affairs;
that they never refuse anything to our vows, offerings, and sacrifices."
The first of these errors (according to his opinion, never continued
rooted in any man from his infancy to his old age); the other two, he
confesses, men might be obstinate in.

God's justice and His power are inseparable; 'tis in vain we invoke His
power in an unjust cause.  We are to have our souls pure and clean, at
that moment at least wherein we pray to Him, and purified from all
vicious passions; otherwise we ourselves present Him the rods wherewith
to chastise us; instead of repairing anything we have done amiss, we
double the wickedness and the offence when we offer to Him, to whom we
are to sue for pardon, an affection full of irreverence and hatred.
Which makes me not very apt to applaud those whom I observe to be so
frequent on their knees, if the actions nearest to the prayer do not give
me some evidence of amendment and reformation:

              "Si, nocturnus adulter,
               Tempora Santonico velas adoperta cucullo."

     ["If a night adulterer, thou coverest thy head with a Santonic
     cowl."--Juvenal, Sat., viii.  144.--The Santones were the people
     who inhabited Saintonge in France, from whom the Romans derived the
     use of hoods or cowls covering the head and face.]

And the practice of a man who mixes devotion with an execrable life seems
in some sort more to be condemned than that of a man conformable to his
own propension and dissolute throughout; and for that reason it is that
our Church denies admittance to and communion with men obstinate and
incorrigible in any notorious wickedness.  We pray only by custom and for
fashion's sake; or rather, we read or pronounce our prayers aloud, which
is no better than an hypocritical show of devotion; and I am scandalised
to see a man cross himself thrice at the Benedicite, and as often at
Grace (and the more, because it is a sign I have in great veneration and
continual use, even when I yawn), and to dedicate all the other hours of
the day to acts of malice, avarice, and injustice.  One hour to God, the
rest to the devil, as if by composition and compensation.  'Tis a wonder
to see actions so various in themselves succeed one another with such an
uniformity of method as not to interfere nor suffer any alteration, even
upon the very confines and passes from the one to the other.  What a
prodigious conscience must that be that can be at quiet within itself
whilst it harbours under the same roof, with so agreeing and so calm a
society, both the crime and the judge?

A man whose whole meditation is continually working upon nothing but
impurity which he knows to be so odious to Almighty God, what can he say
when he comes to speak to Him?  He draws back, but immediately falls into
a relapse.  If the object of divine justice and the presence of his Maker
did, as he pretends, strike and chastise his soul, how short soever the
repentance might be, the very fear of offending the Infinite Majesty
would so often present itself to his imagination that he would soon see
himself master of those vices that are most natural and vehement in him.
But what shall we say of those who settle their whole course of life upon
the profit and emolument of sins, which they know to be mortal?  How many
trades and vocations have we admitted and countenanced amongst us, whose
very essence is vicious?  And he that, confessing himself to me,
voluntarily told me that he had all his lifetime professed and practised
a religion, in his opinion damnable and contrary to that he had in his
heart, only to preserve his credit and the honour of his employments, how
could his courage suffer so infamous a confession?  What can men say to
the divine justice upon this subject?

Their repentance consisting in a visible and manifest reparation, they
lose the colour of alleging it both to God and man.  Are they so impudent
as to sue for remission without satisfaction and without penitence?
I look upon these as in the same condition with the first: but the
obstinacy is not there so easy to be overcome.  This contrariety and
volubility of opinion so sudden, so violent, that they feign, are a kind
of miracle to me: they present us with the state of an indigestible agony
of mind.

It seemed to me a fantastic imagination in those who, these late years
past, were wont to reproach every man they knew to be of any
extraordinary parts, and made profession of the Catholic religion, that
it was but outwardly; maintaining, moreover, to do him honour forsooth,
that whatever he might pretend to the contrary he could not but in his
heart be of their reformed opinion.  An untoward disease, that a man
should be so riveted to his own belief as to fancy that others cannot
believe otherwise than as he does; and yet worse, that they should
entertain so vicious an opinion of such great parts as to think any man
so qualified, should prefer any present advantage of fortune to the
promises of eternal life and the menaces of eternal damnation.  They may
believe me: could anything have tempted my youth, the ambition of the
danger and difficulties in the late commotions had not been the least
motives.

It is not without very good reason, in my opinion, that the Church
interdicts the promiscuous, indiscreet, and irreverent use of the holy
and divine Psalms, with which the Holy Ghost inspired King David.  We
ought not to mix God in our actions, but with the highest reverence and
caution; that poesy is too holy to be put to no other use than to
exercise the lungs and to delight our ears; it ought to come from the
conscience, and not from the tongue.  It is not fit that a prentice in
his shop, amongst his vain and frivolous thoughts, should be permitted to
pass away his time and divert himself with such sacred things.  Neither
is it decent to see the Holy Book of the holy mysteries of our belief
tumbled up and down a hall or a kitchen they were formerly mysteries, but
are now become sports and recreations.  'Tis a book too serious and too
venerable to be cursorily or slightly turned over: the reading of the
scripture ought to be a temperate and premeditated act, and to which men
should always add this devout preface, 'sursum corda', preparing even the
body to so humble and composed a gesture and countenance as shall
evidence a particular veneration and attention.  Neither is it a book for
everyone to fist, but the study of select men set apart for that purpose,
and whom Almighty God has been pleased to call to that office and sacred
function: the wicked and ignorant grow worse by it.  'Tis, not a story to
tell, but a history to revere, fear, and adore.  Are not they then
pleasant men who think they have rendered this fit for the people's
handling by translating it into the vulgar tongue?  Does the
understanding of all therein contained only stick at words?  Shall I
venture to say further, that by coming so near to understand a little,
they are much wider of the whole scope than before.  A pure and simple
ignorance and wholly depending upon the exposition of qualified persons,
was far more learned and salutary than this vain and verbal knowledge,
which has only temerity and presumption.

And I do further believe that the liberty every one has taken to disperse
the sacred writ into so many idioms carries with it a great deal more of
danger than utility.  The Jews, Mohammedans, and almost all other
peoples, have reverentially espoused the language wherein their mysteries
were first conceived, and have expressly, and not without colour of
reason, forbidden the alteration of them into any other.  Are we assured
that in Biscay and in Brittany there are enough competent judges of this
affair to establish this translation into their own language?  The
universal Church has not a more difficult and solemn judgment to make.
In preaching and speaking the interpretation is vague, free, mutable, and
of a piece by itself; so 'tis not the same thing.

One of our Greek historians age justly censures the he lived in, because
the secrets of the Christian religion were dispersed into the hands of
every mechanic, to expound and argue upon, according to his own fancy,
and that we ought to be much ashamed, we who by God's especial favour
enjoy the pure mysteries of piety, to suffer them to be profaned by the
ignorant rabble; considering that the Gentiles expressly forbad Socrates,
Plato, and the other sages to inquire into or so much as mention the
things committed to the priests of Delphi; and he says, moreover, that
the factions of princes upon theological subjects are armed not with zeal
but fury; that zeal springs from the divine wisdom and justice, and
governs itself with prudence and moderation, but degenerates into hatred
and envy, producing tares and nettles instead of corn and wine when
conducted by human passions.  And it was truly said by another, who,
advising the Emperor Theodosius, told him that disputes did not so much
rock the schisms of the Church asleep, as it roused and animated
heresies; that, therefore, all contentions and dialectic disputations
were to be avoided, and men absolutely to acquiesce in the prescriptions
and formulas of faith established by the ancients.  And the Emperor
Andronicus having overheard some great men at high words in his palace
with Lapodius about a point of ours of great importance, gave them so
severe a check as to threaten to cause them to be thrown into the river
if they did not desist.  The very women and children nowadays take upon
them to lecture the oldest and most experienced men about the
ecclesiastical laws; whereas the first of those of Plato forbids them to
inquire so much as into the civil laws, which were to stand instead of
divine ordinances; and, allowing the old men to confer amongst themselves
or with the magistrate about those things, he adds, provided it be not in
the presence of young or profane persons.

A bishop has left in writing that at the other end of the world there is
an isle, by the ancients called Dioscorides, abundantly fertile in all
sorts of trees and fruits, and of an exceedingly healthful air; the
inhabitants of which are Christians, having churches and altars, only
adorned with crosses without any other images, great observers of fasts
and feasts, exact payers of their tithes to the priests, and so chaste,
that none of them is permitted to have to do with more than one woman in
his life--[What Osorius says is that these people only had one wife at a
time.]--as to the rest, so content with their condition, that environed
with the sea they know nothing of navigation, and so simple that they
understand not one syllable of the religion they profess and wherein they
are so devout: a thing incredible to such as do not know that the Pagans,
who are so zealous idolaters, know nothing more of their gods than their
bare names and their statues.  The ancient beginning of 'Menalippus', a
tragedy of Euripides, ran thus:

               "O Jupiter!  for that name alone
               Of what thou art to me is known."

I have also known in my time some men's writings found fault with for
being purely human and philosophical, without any mixture of theology;
and yet, with some show of reason, it might, on the contrary, be said
that the divine doctrine, as queen and regent of the rest, better keeps
her state apart, that she ought to be sovereign throughout, not
subsidiary and suffragan, and that, peradventure, grammatical,
rhetorical, logical examples may elsewhere be more suitably chosen, as
also the material for the stage, games, and public entertainments, than
from so sacred a matter; that divine reasons are considered with greater
veneration and attention by themselves, and in their own proper style,
than when mixed with and adapted to human discourse; that it is a fault
much more often observed that the divines write too humanly, than that
the humanists write not theologically enough.  Philosophy, says St.
Chrysostom, has long been banished the holy schools, as an handmaid
altogether useless and thought unworthy to look, so much as in passing
by the door, into the sanctuary of the holy treasures of the celestial
doctrine; that the human way of speaking is of a much lower form and
ought not to adopt for herself the dignity and majesty of divine
eloquence.  Let who will 'verbis indisciplinatis' talk of fortune,
destiny, accident, good and evil hap, and other suchlike phrases,
according to his own humour; I for my part propose fancies merely human
and merely my own, and that simply as human fancies, and separately
considered, not as determined by any decree from heaven, incapable of
doubt or dispute; matter of opinion, not matter of faith; things which I
discourse of according to my own notions, not as I believe, according to
God; after a laical, not clerical, and yet always after a very religious
manner, as children prepare their exercises, not to instruct but to be
instructed.

And might it not be said, that an edict enjoining all people but such as
are public professors of divinity, to be very reserved in writing of
religion, would carry with it a very good colour of utility and justice
--and to me, amongst the rest peradventure, to hold my prating?  I have
been told that even those who are not of our Church nevertheless amongst
themselves expressly forbid the name of God to be used in common
discourse, nor so much even by way of interjection, exclamation,
assertion of a truth, or comparison; and I think them in the right: upon
what occasion soever we call upon God to accompany and assist us, it
ought always to be done with the greatest reverence and devotion.

There is, as I remember, a passage in Xenophon where he tells us that we
ought so much the more seldom to call upon God, by how much it is hard to
compose our souls to such a degree of calmness, patience, and devotion as
it ought to be in at such a time; otherwise our prayers are not only vain
and fruitless, but vicious: "forgive us," we say, "our trespasses, as we
forgive them that trespass against us"; what do we mean by this petition
but that we present to God a soul free from all rancour and revenge?  And
yet we make nothing of invoking God's assistance in our vices, and
inviting Him into our unjust designs:

          "Quae, nisi seductis, nequeas committere divis"

     ["Which you can only impart to the gods, when you have gained them
     over."--Persius, ii. 4.]

the covetous man prays for the conservation of his vain and superfluous
riches; the ambitious for victory and the good conduct of his fortune;
the thief calls Him to his assistance, to deliver him from the dangers
and difficulties that obstruct his wicked designs, or returns Him thanks
for the facility he has met with in cutting a man's throat; at the door
of the house men are going to storm or break into by force of a petard,
they fall to prayers for success, their intentions and hopes of cruelty,
avarice, and lust.

         "Hoc igitur, quo to Jovis aurem impellere tentas,
          Dic agedum Staio: 'proh Jupiter!  O bone, clamet,
          Jupiter!'  At sese non clamet Jupiter ipse."

     ["This therefore, with which you seek to draw the ear of Jupiter,
     say to Staius.  'O Jupiter!  O good Jupiter!' let him cry.  Think
     you Jupiter himself would not cry out upon it?"--Persius, ii. 21.]

Marguerite, Queen of Navarre,--[In the Heptameron.]--tells of a young
prince, who, though she does not name him, is easily enough by his great
qualities to be known, who going upon an amorous assignation to lie with
an advocate's wife of Paris, his way thither being through a church, he
never passed that holy place going to or returning from his pious
exercise, but he always kneeled down to pray.  Wherein he would employ
the divine favour, his soul being full of such virtuous meditations,
I leave others to judge, which, nevertheless, she instances for a
testimony of singular devotion.  But this is not the only proof we have
that women are not very fit to treat of theological affairs.

A true prayer and religious reconciling of ourselves to Almighty God
cannot enter into an impure soul, subject at the very time to the
dominion of Satan.  He who calls God to his assistance whilst in a course
of vice, does as if a cut-purse should call a magistrate to help him, or
like those who introduce the name of God to the attestation of a lie.

                         "Tacito mala vota susurro
                    Concipimus."

          ["We whisper our guilty prayers."---Lucan, v. 104.]

There are few men who durst publish to the world the prayers they make to
Almighty God:

         "Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque, humilesque susurros
          Tollere de templis, et aperto vivere voto"

     ["'Tis not convenient for every one to bring the prayers he mutters
     out of the temple, and to give his wishes to the public ear.
     --"Persius, ii. 6.]

and this is the reason why the Pythagoreans would have them always public
and heard by every one, to the end they might not prefer indecent or
unjust petitions as this man:

              "Clare quum dixit, Apollo!
               Labra movet, metuens audiri: Pulcra Laverna,
               Da mihi fallere, da justum sanctumque videri;
               Noctem peccatis, et fraudibus objice nubem."

     ["When he has clearly said Apollo!  he moves his lips, fearful to be
     heard; he murmurs: O fair Laverna, grant me the talent to deceive;
     grant me to appear holy and just; shroud my sins with night, and
     cast a cloud over my frauds."--Horace, Ep., i.  16, 59.--(Laverna
     was the goddess of thieves.)]

The gods severely punished the wicked prayers of OEdipus in granting
them: he had prayed that his children might amongst themselves determine
the succession to his throne by arms, and was so miserable as to see
himself taken at his word.  We are not to pray that all things may go as
we would have them, but as most concurrent with prudence.

We seem, in truth, to make use of our prayers as of a kind of jargon, and
as those do who employ holy words about sorceries and magical operations;
and as if we reckoned the benefit we are to reap from them as depending
upon the contexture, sound, and jingle of words, or upon the grave
composing of the countenance.  For having the soul contaminated with
concupiscence, not touched with repentance, or comforted by any late
reconciliation with God, we go to present Him such words as the memory
suggests to the tongue, and hope from thence to obtain the remission of
our sins.  There is nothing so easy, so sweet, and so favourable, as the
divine law: it calls and invites us to her, guilty and abominable as we
are; extends her arms and receives us into her bosom, foul and polluted
as we at present are, and are for the future to be.  But then, in return,
we are to look upon her with a respectful eye; we are to receive this
pardon with all gratitude and submission, and for that instant at least,
wherein we address ourselves to her, to have the soul sensible of the
ills we have committed, and at enmity with those passions that seduced us
to offend her; neither the gods nor good men (says Plato) will accept the
present of a wicked man:

                   "Immunis aram si terigit manus,
                    Non sumptuosa blandior hostia
                    Mollivit aversos Penates
                    Farre pio et saliente mica."

     ["If a pure hand has touched the altar, the pious offering of a
     small cake and a few grains of salt will appease the offended gods
     more effectually than costly sacrifices."
     --Horace, Od., iii. 23, 17.]




CHAPTER LVII

OF AGE

I cannot allow of the way in which we settle for ourselves the duration
of our life.  I see that the sages contract it very much in comparison of
the common opinion: "what," said the younger Cato to those who would stay
his hand from killing himself, "am I now of an age to be reproached that
I go out of the world too soon?"  And yet he was but eight-and-forty
years old.  He thought that to be a mature and advanced age, considering
how few arrive unto it.  And such as, soothing their thoughts with I know
not what course of nature, promise to themselves some years beyond it,
could they be privileged from the infinite number of accidents to which
we are by a natural subjection exposed, they might have some reason so to
do.  What am idle conceit is it to expect to die of a decay of strength,
which is the effect of extremest age, and to propose to ourselves no
shorter lease of life than that, considering it is a kind of death of all
others the most rare and very seldom seen?  We call that only a natural
death; as if it were contrary to nature to see a man break his neck with
a fall, be drowned in shipwreck, be snatched away with a pleurisy or the
plague, and as if our ordinary condition did not expose us to these
inconveniences.  Let us no longer flatter ourselves with these fine
words; we ought rather, peradventure, to call that natural which is
general, common, and universal.

To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and,
therefore, so much less natural than the others; 'tis the last and
extremest sort of dying: and the more remote, the less to be hoped for.
It is, indeed, the bourn beyond which we are not to pass, and which the
law of nature has set as a limit, not to be exceeded; but it is, withal,
a privilege she is rarely seen to give us to last till then.  'Tis a
lease she only signs by particular favour, and it may be to one only in
the space of two or three ages, and then with a pass to boot, to carry
him through all the traverses and difficulties she has strewed in the way
of this long career.  And therefore my opinion is, that when once forty
years we should consider it as an age to which very few arrive.  For
seeing that men do not usually proceed so far, it is a sign that we are
pretty well advanced; and since we have exceeded the ordinary bounds,
which is the just measure of life, we ought not to expect to go much
further; having escaped so many precipices of death, whereinto we have
seen so many other men fall, we should acknowledge that so extraordinary
a fortune as that which has hitherto rescued us from those eminent
perils, and kept us alive beyond the ordinary term of living, is not like
to continue long.

'Tis a fault in our very laws to maintain this error: these say that a
man is not capable of managing his own estate till he be five-and-twenty
years old, whereas he will have much ado to manage his life so long.
Augustus cut off five years from the ancient Roman standard, and declared
that thirty years old was sufficient for a judge.  Servius Tullius
superseded the knights of above seven-and-forty years of age from the
fatigues of war; Augustus dismissed them at forty-five; though methinks
it seems a little unreasonable that men should be sent to the fireside
till five-and-fifty or sixty years of age.  I should be of opinion that
our vocation and employment should be as far as possible extended for the
public good: I find the fault on the other side, that they do not employ
us early enough.  This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at
nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to
determine a dispute about a gutter.

For my part, I believe our souls are adult at twenty as much as they are
ever like to be, and as capable then as ever.  A soul that has not by
that time given evident earnest of its force and virtue will never after
come to proof.  The natural qualities and virtues produce what they have
of vigorous and fine, within that term or never,

                   "Si l'espine rion picque quand nai,
                    A pene que picque jamai,"

               ["If the thorn does not prick at its birth,
               'twill hardly ever prick at all."]

as they say in Dauphin.

Of all the great human actions I ever heard or read of, of what sort
soever, I have observed, both in former ages and our own, more were
performed before the age of thirty than after; and this ofttimes in the
very lives of the same men.  May I not confidently instance in those of
Hannibal and his great rival Scipio?  The better half of their lives they
lived upon the glory they had acquired in their youth; great men after,
'tis true, in comparison of others; but by no means in comparison of
themselves.  As to my own particular, I do certainly believe that since
that age, both my understanding and my constitution have rather decayed
than improved, and retired rather than advanced.  'Tis possible, that
with those who make the best use of their time, knowledge and experience
may increase with their years; but vivacity, promptitude, steadiness, and
other pieces of us, of much greater importance, and much more essentially
our own, languish and decay:

              "Ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus aevi
               Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus,
               Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque, mensque."

          ["When once the body is shaken by the violence of time,
          blood and vigour ebbing away, the judgment halts,
          the tongue and the mind dote."--Lucretius, iii. 452.]

Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind; and I have
seen enough who have got a weakness in their brains before either in
their legs or stomach; and by how much the more it is a disease of no
great pain to the sufferer, and of obscure symptoms, so much greater is
the danger.  For this reason it is that I complain of our laws, not that
they keep us too long to our work, but that they set us to work too late.
For the frailty of life considered, and to how many ordinary and natural
rocks it is exposed, one ought not to give up so large a portion of it to
childhood, idleness, and apprenticeship.

     [Which Cotton thus renders: "Birth though noble, ought not to share
     so large a vacancy, and so tedious a course of education."  Florio
     (1613) makes the passage read as-follows: "Methinks that,
     considering the weakness of our life, and seeing the infinite number
     of ordinary rocks and natural dangers it is subject unto, we should
     not, so soon as we come into the world, allot so large a share
     thereof unto unprofitable wantonness in youth, ill-breeding
     idleness, and slow-learning prentisage."]




     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     Advise to choose weapons of the shortest sort
     An ignorance that knowledge creates and begets
     Ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon it
     Can neither keep nor enjoy anything with a good grace
     Change of fashions
     Chess: this idle and childish game
     Death is terrible to Cicero, coveted by Cato
     Death of old age the most rare and very seldom seen
     Diogenes, esteeming us no better than flies or bladders
     Do not to pray that all things may go as we would have them
     Excel above the common rate in frivolous things
     Expresses more contempt and condemnation than the other
     Fancy that others cannot believe otherwise than as he does
     Gradations above and below pleasure
     Greatest apprehensions, from things unseen, concealed
     He did not think mankind worthy of a wise man's concern
     Home anxieties and a mind enslaved by wearing complaints
     How infirm and decaying material this fabric of ours is
     I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback
     Led by the ears by this charming harmony of words
     Little knacks  and frivolous subtleties
     Men approve of things for their being rare and new
     Must of necessity walk in the steps of another
     Natural death the most rare and very seldom seen
     Not to instruct but to be instructed.
     Present Him such words as the memory suggests to the tongue
     Psalms of King David: promiscuous, indiscreet
     Rhetoric: an art to flatter and deceive
     Rhetoric: to govern a disorderly and tumultuous rabble
     Sitting betwixt two stools
     Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind
     Stupidity and facility natural to the common people
     The Bible: the wicked and ignorant grow worse by it.
     The faintness that surprises in the exercises of Venus
     Thucydides: which was the better wrestler
     To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular
     To make little things appear great was his profession
     To smell, though well, is to stink
     Valour will cause a trembling in the limbs as well as fear
     Viscid melting kisses of youthful ardour in my wanton age
     We can never be despised according to our full desert
     When we have got it, we want something else
     Women who paint, pounce, and plaster up their ruins





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Essays of Montaigne, Volume 8
by Michel de Montaigne

*** 