Michel de Montaigne de Montaigne, Michel 1580 Madame de Grammont de Grammont, Madame Comtesse de Guissen de Guissen, Comtesse IX

To Madame de Grammont, Comtesse de Guissen.

(With twenty-nine sonnets of Monsieur De la Boetie.)

Madam,—I offer to your ladyship nothing of mine, either because it is already yours, or because I find nothing in my writings worthy of you: but I have a great desire that these verses, into what part of the world soever they may travel, may carry your name in the front, for the honor will accrue to them by having the great Corisande d’ Andoins for their safe-conduct. I conceive this present, madam, so much the more proper for you, both by reason there are few ladies in France who are so good judges of poetry, and make so good use of it as you do; as also, that there is none who can give it the spirit and life that you can, by that rich and incomparable voice nature has added to your other perfections. You will find, madam, that these verses deserve your esteem, and will agree with me in this, that Gascony never yielded more invention, finer expression, or that more evidence themselves to flow from a masterhand.

And be not jealous, that you have but the remainder of what I published some years since under the patronage of Monsieur de Foix, your worthy kinsman; for, certainly, these have something in them more sprightly and luxuriant, as being written in a greener youth, and inflamed with a noble ardor that one of these days I will tell you, madam, in your ear. The others were written later, when he was a suitor for marriage, and in honor of his wife, and, already relishing of I know not what matrimonial coldness. And for my part, I am of the same opinion with those who hold that poesy appears nowhere so gay as in a wanton and irregular subject.

(1580.) (MONTAIGNE.)