VOLUME II

Page 91 Born at Sarlac in Perigord, 1st November, 1530, died 18th August, 1563. Of his works, all unpublished during his life, there is a complete edition, Paris, 1846. There is a sufficiently copious account of this gentleman in the Memoir and Letters supra. He to some extent forestalled in his economical views Thoreau in his Walden, 1854. Yet both follow the lines of the Natural Philosophers.

Page 179 “It is likely that Montaigne meant Henry III., king of France. The Cardinal d’Ossat, writing to Louise, the queen-dowager, told her, in his frank manner, that he had lived as much more like a monk than a monarch. And Pope Sextus V., speaking of that prince one day to the Cardinal de Joyeuse, protector of the affairs of France, said to him pleasantly, ‘There is nothing that your king hath not done, and does not do so still, to be a monk, nor anything that I have not done, not to be a monk’.”

Montaigne would here give us to understand upon the authority of Diodurus Siculus, that Pausanias’ mother gave the first hint of the punishment that was to be inflicted on her son. ‘Pausanias,’ says this historian, ‘perceiving that the ephori, and some other Lacedæmonians, aimed at apprehending him, got the start of them, and went and took sanctuary in Minerva’s temple; and the Lacedæmonians, being doubtful whether they ought to take him from thence in violation

of the franchise there, it is said that his own mother came herself to the temple, but spoke nothing, nor did anything more than lay a piece of brick, which she brought with her, on the threshold of the temple, which, when she had done, she returned home. The Lacedæmonians, taking the hint from the mother, caused the gate of the temple to be walled up, and by this means starved Pausanias, so that he died with hunger, etc.’ The name of Pausanias’ mother was Alcithea, as we are informed by Thucydides’ scholiast, who only says that it was reported, that when they set about walling up the gates of the chapel in which Pausanias had taken refuge, his mother Alcithea laid the first stone.

“Opinions differ as to the truth of this fact. Livy thinks he has good authority for rejecting it, because it does not appear in history that Posthumius was branded with it, as Titus Manlius was, about 100 years after his time; for Manlius, having put his son to death for the like cause, obtained the odious name of Imperiosus, and since that time Manliana Imperia has been used as a term to signify orders that are too severe; Manliana Imperia, says Livy, were not only horrible for the time present, but of a bad example to posterity. And this historian makes no doubt but such commands would have been actually styled Posthumiana Imperia, if Posthumus had been the first who set so barbarous an example. But, however, Montaigne has Valer. Maximus on his side, who says expressly, that Posthumus caused his son to be put to death, and Diodorus Siculus.

Page 189 Montaigne probably found at least the basis of the material for this paper in three savages, whom Martin Frobisher brought back with him from America in 1577, and of whom there is an account in English, 1577, and in French, 1578. The portraiture of these strange people was appended to the latter, shewing their dress, arms, tents, and boats, and was separately intended to be printed in English, though no longer known. The essayist seems to have seen the unusual visitors at Rouen, where he was in attendance on Charles IX., and he personally conversed with one of them at a somewhat later date. Antoine Jacquard executed a series of twelve engravings, which he entitled: “Les divers Pourtraicts et Figures faictes sur les moeurs des habitans du Nouveau Monde.” These engravings are sometimes misdescribed as the earliest of the kind. But we perceive that they had been anticipated by the Frobisher volume. The elder Cabot, however, long before Frobisher’s time, presented some natives whom he had induced to accompany him from the same continent in 1497 to Henry VII.

Page 199 This is the famous passage which Shakespeare, through Florio’s version, 1603, or ed. 1613, p. 102, has employed in the “Tempest.” It may be interesting in such a case to compare the essayist with the poet:—

MONTAIGNE.

(Book.)

“They (Lycurgus and Plato) could not imagine a genuitie so pure and simple, as we see it by experience, nor ever beleeve our societie might be maintained with so little arte and humane combination. It is a nation, would I answere, Plato, that hath no kinde of traffike, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politike superioritie; no vse of service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences, no occupation but idle; no respect of kinred, but common; no apparrell but naturall, no manuring of lands, no vse of wine, corne, or mettle. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envie, detraction, and pardon, were never heard of amongst them. How dissonant would hee finde his imaginary commonwealth from this perfection?

Hos natura modos primum dedit.

Nature at first uprise,

These manners did devise.

Furthermore, they live in a country of so exceeding pleasant and temperate situation, that as my testimonies have tolde me it is very rare to see a sicke body amongst them; and they have further assured me, they never saw any man there, shaking with the palsie, toothlesse, with eyes drooping, or crooked and stooping through age.”

SHAKESPEARE.

(Act. ii. Sc. 1.)

GON. I’ the commonwealth I would by

contraries

Execute all things; for no kind of traffic

Would I admit; no name of magistrate;

Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,

And use of service, none; contract, succession,

Bourn, bound of land; tilth, vineyard, none;

No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;

No occupation; all men idle, all;

And women too, but innocent and pure,

No sovereignty—. . .

All things in common nature should produce

Without sweat or endeavour; treason, felony,

Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,

Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,

Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,

To feed my innocent people.

QUOTATIONS

Cicero-42-44-45-51-54-73-82-85-86-142-144-148-159-161-162-244. Horace-11-81-97-143-151-156-174-175-176-178-192-219-244-250. Juvenal-45-49-101. Mithridates-128-144. Lucan-26-250-252. Lucretius-144-236-255-256. Manlius-250. Livy-25-140. Martial-250. Ovid-240. Virgil-96-139-199. Petrarch-251. Plutarch-21. Persius-48-96-106-108. Propertius-89-97-185-197. Terence-173-175. Seneca-42-50-52-75-77-84-116-126-128-199-210. Aeneid-175-191-251. Catullus-156-176-228-254. Milton-101. Stobasum-50.