|
(On) Montaigne
Montaigne
Introductory Note
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, the foremost French critic of the
nineteenth century, and, in the view of many, the greatest literary critic of
the world, was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, December 23, 1804. He studied
medicine, but soon abandoned it for literature; and before he gave himself up
to criticism he made some mediocre attempts in poetry and fiction. He became
professor at the College de France and the Ecole Normale and was appointed
Senator in 1865. A course of lectures given at Lausanne in 1837 resulted in
his great "Histoire de Port-Royal," and another given at Liege in his
"Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire." But his most famous productions were
his critical essays published periodically in the "Constitutionnel" the
"Moniteur" and the "Temps," later collected in sets under the names of
"Critiques et Portraits Litteraires," "Portraits Contemporains," "Causeries du
Lundi," and "Nouveaux Lundis." At the height of his vogue, these Monday essays
were events of European importance. He died in 1869.
Sainte-Beuve`s work was much more than literary criticism as that type
of writing had been generally conceived before his time. In place of the mere
classification of books and the passing of a judgment upon them as good or
bad, he sought to illuminate and explain by throwing light on a literary work
from a study of the life, circumstances, and aim of the writer, and by a
comparison with the literature of other times and countries. Thus his work was
historical, psychological, and ethical, as well as esthetic, and demanded vast
learning and a literary outlook of unparalleled breadth. In addition to this
equipment he had fine taste and an admirable style; and by his universality,
penetration, and balance he raised to a new level the profession of critic.
Montaigne
While the good ship France is taking a somewhat haphazard course, getting
into unknown seas, and preparing to double what the pilots (if there is a
pilot) call the Stormy Cape, while the look-out at the mast-head thinks he
sees the spectre of the giant Adamastor rising on the horizon, many honourable
and peaceable men continue their work and studies all the same, and follow out
to the end, or as far as they can, their favourite hobbies. I know, at the
present time, a learned man who is collating more carefully than has ever yet
been done the different early editions of Rabelais-editions, mark you, of
which only one copy remains, of which a second is not to be found: from the
careful collation of the texts some literary and maybe philosophical result
will be derived with regard to the genius of the French Lucian - Aristophanes.
I know another scholar whose devotion and worship is given to a very different
man - to Bossuet: he is preparing a complete, exact, detailed history of the
life and works of the great bishop. And as tastes differ, and "human fancy is
cut into a thousand shapes" (Montaigne said that), Montaigne also has his
devotees, he who, himself, was so little of one: a sect is formed round him.
In his lifetime he had Mademoiselle de Gournay, his daughter of alliance, who
was solemnly devoted to him; and his disciple, Charron, followed him closely,
step by step, only striving to arrange his thoughts with more order and
method. In our time amateurs, intelligent men, practice the religion under
another form: they devote themselves to collecting the smallest traces of the
author of the Essays, to gathering up the slightest relics, and Dr. Payen may
be justly placed at the head of the group. For years he has been preparing a
book on Montaigne, of which the title will be - "Michel de Montaigne, a
collection of unedited or little known facts about the author of the Essays,
his book, and his other writings, about his family, his friends, his admirers,
his detractors."
While awaiting the conclusion of the book, the occupation and amusement
of a lifetime, Dr. Payen keeps us informed in short pamphlets of the various
works and discoveries made about Montaigne.
If we separate the discoveries made during the last five or six years
from the jumble of quarrels, disputes, cavilling, quackery, and lawsuits (for
there have been all those), they consist in this - In 1846 M. Mace found in
the (then) Royal Library, amongst the "Collection Du Puys," a letter of
Montaigne, addressed to the king, Henri IV., September 2, 1590.
In 1847 M. Payen printed a letter, or a fragment of a letter of Montaigne
of February 16, 1588, a letter corrupt and incomplete, coming from the
collection of the Comtesse Boni de Castellane.
But, most important of all, in 1848, M. Horace de Viel-Castel found in
London, at the British Museum, a remarkable letter of Montaigne, May 22, 1585,
when Mayor of Bordeaux, addressed to M. de Matignon, the king`s lieutenant in
the town. The great interest of the letter is that it shows Montaigne for the
first time in the full discharge of his office with all the energy and
vigilance of which he was capable. The pretended idler was at need much more
active than he was ready to own.
M. Detcheverry, keeper of the records to the mayoralty of Bordeaux, found
and published (1850) a letter of Montaigne, while mayor, to the Jurats, or
aldermen of the town, July 30, 1585.
M. Achille Jubinal found among the manuscripts of the National Library,
and published (1850), a long, remarkable letter from Montaigne to the king,
Henri IV., January 18, 1590, which happily coincides with that already found
by M. Mace.
Lastly, to omit nothing and do justice to all, in a "Visit to Montaigne`s
Chateau in Perigord," of which the account appeared in 1850, M. Bertrand de
Saint-Germain described the place and pointed out the various Greek and
Latin inscriptions that may still be read in Montaigne`s tower in the third -
storey chamber (the ground floor counting as the first), which the philosopher
made his library and study.
M. Payen, collecting together and criticising in his last pamphlet the
various notices and discoveries, not all of equal importance, allowed himself
to be drawn into some little exaggeration of praise; but we cannot blame him.
Admiration, when applied to such noble, perfectly innocent, and disinterested
subjects, is truly a spark of the sacred fire: it produces research that a
less ardent zeal would quickly leave aside, and sometimes leads to valuable
results. However, it would be well for those who, following M. Payen`s
example, intelligently understand and greatly admire Montaigne, to remember,
even in their ardour, the advice of the wise man and the master. "There is
more to do," said he, speaking of the commentators of his time, "in
interpreting the interpretations than in interpreting the things themselves;
and more books about books than on any other subject. We do nothing, but
everything swarms with commentators; of authors there is a great rarity."
Authors are of great price and very scarce at all times - that is to say,
authors who really increase the sum of human knowledge. I should like all who
write on Montaigne, and give us the details of their researches and
discoveries, to imagine one thing, - Montaigne himself reading and criticising
them. "What would he think of me and the manner in which I am going to speak
of him to the public?" If such a question was put, how greatly it would
suppress useless phrases and shorten idle discussions! M. Payen`s last
pamphlet was dedicated to a man who deserves equally well of Montaigne - M.
Gustave Brunet, of Bordeaux. He, speaking of M. Payen, in a work in which he
pointed out interesting and various corrections of Montaigne`s text, said:
"May he soon decide to publish the fruits of his researches: he will have left
nothing for future Montaignologues." Montaignologues! Great Heaven! what would
Montaigne say of such a word coined in his honour? You who occupy yourselves
so meritoriously with him, but who have, I think, no claim to appropriate him
to yourselves, in the name of him whom you love, and whom we all love by a
greater or lesser title, never, I beg of you, use such words; they smack of
the brotherhood and the sect, of pedantry and of the chatter of the schools
things utterly repugnant to Montaigne.
Montaigne had a simple, natural, affable mind, and a very happy
disposition. Sprung from an excellent father, who, though of no great
education, entered with real enthusiasm into the movement of the Renaissance
and all the liberal novelties of his time, the son corrected the excessive
enthusiasm, vivacity, and tenderness he inherited by a great refinement and
justness of reflection; but he did not abjure the original groundwork. It is
scarcely more than thirty years ago that whenever the sixteenth century was
mentioned it was spoken of as a barbarous epoch, Montaigne only excepted:
therein lay error and ignorance. The sixteenth century was a great century,
fertile, powerful, learned, refined in parts, although in some aspects it was
rough, violent, and seemingly coarse. What it particularly lacked was taste,
if by taste is meant the faculty of clear and perfect selection, the
extrication of the elements of the beautiful. But in the succeeding centuries
taste quickly became distaste. If, however, in literature it was crude, in the
arts properly so-called, in those of the hand and the chisel, the sixteenth
century, even in France, is, in the quality of taste, far greater than the two
succeeding centuries: it is neither meagre nor massive, heavy nor distorted.
In art its taste is rich and of fine quality, - at once unrestrained and
complex, ancient and modern, special to itself and original. In the region of
morals it is unequal and mixed. It was an age of contrasts, of contrasts in
all their crudity, an age of philosophy and fanaticism, of scepticism and
strong faith. Everything was at strife and in collision; nothing was blended
and united. Everything was in ferment; it was a period of chaos; every ray of
light caused a storm. It was not a gentle age, or one we can call an age of
light, but an age of struggle and combat. What distinguished Montaigne and
made a phenomenon of him was, that in such an age he should have possessed
moderation, caution, and order.
Born on the last day of February, 1533, taught the ancient languages as a
game while still a child, waked even in his cradle by the sound of musical
instruments, he seemed less fitted for a rude and violent epoch than for the
commerce and sanctuary of the muses. His rare good sense corrected what was
too ideal and poetical in his early education; but he preserved the happy
faculty of saying everything with freshness and wit. Married, when past
thirty, to an estimable woman who was his companion for twenty-eight years,
he seems to have put passion only into friendship. He immortalised his love
for Etienne de la Boetie, whom he lost after four years of the sweetest and
closest intimacy. For some time counsellor in the Parliament of Bordeaux,
Montaigne, before he was forty, retired from public life, and flung away
ambition to live in his tower of Montaigne, enjoying his own society and his
own intellect, entirely given up to his own observations and thoughts, and to
the busy idleness of which we know all the sports and fancies. The first
edition of the Essays appeared in 1580, consisting of only two books, and in a
form representing only the first rough draft of what we have in the later
editions. The same year Montaigne set out on a voyage to Switzerland and
Italy. It was during that voyage that the aldermen of Bordeaux elected him
mayor of their town. At first he refused and excused himself, but warned that
it would be well to accept, and enjoined by the king, he took the office, "the
more beautiful," he said, "that there was neither renunciation nor gain other
than the honour of its performance." He filled the office for four years, from
July 1582 to July 1586, being re-elected after the first two years. Thus
Montaigne, at the age of fifty, and a little against his will, re-entered
public life when the country was on the eve of civil disturbances which,
quieted and lulled to sleep for a while, broke out more violently at the cry
of the League. Although, as a rule, lessons serve for nothing, since the art
of wisdom and happiness cannot be taught, let us not deny ourselves the
pleasure of listening to Montaigne; let us look on his wisdom and happiness;
let him speak of public affairs, of revolutions and disturbances, and of his
way of conducting himself with regard to them. We do not put forward a model,
but we offer our readers an agreeable recreation.
Although Montaigne lived in so agitated and stormy a time, a period that
a man who had lived through the Terror (M. Daunou) called the most tragic
century in all history, he by no means regarded his age as the worst of ages.
He was not of those prejudiced and afflicted persons, who, measuring
everything by their visual horizon, valuing everything according to their
present sensations, always declare that the disease they suffer from is worse
than any ever before experienced by a human being. He was like Socrates, who
did not consider himself a citizen of one city but of the world; with his
broad and full imagination he embraced the universality of countries and of
ages; he even judged more equitably the very evils of which he was witness and
victim. "Who is it," he said, "that, seeing the bloody havoc of these civil
wars of ours, does not cry out that the machine of the world is near
dissolution, and that the day of judgment is at hand, without considering that
many worse revolutions have been seen, and that, in the meantime, people are
being merry in a thousand other parts of the earth for all this? For my part,
considering the license and impunity that always attend such commotions, I
admire they are so moderate, and that there is not more mischief done. To him
who feels the hailstones patter about his ears, the whole hemisphere appears
to be in storm and tempest." And raising his thoughts higher and higher,
reducing his own suffering to what it was in the immensity of nature, seeing
there not only himself but whole kingdoms as mere specks in the infinite, he
added in words which foreshadowed Pascal, in words whose outline and salient
points Pascal did not disdain to borrow: "But whoever shall represent to his
fancy, as in a picture, that great image of our mother nature, portrayed in
her full majesty and lustre, whoever in her face shall read so general and so
constant a variety, whoever shall observe himself in that figure, and not
himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger than the least touch or prick of a
pencil in comparison of the whole, that man alone is able to value things
according to their true estimate and grandeur."
Thus Montaigne gives us a lesson, a useless lesson, but I state it all
the same, because among the many unprofitable ones that have been written
down, it is perhaps of greater worth than most. I do not mean to underrate the
gravity of the circumstances in which France is just now involved, for I
believe there is pressing need to bring together all the energy, prudence, and
courage she possesses in order that the country may come out with honour.^1
However, let us reflect, and remember that, leaving aside the Empire, which as
regards internal affairs was a period of calm, and before 1812 of prosperity,
we who utter such loud complaints, lived in peace from 1815 to 1830, fifteen
long years; that the three days of July only in augurated another order of
things that for eighteen years guaranteed peace and industrial prosperity; in
all, thirty-two years of repose. Stormy days came; tempests burst, and will
doubtless burst again. Let us learn how to live through them, but do not let
us cry out every day, as we are disposed to do, that never under the sun were
such storms known as we are enduring. To get away from the present state of
feeling, to restore lucidity and proportion to our judgments, let us read
every evening a page of Montaigne.
[Footnote 1: This essay appeared April 28, 1851.]
A criticism of Montaigne on the men of his day struck me, and it bears
equally well on those of ours. Our philosopher says somewhere that he knows a
fair number of men possessing various good qualities - one, intelligence;
another, heart; another, address, conscience or knowledge, or skill in
languages, each has his share: "but of a great man as a whole, having so many
good qualities together, or one with such a degree of excellence that we ought
to admire him, or compare him with those we honour in the past, my fortune has
never shown me one." He afterwards made an exception in favour of his friend
Etienne de la Boetie, but he belonged to the company of great men dead before
attaining maturity, and showing promise without having time to fulfil it.
Montaigne`s criticism called up a smile. He did not see a true and wholly
great man in his time, the age of L`Hopital, Coligny, and the Guises. Well!
how does ours seem to you? We have as many great men as in Montaigne`s time,
one distinguished for his intellect, another for his heart, a third for skill,
some (a rare thing) for conscience, many for knowledge and language. But we
too lack the perfect man, and he is greatly to be desired. One of the most
intelligent observers of our day recognised and proclaimed it some years ago:
"Our age," said M. de Remusat, "is wanting in great men."^2
[Footnote 2: Essais de Philosophie, vol. i. p. 22.]
How did Montaigne conduct himself in his duties as first magistrate of a
great city? If we take him literally and on a hasty first glance we should
believe he discharged them slackly and languidly. Did not Horace, doing the
honours to himself, say that in war he one day let his shield fall (relicta
non bene parmula)? We must not be in too great a hurry to take too literally
the men of taste who have a horror of over-estimating themselves. Minds of a
fine quality are more given to vigilance and to action than they are apt to
confess. The man who boasts and makes a great noise, will, I am almost sure,
be less brave in the combat than Horace, and less vigilant at the council
board than Montaigne.
On entering office Montaigne was careful to warn the aldermen of Bordeaux
not to expect to find in him more than there really was; he presented himself
to them without affectation. "I represented to them faithfully and
conscientiously all that I felt myself to be, - a man without memory, without
vigilance, without experience, and without energy; but also, without hate,
without ambition, without avarice, and without violence." He should be sorry,
while taking the affairs of the town in hand, that his feelings should be so
strongly affected as those of his worthy father had been, who in the end had
lost his place and health. The eager and ardent pledge to satisfy an impetuous
desire was not his method. His opinion was "that you must lend yourself to
others, and only give yourself to yourself." And repeating his thought,
according to his custom in all kinds of metaphors and picturesque forms, he
said again that if he sometimes allowed himself to be urged to the management
of other men`s affairs, he promised to take them in hand, not "into my lungs
and liver." We are thus forewarned, we know what to expect. The mayor and
Montaigne were two distinct persons; under his role and office he reserved to
himself a certain freedom and secret security. He continued to judge things in
his own fashion and impartially, although acting loyally for the cause
confided to him. He was far from approving or even excusing all he saw in his
party, and he could judge his adversaries and say of them: "He did that thing
wickedly, and this virtuously." "I would have," he added, "matters go well on
our side; but if they do not, I shall not run mad. I am heartily for the right
party; but I do not affect to be taken notice of for an especial enemy to
others." And he entered into some details and applications which at that time
were piquant. Let us remark, however, in order to explain and justify his
somewhat extensive profession of impartiality, that the chiefs of the party
then in evidence, the three Henris, were famous and considerable men on
several counts: Henri, Duke of Guise, head of the League; Henri, King of
Navarre, leader of the Opposition; and the King Henri III. in whose name
Montaigne was mayor, who wavered between the two. When parties have neither
chief nor head, when they are known by the body only, that is to say, in their
hideous and brutal reality, it is more difficult and also more hazardous to be
just towards them and to assign to each its share of action.
The principle which guided him in his administration was to look only at
the fact, at the result, and to grant nothing to noise and outward show: "How
much more a good effect makes a noise, so much I abate of the goodness of it."
For it is always to be feared that it was more performed for the sake of the
noise than upon the account of goodness: "Being exposed upon the stall, `tis
half sold." That was not Montaigne`s way: he made no show; he managed men and
affairs as quietly as he could; he employed in a manner useful to all alike
the gifts of sincerity and conciliation; the personal attraction with which
nature endowed him was a quality of the highest value in the management of
men. He preferred to warn men of evil rather than to take on himself the
honour of repressing it: "Is there any one who desires to be sick that he may
see his physician`s practice? And would not that physician deserve to be
whipped who should wish the plague amongst us that he might put his art into
practice?" Far from desiring that trouble and disorder in the affairs of the
city should rouse and honour his government, he had ever willingly, he said,
contributed all he could to their tranquillity and ease. He is not of those
whom municipal honours intoxicate and elate, those "dignities of office" as he
called them, and of which all the noise "goes from one cross-road to
another." If he was a man desirous of fame, he recognised that it was of a
kind greater than that. I do not know, however, if even in a vaster field he
would have changed his method and manner of proceeding. To do good for the
public imperceptibly would always seem to him the ideal of skill and the
culminating point of happiness. "He who will not thank me," he said, "for the
order and quiet calm that has accompanied my administration, cannot, however,
deprive me of the share that belongs to me by the title of my good fortune."
And he is inexhaustible in describing in lively and graceful expressions the
kinds of effective and imperceptible services he believed he had rendered -
services greatly superior to noisy and glorious deeds: "Actions which come
from the workman`s hand carelessly and noiselessly have most charm, that some
honest man chooses later and brings from their obscurity to thrust them into
the light for their own sake." Thus fortune served Montaigne to perfection,
and even in his administration of affairs, in difficult conjunctures, he never
had to belie his maxim, nor to step very far out of the way of life he had
planned: "For my part I commend a gliding, solitary, and silent life." He
reached the end of his magistracy almost satisfied with himself, having
accomplished what he had promised himself, and much more than he had promised
others.
The letter lately discovered by M. Horace de Viel-Castel corroborates
the chapter in which Montaigne exhibits and criticises himself in the period
of his public life. "That letter," says M. Payen, "is entirely on affairs.
Montaigne is mayor; Bordeaux, lately disturbed, seems threatened by fresh
agitations; the king`s lieutenant is away. It is Wednesday, May 22, 1585; it
is night, Montaigne is wakeful, and writes to the governor of the province."
The letter, which is of too special and local an interest to be inserted here,
may be summed up in these words: - Montaigne regretted the absence of Marshal
de Matignon, and feared the consequences of its prolongation; he was keeping,
and would continue to keep, him acquainted with all that was going on, and
begged him to return as soon as his circumstances would permit. "We are
looking after our gates and guards, and a little more carefully in your
absence.... If anything important and fresh occurs, I shall send you a
messenger immediately, so that if you hear no news from me, you may consider
that nothing has happened." He begs M. de Matignon to remember, however, that
he might not have time to warn him, "entreating you to consider that such
movements are usually so sudden, that if they do occur they will take me by
the throat without any warning." Besides, he will do everything to ascertain
the march of events beforehand. "I will do what I can to hear news from all
parts, and to that end shall visit and observe the inclinations of all sorts
of men." Lastly, after keeping the marshal informed of everything, of the
least rumours abroad in the city, he pressed him to return, assuring him "that
we spare neither our care, nor, if need be, our lives to preserve everything
in obedience to the king." Montaigne was never prodigal of protestations and
praises, and what with others was a mere form of speech, was with him a real
undertaking and the truth.
Things, however, became worse and worse: civil war broke out; friendly or
hostile parties (the difference was not great) infested the country.
Montaigne, who went to his country house as often as he could, whenever the
duties of his office, which was drawing near its term, did not oblige him to
be in Bordeaux, was exposed to every sort of insult and outrage. "I
underwent," he said, "the inconveniences that moderation brings along with it
in such a disease. I was pitied on all hands; to the Ghibelline I was a
Guelph, and to the Guelph a Ghibelline." In the midst of his personal
grievances he could disengage and raise his thoughts to reflections on the
public misfortunes and on the degradation of men`s characters. Considering
closely the disorder of parties, and all the abject and wretched things which
developed so quickly, he was ashamed to see leaders of renown stoop and debase
themselves by cowardly complacency; for in those circumstances we know, like
him, "that in the word of command to march, draw up, wheel, and the like, we
obey him indeed; but all the rest is dissolute and free." "It pleases me,"
said Montaigne ironically, "to observe how much pusillanimity and cowardice
there is in ambition; by how abject and servile ways it must arrive at its
end." Despising ambition as he did, he was not sorry to see it unmasked by
such practices and degraded in his sight. However, his goodness of heart
overcoming his pride and contempt, he adds sadly, "it displeases me to see
good and generous natures, and that are capable of justice, every day
corrupted in the management and command of this confusion. . . . We had ill -
contrived souls enough without spoiling those that were generous and good." He
rather sought in that misfortune an opportunity and motive for fortifying and
strengthening himself. Attacked one by one by many disagreeables and evils,
which he would have endured more cheerfully in a heap - that is to say, all at
once-pursued by war, disease, by all plagues (July 1585), in the course
things were taking, he already asked himself to whom he and his could have
recourse, of whom he could ask shelter and subsistence for his old age; and
having looked and searched thoroughly all around, he found himself actually
destitute and ruined. For, "to let a man`s self fall plumb down, and from so
great a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, and fortunate
friendship. They are very rare, if there be any." Speaking in such a manner,
we perceive that La Boetie had been some time dead. Then he felt that he must
after all rely on himself in his distress, and must gain strength; now or
never was the time to put into practice the lofty lessons he spent his life in
collecting from the books of the philosophers. He took heart again, and
attained all the height of his virtue: "In an ordinary and quiet time, a man
prepares himself for moderate and common accidents; but in the confusion
wherein we have been for these thirty years, every Frenchman, whether in
particular or in general, sees himself every hour upon the point of the total
ruin and overthrow of his fortune." And far from being discouraged and cursing
fate for causing him to be born in so stormy an age, he suddenly congratulated
himself: "Let us thank fortune that has not made us live in an effeminate,
idle and languishing age." Since the curiosity of wise men seeks the past for
disturbances in states in order to learn the secrets of history, and, as we
should say, the whole physiology of the body social, "so does my curiosity,"
he declares, "make me in some sort please myself with seeing with my own eyes
this notable spectacle of our public death, its forms and symptoms; and,
seeing I could not hinder it, am content to be destined to assist in it, and
thereby to instruct myself." I shall not suggest a consolation of that sort to
most people; the greater part of mankind does not possess the heroic and eager
curiosity of Empedocles and the elder Pliny, the two intrepid men who went
straight to the volcanoes and the disturbances of nature to examine them at
close quarters, at the risk of destruction and death. But to a man of
Montaigne`s nature, the thought of that stoical observation gave him
consolation even amid real evils. Considering the condition of false peace and
doubtful truce, the regime of dull and profound corruption which had preceded
the last disturbances, he almost congratulated himself on seeing their
cessation; for "it was," he said of the regime of Henri III., "an universal
juncture of particular members, rotten to emulation of one another, and the
most of them with inveterate ulcers, that neither required nor admitted of any
cure. This conclusion therefore did really more animate than depress me." Note
that his health, usually delicate, is here raised to the level of his
morality, although what it had suffered through the various disturbances might
have been enough to undermine it. He had the satisfaction of feeling that he
had some hold against fortune, and that it would take a greater shock still to
crush him.
Another consideration, humbler and more humane, upheld him in his
troubles, the consolation arising from a common misfortune, a misfortune
shared by all, and the sight of the courage of others. The people, especially
the real people, they who are victims and not robbers, the peasants of his
district, moved him by the manner in which they endured the same, or even
worse, troubles than his. The disease or plague which raged at that time in
the country pressed chiefly on the poor; Montaigne learned from them
resignation and the practice of philosophy. "Let us look down upon the poor
people that we see scattered upon the face of the earth, prone and intent upon
their business, that neither know Aristotle nor Cato, example nor precept.
Even from these does nature every day extract effects of constancy and
patience, more pure and manly than those we so inquisitively study in the
schools." And he goes on to describe them working to the bitter end, even in
their grief, even in disease, until their strength failed them. "He that is
now digging in my garden has this morning buried his father, or his son. . . .
They never keep their beds but to die." The whole chapter is fine, pathetic,
to the point, evincing noble, stoical elevation of mind, and also the cheerful
and affable disposition which Montaigne said, with truth, was his by
inheritance, and in which he had been nourished. There could be nothing better
as regards "consolation in public calamities," except a chapter of some not
more human, but of some truly divine book, in which the hand of God should be
everywhere visible, not perfunctorily, as with Montaigne, but actually and
lovingly present. In fact, the consolation Montaigne gives himself and others
is perhaps as lofty and beautiful as human consolation without prayer can be.
He wrote the chapter, the twelfth of the third book, in the midst of the
evils described, and before they were ended. He concluded it in his graceful
and poetical way with a collection of examples, "a heap of foreign flowers,"
to which he furnished only the thread for fastening them together.
There is Montaigne to the life; no matter how seriously he spoke, it was
always with the utmost charm. To form an opinion on his style you have only to
open him indifferently at any page and listen to his talk on any subject;
there is none that he did not enliven and make suggestive. In the chapter "Of
Liars," for instance, after enlarging on his lack of memory and giving a list
of reasons by which he might console himself, he suddenly added this fresh and
delightful reason, that, thanks to his faculty for forgetting, "the places I
revisit, and the books I read over again, always smile upon me with a fresh
novelty." It is thus that on every subject he touched he was continually new,
and created sources of freshness.
Montesquieu, in a memorable exclamation, said: "The four great poets,
Plato, Malebranche, Shaftesbury, Montaigne!" How true it is of Montaigne! No
French writer, including the poets proper, had so lofty an idea of poetry as
he had. "From my earliest childhood," he said, "poetry had power over me to
transport and transpierce me." He considered, and therein shows penetration,
that "we have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier
to write than to understand." In itself and its pure beauty his poetry defies
definition; whoever desired to recognise it at a glance and discern of what it
actually consisted would see no more than "the brilliance of a flash of
lightning." In the constitution and continuity of his style, Montaigne is a
writer very rich in animated, bold similes, naturally fertile in metaphors
that are never detached from the thought, but that seize it in its very
centre, in its interior, that join and bind it. In that respect, fully obeying
his own genius, he has gone beyond and sometimes exceeded the genius of
language. His concise, vigorous and always forcible style, by its poignancy,
emphasises and repeats the meaning. It may be said of his style that it is a
continual epigram, or an ever-renewed metaphor, a style that has only been
successfully employed by the French once, by Montaigne himself. If we wanted
to imitate him, supposing we had the power and were naturally fitted for it -
if we desired to write with his severity, exact proportion, and diverse
continuity of figures and turns - it would be necessary to force our language
to be more powerful, and poetically more complete, than is usually our custom.
Style a la Montaigne, consistent, varied in the series and assortment of the
metaphors, exacts the creation of a portion of the tissue itself to hold them.
It is absolutely necessary that in places the woof should be enlarged and
extebe enlarged and extended, in order to weave into it the metaphor; but in
defining him I come almost to write like him. The French language, French
prose, which in fact always savours more or less of conversation, does not,
naturally, possess the resources and the extent of canvas necessary for a
continued picture; by the side of an animated metaphor it will often exhibit a
sudden lacuna and some weak places. In filling this by boldness and invention
as Montaigne did, in creating, in imagining the expression and locution that
is wanting, our prose should appear equally finished. Style a la Montaigne
would, in many respects, be openly at war with that of Voltaire. It could only
come into being and flourish in the full freedom of the sixteenth century, in
a frank, ingenious, jovial, keen, brave, and refined mind, of an unique stamp,
that even for that time, seemed free and somewhat licentious, and that was
inspired and emboldened, but not intoxicated by the pure and direct spirit of
ancient sources.
Such as he is, Montaigne is the French Horace; he is Horatian in the
groundwork, often in the form and expression, although in that he sometimes
approaches Seneca. His book is a treasure-house of moral observations and of
experience; at whatever page it is opened, and in whatever condition of mind,
some wise thought expressed in a striking and enduring fashion is certain to
be found. It will at once detach itself and engrave itself on the mind, a
beautiful meaning in full and forcible words, in one vigorous line, familiar
or great. The whole of his book, said Etienne Pasquier, is a real seminary of
beautiful and remarkable sentences, and they come in so much the better that
they run and hasten on without thrusting themselves into notice. There is
something for every age, for every hour of life: you cannot read in it for any
time without having the mind filled and lined as it were, or, to put it
better, fully armed and clothed. We have just seen how much useful counsel and
actual consolation it contains for an honourable man, born for private life,
and fallen on times of disturbance and revolution. To this I shall add the
counsel he gave those who, like myself and many men of my acquaintance, suffer
from political disturbances without in any way provoking them, or believing
ourselves capable of averting them. Montaigne, as Horace would have done,
counsels them, while apprehending everything from afar off, not to be too much
preoccupied with such matters in advance; to take advantage to the end of
pleasant moments and bright intervals. Stroke on stroke come his piquant and
wise similes, and he concludes, to my thinking, with the most delightful one
of all, and one, besides, entirely appropriate and seasonable: it is folly and
fret, he said, "to take out your furred gown at Saint John because you will
want it at Christmas."
|
