ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 10. 

VII. Of recompenses of honour. VIII. Of the affection of fathers to their children. IX. Of the arms of the Parthians. X. Of books. XI. Of cruelty. 

CHAPTER VII

OF RECOMPENSES OF HONOUR

They who write the life of Augustus Caesar, --[Suetonius, Life ofAugustus, c. 25. ]--observe this in his military discipline, that he waswonderfully liberal of gifts to men of merit, but that as to the truerecompenses of honour he was as sparing; yet he himself had beengratified by his uncle with all the military recompenses before he hadever been in the field. It was a pretty invention, and received intomost governments of the world, to institute certain vain and inthemselves valueless distinctions to honour and recompense virtue, suchas the crowns of laurel, oak, and myrtle, the particular fashion of somegarment, the privilege to ride in a coach in the city, or at night with atorch, some peculiar place assigned in public assemblies, the prerogativeof certain additional names and titles, certain distinctions in thebearing of coats of arms, and the like, the use of which, according tothe several humours of nations, has been variously received, and yetcontinues. 

We in France, as also several of our neighbours, have orders ofknighthood that are instituted only for this end. And 'tis, in earnest, a very good and profitable custom to find out an acknowledgment for theworth of rare and excellent men, and to satisfy them with rewards thatare not at all chargeable either to prince or people. And that which hasalways been found by ancient experience, and which we have heretoforeobserved among ourselves, that men of quality have ever been more jealousof such recompenses than of those wherein there was gain and profit, isnot without very good ground and reason. If with the reward, which oughtto be simply a recompense of honour, they should mix other commoditiesand add riches, this mixture, instead of procuring an increase ofestimation, would debase and abate it. The Order of St. Michael, whichhas been so long in repute amongst us, had no greater commodity than thatit had no communication with any other commodity, which produced thiseffect, that formerly there was no office or title whatever to which thegentry pretended with so great desire and affection as they did to that;no quality that carried with it more respect and grandeur, valour andworth more willingly embracing and with greater ambition aspiring to arecompense purely its own, and rather glorious than profitable. For, intruth, other gifts have not so great a dignity of usage, by reason theyare laid out upon all sorts of occasions; with money a man pays the wagesof a servant, the diligence of a courier, dancing, vaulting, speaking, and the meanest offices we receive; nay, and reward vice with it too, asflattery, treachery, and pimping; and therefore 'tis no wonder if virtueless desires and less willingly receives this common sort of payment, than that which is proper and peculiar to her, throughout generous andnoble. Augustus had reason to be more sparing of this than the other, insomuch that honour is a privilege which derives its principal essencefrom rarity; and so virtue itself:

 "Cui malus est nemo, quis bonus esse potest?"

 ["To whom no one is ill who can be good?"-Martial, xii. 82. ]

We do not intend it for a commendation when we say that such a one iscareful in the education of his children, by reason it is a common act, how just and well done soever; no more than we commend a great tree, where the whole forest is the same. I do not think that any citizen ofSparta glorified himself much upon his valour, it being the universalvirtue of the whole nation; and as little upon his fidelity and contemptof riches. There is no recompense becomes virtue, how great soever, thatis once passed into a custom; and I know not withal whether we can evercall it great, being common. 

Seeing, then, that these remunerations of honour have no other value andestimation but only this, that few people enjoy them, 'tis but to beliberal of them to bring them down to nothing. And though there shouldbe now more men found than in former times worthy of our order, theestimation of it nevertheless should not be abated, nor the honour madecheap; and it may easily happen that more may merit it; for there is novirtue that so easily spreads as that of military valour. There isanother virtue, true, perfect, and philosophical, of which I do notspeak, and only make use of the word in our common acceptation, muchgreater than this and more full, which is a force and assurance of thesoul, equally despising all sorts of adverse accidents, equable, uniform, and constant, of which ours is no more than one little ray. Use, education, example, and custom can do all in all to the establishment ofthat whereof I am speaking, and with great facility render it common, asby the experience of our civil wars is manifest enough; and whoever couldat this time unite us all, Catholic and Huguenot, into one body, and setus upon some brave common enterprise, we should again make our ancientmilitary reputation flourish. It is most certain that in times past therecompense of this order had not only a regard to valour, but had afurther prospect; it never was the reward of a valiant soldier but of agreat captain; the science of obeying was not reputed worthy of sohonourable a guerdon. There was therein a more universal militaryexpertness required, and that comprehended the most and the greatestqualities of a military man:

 "Neque enim eaedem militares et imperatorix artes sunt, "

 ["For the arts of soldiery and generalship are not the same. " --Livy, xxv. 19. ]

as also, besides, a condition suitable to such a dignity. But, I say, though more men were worthy than formerly, yet ought it not to be moreliberally distributed, and it were better to fall short in not giving itat all to whom it should be due, than for ever to lose, as we have latelydone, the fruit of so profitable an invention. No man of spirit willdeign to advantage himself with what is in common with many; and such ofthe present time as have least merited this recompense themselves makethe greater show of disdaining it, in order thereby to be ranked withthose to whom so much wrong has been done by the unworthy conferring anddebasing the distinction which was their particular right. 

Now, to expect that in obliterating and abolishing this, suddenly tocreate and bring into credit a like institution, is not a proper attemptfor so licentious and so sick a time as this wherein we now are; and itwill fall out that the last will from its birth incur the sameinconveniences that have ruined the other. --[Montaigne refers to theOrder of the Saint-Esprit, instituted by Henry III. In 1578. ]--Therules for dispensing this new order had need to be extremely clipt andbound under great restrictions, to give it authority; and this tumultuousseason is incapable of such a curb: besides that, before this can bebrought into repute, 'tis necessary that the memory of the first, and ofthe contempt into which it is fallen, be buried in oblivion. 

This place might naturally enough admit of some discourse upon theconsideration of valour, and the difference of this virtue from others;but, Plutarch having so often handled this subject, I should give myselfan unnecessary trouble to repeat what he has said. But this is worthconsidering: that our nation places valour, vaillance, in the highestdegree of virtue, as its very word evidences, being derived from valeur, and that, according to our use, when we say a man of high worth a goodman, in our court style--'tis to say a valiant man, after the Roman way;for the general appellation of virtue with them takes etymology from vis, force. The proper, sole, and essential profession of, the Frenchnoblesse is that of arms: and 'tis likely that the first virtue thatdiscovered itself amongst men and has given to some advantage overothers, was that by which the strongest and most valiant have masteredthe weaker, and acquired a particular authority and reputation, whencecame to it that dignified appellation; or else, that these nations, beingvery warlike, gave the pre-eminence to that of the virtues which was mostfamiliar to them; just as our passion and the feverish solicitude we haveof the chastity of women occasions that to say, a good woman, a woman ofworth, a woman of honour and virtue, signifies merely a chaste woman asif, to oblige them to that one duty, we were indifferent as to all therest, and gave them the reins in all other faults whatever to compoundfor that one of incontinence. 

CHAPTER VIII

OF THE AFFECTION OF FATHERS TO THEIR CHILDREN

To Madame D'Estissac. 

MADAM, if the strangeness and novelty of my subject, which are wont togive value to things, do not save me, I shall never come off with honourfrom this foolish attempt: but 'tis so fantastic, and carries a face sounlike the common use, that this, peradventure, may make it pass. 'Tis amelancholic humour, and consequently a humour very much an enemy to mynatural complexion, engendered by the pensiveness of the solitude intowhich for some years past I have retired myself, that first put intomy head this idle fancy of writing. Wherein, finding myself totallyunprovided and empty of other matter, I presented myself to myself forargument and subject. 'Tis the only book in the world of its kind, andof a wild and extravagant design. There is nothing worth remark in thisaffair but that extravagancy: for in a subject so vain and frivolous, thebest workman in the world could not have given it a form fit to recommendit to any manner of esteem. 

Now, madam, having to draw my own picture to the life, I had omitted oneimportant feature, had I not therein represented the honour I have everhad for you and your merits; which I have purposely chosen to say in thebeginning of this chapter, by reason that amongst the many otherexcellent qualities you are mistress of, that of the tender love you havemanifested to your children, is seated in one of the highest places. Whoever knows at what age Monsieur D'Estissac, your husband, left you awidow, the great and honourable matches that have since been offered toyou, as many as to any lady of your condition in France, the constancyand steadiness wherewith, for so many years, you have sustained so manysharp difficulties, the burden and conduct of affairs, which havepersecuted you in every corner of the kingdom, and are not yet weary oftormenting you, and the happy direction you have given to all these, byyour sole prudence or good fortune, will easily conclude with me that wehave not so vivid an example as yours of maternal affection in our times. I praise God, madam, that it has been so well employed; for the greathopes Monsieur D'Estissac, your son, gives of himself, render sufficientassurance that when he comes of age you will reap from him all theobedience and gratitude of a very good man. But, forasmuch as by reasonof his tender years, he has not been capable of taking notice of thoseoffices of extremest value he has in so great number received from you, I will, if these papers shall one day happen to fall into his hands, whenI shall neither have mouth nor speech left to deliver it to him, that heshall receive from me a true account of those things, which shall be moreeffectually manifested to him by their own effects, by which he willunderstand that there is not a gentleman in France who stands moreindebted to a mother's care; and that he cannot, in the future, give abetter nor more certain testimony of his own worth and virtue than byacknowledging you for that excellent mother you are. 

If there be any law truly natural, that is to say, any instinct that isseen universally and perpetually imprinted in both beasts and men (whichis not without controversy), I can say, that in my opinion, next to thecare every animal has of its own preservation, and to avoid that whichmay hurt him, the affection that the begetter bears to his offspringholds the second place in this rank. And seeing that nature appears tohave recommended it to us, having regard to the extension and progressionof the successive pieces of this machine of hers, 'tis no wonder if, onthe contrary, that of children towards their parents is not so great. To which we may add this other Aristotelian consideration, that he whoconfers a benefit on any one, loves him better than he is beloved by himagain: that he to whom is owing, loves better than he who owes; and thatevery artificer is fonder of his work, than, if that work had sense, itwould be of him; by reason that it is dear to us to be, and to beconsists in movement and action; therefore every one has in some sort abeing in his work. He who confers a benefit exercises a fine and honestaction; he who receives it exercises the useful only. Now the useful ismuch less lovable than the honest; the honest is stable and permanent, supplying him who has done it with a continual gratification. The usefulloses itself, easily slides away, and the memory of it is neither sofresh nor so pleasing. Those things are dearest to us that have cost usmost, and giving is more chargeable than receiving. 

Since it has pleased God to endue us with some capacity of reason, to theend we may not, like brutes, be servilely subject and enslaved to thelaws common to both, but that we should by judgment and a voluntaryliberty apply ourselves to them, we ought, indeed, something to yield tothe simple authority of nature, but not suffer ourselves to betyrannically hurried away and transported by her; reason alone shouldhave the conduct of our inclinations. I, for my part, have a strangedisgust for those propensions that are started in us without themediation and direction of the judgment, as, upon the subject I amspeaking of, I cannot entertain that passion of dandling and caressinginfants scarcely born, having as yet neither motion of soul nor shape ofbody distinguishable, by which they can render themselves amiable, andhave not willingly suffered them to be nursed near me. A true andregular affection ought to spring and increase with the knowledge theygive us of themselves, and then, if they are worthy of it, the naturalpropension walking hand in hand with reason, to cherish them with a trulypaternal love; and so to judge, also, if they be otherwise, stillrendering ourselves to reason, notwithstanding the inclination of nature. 'Tis oft-times quite otherwise; and, most commonly, we find ourselvesmore taken with the running up and down, the games, and puerilesimplicities of our children, than we do, afterwards, with their mostcomplete actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men; and some there are, who are very liberal in buying themballs to play withal, who are very close-handed for the least necessaryexpense when they come to age. Nay, it looks as if the jealousy ofseeing them appear in and enjoy the world when we are about to leave it, rendered us more niggardly and stingy towards them; it vexes us that theytread upon our heels, as if to solicit us to go out; if this were to befeared, since the order of things will have it so that they cannot, tospeak the truth, be nor live, but at the expense of our being and life, we should never meddle with being fathers at all. 

For my part, I think it cruelty and injustice not to receive them intothe share and society of our goods, and not to make them partakers in theintelligence of our domestic affairs when they are capable, and not tolessen and contract our own expenses to make the more room for theirs, seeing we beget them to that effect. 'Tis unjust that an old fellow, broken and half dead, should alone, in a corner of the chimney, enjoy themoney that would suffice for the maintenance and advancement of manychildren, and suffer them, in the meantime, to lose their' best years forwant of means to advance themselves in the public service and theknowledge of men. A man by this course drives them to despair, and toseek out by any means, how unjust or dishonourable soever, to provide fortheir own support: as I have, in my time, seen several young men of goodextraction so addicted to stealing, that no correction could cure them ofit. I know one of a very good family, to whom, at the request of abrother of his, a very honest and brave gentleman, I once spoke on thisaccount, who made answer, and confessed to me roundly, that he had beenput upon this paltry practice by the severity and avarice of his father;but that he was now so accustomed to it he could not leave it off. And, at that very time, he was trapped stealing a lady's rings, having comeinto her chamber, as she was dressing with several others. He put me inmind of a story I had heard of another gentleman, so perfect andaccomplished in this fine trade in his youth, that, after he came to hisestate and resolved to give it over, he could not hold his hands, nevertheless, if he passed by a shop where he saw anything he liked, fromcatching it up, though it put him to the shame of sending afterwards topay for it. And I have myself seen several so habituated to this qualitythat even amongst their comrades they could not forbear filching, thoughwith intent to restore what they had taken. I am a Gascon, and yet thereis no vice I so little understand as that; I hate it something more bydisposition than I condemn it by reason; I do not so much as desireanything of another man's. This province of ours is, in plain truth, alittle more decried than the other parts of the kingdom; and yet we haveseveral times seen, in our times, men of good families of otherprovinces, in the hands of justice, convicted of abominable thefts. Ifear this vice is, in some sort, to be attributed to the fore-mentionedvice of the fathers. 

And if a man should tell me, as a lord of very good understanding oncedid, that "he hoarded up wealth, not to extract any other fruit and usefrom his parsimony, but to make himself honoured and sought after by hisrelations; and that age having deprived him of all other power, it wasthe only remaining remedy to maintain his authority in his family, and tokeep him from being neglected and despised by all around, " in truth, notonly old age, but all other imbecility, according to Aristotle, is thepromoter of avarice; that is something, but it is physic for a diseasethat a man should prevent the birth of. A father is very miserable whohas no other hold on his children's affection than the need they have ofhis assistance, if that can be called affection; he must render himselfworthy to be respected by his virtue and wisdom, and beloved by hiskindness and the sweetness of his manners; even the very ashes of a richmatter have their value; and we are wont to have the bones and relics ofworthy men in regard and reverence. No old age can be so decrepid in aman who has passed his life in honour, but it must be venerable, especially to his children, whose soul he must have trained up to theirduty by reason, not by necessity and the need they have of him, nor byharshness and compulsion:

 "Et errat longe mea quidem sententia Qui imperium credat esse gravius, aut stabilius, Vi quod fit, quam illud, quod amicitia adjungitur. "

 ["He wanders far from the truth, in my opinion, who thinks that government more absolute and durable which is acquired by force than that which is attached to friendship. "--Terence, Adelph. , i. I, 40. ]

I condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul that is designedfor honour and liberty. There is I know not what of servile in rigourand constraint; and I am of opinion that what is not to be done byreason, prudence, and address, is never to be affected by force. Imyself was brought up after that manner; and they tell me that in all myfirst age I never felt the rod but twice, and then very slightly. Ipractised the same method with my children, who all of them died atnurse, except Leonora, my only daughter, and who arrived to the age offive years and upward without other correction for her childish faults(her mother's indulgence easily concurring) than words only, and thosevery gentle; in which kind of proceeding, though my end and expectationshould be both frustrated, there are other causes enough to lay the faulton without blaming my discipline, which I know to be natural and just, and I should, in this, have yet been more religious towards the males, asless born to subjection and more free; and I should have made it mybusiness to fill their hearts with ingenuousness and freedom. I havenever observed other effects of whipping than to render boys morecowardly, or more wilfully obstinate. 

Do we desire to be beloved of our children? Will we remove from them alloccasion of wishing our death though no occasion of so horrid a wish caneither be just or excusable?

 "Nullum scelus rationem habet. "

 ["No wickedness has reason. "--Livy, xxviii. 28]

Let us reasonably accommodate their lives with what is in our power. Inorder to this, we should not marry so young that our age shall in amanner be confounded with theirs; for this inconvenience plunges us intomany very great difficulties, and especially the gentry of the nation, who are of a condition wherein they have little to do, and who live upontheir rents only: for elsewhere, with people who live by their labour, the plurality and company of children is an increase to the common stock;they are so many new tools and instruments wherewith to grow rich. 

I married at three-and-thirty years of age, and concur in the opinion ofthirty-five, which is said to be that of Aristotle. Plato will havenobody marry before thirty; but he has reason to laugh at those whoundertook the work of marriage after five-and-fifty, and condemns theiroffspring as unworthy of aliment and life. Thales gave the truestlimits, who, young and being importuned by his mother to marry, answered, "That it was too soon, " and, being grown into years and urged again, "That it was too late. " A man must deny opportunity to every inopportuneaction. The ancient Gauls' looked upon it as a very horrid thing for aman to have society with a woman before he was twenty years of age, andstrictly recommended to the men who designed themselves for war thekeeping their virginity till well grown in years, forasmuch as courage isabated and diverted by intercourse with women:

 "Ma, or congiunto a giovinetta sposa, E lieto omai de' figli, era invilito Negli affetti di padre et di marito. "

 ["Now, married to a young wife and happy in children, he was demoralised by his love as father and husband. " --Tasso, Gierus. , x. 39. ]

Muley Hassam, king of Tunis, he whom the Emperor Charles V. Restored tohis kingdom, reproached the memory of his father Mahomet with thefrequentation of women, styling him loose, effeminate, and a getter ofchildren. --[Of whom he had thirty-four. ]--The Greek history observes ofIccus the Tarentine, of Chryso, Astyllus, Diopompos, and others, that tokeep their bodies in order for the Olympic games and such like exercises, they denied themselves during that preparation all commerce with Venus. In a certain country of the Spanish Indies men were not permitted tomarry till after forty age, and yet the girls were allowed at ten. 'Tis not time for a gentleman of thirty years old to give place to hisson who is twenty; he is himself in a condition to serve both in theexpeditions of war and in the court of his prince; has need of all hisappurtenances; and yet, doubtless, he ought to surrender a share, but notso great an one as to forget himself for others; and for such an one theanswer that fathers have ordinarily in their mouths, "I will not put offmy clothes, before I go to bed, " serves well. 

But a father worn out with age and infirmities, and deprived by weaknessand want of health of the common society of men, wrongs himself and histo amass a great heap of treasure. He has lived long enough, if he bewise, to have a mind to strip himself to go to bed, not to his veryshirt, I confess, but to that and a good, warm dressing-gown; theremaining pomps, of which he has no further use, he ought voluntarily tosurrender to those, to whom by the order of nature they belong. 'Tisreason he should refer the use of those things to them, seeing thatnature has reduced him to such a state that he cannot enjoy them himself;otherwise there is doubtless malice and envy in the case. The greatestact of the Emperor Charles V. Was that when, in imitation of some of theancients of his own quality, confessing it but reason to strip ourselveswhen our clothes encumber and grow too heavy for us, and to lie down whenour legs begin to fail us, he resigned his possessions, grandeur, andpower to his son, when he found himself failing in vigour, and steadinessfor the conduct of his affairs suitable with the glory he had thereinacquired:

 "Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne Peccet ad extremum ridendus, et ilia ducat. "

 ["Dismiss the old horse in good time, lest, failing in the lists, the spectators laugh. "--Horace, Epist. , i. , I, 8. ]

This fault of not perceiving betimes and of not being sensible of thefeebleness and extreme alteration that age naturally brings both uponbody and mind, which, in my opinion, is equal, if indeed the soul has notmore than half, has lost the reputation of most of the great men in theworld. I have known in my time, and been intimately acquainted withpersons of great authority, whom one might easily discern marvellouslylapsed from the sufficiency I knew they were once endued with, by thereputation they had acquired in their former years, whom I couldheartily, for their own sakes, have wished at home at their ease, discharged of their public or military employments, which were now growntoo heavy for their shoulders. I have formerly been very familiar in agentleman's house, a widower and very old, though healthy and cheerfulenough: this gentleman had several daughters to marry and a son alreadyof ripe age, which brought upon him many visitors, and a great expense, neither of which well pleased him, not only out of consideration offrugality, but yet more for having, by reason of his age, entered into acourse of life far differing from ours. I told him one day a littleboldly, as I used to do, that he would do better to give us younger folkroom, and to leave his principal house (for he had but that well placedand furnished) to his son, and himself retire to an estate he had hardby, where nobody would trouble his repose, seeing he could not otherwiseavoid being importuned by us, the condition of his children considered. He took my advice afterwards, and found an advantage in so doing. 

I do not mean that a man should so instal them as not to reserve tohimself a liberty to retract; I, who am now arrived to the age whereinsuch things are fit to be done, would resign to them the enjoyment of myhouse and goods, but with a power of revocation if they should give mecause to alter my mind; I would leave to them the use, that being nolonger convenient for me; and, of the general authority and power overall, would reserve as much as--I thought good to myself; having alwaysheld that it must needs be a great satisfaction to an aged father himselfto put his children into the way of governing his affairs, and to havepower during his own life to control their behaviour, supplying them withinstruction and advice from his own experience, and himself to transferthe ancient honour and order of his house into the hands of those who areto succeed him, and by that means to satisfy himself as to the hopes hemay conceive of their future conduct. And in order to this I would notavoid their company; I would observe them near at hand, and partake, according to the condition of my age, of their feasts and jollities. If I did not live absolutely amongst them, which I could not do withoutannoying them and their friends, by reason of the morosity of my age andthe restlessness of my infirmities, and without violating also the rulesand order of living I should then have set down to myself, I would, atleast, live near them in some retired part of my house, not the best inshow, but the most commodious. Nor as I saw some years ago, a dean ofSt. Hilary of Poitiers given up to such a solitude, that at the time Icame into his chamber it had been two and twenty years that he had notstepped one foot out of it, and yet had all his motions free and easy, and was in good health, saving a cold that fell upon his lungs; he would, hardly once in a week, suffer any one to come in to see him; he alwayskept himself shut up in his chamber alone, except that a servant broughthim, once a day, something to eat, and did then but just come in and goout again. His employment was to walk up and down, and read some book, for he was a bit of a scholar; but, as to the rest, obstinately bent todie in this retirement, as he soon after did. I would endeavour bypleasant conversation to create in my children a warm and unfeignedfriendship and good-will towards me, which in well-descended natures isnot hard to do; for if they be furious brutes, of which this age of oursproduces thousands, we are then to hate and avoid them as such. 

I am angry at the custom of forbidding children to call their father bythe name of father, and to enjoin them another, as more full of respectand reverence, as if nature had not sufficiently provided for ourauthority. We call Almighty God Father, and disdain to have our childrencall us so; I have reformed this error in my family. --[As did Henry IV. Of France]--And 'tis also folly and injustice to deprive children, whengrown up, of familiarity with their father, and to carry a scornful andaustere countenance toward them, thinking by that to keep them in awe andobedience; for it is a very idle farce that, instead of producing theeffect designed, renders fathers distasteful, and, which is worse, ridiculous to their own children. They have youth and vigour inpossession, and consequently the breath and favour of the world; andtherefore receive these fierce and tyrannical looks--mere scarecrows--of a man without blood, either in his heart or veins, with mockery andcontempt. Though I could make myself feared, I had yet much rather makemyself beloved: there are so many sorts of defects in old age, so muchimbecility, and it is so liable to contempt, that the best acquisition aman can make is the kindness and affection of his own family; command andfear are no longer his weapons. Such an one I have known who, havingbeen very imperious in his youth, when he came to be old, though he mighthave lived at his full ease, would ever strike, rant, swear, and curse:the most violent householder in France: fretting himself with unnecessarysuspicion and vigilance. And all this rumble and clutter but to make hisfamily cheat him the more; of his barn, his kitchen, cellar, nay, and hisvery purse too, others had the greatest use and share, whilst he keepshis keys in his pocket much more carefully than his eyes. Whilst he hugshimself with the pitiful frugality of a niggard table, everything goes torack and ruin in every corner of his house, in play, drink, all sorts ofprofusion, making sport in their junkets with his vain anger andfruitless parsimony. Every one is a sentinel against him, and if, byaccident, any wretched fellow that serves him is of another humour, andwill not join with the rest, he is presently rendered suspected to him, a bait that old age very easily bites at of itself. How often has thisgentleman boasted to me in how great awe he kept his family, and howexact an obedience and reverence they paid him! How clearly he saw intohis own affairs!

 "Ille solos nescit omnia. "

 ["He alone is ignorant of all that is passing. " --Terence, Adelph. , iv. 2, 9. ]

I do not know any one that can muster more parts, both natural andacquired, proper to maintain dominion, than he; yet he is fallen from itlike a child. For this reason it is that I have picked out him, amongstseveral others that I know of the same humour, for the greatest example. It were matter for a question in the schools, whether he is better thusor otherwise. In his presence, all submit to and bow to him, and give somuch way to his vanity that nobody ever resists him; he has his fill ofassents, of seeming fear, submission, and respect. Does he turn away aservant? he packs up his bundle, and is gone; but 'tis no further thanjust out of his sight: the steps of old age are so slow, the senses sotroubled, that he will live and do his old office in the same house ayear together without being perceived. 

And after a fit interval of time, letters are pretended to come from agreat way off; very humble, suppliant; and full of promises of amendment, by virtue of which he is again received into favour. Does Monsieur makeany bargain, or prepare any despatch that does not please? 'tissuppressed, and causes afterwards forged to excuse the want of executionin the one or answer in the other. No letters being first brought tohim, he never sees any but those that shall seem fit for his knowledge. If by accident they fall first into his own hand, being used to trustsomebody to read them to him; he reads extempore what he thinks fit, andoften makes such a one ask him pardon who abuses and rails at him in hisletter. In short, he sees nothing, but by an image prepared and designedbeforehand and the most satisfactory they can invent, not to rouse andawaken his ill humour and choler. I have seen, under various aspects, enough of these modes of domestic government, long-enduring, constant, tothe like effect. 

Women are evermore addicted to cross their husbands: they lay hold withboth hands on all occasions to contradict and oppose them; the firstexcuse serves for a plenary justification. I have seen one who robbedher husband wholesale, that, as she told her confessor, she mightdistribute the more liberal alms. Let who will trust to that religiousdispensation. No management of affairs seems to them of sufficientdignity, if proceeding from the husband's assent; they must usurp iteither by insolence or cunning, and always injuriously, or else it hasnot the grace and authority they desire. When, as in the case I amspeaking of, 'tis against a poor old man and for the children, then theymake use of this title to serve their passion with glory; and, as for acommon service, easily cabal, and combine against his government anddominion. If they be males grown up in full and flourishing health, theypresently corrupt, either by force or favour, steward, receivers, and allthe rout. Such as have neither wife nor son do not so easily fall intothis misfortune; but withal more cruelly and unworthily. Cato the elderin his time said: So many servants, so many enemies; consider, then, whether according to the vast difference between the purity of the age helived in and the corruption of this of ours, he does not seem to shew usthat wife, son, and servant, are so many enemies to us? 'Tis well forold age that it is always accompanied by want of observation, ignorance, and a proneness to being deceived. For should we see how we are used andwould not acquiesce, what would become of us? especially in such an ageas this, where the very judges who are to determine our controversies areusually partisans to the young, and interested in the cause. In case thediscovery of this cheating escape me, I cannot at least fail to discernthat I am very fit to be cheated. And can a man ever enough exalt thevalue of a friend, in comparison with these civil ties? The very imageof it which I see in beasts, so pure and uncorrupted, how religiously doI respect it! If others deceive me, yet do I not, at least, deceivemyself in thinking I am able to defend myself from them, or in cudgellingmy brains to make myself so. I protect myself from such treasons in myown bosom, not by an unquiet and tumultuous curiosity, but rather bydiversion and resolution. When I hear talk of any one's condition, Inever trouble myself to think of him; I presently turn my eyes uponmyself to see in what condition I am; whatever concerns another relatesto me; the accident that has befallen him gives me caution, and rouses meto turn my defence that way. We every day and every hour say things ofanother that we might properly say of ourselves, could we but apply ourobservation to our own concerns, as well as extend it to others. Andseveral authors have in this manner prejudiced their own cause by runningheadlong upon those they attack, and darting those shafts against theirenemies, that are more properly, and with greater advantage, to be turnedupon themselves. 

The late Mareschal de Montluc having lost his son, who died in the islandof Madeira, in truth a very worthy gentleman and of great expectation, did to me, amongst his other regrets, very much insist upon what a sorrowand heart-breaking it was that he had never made himself familiar withhim; and by that humour of paternal gravity and grimace to have lost theopportunity of having an insight into and of well knowing, his son, asalso of letting him know the extreme affection he had for him, and theworthy opinion he had of his virtue. "That poor boy, " said he, "neversaw in me other than a stern and disdainful countenance, and is gone in abelief that I neither knew how to love him nor esteem him according tohis desert. For whom did I reserve the discovery of that singularaffection I had for him in my soul? Was it not he himself, who ought tohave had all the pleasure of it, and all the obligation? I constrainedand racked myself to put on, and maintain this vain disguise, and have bythat means deprived myself of the pleasure of his conversation, and, Idoubt, in some measure, his affection, which could not but be very coldto me, having never other from me than austerity, nor felt other than atyrannical manner of proceeding. "

 [Madame de Sevigne tells us that she never read this passage without tears in her eyes. "My God!" she exclaims, "how full is this book of good sense!" Ed. ]

I find this complaint to be rational and rightly apprehended: for, as Imyself know by too certain experience, there is no so sweet consolationin the loss of friends as the conscience of having had no reserve orsecret for them, and to have had with them a perfect and entirecommunication. Oh my friend, --[La Boetie. ] am I the better for beingsensible of this; or am I the worse? I am, doubtless, much the better. I am consoled and honoured, in the sorrow for his death. Is it not apious and a pleasing office of my life to be always upon my friend'sobsequies? Can there be any joy equal to this privation?

I open myself to my family, as much as I can, and very willingly let themknow the state of my opinion and good will towards them, as I do toeverybody else: I make haste to bring out and present myself to them; forI will not have them mistaken in me, in anything. Amongst otherparticular customs of our ancient Gauls, this, as Caesar reports, --[DeBello Gall. , vi. R8. ]--was one, that the sons never presentedthemselves before their fathers, nor durst ever appear in their companyin public, till they began to bear arms; as if they would intimate bythis, that it was also time for their fathers to receive them into theirfamiliarity and acquaintance. 

I have observed yet another sort of indiscretion in fathers of my time, that, not contented with having deprived their children, during their ownlong lives, of the share they naturally ought to have had in theirfortunes, they afterwards leave to their wives the same authority overtheir estates, and liberty to dispose of them according to their ownfancy. And I have known a certain lord, one of the principal officers ofthe crown, who, having in reversion above fifty thousand crowns yearlyrevenue, died necessitous and overwhelmed with debt at above fifty yearsof age; his mother in her extremest decrepitude being yet in possessionof all his property by the will of his father, who had, for his part, lived till near fourscore years old. This appears to me by no meansreasonable. And therefore I think it of very little advantage to a man, whose affairs are well enough, to seek a wife who encumbers his estatewith a very great fortune; there is no sort of foreign debt that bringsmore ruin to families than this: my predecessors have ever been aware ofthat danger and provided against it, and so have I. But those whodissuade us from rich wives, for fear they should be less tractable andkind, are out in their advice to make a man lose a real commodity for sofrivolous a conjecture. It costs an unreasonable woman no more to passover one reason than another; they cherish themselves most where they aremost wrong. Injustice allures them, as the honour of their virtuousactions does the good; and the more riches they bring with them, they areso much the more good-natured, as women, who are handsome, are all themore inclined and proud to be chaste. 

'Tis reasonable to leave the administration of affairs to the mothers, till the children are old enough, according to law, to manage them; butthe father has brought them, up very ill, if he cannot hope that, whenthey come to maturity, they will have more wisdom and ability in themanagement of affairs than his wife, considering the ordinary weakness ofthe sex. It were, notwithstanding, to say the truth, more against natureto make the mothers depend upon the discretion of their children; theyought to be plentifully provided for, to maintain themselves according totheir quality and age, by reason that necessity and indigence are muchmore unbecoming and insupportable to them than to men; the son shouldrather be cut short than the mother. 

In general, the most judicious distribution of our goods, when we come todie, is, in my opinion, to let them be distributed according to thecustom of the country; the laws have considered the matter better than weknow how to do, and 'tis wiser to let them fail in their appointment, than rashly to run the hazard of miscarrying in ours. Nor are the goodsproperly ours, since, by civil prescription and without us, they are alldestined to certain successors. And although we have some liberty beyondthat, yet I think we ought not, without great and manifest cause, to takeaway that from one which his fortune has allotted him, and to which thepublic equity gives him title; and that it is against reason to abusethis liberty, in making it serve our own frivolous and private fancies. My destiny has been kind to me in not presenting me with occasions totempt me and divert my affection from the common and legitimateinstitution. I see many with whom 'tis time lost to employ a longexercise of good offices: a word ill taken obliterates ten years' merit;he is happy who is in a position to oil their goodwill at this lastpassage. The last action carries it, not the best and most frequentoffices, but the most recent and present do the work. These are peoplethat play with their wills as with apples or rods, to gratify or chastiseevery action of those who pretend to an interest in their care. 'Tis athing of too great weight and consequence to be so tumbled and tossed andaltered every moment, and wherein the wise determine once for all, havingabove all things regard to reason and the public observance. We laythese masculine substitutions too much to heart, proposing a ridiculouseternity to our names. We are, moreover, too superstitious in vainconjectures as to the future, that we derive from the words and actionsof children. Peradventure they might have done me an injustice, indispossessing me of my right, for having been the most dull and heavy, the most slow and unwilling at my book, not of all my brothers only, butof all the boys in the whole province: whether about learning my lesson, or about any bodily exercise. 'Tis a folly to make an election out ofthe ordinary course upon the credit of these divinations wherein we areso often deceived. If the ordinary rule of descent were to be violated, and the destinies corrected in the choice they have made of our heirs, one might more plausibly do it upon the account of some remarkable andenormous personal deformity, a permanent and incorrigible defect, and inthe opinion of us French, who are great admirers of beauty, an importantprejudice. 

The pleasant dialogue betwixt Plato's legislator and his citizens will bean ornament to this place, "What, " said they, feeling themselves about todie, "may we not dispose of our own to whom we please? God! whatcruelty that it shall not be lawful for us, according as we have beenserved and attended in our sickness, in our old age, in our affairs, togive more or less to those whom we have found most diligent about us, atour own fancy and discretion!" To which the legislator answers thus:

"My friends, who are now, without question, very soon to die, it is hardfor you in the condition you are, either to know yourselves, or what isyours, according to the delphic inscription. I, who make the laws, am ofopinion, that you neither are yourselves your own, nor is that yours ofwhich you are possessed. Both your goods and you belong to yourfamilies, as well those past as those to come; but, further, both yourfamily and goods much more appertain to the public. Wherefore, lest anyflatterer in your old age or in your sickness, or any passion of yourown, should unseasonably prevail with you to make an unjust will, I shalltake care to prevent that inconvenience; but, having respect both to theuniversal interests of the city and that of your particular family, Ishall establish laws, and make it by good reasons appear, that privateconvenience ought to give place to the common benefit. Go thencheerfully where human necessity calls you. It is for me, who regard nomore the one thing than the other, and who, as much as in me lies, amprovident of the public interest, to have a care as to what you leavebehind you. "

To return to my subject: it appears to me that women are very rarelyborn, to whom the prerogative over men, the maternal and naturalexcepted, is in any sort due, unless it be for the punishment of such, as in some amorous fever have voluntarily submitted themselves to them:but that in no way concerns the old ones, of whom we are now speaking. This consideration it is which has made us so willingly to enact and giveforce to that law, which was never yet seen by any one, by which womenare excluded the succession to our crown: and there is hardly agovernment in the world where it is not pleaded, as it is here, by theprobability of reason that authorises it, though fortune has given itmore credit in some places than in others. 'Tis dangerous to leave thedisposal of our succession to their judgment, according to the choicethey shall make of children, which is often fantastic and unjust; for theirregular appetites and depraved tastes they have during the time oftheir being with child, they have at all other times in the mind. Wecommonly see them fond of the most weak, ricketty, and deformed children;or of those, if they have such, as are still hanging at the breast. For, not having sufficient force of reason to choose and embrace that which ismost worthy, they the more willingly suffer themselves to be carriedaway, where the impressions of nature are most alone; like animals thatknow their young no longer than they give them suck. As to the rest, itis easy by experience to be discerned that this natural affection towhich we give so great authority has but very weak roots. For a verylittle profit, we every day tear their own children out of the mothers'arms, and make them take ours in their room: we make them abandon theirown to some pitiful nurse, to whom we disdain to commit ours, or to someshe-goat, forbidding them, not only to give them suck, what danger soeverthey run thereby, but, moreover, to take any manner of care of them, thatthey may wholly be occupied with the care of and attendance upon ours;and we see in most of them an adulterate affection, more vehement thanthe natural, begotten by custom toward the foster children, and a greatersolicitude for the preservation of those they have taken charge of, thanof their own. And that which I was saying of goats was upon thisaccount; that it is ordinary all about where I live, to see thecountrywomen, when they want milk of their own for their children, tocall goats to their assistance; and I have at this hour two men-servantsthat never sucked women's milk more than eight days after they were born. These goats are immediately taught to come to suckle the little children, know their voices when they cry, and come running to them. If any otherthan this foster-child be presented to them, they refuse to let it suck;and the child in like manner will refuse to suck another goat. I saw onethe other day from whom they had taken away the goat that used to nourishit, by reason the father had only borrowed it of a neighbour; the childwould not touch any other they could bring, and died, doubtless ofhunger. Beasts as easily alter and corrupt their natural affection aswe: I believe that in what Herodotus relates of a certain district ofLybia, there are many mistakes; he says that the women are there incommon; but that the child, so soon as it can go, finds him out in thecrowd for his father, to whom he is first led by his natural inclination. 

Now, to consider this simple reason for loving our children, that we havebegot them, therefore calling them our second selves, it appears, methinks, that there is another kind of production proceeding from us, that is of no less recommendation: for that which we engender by thesoul, the issue of our understanding, courage, and abilities, springsfrom nobler parts than those of the body, and that are much more our own:we are both father and mother in this generation. These cost us a greatdeal more and bring us more honour, if they have anything of good inthem. For the value of our other children is much more theirs than ours;the share we have in them is very little; but of these all the beauty, all the grace and value, are ours; and also they more vividly representus than the others. Plato adds, that these are immortal children thatimmortalise and deify their fathers, as Lycurgus, Solon, Minos. Now, histories being full of examples of the common affection of fathers totheir children, it seems not altogether improper to introduce some few ofthis other kind. Heliodorus, that good bishop of Trikka, rather chose tolose the dignity, profit, and devotion of so venerable a prelacy, than tolose his daughter; a daughter that continues to this day very gracefuland comely; but, peradventure, a little too curiously and wantonlytricked, and too amorous for an ecclesiastical and sacerdotal daughter. There was one Labienus at Rome, a man of great worth and authority, andamongst other qualities excellent in all sorts of literature, who was, asI take it, the son of that great Labienus, the chief of Caesar's captainsin the wars of Gaul; and who, afterwards, siding with Pompey the great, so valiantly maintained his cause, till he was by Caesar defeated inSpain. This Labienus, of whom I am now speaking, had several enemies, envious of his good qualities, and, tis likely, the courtiers and minionsof the emperors of his time who were very angry at his freedom and thepaternal humour which he yet retained against tyranny, with which it isto be supposed he had tinctured his books and writings. His adversariesprosecuted several pieces he had published before the magistrates atRome, and prevailed so far against him, as to have them condemned to thefire. It was in him that this new example of punishment was begun, whichwas afterwards continued against others at Rome, to punish even writingand studies with death. There would not be means and matter enough ofcruelty, did we not mix with them things that nature has exempted fromall sense and suffering, as reputation and the products of the mind, anddid we not communicate corporal punishments to the teachings andmonuments of the Muses. Now, Labienus could not suffer this loss, norsurvive these his so dear issue, and therefore caused himself to beconveyed and shut up alive in the monument of his ancestors, where hemade shift to kill and bury himself at once. 'Tis hard to shew a morevehement paternal affection than this. Cassius Severus, a man of greateloquence and his very intimate friend, seeing his books burned, criedout that by the same sentence they should as well condemn him to the firetoo, seeing that he carried in his memory all that they contained. Thelike accident befel Cremutius Cordus, who being accused of having in hisbooks commended Brutus and Cassius, that dirty, servile, and corruptSenate, worthy a worse master than Tiberius, condemned his writings tothe flame. He was willing to bear them company, and killed himself withfasting. The good Lucan, being condemned by that rascal Nero, at thelast gasp of his life, when the greater part of his blood was alreadyspent through the veins of his arms, which he had caused his physician toopen to make him die, and when the cold had seized upon all hisextremities, and began to approach his vital parts, the last thing he hadin his memory was some of the verses of his Battle of Phaysalia, which herecited, dying with them in his mouth. What was this, but taking atender and paternal leave of his children, in imitation of thevaledictions and embraces, wherewith we part from ours, when we come todie, and an effect of that natural inclination, that suggests to ourremembrance in this extremity those things which were dearest to usduring the time of our life?

Can we believe that Epicurus who, as he says himself, dying of theintolerable pain of the stone, had all his consolation in the beauty ofthe doctrine he left behind him, could have received the samesatisfaction from many children, though never so well-conditioned andbrought up, had he had them, as he did from the production of so manyrich writings? Or that, had it been in his choice to have left behindhim a deformed and untoward child or a foolish and ridiculous book, he, or any other man of his understanding, would not rather have chosen tohave run the first misfortune than the other? It had been, for example, peradventure, an impiety in St. Augustin, if, on the one hand, it hadbeen proposed to him to bury his writings, from which religion hasreceived so great fruit, or on the other to bury his children, had he hadthem, had he not rather chosen to bury his children. And I know notwhether I had not much rather have begot a very beautiful one, throughsociety with the Muses, than by lying with my wife. To this, such as itis, what I give it I give absolutely and irrevocably, as men do to theirbodily children. That little I have done for it, is no more at my owndisposal; it may know many things that are gone from me, and from me holdthat which I have not retained; and which, as well as a stranger, Ishould borrow thence, should I stand in need. If I am wiser than mybook, it is richer than I. There are few men addicted to poetry, whowould not be much prouder to be the father to the AEneid than to thehandsomest youth of Rome; and who would not much better bear the loss ofthe one than of the other. For according to Aristotle, the poet, of allartificers, is the fondest of his work. 'Tis hard to believe thatEpaminondas, who boasted that in lieu of all posterity he left twodaughters behind him that would one day do their father honour (meaningthe two victories he obtained over the Lacedaemonians), would willinglyhave consented to exchange these for the most beautiful creatures of allGreece; or that Alexander or Caesar ever wished to be deprived of thegrandeur of their glorious exploits in war, for the convenience ofchildren and heirs, how perfect and accomplished soever. Nay, I make agreat question, whether Phidias or any other excellent sculptor would beso solicitous of the preservation and continuance of his naturalchildren, as he would be of a rare statue, which with long labour andstudy he had perfected according to art. And to those furious andirregular passions that have sometimes inflamed fathers towards their owndaughters, and mothers towards their own sons, the like is also found inthis other sort of parentage: witness what is related of Pygmalion who, having made the statue of a woman of singular beauty, fell sopassionately in love with this work of his, that the gods in favour ofhis passion inspired it with life. 

 "Tentatum mollescit ebur, positoque rigore, Subsidit digitis. "

 ["The ivory grows soft under his touch and yields to his fingers. " --Ovid, Metam. , x. 283. ]

CHAPTER IX

OF THE ARMS OF THE PARTHIANS

'Tis an ill custom and unmanly that the gentlemen of our time have got, not to put on arms but just upon the point of the most extreme necessity, and to lay them by again, so soon as ever there is any show of the dangerbeing over; hence many disorders arise; for every one bustling andrunning to his arms just when he should go to charge, has his cuirass tobuckle on when his companions are already put to rout. Our ancestorswere wont to give their head-piece, lance and gauntlets to be carried, but never put off the other pieces so long as there was any work to bedone. Our troops are now cumbered and rendered unsightly with theclutter of baggage and servants who cannot be from their masters, byreason they carry their arms. Titus Livius speaking of our nation:

 "Intolerantissima laboris corpora vix arma humeris gerebant. "

 ["Bodies most impatient of labour could scarce endure to wear their arms on their shoulders. "--Livy, x. 28. ]

Many nations do yet, and did anciently, go to war without defensive arms, or with such, at least, as were of very little proof:

 "Tegmina queis capitum, raptus de subere cortex. "

 ["To whom the coverings of the heads were the bark of the cork-tree. "--AEneid, vii. 742. ]

Alexander, the most adventurous captain that ever was, very seldom worearmour, and such amongst us as slight it, do not by that much harm to themain concern; for if we see some killed for want of it, there are fewless whom the lumber of arms helps to destroy, either by beingoverburthened, crushed, and cramped with their weight, by a rude shock, or otherwise. For, in plain truth, to observe the weight and thicknessof the armour we have now in use, it seems as if we only sought to defendourselves, and are rather loaded than secured by it. We have enough todo to support its weight, being so manacled and immured, as if we wereonly to contend with our own arms, and as if we had not the sameobligation to defend them, that they have to defend us. Tacitus gives apleasant description of the men-at-arms among our ancient Gauls, who wereso armed as only to be able to stand, without power to harm or to beharmed, or to rise again if once struck down. Lucullus, seeing certainsoldiers of the Medes, who formed the van of Tigranes' army, heavilyarmed and very uneasy, as if in prisons of iron, thence conceived hopeswith great ease to defeat them, and by them began his charge and victory. And now that our musketeers are in credit, I believe some invention willbe found out to immure us for our safety, and to draw us to the war incastles, such as those the ancients loaded their elephants withal. 

This humour is far differing from that of the younger Scipio, who sharplyreprehended his soldiers for having planted caltrops under water, in aditch by which those of the town he held besieged might sally out uponhim; saying, that those who assaulted should think of attacking, and notto fear; suspecting, with good reason, that this stop they had put to theenemies, would make themselves less vigilant upon their guard. He saidalso to a young man, who showed him a fine buckler he had, that he wasvery proud of, "It is a very fine buckler indeed, but a Roman soldierought to repose greater confidence in his right hand than in his left. "

Now 'tis nothing but the not being used to wear it that makes the weightof our armour so intolerable:

 "L'usbergo in dosso haveano, et l'elmo in testa, Due di questi guerrier, de' quali io canto; Ne notte o di, d' appoi ch' entraro in questa Stanza, gl'haveano mai messi da canto; Che facile a portar come la vesta Era lor, perche in uso l'havean tanto:"

 ["Two of the warriors, of whom I sing, had on their backs their cuirass and on their heads their casque, and never had night or day once laid them by, whilst here they were; those arms, by long practice, were grown as light to bear as a garment" --Ariosto, Cant. , MI. 30. ]

the Emperor Caracalla was wont to march on foot, completely armed, at thehead of his army. The Roman infantry always carried not only a morion, asword, and a shield (for as to arms, says Cicero, they were so accustomedto have them always on, that they were no more trouble to them than theirown limbs):

 "Arma enim membra militis esse dicunt. "

but, moreover, fifteen days' provision, together with a certain number ofstakes, wherewith to fortify their camp, sixty pounds in weight. AndMarius' soldiers, laden at the same rate, were inured to march in orderof battle five leagues in five hours, and sometimes, upon any urgentoccasion, six. 

Their military discipline was much ruder than ours, and accordinglyproduced much greater effects. The younger Scipio, reforming his army inSpain, ordered his soldiers to eat standing, and nothing that was drest. The jeer that was given a Lacedaemonian soldier is marvellously pat tothis purpose, who, in an expedition of war, was reproached for havingbeen seen under the roof of a house: they were so inured to hardshipthat, let the weather be what it would, it was a shame to be seen underany other cover than the roof of heaven. We should not march our peoplevery far at that rate. 

As to what remains, Marcellinus, a man bred up in the Roman wars, curiously observes the manner of the Parthians arming themselves, and therather, for being so different from that of the Romans. "They had, " sayshe, "armour so woven as to have all the scales fall over one another likeso many little feathers; which did nothing hinder the motion of the body, and yet were of such resistance, that our darts hitting upon them, wouldrebound" (these were the coats of mail our forefathers were so constantlywont to use). And in another place: "they had, " says he, "strong andable horses, covered with thick tanned hides of leather, and werethemselves armed 'cap-a-pie' with great plates of iron, so artificiallyordered, that in all parts of the limbs, which required bending, theylent themselves to the motion. One would have said, that they had beenmen of iron; having armour for the head so neatly fitted, and sonaturally representing the form of a face, that they were nowherevulnerable, save at two little round holes, that gave them a littlelight, corresponding with their eyes, and certain small chinks abouttheir nostrils, through which they, with great difficulty, breathed, "

 "Flexilis inductis animatur lamina membris, Horribilis visu; credas simulacra moveri Ferrea, cognatoque viros spirare metallo. Par vestitus equis: ferrata fronte minantur, Ferratosque movent, securi vulneris, armos. "

 ["Plates of steel are placed over the body, so flexible that, dreadful to be seen, you would think these not living men, but moving images. The horses are similarly armed, and, secured from wounds, move their iron shoulders. "--Claud, In Ruf. , ii. 358. ]

'Tis a description drawing very near resembling the equipage of themen-at-arms in France, with their barded horses. Plutarch says, thatDemetrius caused two complete suits of armour to be made for himself andfor Alcimus, a captain of the greatest note and authority about him, ofsix score pounds weight each, whereas the ordinary suits weighed but halfas much. 

CHAPTER X

OF BOOKS

I make no doubt but that I often happen to speak of things that are muchbetter and more truly handled by those who are masters of the trade. Youhave here purely an essay of my natural parts, and not of those acquired:and whoever shall catch me tripping in ignorance, will not in any sortget the better of me; for I should be very unwilling to becomeresponsible to another for my writings, who am not so to myself, norsatisfied with them. Whoever goes in quest of knowledge, let him fishfor it where it is to be found; there is nothing I so little profess. These are fancies of my own, by which I do not pretend to discover thingsbut to lay open myself; they may, peradventure, one day be known to me, or have formerly been, according as fortune has been able to bring me inplace where they have been explained; but I have utterly forgotten it;and if I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retention; so that Ican promise no certainty, more than to make known to what point theknowledge I now have has risen. Therefore, let none lay stress upon thematter I write, but upon my method in writing it. Let them observe, inwhat I borrow, if I have known how to choose what is proper to raise orhelp the invention, which is always my own. For I make others say forme, not before but after me, what, either for want of language or want ofsense, I cannot myself so well express. I do not number my borrowings, I weigh them; and had I designed to raise their value by number, I hadmade them twice as many; they are all, or within a very few, so famed andancient authors, that they seem, methinks, themselves sufficiently totell who they are, without giving me the trouble. In reasons, comparisons, and arguments, if I transplant any into my own soil, andconfound them amongst my own, I purposely conceal the author, to awe thetemerity of those precipitate censors who fall upon all sorts ofwritings, particularly the late ones, of men yet living; and in thevulgar tongue which puts every one into a capacity of criticising andwhich seem to convict the conception and design as vulgar also. I willhave them give Plutarch a fillip on my nose, and rail against Seneca whenthey think they rail at me. I must shelter my own weakness under thesegreat reputations. I shall love any one that can unplume me, that is, by clearness of understanding and judgment, and by the sole distinctionof the force and beauty of the discourse. For I who, for want of memory, am at every turn at a loss to, pick them out of their national livery, amyet wise enough to know, by the measure of my own abilities, that my soilis incapable of producing any of those rich flowers that I there findgrowing; and that all the fruits of my own growth are not worth any oneof them. For this, indeed, I hold myself responsible; if I get in my ownway; if there be any vanity and defect in my writings which I do not ofmyself perceive nor can discern, when pointed out to me by another; formany faults escape our eye, but the infirmity of judgment consists in notbeing able to discern them, when by another laid open to us. Knowledgeand truth may be in us without judgment, and judgment also without them;but the confession of ignorance is one of the finest and suresttestimonies of judgment that I know. I have no other officer to put mywritings in rank and file, but only fortune. As things come into myhead, I heap them one upon another; sometimes they advance in wholebodies, sometimes in single file. I would that every one should see mynatural and ordinary pace, irregular as it is; I suffer myself to jog onat my own rate. Neither are these subjects which a man is not permittedto be ignorant in, or casually and at a venture, to discourse of. Icould wish to have a more perfect knowledge of things, but I will not buyit so dear as it costs. My design is to pass over easily, and notlaboriously, the remainder of my life; there is nothing that I willcudgel my brains about; no, not even knowledge, of what value soever. 

I seek, in the reading of books, only to please myself by an honestdiversion; or, if I study, 'tis for no other science than what treats ofthe knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to die and how to livewell. 

 "Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus. "

 ["My horse must work according to my step. " --Propertius, iv. ]

I do not bite my nails about the difficulties I meet with in my reading;after a charge or two, I give them over. Should I insist upon them, Ishould both lose myself and time; for I have an impatient understanding, that must be satisfied at first: what I do not discern at once is bypersistence rendered more obscure. I do nothing without gaiety;continuation and a too obstinate endeavour, darkens, stupefies, and tiresmy judgment. My sight is confounded and dissipated with poring; I mustwithdraw it, and refer my discovery to new attempts; just as, to judgerightly of the lustre of scarlet, we are taught to pass the eye lightlyover it, and again to run it over at several sudden and reiteratedglances. If one book do not please me, I take another; and I nevermeddle with any, but at such times as I am weary of doing nothing. I care not much for new ones, because the old seem fuller and stronger;neither do I converse much with Greek authors, because my judgment cannotdo its work with imperfect intelligence of the material. 

Amongst books that are simply pleasant, of the moderns, Boccaccio'sDecameron, Rabelais, and the Basia of Johannes Secundus (if those may beranged under the title) are worth reading for amusement. As to theAmadis, and such kind of stuff, they had not the credit of arresting evenmy childhood. And I will, moreover, say, whether boldly or rashly, thatthis old, heavy soul of mine is now no longer tickled with Ariosto, no, nor with the worthy Ovid; his facility and inventions, with which I wasformerly so ravished, are now of no more relish, and I can hardly havethe patience to read them. I speak my opinion freely of all things, evenof those that, perhaps, exceed my capacity, and that I do not conceive tobe, in any wise, under my jurisdiction. And, accordingly, the judgment Ideliver, is to show the measure of my own sight, and not of the things Imake so bold to criticise. When I find myself disgusted with Plato's'Axiochus', as with a work, with due respect to such an author be itspoken, without force, my judgment does not believe itself: it is not soarrogant as to oppose the authority of so many other famous judgments ofantiquity, which it considers as its tutors and masters, and with whom itis rather content to err; in such a case, it condemns itself either tostop at the outward bark, not being able to penetrate to the heart, or toconsider it by sortie false light. It is content with only securingitself from trouble and disorder; as to its own weakness, it franklyacknowledges and confesses it. It thinks it gives a just interpretationto the appearances by its conceptions presented to it; but they are weakand imperfect. Most of the fables of AEsop have diverse senses andmeanings, of which the mythologists chose some one that quadrates well tothe fable; but, for the most part, 'tis but the first face that presentsitself and is superficial only; there yet remain others more vivid, essential, and profound, into which they have not been able to penetrate;and just so 'tis with me. 

But, to pursue the business of this essay, I have always thought that, inpoesy, Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace by many degrees excel therest; and signally, Virgil in his Georgics, which I look upon as the mostaccomplished piece in poetry; and in comparison of which a man may easilydiscern that there are some places in his AEneids, to which the authorwould have given a little more of the file, had he had leisure: and thefifth book of his AEneids seems to me the most perfect. I also loveLucan, and willingly read him, not so much for his style, as for his ownworth, and the truth and solidity of his opinions and judgments. As forgood Terence, the refined elegance and grace of the Latin tongue, I findhim admirable in his vivid representation of our manners and themovements of the soul; our actions throw me at every turn upon him; andI cannot read him so often that I do not still discover some new graceand beauty. Such as lived near Virgil's time complained that some shouldcompare Lucretius to him. I am of opinion that the comparison is, intruth, very unequal: a belief that, nevertheless, I have much ado toassure myself in, when I come upon some excellent passage in Lucretius. But if they were so angry at this comparison, what would they say to thebrutish and barbarous stupidity of those who, nowadays, compare him withAriosto? Would not Ariosto himself say?

 "O seclum insipiens et inficetum!"

 ["O stupid and tasteless age. "--Catullus, xliii. 8. ]

I think the ancients had more reason to be angry with those who comparedPlautus with Terence, though much nearer the mark, than Lucretius withVirgil. It makes much for the estimation and preference of Terence, thatthe father of Roman eloquence has him so often, and alone of his class, in his mouth; and the opinion that the best judge of Roman poets--[Horace, De Art. Poetica, 279. ]--has passed upon his companion. Ihave often observed that those of our times, who take upon them to writecomedies (in imitation of the Italians, who are happy enough in that wayof writing), take three or four plots of those of Plautus or Terence tomake one of their own, and, crowd five or six of Boccaccio's novels intoone single comedy. That which makes them so load themselves with matteris the diffidence they have of being able to support themselves withtheir own strength. They must find out something to lean to; and nothaving of their own stuff wherewith to entertain us, they bring in thestory to supply the defect of language. It is quite otherwise with myauthor; the elegance and perfection of his way of speaking makes us losethe appetite of his plot; his refined grace and elegance of dictioneverywhere occupy us: he is so pleasant throughout, "Liquidus, puroque simillimus amni, "

 ["Liquid, and likest the pure river. " --Horace, Ep. , ii. S, 120. ]

and so possesses the soul with his graces that we forget those of hisfable. This same consideration carries me further: I observe that thebest of the ancient poets have avoided affectation and the hunting after, not only fantastic Spanish and Petrarchic elevations, but even the softerand more gentle touches, which are the ornament of all succeeding poesy. And yet there is no good judgment that will condemn this in the ancients, and that does not incomparably more admire the equal polish, and thatperpetual sweetness and flourishing beauty of Catullus's epigrams, thanall the stings with which Martial arms the tails of his. This is by thesame reason that I gave before, and as Martial says of himself:

 "Minus illi ingenio laborandum fuit, in cujus locum materia successerat:"

 ["He had the less for his wit to do that the subject itself supplied what was necessary. "--Martial, praef. Ad lib. Viii. ]

The first, without being moved, or without getting angry, make themselvessufficiently felt; they have matter enough of laughter throughout, theyneed not tickle themselves; the others have need of foreign assistance;as they have the less wit they must have the more body; they mount onhorseback, because they are not able to stand on their own legs. As inour balls, those mean fellows who teach to dance, not being able torepresent the presence and dignity of our noblesse, are fain to putthemselves forward with dangerous jumping, and other strange motions andtumblers tricks; and the ladies are less put to it in dance; where thereare various coupees, changes, and quick motions of body, than in someother of a more sedate kind, where they are only to move a natural pace, and to represent their ordinary grace and presence. And so I have seengood drolls, when in their own everyday clothes, and with the same facethey always wear, give us all the pleasure of their art, when theirapprentices, not yet arrived at such a pitch of perfection, are fain tomeal their faces, put themselves into ridiculous disguises, and make ahundred grotesque faces to give us whereat to laugh. This conception ofmine is nowhere more demonstrable than in comparing the AEneid withOrlando Furioso; of which we see the first, by dint of wing, flying in abrave and lofty place, and always following his point: the latter, fluttering and hopping from tale to tale, as from branch to branch, notdaring to trust his wings but in very short flights, and perching atevery turn, lest his breath and strength should fail. 

 "Excursusque breves tentat. "

 ["And he attempts short excursions. " --Virgil, Georgics, iv. 194. ]

These, then, as to this sort of subjects, are the authors that bestplease me. 

As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more profitwith the pleasure, and whence I learn how to marshal my opinions andconditions, the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch, sincehe has been translated into French, and Seneca. Both of these have thisnotable convenience suited to my humour, that the knowledge I there seekis discoursed in loose pieces, that do not require from me any trouble ofreading long, of which I am incapable. Such are the minor works of thefirst and the epistles of the latter, which are the best and mostprofiting of all their writings. 'Tis no great attempt to take one ofthem in hand, and I give over at pleasure; for they have no sequence ordependence upon one another. These authors, for the most part, concur inuseful and true opinions; and there is this parallel betwixt them, thatfortune brought them into the world about the same century: they wereboth tutors to two Roman emperors: both sought out from foreigncountries: both rich and both great men. Their instruction is the creamof philosophy, and delivered after a plain and pertinent manner. Plutarch is more uniform and constant; Seneca more various and waving:the last toiled and bent his whole strength to fortify virtue againstweakness, fear, and vicious appetites; the other seems more to slighttheir power, and to disdain to alter his pace and to stand upon hisguard. Plutarch's opinions are Platonic, gentle, and accommodated tocivil society; those of the other are Stoical and Epicurean, more remotefrom the common use, but, in my opinion, more individually commodious andmore firm. Seneca seems to lean a little to the tyranny of the emperorsof his time, and only seems; for I take it for certain that he speaksagainst his judgment when he condemns the action of the generousmurderers of Caesar. Plutarch is frank throughout: Seneca abounds withbrisk touches and sallies; Plutarch with things that warm and move youmore; this contents and pays you better: he guides us, the other pushesus on. 

As to Cicero, his works that are most useful to my design are they thattreat of manners and rules of our life. But boldly to confess the truth(for since one has passed the barriers of impudence, there is no bridle), his way of writing appears to me negligent and uninviting: for hisprefaces, definitions, divisions, and etymologies take up the greatestpart of his work: whatever there is of life and marrow is smothered andlost in the long preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him, which is a great deal for me, and try to recollect what I have thenceextracted of juice and substance, for the most part I find nothing butwind; for he is not yet come to the arguments that serve to his purpose, and to the reasons that properly help to form the knot I seek. For me, who only desire to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent, theselogical and Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use. I wouldhave a man begin with the main proposition. I know well enough whatdeath and pleasure are; let no man give himself the trouble to anatomisethem to me. I look for good and solid reasons, at the first dash, toinstruct me how to stand their shock, for which purpose neithergrammatical subtleties nor the quaint contexture of words andargumentations are of any use at all. I am for discourses that give thefirst charge into the heart of the redoubt; his languish about thesubject; they are proper for the schools, for the bar, and for thepulpit, where we have leisure to nod, and may awake, a quarter of an hourafter, time enough to find again the thread of the discourse. It isnecessary to speak after this manner to judges, whom a man has a designto gain over, right or wrong, to children and common people, to whom aman must say all, and see what will come of it. I would not have anauthor make it his business to render me attentive: or that he should cryout fifty times Oyez! as the heralds do. The Romans, in their religiousexercises, began with 'Hoc age' as we in ours do with 'Sursum corda';these are so many words lost to me: I come already fully prepared from mychamber. I need no allurement, no invitation, no sauce; I eat the meatraw, so that, instead of whetting my appetite by these preparatives, theytire and pall it. Will the licence of the time excuse my sacrilegiousboldness if I censure the dialogism of Plato himself as also dull andheavy, too much stifling the matter, and lament so much time lost by aman, who had so many better things to say, in so many long and needlesspreliminary interlocutions? My ignorance will better excuse me in thatI understand not Greek so well as to discern the beauty of his language. I generally choose books that use sciences, not such as only lead tothem. The two first, and Pliny, and their like, have nothing of this Hocage; they will have to do with men already instructed; or if they have, 'tis a substantial Hoc age; and that has a body by itself. I alsodelight in reading the Epistles to Atticus, not only because they containa great deal of the history and affairs of his time, but much morebecause I therein discover much of his own private humours; for I have asingular curiosity, as I have said elsewhere, to pry into the souls andthe natural and true opinions of the authors, with whom I converse. Aman may indeed judge of their parts, but not of their manners nor ofthemselves, by the writings they exhibit upon the theatre of the world. I have a thousand times lamented the loss of the treatise Brutus wroteupon Virtue, for it is well to learn the theory from those who best knowthe practice. 

But seeing the matter preached and the preacher are different things, I would as willingly see Brutus in Plutarch, as in a book of his own. I would rather choose to be certainly informed of the conference he hadin his tent with some particular friends of his the night before abattle, than of the harangue he made the next day to his army; and ofwhat he did in his closet and his chamber, than what he did in the publicsquare and in the senate. As to Cicero, I am of the common opinion that, learning excepted, he had no great natural excellence. He was a goodcitizen, of an affable nature, as all fat, heavy men, such as he was, usually are; but given to ease, and had, in truth, a mighty share ofvanity and ambition. Neither do I know how to excuse him for thinkinghis poetry fit to be published; 'tis no great imperfection to make illverses, but it is an imperfection not to be able to judge how unworthyhis verses were of the glory of his name. For what concerns hiseloquence, that is totally out of all comparison, and I believe it willnever be equalled. The younger Cicero, who resembled his father innothing but in name, whilst commanding in Asia, had several strangers oneday at his table, and, amongst the rest, Cestius seated at the lower end, as men often intrude to the open tables of the great. Cicero asked oneof his people who that man was, who presently told him his name; but he, as one who had his thoughts taken up with something else, and who hadforgotten the answer made him, asking three or four times, over and overagain; the same question, the fellow, to deliver himself from so manyanswers and to make him know him by some particular circumstance; "'tisthat Cestius, " said he, "of whom it was told you, that he makes no greataccount of your father's eloquence in comparison of his own. " At whichCicero, being suddenly nettled, commanded poor Cestius presently to beseized, and caused him to be very well whipped in his own presence; avery discourteous entertainer! Yet even amongst those, who, all thingsconsidered, have reputed his, eloquence incomparable, there have beensome, who have not stuck to observe some faults in it: as that greatBrutus his friend, for example, who said 'twas a broken and feebleeloquence, 'fyactam et elumbem'. The orators also, nearest to the agewherein he lived, reprehended in him the care he had of a certain longcadence in his periods, and particularly took notice of these words, 'esse videatur', which he there so often makes use of. For my part, Imore approve of a shorter style, and that comes more roundly off. Hedoes, though, sometimes shuffle his parts more briskly together, but 'tisvery seldom. I have myself taken notice of this one passage:

 "Ego vero me minus diu senem mallem, quam esse senem, antequam essem. "

 ["I had rather be old a brief time, than be old before old age. --"Cicero, De Senect. , c. 10. ]

The historians are my right ball, for they are pleasant and easy, andwhere man, in general, the knowledge of whom I hunt after, appears morevividly and entire than anywhere else:

 [The easiest of my amusements, the right ball at tennis being that which coming to the player from the right hand, is much easier played with. --Coste. ]

the variety and truth of his internal qualities, in gross and piecemeal, the diversity of means by which he is united and knit, and the accidentsthat threaten him. Now those that write lives, by reason they insistmore upon counsels than events, more upon what sallies from within, thanupon what happens without, are the most proper for my reading; and, therefore, above all others, Plutarch is the man for me. I am very sorrywe have not a dozen Laertii, --[Diogenes Laertius, who wrote the Lives ofthe Philosophers]--or that he was not further extended; for I am equallycurious to know the lives and fortunes of these great instructors of theworld, as to know the diversities of their doctrines and opinions. Inthis kind of study of histories, a man must tumble over, withoutdistinction, all sorts of authors, old and new, French or foreign, thereto know the things of which they variously treat. But Caesar, in myopinion, particularly deserves to be studied, not for the knowledge ofthe history only, but for himself, so great an excellence and perfectionhe has above all the rest, though Sallust be one of the number. Inearnest, I read this author with more reverence and respect than isusually allowed to human writings; one while considering him in hisperson, by his actions and miraculous greatness, and another in thepurity and inimitable polish of his language, wherein he not only excelsall other historians, as Cicero confesses, but, peradventure, evenCicero himself; speaking of his enemies with so much sincerity in hisjudgment, that, the false colours with which he strives to palliate hisevil cause, and the ordure of his pestilent ambition excepted, I thinkthere is no fault to be objected against him, saving this, that he speakstoo sparingly of himself, seeing so many great things could not have beenperformed under his conduct, but that his own personal acts mustnecessarily have had a greater share in them than he attributes to them. 

I love historians, whether of the simple sort, or of the higher order. The simple, who have nothing of their own to mix with it, and who onlymake it their business to collect all that comes to their knowledge, andfaithfully to record all things, without choice or discrimination, leaveto us the entire judgment of discerning the truth. Such, for example, amongst others, is honest Froissart, who has proceeded in his undertakingwith so frank a plainness that, having committed an error, he is notashamed to confess and correct it in the place where the finger has beenlaid, and who represents to us even the variety of rumours that were thenspread abroad, and the different reports that were made to him; 'tis thenaked and inform matter of history, and of which every one may make hisprofit, according to his understanding. The more excellent sort ofhistorians have judgment to pick out what is most worthy to be known;and, of two reports, to examine which is the most likely to be true: fromthe condition of princes and their humours, they conclude their counsels, and attribute to them words proper for the occasion; such have title toassume the authority of regulating our belief to what they themselvesbelieve; but certainly, this privilege belongs to very few. For themiddle sort of historians, of which the most part are, they spoil all;they will chew our meat for us; they take upon them to judge of, andconsequently, to incline the history to their own fancy; for if thejudgment lean to one side, a man cannot avoid wresting and writhing hisnarrative to that bias; they undertake to select things worthy to beknown, and yet often conceal from us such a word, such a private action, as would much better instruct us; omit, as incredible, such things asthey do not understand, and peradventure some, because they cannotexpress good French or Latin. Let them display their eloquence andintelligence, and judge according to their own fancy: but let them, withal, leave us something to judge of after them, and neither alter nordisguise, by their abridgments and at their own choice, anything of thesubstance of the matter, but deliver it to us pure and entire in all itsdimensions. 

For the most part, and especially in these latter ages, persons areculled out for this work from amongst the common people, upon the soleconsideration of well-speaking, as if we were to learn grammar from them;and the men so chosen have fair reason, being hired for no other end andpretending to nothing but babble, not to be very solicitous of any partbut that, and so, with a fine jingle of words, prepare us a prettycontexture of reports they pick up in the streets. The only goodhistories are those that have been written themselves who held command inthe affairs whereof they write, or who participated in the conduct ofthem, or, at least, who have had the conduct of others of the samenature. Such are almost all the Greek and Roman histories: for, severaleye-witnesses having written of the same subject, in the time whengrandeur and learning commonly met in the same person, if there happen tobe an error, it must of necessity be a very slight one, and upon a verydoubtful incident. What can a man expect from a physician who writes ofwar, or from a mere scholar, treating of the designs of princes? If wecould take notice how scrupulous the Romans were in this, there wouldneed but this example: Asinius Pollio found in the histories of Caesarhimself something misreported, a mistake occasioned; either by reason hecould not have his eye in all parts of his army at once and had givencredit to some individual persons who had not delivered him a very trueaccount; or else, for not having had too perfect notice given him by hislieutenants of what they had done in his absence. --[Suetonius, Life ofCaesar, c. 56. ]--By which we may see, whether the inquisition aftertruth be not very delicate, when a man cannot believe the report of abattle from the knowledge of him who there commanded, nor from thesoldiers who were engaged in it, unless, after the method of a judicialinquiry, the witnesses be confronted and objections considered upon theproof of the least detail of every incident. In good earnest theknowledge we have of our own affairs, is much more obscure: but that hasbeen sufficiently handled by Bodin, and according to my own sentiment--[In the work by jean Bodin, entitled "Methodus ad facilem historiarumcognitionem. " 1566. ]--A little to aid the weakness of my memory (soextreme that it has happened to me more than once, to take books againinto my hand as new and unseen, that I had carefully read over a fewyears before, and scribbled with my notes) I have adopted a custom oflate, to note at the end of every book (that is, of those I never intendto read again) the time when I made an end on't, and the judgment I hadmade of it, to the end that this might, at least, represent to me thecharacter and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it;and I will here transcribe some of those annotations. 

I wrote this, some ten years ago, in my Guicciardini (of what languagesoever my books speak to me in, I always speak to them in my own): "He isa diligent historiographer, from whom, in my opinion, a man may learn thetruth of the affairs of his time, as exactly as from any other; in themost of which he was himself also a personal actor, and in honourablecommand. There is no appearance that he disguised anything, either uponthe account of hatred, favour, or vanity; of which the free censures hepasses upon the great ones, and particularly those by whom he wasadvanced and employed in commands of great trust and honour, as PopeClement VII. , give ample testimony. As to that part which he thinkshimself the best at, namely, his digressions and discourses, he hasindeed some very good, and enriched with fine features; but he is toofond of them: for, to leave nothing unsaid, having a subject so full, ample, almost infinite, he degenerates into pedantry and smacks a littleof scholastic prattle. I have also observed this in him, that of so manysouls and so many effects, so many motives and so many counsels as hejudges, he never attributes any one to virtue, religion, or conscience, as if all these were utterly extinct in the world: and of all theactions, how brave soever in outward show they appear in themselves, healways refers the cause and motive to some vicious occasion or someprospect of profit. It is impossible to imagine but that, amongst suchan infinite number of actions as he makes mention of, there must be someone produced by the way of honest reason. No corruption could souniversally have infected men that some one would not escape thecontagion which makes me suspect that his own taste was vicious, whenceit might happen that he judged other men by himself. "

In my Philip de Commines there is this written: "You will here find thelanguage sweet and delightful, of a natural simplicity, the narrationpure, with the good faith of the author conspicuous therein; free fromvanity, when speaking of himself, and from affection or envy, whenspeaking of others: his discourses and exhortations rather accompaniedwith zeal and truth, than with any exquisite sufficiency; and, throughout, authority and gravity, which bespeak him a man of goodextraction, and brought up in great affairs. "

Upon the Memoirs of Monsieur du Bellay I find this: "'Tis always pleasantto read things written by those that have experienced how they ought tobe carried on; but withal, it cannot be denied but there is a manifestdecadence in these two lords--[Martin du Bellay and Guillaume de Langey, brothers, who jointly wrote the Memoirs. ]--from the freedom and libertyof writing that shine in the elder historians, such as the Sire deJoinville, the familiar companion of St. Louis; Eginhard, chancellor toCharlemagne; and of later date, Philip de Commines. What we have here israther an apology for King Francis, against the Emperor Charles V. , thanhistory. I will not believe that they have falsified anything, as tomatter of fact; but they make a common practice of twisting the judgmentof events, very often contrary to reason, to our advantage, and ofomitting whatsoever is ticklish to be handled in the life of theirmaster; witness the proceedings of Messieurs de Montmorency and de Biron, which are here omitted: nay, so much as the very name of Madamed'Estampes is not here to be found. Secret actions an historian mayconceal; but to pass over in silence what all the world knows and thingsthat have drawn after them public and such high consequences, is aninexcusable defect. In fine, whoever has a mind to have a perfectknowledge of King Francis and the events of his reign, let him seek itelsewhere, if my advice may prevail. The only profit a man can reap fromthese Memoirs is in the special narrative of battles and other exploitsof war wherein these gentlemen were personally engaged; in some words andprivate actions of the princes of their time, and in the treaties andnegotiations carried on by the Seigneur de Langey, where there areeverywhere things worthy to be known, and discourses above the vulgarstrain. "

CHAPTER XI

OF CRUELTY

I fancy virtue to be something else, and something more noble, than goodnature, and the mere propension to goodness, that we are born into theworld withal. Well-disposed and well-descended souls pursue, indeed, thesame methods, and represent in their actions the same face that virtueitself does: but the word virtue imports, I know not what, more great andactive than merely for a man to suffer himself, by a happy disposition, to be gently and quietly drawn to the rule of reason. He who, by anatural sweetness and facility, should despise injuries received, woulddoubtless do a very fine and laudable thing; but he who, provoked andnettled to the quick by an offence, should fortify himself with the armsof reason against the furious appetite of revenge, and after a greatconflict, master his own passion, would certainly do a great deal more. The first would do well; the latter virtuously: one action might becalled goodness, and the other virtue; for methinks, the very name ofvirtue presupposes difficulty and contention, and cannot be exercisedwithout an opponent. 'Tis for this reason, perhaps, that we call Godgood, mighty, liberal and just; but we do not call Him virtuous, beingthat all His operations are natural and without endeavour. --[Rousseau, in his Emile, book v. , adopts this passage almost in the same words. ]--It has been the opinion of many philosophers, not only Stoics, butEpicureans--and this addition--

 ["Montaigne stops here to make his excuse for thus naming the Epicureans with the Stoics, in conformity to the general opinion that the Epicureans were not so rigid in their morals as the Stoics, which is not true in the main, as he demonstrates at one view. This involved Montaigne in a tedious parenthesis, during which it is proper that the reader be attentive, that he may not entirely lose the thread of the argument. In some later editions of this author, it has been attempted to remedy this inconvenience, but without observing that Montaigne's argument is rendered more feeble and obscure by such vain repetitions: it is a licence that ought not to be taken, because he who publishes the work of another, ought to give it as the other composed ft. But, in Mr Cotton's translation, he was so puzzled with this enormous parenthesis that he has quite left it out"--Coste. ]

I borrow from the vulgar opinion, which is false, notwithstanding thewitty conceit of Arcesilaus in answer to one, who, being reproached thatmany scholars went from his school to the Epicurean, but never any fromthence to his school, said in answer, "I believe it indeed; numbers ofcapons being made out of cocks, but never any cocks out of capons. "--[Diogenes Laertius, Life of Archesilaus, lib. Iv. , 43. ]--For, in truth, the Epicurean sect is not at all inferior to the Stoic in steadiness, andthe rigour of opinions and precepts. And a certain Stoic, showing morehonesty than those disputants, who, in order to quarrel with Epicurus, and to throw the game into their hands, make him say what he neverthought, putting a wrong construction upon his words, clothing hissentences, by the strict rules of grammar, with another meaning, and adifferent opinion from that which they knew he entertained in his mindand in his morals, the Stoic, I say, declared that he abandoned theEpicurean sect, upon this among other considerations, that he thoughttheir road too lofty and inaccessible;

 ["And those are called lovers of pleasure, being in effect lovers of honour and justice, who cultivate and observe all the virtues. "--Cicero, Ep. Fam. , xv. I, 19. ]

These philosophers say that it is not enough to have the soul seated ina good place, of a good temper, and well disposed to virtue; it is notenough to have our resolutions and our reasoning fixed above all thepower of fortune, but that we are, moreover, to seek occasions wherein toput them to the proof: they would seek pain, necessity, and contempt tocontend with them and to keep the soul in breath:

 "Multum sibi adjicit virtus lacessita. "

 ["Virtue is much strengthened by combats. " or: "Virtue attacked adds to its own force. " --Seneca, Ep. , 13. ]

'Tis one of the reasons why Epaminondas, who was yet of a third sect, --[The Pythagorean. ]--refused the riches fortune presented to him byvery lawful means; because, said he, I am to contend with poverty, inwhich extreme he maintained himself to the last. Socrates put himself, methinks, upon a ruder trial, keeping for his exercise a confoundedscolding wife, which was fighting at sharps. Metellus having, of all theRoman senators, alone attempted, by the power of virtue, to withstand theviolence of Saturninus, tribune of the people at Rome, who would, by allmeans, cause an unjust law to pass in favour of the commons, and, by sodoing, having incurred the capital penalties that Saturninus hadestablished against the dissentient, entertained those who, in thisextremity, led him to execution with words to this effect: That it was athing too easy and too base to do ill; and that to do well where therewas no danger was a common thing; but that to do well where there wasdanger was the proper office of a man of virtue. These words of Metellusvery clearly represent to us what I would make out, viz. , that virtuerefuses facility for a companion; and that the easy, smooth, anddescending way by which the regular steps of a sweet disposition ofnature are conducted is not that of a true virtue; she requires a roughand stormy passage; she will have either exotic difficulties to wrestlewith, like that of Metellus, by means whereof fortune delights tointerrupt the speed of her career, or internal difficulties, that theinordinate appetites and imperfections of our condition introduce todisturb her. 

I am come thus far at my ease; but here it comes into my head that thesoul of Socrates, the most perfect that ever came to my knowledge, shouldby this rule be of very little recommendation; for I cannot conceive inthat person any the least motion of a vicious inclination: I cannotimagine there could be any difficulty or constraint in the course of hisvirtue: I know his reason to be so powerful and sovereign over him thatshe would never have suffered a vicious appetite so much as to spring inhim. To a virtue so elevated as his, I have nothing to oppose. MethinksI see him march, with a victorious and triumphant pace, in pomp and athis ease, without opposition or disturbance. If virtue cannot shinebright, but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say thatshe cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is fromher that she derives her reputation and honour? What then, also, wouldbecome of that brave and generous Epicurean pleasure, which makes accountthat it nourishes virtue tenderly in her lap, and there makes it play andwanton, giving it for toys to play withal, shame, fevers, poverty, death, and torments? If I presuppose that a perfect virtue manifests itself incontending, in patient enduring of pain, and undergoing the uttermostextremity of the gout; without being moved in her seat; if I give hertroubles and difficulty for her necessary objects: what will become of avirtue elevated to such a degree, as not only to despise pain, but, moreover, to rejoice in it, and to be tickled with the throes of a sharpcolic, such as the Epicureans have established, and of which many ofthem, by their actions, have given most manifest proofs? As have severalothers, who I find to have surpassed in effects even the very rules oftheir discipline. Witness the younger Cato: When I see him die, andtearing out his own bowels, I am not satisfied simply to believe that hehad then his soul totally exempt from all trouble and horror: I cannotthink that he only maintained himself in the steadiness that the Stoicalrules prescribed him; temperate, without emotion, and imperturbed. Therewas, methinks, something in the virtue of this man too sprightly andfresh to stop there; I believe that, without doubt, he felt a pleasureand delight in so noble an action, and was more pleased in it than in anyother of his life:

 "Sic abiit a vita, ut causam moriendi nactum se esse gauderet. "

 ["He quitted life rejoicing that a reason for dying had arisen. " --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , i. 30. ]

I believe it so thoroughly that I question whether he would have beencontent to have been deprived of the occasion of so brave an exploit; andif the goodness that made him embrace the public concern more than hisown, withheld me not, I should easily fall into an opinion that hethought himself obliged to fortune for having put his virtue upon sobrave a trial, and for having favoured that theif--[Caesar]--in treadingunderfoot the ancient liberty of his country. Methinks I read in thisaction I know not what exaltation in his soul, and an extraordinary andmanly emotion of pleasure, when he looked upon the generosity and heightof his enterprise:

 "Deliberate morte ferocior, "

 ["The more courageous from the deliberation to die. " --Horace, Od. , i. 37, 29. ]

not stimulated with any hope of glory, as the popular and effeminatejudgments of some have concluded (for that consideration was too mean andlow to possess so generous, so haughty, and so determined a heart ashis), but for the very beauty of the thing in itself, which he who hadthe handling of the springs discerned more clearly and in its perfectionthan we are able to do. Philosophy has obliged me in determining that sobrave an action had been indecently placed in any other life than that ofCato; and that it only appertained to his to end so; notwithstanding, andaccording to reason, he commanded his son and the senators whoaccompanied him to take another course in their affairs:

 "Catoni, quum incredibilem natura tribuisset gravitatem, eamque ipse perpetue constantia roboravisset, semperque in proposito consilio permansisset, moriendum potius, quam tyranni vultus aspiciendus, erat. "

 ["Cato, whom nature had given incredible dignity, which he had fortified by perpetual constancy, ever remaining of his predetermined opinion, preferred to die rather than to look on the countenance of a tyrant. "--Cicero, De Ofc. , i. 31. ]

Every death ought to hold proportion with the life before it; we do notbecome others for dying. I always interpret the death by the lifepreceding; and if any one tell me of a death strong and constant inappearance, annexed to a feeble life, I conclude it produced by somefeeble cause, and suitable to the life before. The easiness then of hisdeath and the facility of dying he had acquired by the vigour of hissoul; shall we say that it ought to abate anything of the lustre of hisvirtue? And who, that has his brain never so little tinctured with thetrue philosophy, can be content to imagine Socrates only free from fearand passion in the accident of his prison, fetters, and condemnation?and that will not discover in him not only firmness and constancy (whichwas his ordinary condition), but, moreover, I know not what newsatisfaction, and a frolic cheerfulness in his last words and actions?In the start he gave with the pleasure of scratching his leg when hisirons were taken off, does he not discover an equal serenity and joy inhis soul for being freed from past inconveniences, and at the same timeto enter into the knowledge of the things to come? Cato shall pardon me, if he please; his death indeed is more tragical and more lingering; butyet this is, I know not how, methinks, finer. Aristippus, to one thatwas lamenting this death: "The gods grant me such an one, " said he. A man discerns in the soul of these two great men and their imitators(for I very much doubt whether there were ever their equals) so perfect ahabitude to virtue, that it was turned to a complexion. It is no longera laborious virtue, nor the precepts of reason, to maintain which thesoul is so racked, but the very essence of their soul, its natural andordinary habit; they have rendered it such by a long practice ofphilosophical precepts having lit upon a rich and fine nature; thevicious passions that spring in us can find no entrance into them; theforce and vigour of their soul stifle and extinguish irregular desires, so soon as they begin to move. 

Now, that it is not more noble, by a high and divine resolution, tohinder the birth of temptations, and to be so formed to virtue, that thevery seeds of vice are rooted out, than to hinder by main force theirprogress; and, having suffered ourselves to be surprised with the firstmotions of the passions, to arm ourselves and to stand firm to opposetheir progress, and overcome them; and that this second effect is notalso much more generous than to be simply endowed with a facile andaffable nature, of itself disaffected to debauchery and vice, I do notthink can be doubted; for this third and last sort of virtue seems torender a man innocent, but not virtuous; free from doing ill, but not aptenough to do well: considering also, that this condition is so nearneighbour to imperfection and cowardice, that I know not very well how toseparate the confines and distinguish them: the very names of goodnessand innocence are, for this reason, in some sort grown into contempt. I very well know that several virtues, as chastity, sobriety, andtemperance, may come to a man through personal defects. Constancy indanger, if it must be so called, the contempt of death, and patience inmisfortunes, may ofttimes be found in men for want of well judging ofsuch accidents, and not apprehending them for such as they are. Want ofapprehension and stupidity sometimes counterfeit virtuous effects as Ihave often seen it happen, that men have been commended for what reallymerited blame. An Italian lord once said this, in my presence, to thedisadvantage of his own nation: that the subtlety of the Italians, andthe vivacity of their conceptions were so great, and they foresaw thedangers and accidents that might befall them so far off, that it was notto be thought strange, if they were often, in war, observed to providefor their safety, even before they had discovered the peril; that weFrench and the Spaniards, who were not so cunning, went on further, andthat we must be made to see and feel the danger before we would take thealarm; but that even then we could not stick to it. But the Germans andSwiss, more gross and heavy, had not the sense to look about them, evenwhen the blows were falling about their ears. Peradventure, he onlytalked so for mirth's sake; and yet it is most certain that in war rawsoldiers rush into dangers with more precipitancy than after they havebeen cudgelled*--(The original has eschauldex--scalded)

 "Haud ignarus . . . . Quantum nova gloria in armis, Et praedulce decus, primo certamine possit. "

 ["Not ignorant how much power the fresh glory of arms and sweetest honour possess in the first contest. "--AEneid, xi. 154]

For this reason it is that, when we judge of a particular action, we areto consider the circumstances, and the whole man by whom it is performed, before we give it a name. 

To instance in myself: I have sometimes known my friends call thatprudence in me, which was merely fortune; and repute that courage andpatience, which was judgment and opinion; and attribute to me one titlefor another, sometimes to my advantage and sometimes otherwise. As tothe rest, I am so far from being arrived at the first and most perfectdegree of excellence, where virtue is turned into habit, that even of thesecond I have made no great proofs. I have not been very solicitous tocurb the desires by which I have been importuned. My virtue is a virtue, or rather an innocence, casual and accidental. If I had been born of amore irregular complexion, I am afraid I should have made scurvy work;for I never observed any great stability in my soul to resist passions, if they were never so little vehement: I know not how to nourish quarrelsand debates in my own bosom, and, consequently, owe myself no greatthanks that I am free from several vices:

 "Si vitiis mediocribus et mea paucis Mendosa est natura, alioqui recta, velut si Egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore naevos:"

 ["If my nature be disfigured only with slight and few vices, and is otherwise just, it is as if you should blame moles on a fair body. " --Horatius, Sat. , i. 6, 65. ]

I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason. She has caused me to bedescended of a race famous for integrity and of a very good father; Iknow not whether or no he has infused into me part of his humours, orwhether domestic examples and the good education of my infancy haveinsensibly assisted in the work, or, if I was otherwise born so:

 "Seu Libra, seu me Scorpius adspicit Formidolosus, pars violentior Natalis hors, seu tyrannus Hesperive Capricornus undae:"

 ["Whether the Balance or dread Scorpio, more potent over my natal hour, aspects me, or Capricorn, supreme over the Hesperian sea. " --Horace, Od. , ii. 117. ]

but so it is, that I have naturally a horror for most vices. The answerof Antisthenes to him who asked him, which was the best apprenticeship"to unlearn evil, " seems to point at this. I have them in horror, I say, with a detestation so natural, and so much my own, that the same instinctand impression I brought of them with me from my nurse, I yet retain, andno temptation whatever has had the power to make me alter it. Not somuch as my own discourses, which in some things lashing out of the commonroad might seem easily to license me to actions that my naturalinclination makes me hate. I will say a prodigious thing, but I will sayit, however: I find myself in many things more under reputation by mymanners than by my opinion, and my concupiscence less debauched than myreason. Aristippus instituted opinions so bold in favour of pleasure andriches as set all the philosophers against him: but as to his manners, Dionysius the tyrant, having presented three beautiful women before him, to take his choice; he made answer, that he would choose them all, andthat Paris got himself into trouble for having preferred one before theother two: but, having taken them home to his house, he sent them backuntouched. His servant finding himself overladen upon the way, with themoney he carried after him, he ordered him to pour out and throw awaythat which troubled him. And Epicurus, whose doctrines were soirreligious and effeminate, was in his life very laborious and devout;he wrote to a friend of his that he lived only upon biscuit and water, entreating him to send him a little cheese, to lie by him against he hada mind to make a feast. Must it be true, that to be a perfect good man, we must be so by an occult, natural, and universal propriety, withoutlaw, reason, or example? The debauches wherein I have been engaged, havenot been, I thank God, of the worst sort, and I have condemned them inmyself, for my judgment was never infected by them; on the contrary, I accuse them more severely in myself than in any other; but that is all, for, as to the rest. I oppose too little resistance and suffer myself toincline too much to the other side of the balance, excepting that Imoderate them, and prevent them from mixing with other vices, which forthe most part will cling together, if a man have not a care. I havecontracted and curtailed mine, to make them as single and as simple as Ican:

 "Nec ultra Errorem foveo. "

 ["Nor do I cherish error further. " or: "Nor carry wrong further. " --Juvenal, viii. 164. ]

For as to the opinion of the Stoics, who say, "That the wise man when heworks, works by all the virtues together, though one be most apparent, according to the nature of the action"; and herein the similitude of ahuman body might serve them somewhat, for the action of anger cannotwork, unless all the humours assist it, though choler predominate;--if they will thence draw a like consequence, that when the wicked mandoes wickedly, he does it by all the vices together, I do not believe itto be so, or else I understand them not, for I by effect find thecontrary. These are sharp, unsubstantial subleties, with whichphilosophy sometimes amuses itself. I follow some vices, but I flyothers as much as a saint would do. The Peripatetics also disown thisindissoluble connection; and Aristotle is of opinion that a prudent andjust man may be intemperate and inconsistent. Socrates confessed to somewho had discovered a certain inclination to vice in his physiognomy, thatit was, in truth, his natural propension, but that he had by disciplinecorrected it. And such as were familiar with the philosopher Stilposaid, that being born with addiction to wine and women, he had by studyrendered himself very abstinent both from the one and the other. 

What I have in me of good, I have, quite contrary, by the chance of mybirth; and hold it not either by law, precept, or any other instruction;the innocence that is in me is a simple one; little vigour and no art. Amongst other vices, I mortally hate cruelty, both by nature andjudgment, as the very extreme of all vices: nay, with so much tendernessthat I cannot see a chicken's neck pulled off without trouble, and cannotwithout impatience endure the cry of a hare in my dog's teeth, though thechase be a violent pleasure. Such as have sensuality to encounter, freely make use of this argument, to shew that it is altogether "viciousand unreasonable; that when it is at the height, it masters us to thatdegree that a man's reason can have no access, " and instance our ownexperience in the act of love, "Quum jam praesagit gaudia corpus, Atque in eo est Venus, ut muliebria conserat arva. "

 [None of the translators of the old editions used for this etext have been willing to translate this passage from Lucretius, iv. 1099; they take a cop out by bashfully saying: "The sense is in the preceding passage of the text. " D. W. ]

wherein they conceive that the pleasure so transports us, that our reasoncannot perform its office, whilst we are in such ecstasy and rapture. Iknow very well it may be otherwise, and that a man may sometimes, if hewill, gain this point over himself to sway his soul, even in the criticalmoment, to think of something else; but then he must ply it to that bent. I know that a man may triumph over the utmost effort of this pleasure: Ihave experienced it in myself, and have not found Venus so imperious agoddess, as many, and much more virtuous men than I, declare. I do notconsider it a miracle, as the Queen of Navarre does in one of the Talesof her Heptameron--["Vu gentil liure pour son estoffe. "]--(which is avery pretty book of its kind), nor for a thing of extreme difficulty, topass whole nights, where a man has all the convenience and liberty he candesire, with a long-coveted mistress, and yet be true to the pledge firstgiven to satisfy himself with kisses and suchlike endearments, withoutpressing any further. I conceive that the example of the pleasure of thechase would be more proper; wherein though the pleasure be less, there isthe higher excitement of unexpected joy, giving no time for the reason, taken by surprise, to prepare itself for the encounter, when after a longquest the beast starts up on a sudden in a place where, peradventure, weleast expected it; the shock and the ardour of the shouts and cries ofthe hunters so strike us, that it would be hard for those who love thislesser chase, to turn their thoughts upon the instant another way; andthe poets make Diana triumph over the torch and shafts of Cupid:

 "Quis non malarum, quas amor curas habet, Haec inter obliviscitur?"

 ["Who, amongst such delights would not remove out of his thoughts the anxious cares of love. "--Horace, Epod. , ii. 37. ]

To return to what I was saying before, I am tenderly compassionate ofothers' afflictions, and should readily cry for company, if, upon anyoccasion whatever, I could cry at all. Nothing tempts my tears buttears, and not only those that are real and true, but whatever they are, feigned or painted. I do not much lament the dead, and should envy themrather; but I very much lament the dying. The savages do not so muchoffend me, in roasting and eating the bodies of the dead, as they do whotorment and persecute the living. Nay, I cannot look so much as upon theordinary executions of justice, how reasonable soever, with a steady eye. Some one having to give testimony of Julius Caesar's clemency; "he was, "says he, "mild in his revenges. Having compelled the pirates to yield bywhom he had before been taken prisoner and put to ransom; forasmuch as hehad threatened them with the cross, he indeed condemned them to it, butit was after they had been first strangled. He punished his secretaryPhilemon, who had attempted to poison him, with no greater severity thanmere death. " Without naming that Latin author, --[Suetonius, Life ofCasay, c. 74. ]--who thus dares to allege as a testimony of mercy thekilling only of those by whom we have been offended; it is easy to guessthat he was struck with the horrid and inhuman examples of crueltypractised by the Roman tyrants. 

For my part, even in justice itself, all that exceeds a simple deathappears to me pure cruelty; especially in us who ought, having regard totheir souls, to dismiss them in a good and calm condition; which cannotbe, when we have agitated them by insufferable torments. Not long since, a soldier who was a prisoner, perceiving from a tower where he was shutup, that the people began to assemble to the place of execution, and thatthe carpenters were busy erecting a scaffold, he presently concludedthat the preparation was for him, and therefore entered into a resolutionto kill himself, but could find no instrument to assist him in his designexcept an old rusty cart-nail that fortune presented to him; with this hefirst gave himself two great wounds about his throat, but finding thesewould not do, he presently afterwards gave himself a third in the belly, where he left the nail sticking up to the head. The first of his keeperswho came in found him in this condition: yet alive, but sunk down andexhausted by his wounds. To make use of time, therefore, before heshould die, they made haste to read his sentence; which having done, andhe hearing that he was only condemned to be beheaded, he seemed to takenew courage, accepted wine which he had before refused, and thanked hisjudges for the unhoped-for mildness of their sentence; saying, that hehad taken a resolution to despatch himself for fear of a more severe andinsupportable death, having entertained an opinion, by the preparationshe had seen in the place, that they were resolved to torment him withsome horrible execution, and seemed to be delivered from death in havingit changed from what he apprehended. 

I should advise that those examples of severity by which 'tis designed toretain the people in their duty, might be exercised upon the dead bodiesof criminals; for to see them deprived of sepulture, to see them boiledand divided into quarters, would almost work as much upon the vulgar, asthe pain they make the living endure; though that in effect be little ornothing, as God himself says, "Who kill the body, and after that have nomore that they can do;"--[Luke, xii. 4. ]--and the poets singularlydwell upon the horrors of this picture, as something worse than death:

 "Heu! reliquias semiustas regis, denudatis ossibus, Per terram sanie delibutas foede divexarier. "

 ["Alas! that the half-burnt remains of the king, exposing his bones, should be foully dragged along the ground besmeared with gore. " --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , i. 44. ]

I happened to come by one day accidentally at Rome, just as they wereupon executing Catena, a notorious robber: he was strangled without anyemotion of the spectators, but when they came to cut him in quarters, thehangman gave not a blow that the people did not follow with a doleful cryand exclamation, as if every one had lent his sense of feeling to themiserable carcase. Those inhuman excesses ought to be exercised upon thebark, and not upon the quick. Artaxerxes, in almost a like case, moderated the severity of the ancient laws of Persia, ordaining that thenobility who had committed a fault, instead of being whipped, as theywere used to be, should be stripped only and their clothes whipped forthem; and that whereas they were wont to tear off their hair, they shouldonly take off their high-crowned tiara. '--[Plutarch, Notable Sayings ofthe Ancient King. ]--The so devout Egyptians thought they sufficientlysatisfied the divine justice by sacrificing hogs in effigy andrepresentation; a bold invention to pay God so essential a substance inpicture only and in show. 

I live in a time wherein we abound in incredible examples of this vice, through the licence of our civil wars; and we see nothing in ancienthistories more extreme than what we have proof of every day, but Icannot, any the more, get used to it. I could hardly persuade myself, before I saw it with my eyes, that there could be found souls so crueland fell, who, for the sole pleasure of murder, would commit it; wouldhack and lop off the limbs of others; sharpen their wits to inventunusual torments and new kinds of death, without hatred, without profit, and for no other end but only to enjoy the pleasant spectacle of thegestures and motions, the lamentable groans and cries of a man dying inanguish. For this is the utmost point to which cruelty can arrive:

 "Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens, tantum spectaturus, occidat. "

 ["That a man should kill a man, not being angry, not in fear, only for the sake of the spectacle. "--Seneca, Ep. , 90. ]

For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beastpursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have receivedno offence at all; and that which frequently happens, that the stag wehunt, finding himself weak and out of breath, and seeing no other remedy, surrenders himself to us who pursue him, imploring mercy by his tears:

 "Questuque cruentus, Atque imploranti similis, "

 ["Who, bleeding, by his tears seems to crave mercy. " --AEnead, vii. 501. ]

has ever been to me a very unpleasing sight; and I hardly ever take abeast alive that I do not presently turn out again. Pythagoras boughtthem of fishermen and fowlers to do the same:

 "Primoque a caede ferarum, Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum. "

 ["I think 'twas slaughter of wild beasts that first stained the steel of man with blood. "--Ovid, Met. , xv. 106. ]

Those natures that are sanguinary towards beasts discover a naturalproneness to cruelty. After they had accustomed themselves at Rome tospectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of theslaughter of men, of gladiators. Nature has herself, I fear, imprintedin man a kind of instinct to inhumanity; nobody takes pleasure in seeingbeasts play with and caress one another, but every one is delighted withseeing them dismember, and tear one another to pieces. And that I maynot be laughed at for the sympathy I have with them, theology itselfenjoins us some favour in their behalf; and considering that one and thesame master has lodged us together in this palace for his service, andthat they, as well as we, are of his family, it has reason to enjoin ussome affection and regard to them. Pythagoras borrowed themetempsychosis from the Egyptians; but it has since been received byseveral nations, and particularly by our Druids:

 "Morte carent animae; semperque, priore relicts Sede, novis domibus vivunt, habitantque receptae. "

 ["Souls never die, but, having left their former seat, live and are received into new homes. "--Ovid, Met. , xv. 158. ]

The religion of our ancient Gauls maintained that souls, being eternal, never ceased to remove and shift their places from one body to another;mixing moreover with this fancy some consideration of divine justice; foraccording to the deportments of the soul, whilst it had been inAlexander, they said that God assigned it another body to inhabit, moreor less painful, and proper for its condition:

 "Muta ferarum Cogit vincla pati; truculentos ingerit ursis, Praedonesque lupis; fallaces vulpibus addit: Atque ubi per varios annos, per mille figuras

 Egit, Lethaeo purgatos flumine, tandem Rursus ad humanae revocat primordia formae:"

 ["He makes them wear the silent chains of brutes, the bloodthirsty souls he encloses in bears, the thieves in wolves, the deceivers in foxes; where, after successive years and a thousand forms, man had spent his life, and after purgation in Lethe's flood, at last he restores them to the primordial human shapes. " --Claudian, In Ruf. , ii. 482. ]

If it had been valiant, he lodged it in the body of a lion; ifvoluptuous, in that of a hog; if timorous, in that of a hart or hare; ifmalicious, in that of a fox, and so of the rest, till having purified itby this chastisement, it again entered into the body of some other man:

 "Ipse ego nam memini, Trojani, tempore belli Panthoides Euphorbus eram. "

 ["For I myself remember that, in the days of the Trojan war, I was Euphorbus, son of Pantheus. "--Ovid, Met. , xv. 160; and see Diogenes Laertius, Life of Pythagoras. ]

As to the relationship betwixt us and beasts, I do not much admit of it;nor of that which several nations, and those among the most ancient andmost noble, have practised, who have not only received brutes into theirsociety and companionship, but have given them a rank infinitely abovethemselves, esteeming them one while familiars and favourites of thegods, and having them in more than human reverence and respect; othersacknowledged no other god or divinity than they:

 "Bellux a barbaris propter beneficium consecratae. "

 ["Beasts, out of opinion of some benefit received by them, were consecrated by barbarians"--Cicero, De Natura Deor. , i. 36. ]

 "Crocodilon adorat Pars haec; illa pavet saturam serpentibus ibin: Effigies sacri hic nitet aurea cercopitheci; Hic piscem flumints, illic Oppida tota canem venerantur. "

 ["This place adores the crocodile; another dreads the ibis, feeder on serpents; here shines the golden image of the sacred ape; here men venerate the fish of the river; there whole towns worship a dog. "--Juvenal, xv. 2. ]

And the very interpretation that Plutarch, gives to this error, which isvery well conceived, is advantageous to them: for he says that it was notthe cat or the ox, for example, that the Egyptians adored: but that they, in those beasts, adored some image of the divine faculties; in this, patience and utility: in that, vivacity, or, as with our neighbours theBurgundians and all the Germans, impatience to see themselves shut up; bywhich they represented liberty, which they loved and adored above allother godlike attributes, and so of the rest. But when, amongst the moremoderate opinions, I meet with arguments that endeavour to demonstratethe near resemblance betwixt us and animals, how large a share they havein our greatest privileges, and with how much probability they compare ustogether, truly I abate a great deal of our presumption, and willinglyresign that imaginary sovereignty that is attributed to us over othercreatures. 

But supposing all this were not true, there is nevertheless a certainrespect, a general duty of humanity, not only to beasts that have lifeand sense, but even to trees, and plants. We owe justice to men, andgraciousness and benignity to other creatures that are capable of it;there is a certain commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them and us. Nor shall I be afraid to confess the tenderness of my nature so childish, that I cannot well refuse to play with my dog, when he the mostunseasonably importunes me to do so. The Turks have alms and hospitalsfor beasts. The Romans had public care to the nourishment of geese, bywhose vigilance their Capitol had been preserved. The Athenians made adecree that the mules and moyls which had served at the building of thetemple called Hecatompedon should be free and suffered to pasture attheir own choice, without hindrance. The Agrigentines had a common usesolemnly to inter the beasts they had a kindness for, as horses of somerare quality, dogs, and useful birds, and even those that had only beenkept to divert their children; and the magnificence that was ordinarywith them in all other things, also particularly appeared in thesumptuosity and numbers of monuments erected to this end, and whichremained in their beauty several ages after. The Egyptians buriedwolves, bears, crocodiles, dogs, and cats in sacred places, embalmedtheir bodies, and put on mourning at their death. Cimon gave anhonourable sepulture to the mares with which he had three times gainedthe prize of the course at the Olympic Games. The ancient Xantippuscaused his dog to be interred on an eminence near the sea, which has eversince retained the name, and Plutarch says, that he had a scruple aboutselling for a small profit to the slaughterer an ox that had been long inhis service. 

 ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 A little cheese when a mind to make a feast A word ill taken obliterates ten years' merit Cato said: So many servants, so many enemies Cherish themselves most where they are most wrong Condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul Cruelty is the very extreme of all vices Disguise, by their abridgments and at their own choice Epicurus Flatterer in your old age or in your sickness He felt a pleasure and delight in so noble an action He judged other men by himself I cannot well refuse to play with my dog I do not much lament the dead, and should envy them rather I had rather be old a brief time, than be old before old age I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason Incline the history to their own fancy It (my books) may know many things that are gone from me Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment Learn the theory from those who best know the practice Loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men Motive to some vicious occasion or some prospect of profit My books: from me hold that which I have not retained My dog unseasonably importunes me to play My innocence is a simple one; little vigour and no art. Never observed any great stability in my soul to resist passions Nothing tempts my tears but tears Omit, as incredible, such things as they do not understand On all occasions to contradict and oppose Only desire to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent Passion of dandling and caressing infants scarcely born Perfection: but I will not buy it so dear as it costs Plato will have nobody marry before thirty Prudent and just man may be intemperate and inconsistent Puerile simplicities of our children Shelter my own weakness under these great reputations Socrates kept a confounded scolding wife The authors, with whom I converse There is no recompense becomes virtue To do well where there was danger was the proper office To whom no one is ill who can be good? Turks have alms and hospitals for beasts Vices will cling together, if a man have not a care Virtue is much strengthened by combats Virtue refuses facility for a companion