ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 15. 

V. Upon Some verses of Virgil. 

CHAPTER V

UPON SOME VERSES OF VIRGIL

CHAPTER V. 

By how much profitable thoughts are more full and solid, by so much arethey also more cumbersome and heavy: vice, death, poverty, diseases, aregrave and grievous subjects. A man should have his soul instructed inthe means to sustain and to contend with evils, and in the rules ofliving and believing well: and often rouse it up, and exercise it in thisnoble study; but in an ordinary soul it must be by intervals and withmoderation; it will otherwise grow besotted if continually intent uponit. I found it necessary, when I was young, to put myself in mind andsolicit myself to keep me to my duty; gaiety and health do not, they say, so well agree with those grave and serious meditations: I am at presentin another state: the conditions of age but too much put me in mind, urgeme to wisdom, and preach to me. From the excess of sprightliness I amfallen into that of severity, which is much more troublesome; and forthat reason I now and then suffer myself purposely a little to run intodisorder, and occupy my mind in wanton and youthful thoughts, wherewithit diverts itself. I am of late but too reserved, too heavy, and tooripe; years every day read to me lectures of coldness and temperance. This body of mine avoids disorder and dreads it; 'tis now my body's turnto guide my mind towards reformation; it governs, in turn, and morerudely and imperiously than the other; it lets me not an hour alone, sleeping or waking, but is always preaching to me death, patience, andrepentance. I now defend myself from temperance, as I have formerly donefrom pleasure; it draws me too much back, and even to stupidity. Now Iwill be master of myself, to all intents and purposes; wisdom has itsexcesses, and has no less need of moderation than folly. Therefore, lestI should wither, dry up, and overcharge myself with prudence, in theintervals and truces my infirmities allow me:

 "Mens intenta suis ne seit usque malis. "

 ["That my mind may not eternally be intent upon my ills. " --Ovid. , Trist. , iv. I, 4. ]

I gently turn aside, and avert my eyes from the stormy and cloudy sky Ihave before me, which, thanks be to God, I regard without fear, but notwithout meditation and study, and amuse myself in the remembrance of mybetter years:

 "Animus quo perdidit, optat, Atque in praeterita se totus imagine versat. "

 ["The mind wishes to have what it has lost, and throws itself wholly into memories of the past. "--Petronius, c. 128. ]

Let childhood look forward and age backward; was not this thesignification of Janus' double face? Let years draw me along if theywill, but it shall be backward; as long as my eyes can discern thepleasant season expired, I shall now and then turn them that way; thoughit escape from my blood and veins, I shall not, however, root the imageof it out of my memory:

 "Hoc est Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui. "

 ["'Tis to live twice to be able to enjoy one's former life again. " --Martial, x. 23, 7. ]

Plato ordains that old men should be present at the exercises, dances, and sports of young people, that they may rejoice in others for theactivity and beauty of body which is no more in themselves, and call tomind the grace and comeliness of that flourishing age; and wills that inthese recreations the honour of the prize should be given to that youngman who has most diverted the company. I was formerly wont to markcloudy and gloomy days as extraordinary; these are now my ordinary days;the extraordinary are the clear and bright; I am ready to leap for joy, as for an unwonted favour, when nothing happens me. Let me ticklemyself, I cannot force a poor smile from this wretched body of mine;I am only merry in conceit and in dreaming, by artifice to divert themelancholy of age; but, in faith, it requires another remedy than adream. A weak contest of art against nature. 'Tis great folly tolengthen and anticipate human incommodities, as every one does; I hadrather be a less while old than be old before I am really so. ' I seize oneven the least occasions of pleasure I can meet. I know very well, byhearsay, several sorts of prudent pleasures, effectually so, and gloriousto boot; but opinion has not power enough over me to give me an appetiteto them. I covet not so much to have them magnanimous, magnificent, andpompous, as I do to have them sweet, facile, and ready:

 "A natura discedimus; populo nos damus, nullius rei bono auctori. "

 ["We depart from nature and give ourselves to the people, who understand nothing. "--Seneca, Ep. , 99. ]

My philosophy is in action, in natural and present practice, very littlein fancy: what if I should take pleasure in playing at cob-nut or to whipa top!

 "Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem. "

 ["He did not sacrifice his health even to rumours. " Ennius, apud Cicero, De Offic. , i. 24]

Pleasure is a quality of very little ambition; it thinks itself richenough of itself without any addition of repute; and is best pleasedwhere most retired. A young man should be whipped who pretends to ataste in wine and sauces; there was nothing which, at that age, I lessvalued or knew: now I begin to learn; I am very much ashamed on't; butwhat should I do? I am more ashamed and vexed at the occasions that putme upon't. 'Tis for us to dote and trifle away the time, and for youngmen to stand upon their reputation and nice punctilios; they are goingtowards the world and the world's opinion; we are retiring from it:

 "Sibi arma, sibi equos, sibi hastas, sibi clavam, sibi pilam, sibi natationes, et cursus habeant: nobis senibus, ex lusionibus multis, talos relinquant et tesseras;"

 ["Let them reserve to themselves arms, horses, spears, clubs, tennis, swimming, and races; and of all the sports leave to us old men cards and dice. "--Cicero, De Senec. , c. 16. ]

the laws themselves send us home. I can do no less in favour of thiswretched condition into which my age has thrown me than furnish it withtoys to play withal, as they do children; and, in truth, we become such. Both wisdom and folly will have enough to do to support and relieve me byalternate services in this calamity of age:

 "Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem. "

 ["Mingle with counsels a brief interval of folly. " --Horace, Od. , iv. 12, 27. ]

I accordingly avoid the lightest punctures; and those that formerly wouldnot have rippled the skin, now pierce me through and through: my habit ofbody is now so naturally declining to ill:

 "In fragili corpore odiosa omnis offensio est;"

 ["In a fragile body every shock is obnoxious. " --Cicero, De Senec. , c. 18. ]

 "Mensque pati durum sustinet aegra nihil. "

 ["And the infirm mind can bear no difficult exertion. " --Ovid, De Ponto. , i. 5, 18. ]

I have ever been very susceptibly tender as to offences: I am much moretender now, and open throughout. 

 "Et minimae vires frangere quassa valent. "

 ["And little force suffices to break what was cracked before. " --Ovid, De Tris. , iii. 11, 22. ]

My judgment restrains me from kicking against and murmuring at theinconveniences that nature orders me to endure, but it does not take awaymy feeling them: I, who have no other thing in my aim but to live and bemerry, would run from one end of the world to the other to seek out onegood year of pleasant and jocund tranquillity. A melancholic and dulltranquillity may be enough for me, but it benumbs and stupefies me; I amnot contented with it. If there be any person, any knot of good companyin country or city, in France or elsewhere, resident or in motion, whocan like my humour, and whose humours I can like, let them but whistleand I will run and furnish them with essays in flesh and bone:

Seeing it is the privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age, Iadvise mine to it with all the power I have; let it meanwhile continuegreen, and flourish if it can, like mistletoe upon a dead tree. But Ifear 'tis a traitor; it has contracted so strict a fraternity with thebody that it leaves me at every turn, to follow that in its need. Iwheedle and deal with it apart in vain; I try in vain to wean it fromthis correspondence, to no effect; quote to it Seneca and Catullus, andladies and royal masques; if its companion have the stone, it seems tohave it too; even the faculties that are most peculiarly and properly itsown cannot then perform their functions, but manifestly appear stupefiedand asleep; there is no sprightliness in its productions, if there be notat the same time an equal proportion in the body too. 

Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of theextraordinary emotions of the soul, besides attributing it to a divineecstasy, love, martial fierceness, poesy, wine, they have not alsoattributed a part to health: a boiling, vigorous, full, and lazy health, such as formerly the verdure of youth and security, by fits, supplied mewithal; that fire of sprightliness and gaiety darts into the mind flashesthat are lively and bright beyond our natural light, and of allenthusiasms the most jovial, if not the most extravagant. 

It is, then, no wonder if a contrary state stupefy and clog my spirit, and produce a contrary effect:

 "Ad nullum consurgit opus, cum corpore languet;"

 ["When the mind is languishing, the body is good for nothing. " (Or:) "It rises to no effort; it languishes with the body. " --Pseudo Gallus, i. 125. ]

and yet would have me obliged to it for giving, as it wants to make out, much less consent to this stupidity than is the ordinary case with men ofmy age. Let us, at least, whilst we have truce, drive away incommoditiesand difficulties from our commerce:

 "Dum licet, obducta solvatur fronte senectus:"

 ["Whilst we can, let us banish old age from the brow. " --Herod. , Ep. , xiii. 7. ]

 "Tetrica sunt amcenanda jocularibus. "

 ["Sour things are to be sweetened with those that are pleasant. " --Sidonius Apollin. , Ep. , i. 9. ]

I love a gay and civil wisdom, and fly from all sourness and austerity ofmanners, all repellent, mien being suspected by me:

 "Tristemque vultus tetrici arrogantiam:"

 ["The arrogant sadness of a crabbed face. "--Auctor Incert. ]

 "Et habet tristis quoque turba cinaedos. "

 ["And the dull crowd also has its voluptuaries. " (Or:) "An austere countenance sometimes covers a debauched mind. " --Idem. ]

I am very much of Plato's opinion, who says that facile or harsh humoursare great indications of the good or ill disposition of the mind. Socrates had a constant countenance, but serene and smiling, not sourlyaustere, like the elder Crassus, whom no one ever saw laugh. Virtue is apleasant and gay quality. 

I know very well that few will quarrel with the licence of my writings, who have not more to quarrel with in the licence of their own thoughts:I conform myself well enough to their inclinations, but I offend theireyes. 'Tis a fine humour to strain the writings of Plato, to wrest hispretended intercourses with Phaedo, Dion, Stella, and Archeanassa:

 "Non pudeat dicere, quod non pudet sentire. "

 ["Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think. "]

I hate a froward and dismal spirit, that slips over all the pleasures oflife and seizes and feeds upon misfortunes; like flies, that cannot stickto a smooth and polished body, but fix and repose themselves upon craggyand rough places, and like cupping-glasses, that only suck and attractbad blood. 

As to the rest, I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare todo; even thoughts that are not to be published, displease me; the worstof my actions and qualities do not appear to me so evil as I find it eviland base not to dare to own them. Every one is wary and discreet inconfession, but men ought to be so in action; the boldness of doing illis in some sort compensated and restrained by the boldness of confessingit. Whoever will oblige himself to tell all, should oblige himself to donothing that he must be forced to conceal. I wish that this excessivelicence of mine may draw men to freedom, above these timorous and mincingvirtues sprung from our imperfections, and that at the expense of myimmoderation I may reduce them to reason. A man must see and study hisvice to correct it; they who conceal it from others, commonly conceal itfrom themselves; and do not think it close enough, if they themselves seeit: they withdraw and disguise it from their own consciences:

 "Quare vitia sua nemo confitetur? Quia etiam nunc in illia est; somnium narrare vigilantis est. "

 ["Why does no man confess his vices? because he is yet in them; 'tis for a waking man to tell his dream. "--Seneca, Ep. , 53. ]

The diseases of the body explain themselves by their increase; we findthat to be the gout which we called a rheum or a strain; the diseases ofthe soul, the greater they are, keep, themselves the most obscure;the most sick are the least sensible; therefore it is that with anunrelenting hand they most often, in full day, be taken to task, opened, and torn from the hollow of the heart. As in doing well, so in doingill, the mere confession is sometimes satisfaction. Is there anydeformity in doing amiss, that can excuse us from confessing ourselves?It is so great a pain to me to dissemble, that I evade the trust ofanother's secrets, wanting the courage to disavow my knowledge. I cankeep silent, but deny I cannot without the greatest trouble and violenceto myself imaginable to be very secret, a man must be so by nature, notby obligation. 'Tis little worth, in the service of a prince, to besecret, if a man be not a liar to boot. If he who asked Thales theMilesian whether he ought solemnly to deny that he had committedadultery, had applied himself to me, I should have told him that he oughtnot to do it; for I look upon lying as a worse fault than the other. Thales advised him quite contrary, bidding him swear to shield thegreater fault by the less;

 [Montaigne's memory here serves him ill, for the question being put to Thales, his answer was: "But is not perjury worse than adultery?"--Diogenes Laertius, in vita, i. 36. ]

nevertheless, this counsel was not so much an election as amultiplication of vice. Upon which let us say this in passing, that wedeal liberally with a man of conscience when we propose to him somedifficulty in counterpoise of vice; but when we shut him up betwixt twovices, he is put to a hard choice as Origen was either to idolatrise orto suffer himself to be carnally abused by a great Ethiopian slave theybrought to him. He submitted to the first condition, and wrongly, peoplesay. Yet those women of our times are not much out, according to theirerror, who protest they had rather burden their consciences with ten menthan one mass. 

If it be indiscretion so to publish one's errors, yet there is no greatdanger that it pass into example and custom; for Ariston said, that thewinds men most fear are those that lay them open. We must tuck up thisridiculous rag that hides our manners: they send their consciences to thestews, and keep a starched countenance: even traitors and assassinsespouse the laws of ceremony, and there fix their duty. So that neithercan injustice complain of incivility, nor malice of indiscretion. 'Tispity but a bad man should be a fool to boot, and that outward decencyshould palliate his vice: this rough-cast only appertains to a good andsound wall, that deserves to be preserved and whited. 

In favour of the Huguenots, who condemn our auricular and privateconfession, I confess myself in public, religiously and purely: St. Augustin, Origeti, and Hippocrates have published the errors of theiropinions; I, moreover, of my manners. I am greedy of making myselfknown, and I care not to how many, provided it be truly; or to saybetter, I hunger for nothing; but I mortally hate to be mistaken by thosewho happen to learn my name. He who does all things for honour andglory, what can he think to gain by shewing himself to the world in avizor, and by concealing his true being from the people? Praise ahumpback for his stature, he has reason to take it for an affront:if you are a coward, and men commend you for your valour, is it of youthey speak? They take you for another. I should like him as well whoglorifies himself in the compliments and congees that are made him as ifhe were master of the company, when he is one of the least of the train. Archelaus, king of Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threwwater on his head, which they who were with him said he ought to punish:"Aye, but, " said he, "whoever it was, he did not throw the water upon me, but upon him whom he took me to be. " Socrates being told that peoplespoke ill of him, "Not at all, " said he, "there is nothing, in me of whatthey say. "

For my part, if any one should recommend me as a good pilot, as beingvery modest or very chaste, I should owe him no thanks; and so, whoevershould call me traitor, robber, or drunkard, I should be as littleconcerned. They who do not rightly know themselves, may feed themselveswith false approbations; not I, who see myself, and who examine myselfeven to my very bowels, and who very well know what is my due. I amcontent to be less commended, provided I am better known. I may bereputed a wise man in such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly. I am vexed that my Essays only serve the ladies for a common piece offurniture, and a piece for the hall; this chapter will make me part ofthe water-closet. I love to traffic with them a little in private;public conversation is without favour and without savour. In farewells, we oftener than not heat our affections towards the things we take leaveof; I take my last leave of the pleasures of this world: these are ourlast embraces. 

But let us come to my subject: what has the act of generation, sonatural, so necessary, and so just, done to men, to be a thing not tobe spoken of without blushing, and to be excluded from all serious andmoderate discourse? We boldly pronounce kill, rob, betray, and that wedare only to do betwixt the teeth. Is it to say, the less we expend inwords, we may pay so much the more in thinking? For it is certain thatthe words least in use, most seldom written, and best kept in, are thebest and most generally known: no age, no manners, are ignorant of them, no more than the word bread they imprint themselves in every one withoutbeing, expressed, without voice, and without figure; and the sex thatmost practises it is bound to say least of it. 'Tis an act that we haveplaced in the franchise of silence, from which to take it is a crime evento accuse and judge it; neither dare we reprehend it but by periphrasisand picture. A great favour to a criminal to be so execrable thatjustice thinks it unjust to touch and see him; free, and safe by thebenefit of the severity of his condemnation. Is it not here as in matterof books, that sell better and become more public for being suppressed?For my part, I will take Aristotle at his word, who says, that"bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age. " Theseverses are preached in the ancient school, a school that I much moreadhere to than the modern: its virtues appear to me to be greater, andthe vices less:

 "Ceux qui par trop fuyant Venus estrivent, Faillent autant que ceulx qui trop la suyvent. "

 ["They err as much who too much forbear Venus, as they who are too frequent in her rites. "--A translation by Amyot from Plutarch, A philosopher should converse with princes. ]

 "Tu, dea, rerum naturam sola gubernas, Nec sine to quicquam dias in luminis oras Exoritur, neque fit laetum, nec amabile quidquam. "

 ["Goddess, still thou alone governest nature, nor without thee anything comes into light; nothing is pleasant, nothing joyful. " --Lucretius, i. 22. ]

I know not who could set Pallas and the Muses at variance with Venus, andmake them cold towards Love; but I see no deities so well met, or thatare more indebted to one another. Who will deprive the Muses of amorousimaginations, will rob them of the best entertainment they have, and ofthe noblest matter of their work: and who will make Love lose thecommunication and service of poesy, will disarm him of his best weapons:by this means they charge the god of familiarity and good will, and theprotecting goddesses of humanity and justice, with the vice ofingratitude and unthankfulness. I have not been so long cashiered fromthe state and service of this god, that my memory is not still perfect inhis force and value:

 "Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae;"

 ["I recognise vestiges of my old flame. "--AEneid. , iv. 23. ]

There are yet some remains of heat and emotion after the fever:

 "Nec mihi deficiat calor hic, hiemantibus annis!"

 ["Nor let this heat of youth fail me in my winter years. "]

Withered and drooping as I am, I feel yet some remains of the pastardour:

 "Qual l'alto Egeo, per the Aquilone o Noto Cessi, the tutto prima il volse et scosse, Non 's accheta ei pero; ma'l suono e'l moto Ritien del l'onde anco agitate e grosse:"

 ["As Aegean seas, when storms be calmed again, That rolled their tumbling waves with troublous blasts, Do yet of tempests passed some show retain, And here and there their swelling billows cast. "--Fairfax. ]

but from what I understand of it, the force and power of this god aremore lively and animated in the picture of poesy than in their ownessence:

 "Et versus digitos habet:"

 ["Verse has fingers. "--Altered from Juvenal, iv. 196. ]

it has I know not what kind of air, more amorous than love itself. Venusis not so beautiful, naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil:

 "Dixerat; et niveis hinc atque hinc Diva lacertis Cunctantem amplexu molli fovet. Ille repente Accepit solitam flammam; notusque medullas Intravit calor, et labefacta per ossa cucurrit Non secus atque olim tonitru, cum rupta corusco Ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos. . . . . . . Ea verba loquutus, Optatos dedit amplexus; placidumque petivit Conjugis infusus gremio per membra soporem. "

 ["The goddess spoke, and throwing round him her snowy arms in soft embraces, caresses him hesitating. Suddenly he caught the wonted flame, and the well-known warmth pierced his marrow, and ran thrilling through his shaken bones: just as when at times, with thunder, a stream of fire in lightning flashes shoots across the skies. Having spoken these words, he gave her the wished embrace, and in the bosom of his spouse sought placid sleep. " --AEneid, viii. 387 and 392. ]

All that I find fault with in considering it is, that he has representedher a little too passionate for a married Venus; in this discreet kind ofcoupling, the appetite is not usually so wanton, but more grave and dull. Love hates that people should hold of any but itself, and goes butfaintly to work in familiarities derived from any other title, asmarriage is: alliance, dowry, therein sway by reason, as much or morethan grace and beauty. Men do not marry for themselves, let them saywhat they will; they marry as much or more for their posterity andfamily; the custom and interest of marriage concern our race much morethan us; and therefore it is, that I like to have a match carried on by athird hand rather than a man's own, and by another man's liking than thatof the party himself; and how much is all this opposite to theconventions of love? And also it is a kind of incest to employ in thisvenerable and sacred alliance the heat and extravagance of amorouslicence, as I think I have said elsewhere. A man, says Aristotle, mustapproach his wife with prudence and temperance, lest in dealing toolasciviously with her, the extreme pleasure make her exceed the bounds ofreason. What he says upon the account of conscience, the physicians sayupon the account of health: "that a pleasure excessively lascivious, voluptuous, and frequent, makes the seed too hot, and hindersconception": 'tis said, elsewhere, that to a languishing intercourse, asthis naturally is, to supply it with a due and fruitful heat, a man mustdo it but seldom and at appreciable intervals:

 "Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat. "

 ["But let him thirstily snatch the joys of love and enclose them in his bosom. "--Virg. , Georg. , iii. 137. ]

I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails thanthose that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires;there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they shouldproceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardour is worthnothing. 

They who think they honour marriage by joining love to it, do, methinks, like those who, to favour virtue, hold that nobility is nothing else butvirtue. They are indeed things that have some relation to one another, but there is a great deal of difference; we should not so mix their namesand titles; 'tis a wrong to them both so to confound them. Nobility is abrave quality, and with good reason introduced; but forasmuch as 'tis aquality depending upon others, and may happen in a vicious person, inhimself nothing, 'tis in estimate infinitely below virtue';

 ["If nobility be virtue, it loses its quality in all things wherein not virtuous: and if it be not virtue, 'tis a small matter. " --La Byuyere. ]

'tis a virtue, if it be one, that is artificial and apparent, dependingupon time and fortune: various in form, according to the country; livingand mortal; without birth, as the river Nile; genealogical and common;of succession and similitude; drawn by consequence, and a very weak one. Knowledge, strength, goodness, beauty, riches, and all other qualities, fall into communication and commerce, but this is consummated in itself, and of no use to the service of others. There was proposed to one of ourkings the choice of two candidates for the same command, of whom one wasa gentleman, the other not; he ordered that, without respect to quality, they should choose him who had the most merit; but where the worth of thecompetitors should appear to be entirely equal, they should have respectto birth: this was justly to give it its rank. A young man unknown, coming to Antigonus to make suit for his father's command, a valiant manlately dead: "Friend, " said he, "in such preferments as these, I have notso much regard to the nobility of my soldiers as to their prowess. "And, indeed, it ought not to go as it did with the officers of the kingsof Sparta, trumpeters, fiddlers, cooks, the children of whom alwayssucceeded to their places, how ignorant soever, and were preferred beforethe most experienced in the trade. They of Calicut make of nobles a sortof superhuman persons: they are interdicted marriage and all but warlikeemployments: they may have of concubines their fill, and the women asmany lovers, without being jealous of one another; but 'tis a capital andirremissible crime to couple with a person of meaner conditions thanthemselves; and they think themselves polluted, if they have but touchedone in walking along; and supposing their nobility to be marvellouslyinterested and injured in it, kill such as only approach a little toonear them: insomuch that the ignoble are obliged to cry out as they walk, like the gondoliers of Venice, at the turnings of streets for fear ofjostling; and the nobles command them to step aside to what part theyplease: by that means these avoid what they repute a perpetual ignominy, those certain death. No time, no favour of the prince, no office, orvirtue, or riches, can ever prevail to make a plebeian become noble: towhich this custom contributes, that marriages are interdicted betwixtdifferent trades; the daughter of one of the cordwainers' gild is notpermitted to marry a carpenter; and parents are obliged to train up theirchildren precisely in their own callings, and not put them to any othertrade; by which means the distinction and continuance of their fortunesare maintained. 

A good marriage, if there be any such, rejects the company and conditionsof love, and tries to represent those of friendship. 'Tis a sweetsociety of life, full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number ofuseful and solid services and mutual obligations; which any woman who hasa right taste:

 "Optato quam junxit lumine taeda"--

 ["Whom the marriage torch has joined with the desired light. " --Catullus, lxiv. 79. ]

would be loth to serve her husband in quality of a mistress. If she belodged in his affection as a wife, she is more honourably and securelyplaced. When he purports to be in love with another, and works all hecan to obtain his desire, let any one but ask him, on which he had rathera disgrace should fall, his wife or his mistress, which of theirmisfortunes would most afflict him, and to which of them he wishes themost grandeur, the answer to these questions is out of dispute in a soundmarriage. 

And that so few are observed to be happy, is a token of its price andvalue. If well formed and rightly taken, 'tis the best of all humansocieties; we cannot live without it, and yet we do nothing but decry it. It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in, and thosewithin despair of getting out. Socrates being asked, whether it was morecommodious to take a wife or not, "Let a man take which course he will, "said he; "he will repent. " 'Tis a contract to which the commonsaying:

 "Homo homini aut deus aut lupus, "

 ["Man to man is either a god or a wolf. "--Erasmus, Adag. ]

may very fitly be applied; there must be a concurrence of many qualitiesin the construction. It is found nowadays more convenient for simple andplebeian souls, where delights, curiosity, and idleness do not so muchdisturb it; but extravagant humours, such as mine, that hate all sorts ofobligation and restraint, are not so proper for it:

 "Et mihi dulce magis resoluto vivere collo. "

 ["And it is sweet to me to live with a loosened neck. " --Pseudo Gallus, i. 61. ]

Might I have had my own will, I would not have married Wisdom herself, ifshe would have had me. But 'tis to much purpose to evade it; the commoncustom and usance of life will have it so. The most of my actions areguided by example, not by choice, and yet I did not go to it of my ownvoluntary motion; I was led and drawn to it by extrinsic occasions; fornot only things that are incommodious in themselves, but also thingshowever ugly, vicious, and to be avoided, may be rendered acceptable bysome condition or accident; so unsteady and vain is all human resolution!and I was persuaded to it, when worse prepared and less tractable than Iam at present, that I have tried what it is: and as great a libertine asI am taken to be, I have in truth more strictly observed the laws ofmarriage, than I either promised or expected. 'Tis in vain to kick, whena man has once put on his fetters: a man must prudently manage hisliberty; but having once submitted to obligation, he must confine himselfwithin the laws of common duty, at least, do what he can towards it. They who engage in this contract, with a design to carry themselves in itwith hatred and contempt, do an unjust and inconvenient thing; and thefine rule that I hear pass from hand to hand amongst the women, as asacred oracle:

 ["Serve thy husband as thy master, but guard thyself against him as from a traitor. "]

which is to say, comport thyself towards him with a dissembled, inimical, and distrustful reverence (a cry of war and defiance), is equallyinjurious and hard. I am too mild for such rugged designs: to say thetruth, I am not arrived to that perfection of ability and refinement ofwit, to confound reason with injustice, and to laugh at all rule andorder that does not please my palate; because I hate superstition, I donot presently run into the contrary extreme of irreligion. 

 (If a man hate superstition he cannot love religion. D. W. )

If a man does not always perform his duty, he ought at least to love andacknowledge it; 'tis treachery to marry without espousing. 

Let us proceed. 

Our poet represents a marriage happy in a good accord whereinnevertheless there is not much loyalty. Does he mean, that it is notimpossible but a woman may give the reins to her own passion, and yieldto the importunities of love, and yet reserve some duty toward marriage, and that it may be hurt, without being totally broken? A serving man maycheat his master, whom nevertheless he does not hate. Beauty, opportunity, and destiny (for destiny has also a hand in't), "Fatum est in partibus illis Quas sinus abscondit; nam, si tibi sidera cessent, Nil faciet longi mensura incognita nervi;"

 ["There is a fatality about the hidden parts: let nature have endowed you however liberally, 'tis of no use, if your good star fails you in the nick of time. "--Juvenal, ix. 32. ]

have attached her to a stranger; though not so wholly, peradventure, butthat she may have some remains of kindness for her husband. They are twodesigns, that have several paths leading to them, without beingconfounded with one another; a woman may yield to a man she would by nomeans have married, not only for the condition of his fortune, but forthose also of his person. Few men have made a wife of a mistress, whohave not repented it. And even in the other world, what an unhappy lifedoes Jupiter lead with his, whom he had first enjoyed as a mistress!'Tis, as the proverb runs, to befoul a basket and then put it upon one'shead. I have in my time, in a good family, seen love shamefully anddishonestly cured by marriage: the considerations are widely different. We love at once, without any tie, two things contrary in themselves. 

Socrates was wont to say, that the city of Athens pleased, as ladies dowhom men court for love; every one loved to come thither to take a turn, and pass away his time; but no one liked it so well as to espouse it, that is, to inhabit there, and to make it his constant residence. I havebeen vexed to see husbands hate their wives only because they themselvesdo them wrong; we should not, at all events, methinks, love them the lessfor our own faults; they should at least, upon the account of repentanceand compassion, be dearer to us. 

They are different ends, he says, and yet in some sort compatible;marriage has utility, justice, honour, and constancy for its share;a flat, but more universal pleasure: love founds itself wholly uponpleasure, and, indeed, has it more full, lively, and sharp; a pleasureinflamed by difficulty; there must be in it sting and smart: 'tis nolonger love, if without darts and fire. The bounty of ladies is tooprofuse in marriage, and dulls the point of affection and desire: toevade which inconvenience, do but observe what pains Lycurgus and Platotake in their laws. 

Women are not to blame at all, when they refuse the rules of life thatare introduced into the world, forasmuch as the men make them withouttheir help. There is naturally contention and brawling betwixt them andus; and the strictest friendship we have with them is yet mixed withtumult and tempest. In the opinion of our author, we dealinconsiderately with them in this: after we have discovered that theyare, without comparison, more able and ardent in the practice of lovethan we, and that the old priest testified as much, who had been onewhile a man, and then a woman:

 "Venus huic erat utraque nota:"

 ["Both aspects of love were known to him, " --Tiresias. Ovid. Metam. , iii. 323. ]

and moreover, that we have learned from their own mouths the proof that, in several ages, was made by an Emperor and Empress of Rome, --[Proclus. ]--both famous for ability in that affair! for he in one night defloweredten Sarmatian virgins who were his captives: but she had five-and-twentybouts in one night, changing her man according to her need and liking;

 "Adhuc ardens rigidae tentigine vulvae Et lassata viris, nondum satiata, recessit:"

 ["Ardent still, she retired, fatigued, but not satisfied. " --Juvenal, vi. 128. ]

and that upon the dispute which happened in Cataluna, wherein a wifecomplaining of her husband's too frequent addresses to her, not so much, as I conceive, that she was incommodated by it (for I believe no miraclesout of religion) as under this pretence, to curtail and curb in this, which is the fundamental act of marriage, the authority of husbands overtheir wives, and to shew that their frowardness and malignity go beyondthe nuptial bed, and spurn under foot even the graces and sweets ofVenus; the husband, a man truly brutish and unnatural, replied, that evenon fasting days he could not subsist with less than ten courses:whereupon came out that notable sentence of the Queen of Arragon, bywhich, after mature deliberation of her council, this good queen, to givea rule and example to all succeeding ages of the moderation required ina just marriage, set down six times a day as a legitimate and necessarystint; surrendering and quitting a great deal of the needs and desires ofher sex, that she might, she said, establish an easy, and consequently, apermanent and immutable rule. Hereupon the doctors cry out: what mustthe female appetite and concupiscence be, when their reason, theirreformation and virtue, are taxed at such a rate, considering the diversjudgments of our appetites? for Solon, master of the law school, taxesus but at three a month, --that men may not fail in point of conjugalfrequentation: after having, I say, believed and preached all this, we goand enjoin them continency for their particular share, and upon the lastand extreme penalties. 

There is no passion so hard to contend with as this, which we would havethem only resist, not simply as an ordinary vice, but as an execrableabomination, worse than irreligion and parricide; whilst we, at the sametime, go to't without offence or reproach. Even those amongst us whohave tried the experiment have sufficiently confessed what difficulty, orrather impossibility, they have found by material remedies to subdue, weaken, and cool the body. We, on the contrary, would have them at oncesound, vigorous plump, high-fed, and chaste; that is to say, both hot andcold; for the marriage, which we tell them is to keep them from burning, is but small refreshment to them, as we order the matter. If they takeone whose vigorous age is yet boiling, he will be proud to make it knownelsewhere;

 "Sit tandem pudor; aut eamus in jus; Multis mentula millibus redempta, Non est haec tua, Basse; vendidisti;"

 ["Let there be some shame, or we shall go to law: your vigour, bought by your wife with many thousands, is no longer yours: thou hast sold it. --"Martial, xii. 90. ]

Polemon the philosopher was justly by his wife brought before the judgefor sowing in a barren field the seed that was due to one that wasfruitful: if, on the other hand, they take a decayed fellow, they are ina worse condition in marriage than either maids or widows. We think themwell provided for, because they have a man to lie with, as the Romansconcluded Clodia Laeta, a vestal nun, violated, because Caligula hadapproached her, though it was declared he did no more but approach her:but, on the contrary, we by that increase their necessity, forasmuch asthe touch and company of any man whatever rouses their desires, that insolitude would be more quiet. And to the end, 'tis likely, that theymight render their chastity more meritorious by this circumstance andconsideration, Boleslas and Kinge his wife, kings of Poland, vowed it bymutual consent, being in bed together, on their very wedding day, andkept their vow in spite of all matrimonial conveniences. 

We train them up from their infancy to the traffic of love; their grace, dressing, knowledge, language, and whole instruction tend that way: theirgovernesses imprint nothing in them but the idea of love, if for nothingelse but by continually representing it to them, to give them a distastefor it. My daughter, the only child I have, is now of an age thatforward young women are allowed to be married at; she is of a slow, thin, and tender complexion, and has accordingly been brought up by her motherafter a retired and particular manner, so that she but now begins to beweaned from her childish simplicity. She was reading before me in aFrench book where the word 'fouteau', the name of a tree very well known, occurred;--[The beech-tree; the name resembles in sound an obsceneFrench word. ]--the woman, to whose conduct she is committed, stopped hershort a little roughly, and made her skip over that dangerous step. Ilet her alone, not to trouble their rules, for I never concern myself inthat sort of government; feminine polity has a mysterious procedure; wemust leave it to them; but if I am not mistaken the commerce of twentylacquies could not, in six months' time, have so imprinted in her memorythe meaning, usage, and all the consequence of the sound of these wickedsyllables, as this good old woman did by reprimand and interdiction. 

 "Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos Matura virgo, et frangitur artibus; Jam nunc et incestos amores De tenero, meditatur ungui. "

 ["The maid ripe for marriage delights to learn Ionic dances, and to imitate those lascivious movements. Nay, already from her infancy she meditates criminal amours. "--Horace, Od. , iii. 6, 21. , the text has 'fingitur'. ]

Let them but give themselves the rein a little, let them but enter intoliberty of discourse, we are but children to them in this science. Hearthem but describe our pursuits and conversation, they will very well makeyou understand that we bring them nothing they have not known before, anddigested without our help. 

 [This sentence refers to a conversation between some young women in his immediate neighbourhood, which the Essayist just below informs us that he overheard, and which was too shocking for him to repeat. It must have been tolerably bad. --Remark by the editor of a later edition. ]

Is it, perhaps, as Plato says, that they have formerly been debauchedyoung fellows? I happened one day to be in a place where I could hearsome of their talk without suspicion; I am sorry I cannot repeat it. By'rlady, said I, we had need go study the phrases of Amadis, and thetales of Boccaccio and Aretin, to be able to discourse with them: weemploy our time to much purpose indeed. There is neither word, example, nor step they are not more perfect in than our books; 'tis a disciplinethat springs with their blood, "Et mentem ipsa Venus dedit, "

 ["Venus herself made them what they are, " --Virg. , Georg. , iii. 267. ]

which these good instructors, nature, youth, and health, are continuallyinspiring them with; they need not learn, they breed it:

 "Nec tantum niveo gavisa est ulla columbo, Compar, vel si quid dicitur improbius, Oscula mordenti semper decerpere rostro, Quantum praecipue multivola est mulier. "

 ["No milk-white dove, or if there be a thing more lascivious, takes so much delight in kissing as woman, wishful for every man she sees. "--Catullus, lxvi. 125. ]

So that if the natural violence of their desire were not a littlerestrained by fear and honour, which were wisely contrived for them, weshould be all shamed. All the motions in the world resolve into and tendto this conjunction; 'tis a matter infused throughout: 'tis a centre towhich all things are directed. We yet see the edicts of the old and wiseRome made for the service of love, and the precepts of Socrates for theinstruction of courtezans:

 "Noncon libelli Stoici inter sericos Jacere pulvillos amant:"

 ["There are writings of the Stoics which we find lying upon silken cushions. "--Horace, Epod. , viii. 15. ]

Zeno, amongst his laws, also regulated the motions to be observed ingetting a maidenhead. What was the philosopher Strato's book Of CarnalConjunction?--[ Diogenes Laertius, v. 59. ]--And what did Theophrastustreat of in those he intituled, the one 'The Lover', and the other 'OfLove?' Of what Aristippus in his 'Of Former Delights'? What do the solong and lively descriptions in Plato of the loves of his time pretendto? and the book called 'The Lover', of Demetrius Phalereus? and'Clinias', or the 'Ravished Lover', of Heraclides; and that ofAntisthenes, 'Of Getting Children', or, 'Of Weddings', and the other, 'Of the Master or the Lover'? And that of Aristo: 'Of Amorous Exercises'What those of Cleanthes: one, 'Of Love', the other, 'Of the Art ofLoving'? The amorous dialogues of Sphaereus? and the fable of Jupiterand Juno, of Chrysippus, impudent beyond all toleration? And his fiftyso lascivious epistles? I will let alone the writings of thephilosophers of the Epicurean sect, protectress of voluptuousness. Fiftydeities were, in time past, assigned to this office; and there have beennations where, to assuage the lust of those who came to their devotion, they kept men and women in their temples for the worshippers to lie with;and it was an act of ceremony to do this before they went to prayers:

 "Nimirum propter continentiam incontinentia necessaria est; incendium ignibus extinguitur. "

 ["Forsooth incontinency is necessary for continency's sake; a conflagration is extinguished by fire. "]

In the greatest part of the world, that member of our body was deified;in the same province, some flayed off the skin to offer and consecrate apiece; others offered and consecrated their seed. In another, the youngmen publicly cut through betwixt the skin and the flesh of that part inseveral places, and thrust pieces of wood into the openings as long andthick as they would receive, and of these pieces of wood afterwards madea fire as an offering to their gods; and were reputed neither vigorousnor chaste, if by the force of that cruel pain they seemed to be at alldismayed. Elsewhere the most sacred magistrate was reverenced andacknowledged by that member and in several ceremonies the effigy of itwas carried in pomp to the honour of various divinities. The Egyptianladies, in their Bacchanalia, each carried one finely-carved of woodabout their necks, as large and heavy as she could so carry it; besideswhich, the statue of their god presented one, which in greatnesssurpassed all the rest of his body. --[Herodotus, ii. 48, says "nearlyas large as the body itself. "]--The married women, near the place whereI live, make of their kerchiefs the figure of one upon their foreheads, to glorify themselves in the enjoyment they have of it; and coming to bewidows, they throw it behind, and cover it with their headcloths. Themost modest matrons of Rome thought it an honour to offer flowers andgarlands to the god Priapus; and they made the virgins, at the time oftheir espousals, sit upon his shameful parts. And I know not whether Ihave not in my time seen some air of like devotion. What was the meaningof that ridiculous piece of the chaussuye of our forefathers, and that isstill worn by our Swiss? ["Cod-pieces worn"--Cotton]--To what end do wemake a show of our implements in figure under our breeches, and often, which is worse, above their natural size, by falsehood and imposture?I have half a mind to believe that this sort of vestment was invented inthe better and more conscientious ages, that the world might not bedeceived, and that every one should give a public account of hisproportions: the simple nations wear them yet, and near about the realsize. In those days, the tailor took measure of it, as the shoemakerdoes now of a man's foot. That good man, who, when I was young, geldedso many noble and ancient statues in his great city, that they might notcorrupt the sight of the ladies, according to the advice of this otherancient worthy:

 "Flagitii principium est, nudare inter gives corpora, "

 ["'Tis the beginning of wickedness to expose their persons among the citizens"--Ennius, ap. Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , iv. 33. ]

should have called to mind, that, as in the mysteries of the Bona Dea, all masculine appearance was excluded, he did nothing, if he did not geldhorses and asses, in short, all nature:

 "Omne adeo genus in terris, hominumque, ferarumque, Et genus aequoreum, pecudes, pictaeque volucres, In furias ignemque ruunt. "

 ["So that all living things, men and animals, wild or tame, and fish and gaudy fowl, rush to this flame of love. " --Virgil, Georg. , iii. 244. ]

The gods, says Plato, have given us one disobedient and unruly memberthat, like a furious animal, attempts, by the violence of its appetite, to subject all things to it; and so they have given to women one like agreedy and ravenous animal, which, if it be refused food in season, growswild, impatient of delay, and infusing its rage into their bodies, stopsthe passages, and hinders respiration, causing a thousand ills, till, having imbibed the fruit of the common thirst, it has plentifully bedewedthe bottom of their matrix. Now my legislator--[The Pope who, asMontaigne has told us, took it into his head to geld the statues. ]--should also have considered that, peradventure, it were a chaster andmore fruitful usage to let them know the fact as it is betimes, thanpermit them to guess according to the liberty and heat of their ownfancy; instead of the real parts they substitute, through hope anddesire, others that are three times more extravagant; and a certainfriend of mine lost himself by producing his in place and time when theopportunity was not present to put them to their more serious use. Whatmischief do not those pictures of prodigious dimension do that the boysmake upon the staircases and galleries of the royal houses? they give theladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture. And what do we knowbut that Plato, after other well-instituted republics, ordered that themen and women, old and young, should expose themselves naked to the viewof one another, in his gymnastic exercises, upon that very account? TheIndian women who see the men in their natural state, have at least cooledthe sense of seeing. And let the women of the kingdom of Pegu say whatthey will, who below the waist have nothing to cover them but a clothslit before, and so strait, that what decency and modesty soever theypretend by it, at every step all is to be seen, that it is an inventionto allure the men to them, and to divert them from boys, to whom thatnation is generally inclined; yet, peradventure they lose more by it thanthey get, and one may venture to say, that an entire appetite is moresharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes. Livia was wont to say, that to a virtuous woman a naked man was but a statue. The Lacedaemonianwomen, more virgins when wives than our daughters are, saw every day theyoung men of their city stripped naked in their exercises, themselveslittle heeding to cover their thighs in walking, believing themselves, says Plato, sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe. But those, of whom St. Augustin speaks, have given nudity a wonderfulpower of temptation, who have made it a doubt, whether women at the dayof judgment shall rise again in their own sex, and not rather in ours, for fear of tempting us again in that holy state. In brief, we allureand flesh them by all sorts of ways: we incessantly heat and stir uptheir imagination, and then we find fault. Let us confess the truth;there is scarce one of us who does not more apprehend the shame thataccrues to him by the vices of his wife than by his own, and that is notmore solicitous (a wonderful charity) of the conscience of his virtuouswife than of his own; who had not rather commit theft and sacrilege, andthat his wife was a murderess and a heretic, than that she should not bemore chaste than her husband: an unjust estimate of vices. Both we andthey are capable of a thousand corruptions more prejudicial and unnaturalthan lust: but we weigh vices, not according to nature, but according toour interest; by which means they take so many unequal forms. 

The austerity of our decrees renders the application of women to thisvice more violent and vicious than its own condition needs, and engagesit in consequences worse than their cause: they will readily offer to goto the law courts to seek for gain, and to the wars to get reputation, rather than in the midst of ease and delights, to have to keep sodifficult a guard. Do not they very well see that there is neithermerchant nor soldier who will not leave his business to run after thissport, or the porter or cobbler, toiled and tired out as they are withlabour and hunger?

 "Num tu, qux tenuit dives Achaemenes, Aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes, Permutare velis crine Licymnim? Plenas aut Arabum domos, Dum fragrantia detorquet ad oscula Cervicem, aut facili sxvitia negat, Quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi, Interdum rapere occupet?"

 ["Wouldst thou not exchange all that the wealthy Arhaemenes had, or the Mygdonian riches of fertile Phrygia, for one ringlet of Licymnia's hair? or the treasures of the Arabians, when she turns her head to you for fragrant kisses, or with easily assuaged anger denies them, which she would rather by far you took by force, and sometimes herself snatches one!"--Horace, Od. , ii. 12, 21. ]

I do not know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpassthe resolution of a beautiful young woman, bred up after our fashion, inthe light and commerce of the world, assailed by so many contraryexamples, and yet keeping herself entire in the midst of a thousandcontinual and powerful solicitations. There is no doing more difficultthan that not doing, nor more active:

I hold it more easy to carry a suit of armour all the days of one's lifethan a maidenhead; and the vow of virginity of all others is the mostnoble, as being the hardest to keep:

 "Diaboli virtus in lumbis est, "

says St. Jerome. We have, doubtless, resigned to the ladies the mostdifficult and most vigorous of all human endeavours, and let us resign tothem the glory too. This ought to encourage them to be obstinate in it;'tis a brave thing for them to defy us, and to spurn under foot that vainpre-eminence of valour and virtue that we pretend to have over them; theywill find if they do but observe it, that they will not only be much moreesteemed for it, but also much more beloved. A gallant man does not giveover his pursuit for being refused, provided it be a refusal of chastity, and not of choice; we may swear, threaten, and complain to much purpose;we therein do but lie, for we love them all the better: there is noallurement like modesty, if it be not rude and crabbed. 'Tis stupidityand meanness to be obstinate against hatred and disdain; but against avirtuous and constant resolution, mixed with goodwill, 'tis the exerciseof a noble and generous soul. They may acknowledge our service to acertain degree, and give us civilly to understand that they disdain usnot; for the law that enjoins them to abominate us because we adore them, and to hate us because we love them, is certainly very cruel, if but forthe difficulty of it. Why should they not give ear to our offers andrequests, so long as they are kept within the bounds of modesty?wherefore should we fancy them to have other thoughts within, and to beworse than they seem? A queen of our time said with spirit, "that torefuse these courtesies is a testimony of weakness in women and aself-accusation of facility, and that a lady could not boast of herchastity who was never tempted. "

The limits of honour are not cut so short; they may give themselves alittle rein, and relax a little without being faulty: there lies on thefrontier some space free, indifferent, and neuter. He that has beatenand pursued her into her fort is a strange fellow if he be not satisfiedwith his fortune: the price of the conquest is considered by thedifficulty. Would you know what impression your service and merit havemade in her heart? Judge of it by her behaviour. Such an one may grantmore, who does not grant so much. The obligation of a benefit whollyrelates to the good will of those who confer it: the other coincidentcircumstances are dumb, dead, and casual; it costs her dearer to grantyou that little, than it would do her companion to grant all. If inanything rarity give estimation, it ought especially in this: do notconsider how little it is that is given, but how few have it to give;the value of money alters according to the coinage and stamp of theplace. Whatever the spite and indiscretion of some may make them say inthe excess of their discontent, virtue and truth will in time recover allthe advantage. I have known some whose reputation has for a great whilesuffered under slander, who have afterwards been restored to the world'suniversal approbation by their mere constancy without care or artifice;every one repents, and gives himself the lie for what he has believed andsaid; and from girls a little suspected they have been afterward advancedto the first rank amongst the ladies of honour. Somebody told Plato thatall the world spoke ill of him. "Let them talk, " said he; "I will liveso as to make them change their note. " Besides the fear of God, and thevalue of so rare a glory, which ought to make them look to themselves, the corruption of the age we live in compels them to it; and if I werethey, there is nothing I would not rather do than intrust my reputationin so dangerous hands. In my time the pleasure of telling (a pleasurelittle inferior to that of doing) was not permitted but to those who hadsome faithful and only friend; but now the ordinary discourse and commontable-talk is nothing but boasts of favours received and the secretliberality of ladies. In earnest, 'tis too abject, too much meanness ofspirit, in men to suffer such ungrateful, indiscreet, and giddy-headedpeople so to persecute, forage, and rifle those tender and charmingfavours. 

This our immoderate and illegitimate exasperation against this vicesprings from the most vain and turbulent disease that afflicts humanminds, which is jealousy:

 "Quis vetat apposito lumen de lumine sumi? Dent licet assidue, nil tamen inde perit;"

 ["Who says that one light should not be lighted from another light? Let them give ever so much, as much ever remains to lose. "--Ovid, De Arte Amandi, iii. 93. The measure of the last line is not good; but the words are taken from the epigram in the Catalecta entitled Priapus. ]

she, and envy, her sister, seem to me to be the most foolish of the wholetroop. As to the last, I can say little about it; 'tis a passion that, though said to be so mighty and powerful, had never to do with me. As tothe other, I know it by sight, and that's all. Beasts feel it; theshepherd Cratis, having fallen in love with a she-goat, the he-goat, outof jealousy, came, as he lay asleep, to butt the head of the female, andcrushed it. We have raised this fever to a greater excess by theexamples of some barbarous nations; the best disciplined have beentouched with it, and 'tis reason, but not transported:

 "Ense maritali nemo confossus adulter Purpureo Stygias sanguine tinxit aquas. "

 ["Never did adulterer slain by a husband stain with purple blood the Stygian waters. "]

Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Cato, and other brave men werecuckolds, and knew it, without making any bustle about it; there was inthose days but one coxcomb, Lepidus, that died for grief that his wifehad used him so. 

 "Ah! tum te miserum malique fati, Quem attractis pedibus, patente porta, Percurrent raphanique mugilesque:"

 ["Wretched man! when, taken in the fact, thou wilt be dragged out of doors by the heels, and suffer the punishment of thy adultery. "--Catullus, xv. 17. ]

and the god of our poet, when he surprised one of his companions with hiswife, satisfied himself by putting them to shame only, "Atque aliquis de dis non tristibus optat Sic fieri turpis:"

 ["And one of the merry gods wishes that he should himself like to be so disgraced. "--Ovid, Metam. , iv. 187. ]

and nevertheless took anger at the lukewarm embraces she gave him;complaining that upon that account she was grown jealous of hisaffection:

 "Quid causas petis ex alto? fiducia cessit Quo tibi, diva, mei?"

 ["Dost thou seek causes from above? Why, goddess, has your confidence in me ceased?"--Virgil, AEneid, viii. 395. ]

nay, she entreats arms for a bastard of hers, "Arena rogo genitrix nato. "

 ["I, a mother, ask armour for a son. "--Idem, ibid. , 383. ]

which are freely granted; and Vulcan speaks honourably of AEneas, "Arma acri facienda viro, "

 ["Arms are to be made for a valiant hero. "--AEneid, viii. 441. ]

with, in truth, a more than human humanity. And I am willing to leavethis excess of kindness to the gods:

 "Nec divis homines componier aequum est. "

 ["Nor is it fit to compare men with gods. " --Catullus, lxviii. 141. ]

As to the confusion of children, besides that the gravest legislatorsordain and affect it in their republics, it touches not the women, wherethis passion is, I know not how, much better seated:

 "Saepe etiam Juno, maxima coelicolam, Conjugis in culpa flagravit quotidiana. "

 ["Often was Juno, greatest of the heaven-dwellers, enraged by her husband's daily infidelities. "--Idem, ibid. ]

When jealousy seizes these poor souls, weak and incapable of resistance, 'tis pity to see how miserably it torments and tyrannises over them; itinsinuates itself into them under the title of friendship, but after ithas once possessed them, the same causes that served for a foundation ofgood-will serve them for a foundation of mortal hatred. 'Tis, of all thediseases of the mind, that which the most things serve for aliment andthe fewest for remedy: the virtue, health, merit, reputation of thehusband are incendiaries of their fury and ill-will:

 "Nullae sunt inimicitiae, nisi amoris, acerbae. "

 ["No enmities are bitter, save that of love. " (Or:) "No hate is implacable except the hatred of love" --Propertius, ii. 8, 3. ]

This fever defaces and corrupts all they have of beautiful and goodbesides; and there is no action of a jealous woman, let her be how chasteand how good a housewife soever, that does not relish of anger andwrangling; 'tis a furious agitation, that rebounds them to an extremityquite contrary to its cause. This held good with one Octavius at Rome. Having lain with Pontia Posthumia, he augmented love with fruition, andsolicited with all importunity to marry her: unable to persuade her, thisexcessive affection precipitated him to the effects of the most cruel andmortal hatred: he killed her. In like manner, the ordinary symptoms ofthis other amorous disease are intestine hatreds, private conspiracies, and cabals:

 "Notumque furens quid faemina possit, "

 ["And it is known what an angry woman is capable of doing. " --AEneid, V. 21. ]

and a rage which so much the more frets itself, as it is compelled toexcuse itself by a pretence of good-will. 

Now, the duty of chastity is of a vast extent; is it the will that wewould have them restrain? This is a very supple and active thing; athing very nimble, to be stayed. How? if dreams sometimes engage them sofar that they cannot deny them: it is not in them, nor, peradventure, inchastity itself, seeing that is a female, to defend itself from lust anddesire. If we are only to trust to their will, what a case are we in, then? Do but imagine what crowding there would be amongst men inpursuance of the privilege to run full speed, without tongue or eyes, into every woman's arms who would accept them. The Scythian women putout the eyes of all their slaves and prisoners of war, that they mighthave their pleasure of them, and they never the wiser. O, the furiousadvantage of opportunity! Should any one ask me, what was the firstthing to be considered in love matters, I should answer that it was howto take a fitting time; and so the second; and so the third--'tis a pointthat can do everything. I have sometimes wanted fortune, but I have alsosometimes been wanting to myself in matters of attempt. God help him, who yet makes light of this! There is greater temerity required in thisage of ours, which our young men excuse under the name of heat; butshould women examine it more strictly, they would find that it ratherproceeds from contempt. I was always superstitiously afraid of givingoffence, and have ever had a great respect for her I loved: besides, hewho in this traffic takes away the reverence, defaces at the same timethe lustre. I would in this affair have a man a little play the child, the timorous, and the servant. If not this, I have in other bashfulnesswhereof altogether in things some air of the foolish Plutarch makesmention; and the course of my life has been divers ways hurt andblemished with it; a quality very ill suiting my universal form: and, indeed, what are we but sedition and discrepancy? I am as much out ofcountenance to be denied as I am to deny; and it so much troubles me tobe troublesome to others that on occasion when duty compels me to try thegood-will of any one in a thing that is doubtful and that will bechargeable to him, I do it very faintly, and very much against my will:but if it be for my own particular (whatever Homer truly says, thatmodesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person), I commonly commit itto a third person to blush for me, and deny those who employ me with thesame difficulty: so that it has sometimes befallen me to have had a mindto deny, when I had not the power to do it. 

'Tis folly, then, to attempt to bridle in women a desire that is sopowerful in them, and so natural to them. And when I hear them brag ofhaving so maidenly and so temperate a will, I laugh at them: they retiretoo far back. If it be an old toothless trot, or a young dry consumptivething, though it be not altogether to be believed, at least they say itwith more similitude of truth. But they who still move and breathe, talkat that ridiculous rate to their own prejudice, by reason thatinconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation; like a gentleman, aneighbour of mine, suspected to be insufficient:

 "Languidior tenera cui pendens sicula beta, Numquam se mediam sustulit ad tunicam, "

 [Catullus, lxvii. 2, i. --The sense is in the context. ]

who three or four days after he was married, to justify himself, wentabout boldly swearing that he had ridden twenty stages the night before:an oath that was afterwards made use of to convict him of his ignorancein that affair, and to divorce him from his wife. Besides, it signifiesnothing, for there is neither continency nor virtue where there are noopposing desires. It is true, they may say, but we will not yield;saints themselves speak after that manner. I mean those who boast ingood gravity of their coldness and insensibility, and who expect to bebelieved with a serious countenance; for when 'tis spoken with anaffected look, when their eyes give the lie to their tongue, and whenthey talk in the cant of their profession, which always goes against thehair, 'tis good sport. I am a great servant of liberty and plainness;but there is no remedy; if it be not wholly simple or childish, 'tissilly, and unbecoming ladies in this commerce, and presently runs intoimpudence. Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools; lyingis there in its seat of honour; 'tis a by-way, that by a back-door leadsus to truth. If we cannot curb their imagination, what would we havefrom them. Effects? There are enough of them that evade all foreigncommunication, by which chastity may be corrupted:

 "Illud saepe facit, quod sine teste facit;"

 ["He often does that which he does without a witness. " --Martial, vii. 62, 6. ]

and those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be feared;their sins that make the least noise are the worst:

 "Offendor maecha simpliciore minus. "

 ["I am less offended with a more professed strumpet. " --Idem, vi. 7, 6. ]

There are ways by which they may lose their virginity withoutprostitution, and, which is more, without their knowledge:

 "Obsterix, virginis cujusdam integritatem manu velut explorans, sive malevolentia, sive inscitia, sive casu, dum inspicit, perdidit. "

 ["By malevolence, or unskilfulness, or accident, the midwife, seeking with the hand to test some maiden's virginity, has sometimes destroyed it. "--St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, i. 18. ]

Such a one, by seeking her maidenhead, has lost it; another by playingwith it has destroyed it. We cannot precisely circumscribe the actions, we interdict them; they must guess at our meaning under general anddoubtful terms; the very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous:for, amongst the greatest patterns that I have is Fatua, the wife ofFaunus: who never, after her marriage, suffered herself to be seen by anyman whatever; and the wife of Hiero, who never perceived her husband'sstinking breath, imagining that it was common to all men. They mustbecome insensible and invisible to satisfy us. 

Now let us confess that the knot of this judgment of duty principallylies in the will; there have been husbands who have suffered cuckoldom, not only without reproach or taking offence at their wives, but withsingular obligation to them and great commendation of their virtue. Such a woman has been, who prized her honour above her life, and yet hasprostituted it to the furious lust of a mortal enemy, to save herhusband's life, and who, in so doing, did that for him she would not havedone for herself! This is not the place wherein we are to multiply theseexamples; they are too high and rich to be set off with so poor a foil asI can give them here; let us reserve them for a nobler place; but forexamples of ordinary lustre, do we not every day see women amongst us whosurrender themselves for their husbands sole benefit, and by theirexpress order and mediation? and, of old, Phaulius the Argian, whooffered his to King Philip out of ambition; as Galba did it out ofcivility, who, having entertained Maecenas at supper, and observing thathis wife and he began to cast glances at one another and to make eyes andsigns, let himself sink down upon his cushion, like one in a profoundsleep, to give opportunity to their desires: which he handsomelyconfessed, for thereupon a servant having made bold to lay hands on theplate upon the table, he frankly cried, "What, you rogue? do you not seethat I only sleep for Maecenas?" Such there may be, whose manners may belewd enough, whose will may be more reformed than another, who outwardlycarries herself after a more regular manner. As we see some who complainof having vowed chastity before they knew what they did; and I have alsoknown others really, complain of having been given up to debaucherybefore they were of the years of discretion. The vice of the parents orthe impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor, may be the cause. 

In the East Indies, though chastity is of singular reputation, yet custompermitted a married woman to prostitute herself to any one who presentedher with an elephant, and that with glory, to have been valued at so higha rate. Phaedo the philosopher, a man of birth, after the taking of hiscountry Elis, made it his trade to prostitute the beauty of his youth, solong as it lasted, to any one that would, for money thereby to gain hisliving: and Solon was the first in Greece, 'tis said, who by his lawsgave liberty to women, at the expense of their chastity, to provide forthe necessities of life; a custom that Herodotus says had been receivedin many governments before his time. And besides, what fruit is there ofthis painful solicitude? For what justice soever there is in thispassion, we are yet to consider whether it turns to account or no: doesany one think to curb them, with all his industry?

 "Pone seram; cohibe: sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? cauta est, et ab illis incipit uxor. "

 ["Put on a lock; shut them up under a guard; but who shall guard the guard? she knows what she is about, and begins with them. " --Juvenal, vi. 346. ]

What commodity will not serve their turn, in so knowing an age?

Curiosity is vicious throughout; but 'tis pernicious here. 'Tis folly toexamine into a disease for which there is no physic that does not inflameand make it worse; of which the shame grows still greater and more publicby jealousy, and of which the revenge more wounds our children than itheals us. You wither and die in the search of so obscure a proof. Howmiserably have they of my time arrived at that knowledge who have been sounhappy as to have found it out? If the informer does not at the sametime apply a remedy and bring relief, 'tis an injurious information, andthat better deserves a stab than the lie. We no less laugh at him whotakes pains to prevent it, than at him who is a cuckold and knows it not. The character of cuckold is indelible: who once has it carries it to hisgrave; the punishment proclaims it more than the fault. It is to muchpurpose to drag out of obscurity and doubt our private misfortunes, thence to expose them on tragic scaffolds; and misfortunes that only hurtus by being known; for we say a good wife or a happy marriage, not thatthey are really so, but because no one says to the contrary. Men shouldbe so discreet as to evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge:and the Romans had a custom, when returning from any expedition, to sendhome before to acquaint their wives with their coming, that they mightnot surprise them; and to this purpose it is that a certain nation hasintroduced a custom, that the priest shall on the wedding-day open theway to the bride, to free the husband from the doubt and curiosity ofexamining in the first assault, whether she comes a virgin to his bed, orhas been at the trade before. 

But the world will be talking. I know, a hundred honest men cuckolds, honestly and not unbeseemingly; a worthy man is pitied, not disesteemedfor it. Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune; thatgood men may curse the occasion, and that he who wrongs you may tremblebut to think on't. And, moreover, who escapes being talked of at thesame rate, from the least even to the greatest?

 "Tot qui legionibus imperitivit Et melior quam to multis fuit, improbe, rebus. "

 ["Many who have commanded legions, many a man much better far than you, you rascal. "--Lucretius, iii. 1039, 1041. ]

Seest thou how many honest men are reproached with this in thy presence;believe that thou art no more spared elsewhere. But, the very ladieswill be laughing too; and what are they so apt to laugh at in thisvirtuous age of ours as at a peaceable and well-composed marriage? Eachamongst you has made somebody cuckold; and nature runs much in parallel, in compensation, and turn for turn. The frequency of this accident oughtlong since to have made it more easy; 'tis now passed into custom. 

Miserable passion! which has this also, that it is incommunicable, "Fors etiam nostris invidit questibus aures;"

 ["Fortune also refuses ear to our complaints. " --Catullus, lxvii. ]

for to what friend dare you intrust your griefs, who, if he does notlaugh at them, will not make use of the occasion to get a share of thequarry? The sharps, as well as the sweets of marriage, are kept secretby the wise; and amongst its other troublesome conditions this to aprating fellow, as I am, is one of the chief, that custom has rendered itindecent and prejudicial to communicate to any one all that a man knowsand all that a man feels. To give women the same counsel againstjealousy would be so much time lost; their very being is so made up ofsuspicion, vanity, and curiosity, that to cure them by any legitimate wayis not to be hoped. They often recover of this infirmity by a form ofhealth much more to be feared than the disease itself; for as there areenchantments that cannot take away the evil but by throwing it uponanother, they also willingly transfer this ever to their husbands, whenthey shake it off themselves. And yet I know not, to speak truth, whether a man can suffer worse from them than their jealousy; 'tis themost dangerous of all their conditions, as the head is of all theirmembers. Pittacus used to say, --[Plutarch, On Contentment, c. II. ]--that every one had his trouble, and that his was the jealous head of hiswife; but for which he should think himself perfectly happy. A mightyinconvenience, sure, which could poison the whole life of so just, sowise, and so valiant a man; what must we other little fellows do? Thesenate of Marseilles had reason to grant him his request who begged leaveto kill himself that he might be delivered from the clamour of his wife;for 'tis a mischief that is never removed but by removing the wholepiece; and that has no remedy but flight or patience, though both of themvery hard. He was, methinks, an understanding fellow who said, 'twas ahappy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband. 

Let us also consider whether the great and violent severity of obligationwe enjoin them does not produce two effects contrary to our designnamely, whether it does not render the pursuants more eager to attack, and the women more easy to yield. For as to the first, by raising thevalue of the place, we raise the value and the desire of the conquest. Might it not be Venus herself, who so cunningly enhanced the price of hermerchandise, by making the laws her bawds; knowing how insipid a delightit would be that was not heightened by fancy and hardness to achieve?In short, 'tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces, as Flaminius' hostsaid. Cupid is a roguish god, who makes it his sport to contend withdevotion and justice: 'tis his glory that his power mates all powers, andthat all other rules give place to his:

 "Materiam culpae prosequiturque suae. "

 ["And seeks out a matter (motive) for his crimes. " --Ovid, Trist. , iv. I. 34. ]

As to the second point; should we not be less cuckolds, if we less fearedto be so? according to the humour of women whom interdiction incites, andwho are more eager, being forbidden:

 "Ubi velis, nolunt; ubi nolis, volunt ultro; Concessa pudet ire via. "

 ["Where thou wilt, they won't; where thou wilt not, they spontaneously agree; they are ashamed to go in the permitted path. " --Terence, Eunuchus, act iv. , sc. 8, v 43]

What better interpretation can we make of Messalina's behaviour? She, at first, made her husband a cuckold in private, as is the common use;but, bringing her business about with too much ease, by reason of herhusband's stupidity, she soon scorned that way, and presently fell tomaking open love, to own her lovers, and to favour and entertain them inthe sight of all: she would make him know and see how she used him. Thisanimal, not to be roused with all this, and rendering her pleasures dulland flat by his too stupid facility, by which he seemed to authorise andmake them lawful; what does she? Being the wife of a living andhealthful emperor, and at Rome, the theatre of the world, in the face ofthe sun, and with solemn ceremony, and to Silius, who had long beforeenjoyed her, she publicly marries herself one day that her husband wasgone out of the city. Does it not seem as if she was going to becomechaste by her husband's negligence? or that she sought another husbandwho might sharpen her appetite by his jealousy, and who by watchingshould incite her? But the first difficulty she met with was also thelast: this beast suddenly roused these sleepy, sluggish sort of men areoften the most dangerous: I have found by experience that this extremetoleration, when it comes to dissolve, produces the most severe revenge;for taking fire on a sudden, anger and fury being combined in one, discharge their utmost force at the first onset, "Irarumque omnes effundit habenas:"

 ["He let loose his whole fury. "--AEneid, xii. 499. ]

he put her to death, and with her a great number of those with whom shehad intelligence, and even one of them who could not help it, and whomshe had caused to be forced to her bed with scourges. 

What Virgil says of Venus and Vulcan, Lucretius had better expressed of astolen enjoyment betwixt her and Mars:

 "Belli fera moenera Mavors Armipotens regit, ingremium qui saepe tuum se Rejictt, aeterno devinctus vulnere amoris ............................ Pascit amore avidos inhians in te, Dea, visus, Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore Hunc tu, Diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto Circumfusa super, suaveis ex ore loquelas Funde. "

 ["Mars, the god of wars, who controls the cruel tasks of war, often reclines on thy bosom, and greedily drinks love at both his eyes, vanquished by the eternal wound of love: and his breath, as he reclines, hangs on thy lips; bending thy head over him as he lies upon thy sacred person, pour forth sweet and persuasive words. " --Lucretius, i. 23. ]

When I consider this rejicit, fiascit, inhians, ynolli, fovet, medullas, labefacta, pendet, percurrit, and that noble circumfusa, mother of thepretty infuses; I disdain those little quibbles and verbal allusions thathave since sprung up. Those worthy people stood in need of no subtletyto disguise their meaning; their language is downright, and full ofnatural and continued vigour; they are all epigram; not only the tail, but the head, body, and feet. There is nothing forced, nothinglanguishing, but everything keeps the same pace:

 "Contextus totes virilis est; non sunt circa flosculos occupati. "

 ["The whole contexture is manly; they don't occupy themselves with little flowers of rhetoric. "--Seneca, Ep. , 33. ]

'Tis not a soft eloquence, and without offence only; 'tis nervous andsolid, that does not so much please, as it fills and ravishes thegreatest minds. When I see these brave forms of expression, so lively, so profound, I do not say that 'tis well said, but well thought. 'Tisthe sprightliness of the imagination that swells and elevates the words:

 "Pectus est quod disertum Tacit. "

 ["The heart makes the man eloquent. "--Quintilian, x. 7. ]

Our people call language, judgment, and fine words, full conceptions. This painting is not so much carried on by dexterity of hand as by havingthe object more vividly imprinted in the soul. Gallus speaks simplybecause he conceives simply: Horace does not content himself with asuperficial expression; that would betray him; he sees farther and moreclearly into things; his mind breaks into and rummages all the magazineof words and figures wherewith to express himself, and he must have themmore than ordinary, because his conception is so. Plutarch says' that hesees the Latin tongue by the things: 'tis here the same: the senseilluminates and produces the words, no more words of air, but of fleshand bone; they signify more than they say. Moreover, those who are notwell skilled in a language present some image of this; for in Italy Isaid whatever I had a mind to in common discourse, but in more serioustalk, I durst not have trusted myself with an idiom that I could not windand turn out of its ordinary pace; I would have a power of introducingsomething of my own. 

The handling and utterance of fine wits is that which sets off language;not so much by innovating it, as by putting it to more vigorous andvarious services, and by straining, bending, and adapting it to them. They do not create words, but they enrich their own, and give them weightand signification by the uses they put them to, and teach them unwontedmotions, but withal ingeniously and discreetly. And how little thistalent is given to all is manifest by the many French scribblers of thisage: they are bold and proud enough not to follow the common road, butwant of invention and discretion ruins them; there is nothing seen intheir writings but a wretched affectation of a strange new style, withcold and absurd disguises, which, instead of elevating, depress thematter: provided they can but trick themselves out with new words, theycare not what they signify; and to bring in a new word by the head andshoulders, they leave the old one, very often more sinewy and significantthan the other. 

There is stuff enough in our language, but there is a defect in cuttingout: for there is nothing that might not be made out of our terms ofhunting and war, which is a fruitful soil to borrow from; and forms ofspeaking, like herbs, improve and grow stronger by being transplanted. I find it sufficiently abundant, but not sufficiently pliable andvigorous; it commonly quails under a powerful conception; if you wouldmaintain the dignity of your style, you will often perceive it to flagand languish under you, and there Latin steps in to its relief, as Greekdoes to others. Of some of these words I have just picked out we do notso easily discern the energy, by reason that the frequent use of them hasin some sort abased their beauty, and rendered it common; as in ourordinary language there are many excellent phrases and metaphors to bemet with, of which the beauty is withered by age, and the colour issullied by too common handling; but that nothing lessens the relish to anunderstanding man, nor does it derogate from the glory of those ancientauthors who, 'tis likely, first brought those words into that lustre. 

The sciences treat of things too refinedly, after an artificial, verydifferent from the common and natural, way. My page makes love, andunderstands it; but read to him Leo Hebraeus--[Leo the Jew, Ficinus, Cardinal Bembo, and Mario Equicola all wrote Treatises on Love. ]--and Ficinus, where they speak of love, its thoughts and actions, heunderstands it not. I do not find in Aristotle most of my ordinarymotions; they are there covered and disguised in another robe for the useof the schools. Good speed them! were I of the trade, I would as muchnaturalise art as they artificialise nature. Let us let Bembo andEquicola alone. 

When I write, I can very well spare both the company and the remembranceof books, lest they should interrupt my progress; and also, in truth, thebest authors too much humble and discourage me: I am very much of thepainter's mind, who, having represented cocks most wretchedly ill, charged all his boys not to suffer any natural cock to come into hisshop; and had rather need to give myself a little lustre, of theinvention of Antigenides the musician, who, when he was asked to sing orplay, took care beforehand that the auditory should, either before orafter, be satiated with some other ill musicians. But I can hardly bewithout Plutarch; he is so universal and so full, that upon alloccasions, and what extravagant subject soever you take in hand, he willstill be at your elbow, and hold out to you a liberal and not to beexhausted hand of riches and embellishments. It vexes me that he is soexposed to be the spoil of those who are conversant with him: I canscarce cast an eye upon him but I purloin either a leg or a wing. 

And also for this design of mine 'tis convenient for me for me to writeat home, in a wild country, where I have nobody to assist or relieve me;where I hardly see a man who understands the Latin of his Paternoster, and of French a little less. I might have made it better elsewhere, butthen the work would have been less my own; and its principal end andperfection is to be exactly mine. I readily correct an accidental error, of which I am full, as I run carelessly on; but for my ordinary andconstant imperfections, it were a kind of treason to put them out. Whenanother tells me, or that I say to myself, "Thou art too thick offigures: this is a word of rough Gascon: that is a dangerous phrase (I donot reject any of those that are used in the common streets of France;they who would fight custom with grammar are triflers): this is anignorant discourse: this is a paradoxical discourse: that is going toofar: thou makest thyself too merry at times: men will think thou sayest athing in good earnest which thou only speakest in jest. "--"Yes, I know, but I correct the faults of inadvertence, not those of custom. Do I nottalk at the same rate throughout? Do I not represent myself to the life?'Tis enough that I have done what I designed; all the world knows me inmy book, and my book in me. "

Now I have an apish, imitative quality: when I used to write verses (andI never made any but Latin), they evidently discovered the poet I hadlast read, and some of my first essays have a little exotic taste: Ispeak something another kind of language at Paris than I do at Montaigne. Whoever I steadfastly look upon easily leaves some impression of his uponme; whatever I consider I usurp, whether a foolish countenance, adisagreeable look, or a ridiculous way of speaking; and vices most ofall, because they seize and stick to me, and will not leave hold withoutshaking. I swear more by imitation than by complexion: a murderousimitation, like that of the apes so terrible both in stature andstrength, that Alexander met with in a certain country of the Indies, andwhich he would have had much ado any other way to have subdued; but theyafforded him the means by that inclination of theirs to imitate whateverthey saw done; for by that the hunters were taught to put on shoes intheir sight, and to tie them fast with many knots, and to muffle up theirheads in caps all composed of running nooses, and to seem to anoint theireyes with glue; so did those poor beasts employ their imitation to theirown ruin they glued up their own eyes, haltered and bound themselves. The other faculty of playing the mimic, and ingeniously acting the wordsand gestures of another, purposely to make people merry and to raisetheir admiration, is no more in me than in a stock. When I swear my ownoath, 'tis only, by God! of all oaths the most direct. They say thatSocrates swore by the dog; Zeno had for his oath the same interjection atthis time in use amongst the Italians, Cappari! Pythagoras swore Bywater and air. I am so apt, without thinking of it, to receive thesesuperficial impressions, that if I have Majesty or Highness in my mouththree days together, they come out instead of Excellency and Lordshipeight days after; and what I say to-day in sport and fooling I shall saythe same to-morrow seriously. Wherefore, in writing, I more unwillinglyundertake beaten arguments, lest I should handle them at another'sexpense. Every subject is equally fertile to me: a fly will serve thepurpose, and 'tis well if this I have in hand has not been undertaken atthe recommendation of as flighty a will. I may begin, with that whichpleases me best, for the subjects are all linked to one another. 

But my soul displeases me, in that it ordinarily produces its deepest andmost airy conceits and which please me best, when I least expect or studyfor them, and which suddenly vanish, having at the instant, nothing toapply them to; on horseback, at table, and in bed: but most on horseback, where I am most given to think. My speaking is a little nicely jealousof silence and attention: if I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me, stops me. In travelling, the necessity of the way will often put a stopto discourse; besides which I, for the most part, travel without companyfit for regular discourses, by which means I have all the leisure I wouldto entertain myself. It falls out as it does in my dreams; whilstdreaming I recommend them to my memory (for I am apt to dream that Idream), but, the next morning, I may represent to myself of whatcomplexion they were, whether gay, or sad, or strange, but what theywere, as to the rest, the more I endeavour to retrieve them, the deeper Iplunge them in oblivion. So of thoughts that come accidentally into myhead, I have no more but a vain image remaining in my memory; only enoughto make me torment myself in their quest to no purpose. 

Well, then, laying books aside, and more simply and materially speaking, I find, after all, that Love is nothing else but the thirst of enjoyingthe object desired, or Venus any other thing than the pleasure ofdischarging one's vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives indischarging other parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretionbecome vicious. According to Socrates, love is the appetite ofgeneration by the mediation of beauty. And when I consider theridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, crack-brained, wildmotions with which it inspires Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage, the countenance inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects oflove, and then that austere air, so grave, severe, ecstatic, in so wantonan action; that our delights and our excrements are promiscuouslyshuffled together; and that the supreme pleasure brings along with it, asin pain, fainting and complaining; I believe it to be true, as Platosays, that the gods made man for their sport:

 "Quaenam ista jocandi Saevitia!"

 ["With a sportive cruelty" (Or:) "What an unkindness there is in jesting!"--Claudian in Eutrop. I. 24. ]

and that it was in mockery that nature has ordered the most agitative ofactions and the most common, to make us equal, and to put fools and wisemen, beasts and us, on a level. Even the most contemplative and prudentman, when I imagine him in this posture, I hold him an impudent fellow topretend to be prudent and contemplative; they are the peacocks' feet thatabate his pride:

 "Ridentem dicere verum Quid vetat?"

 ["What prevents us from speaking truth with a smile?" --Horace, Sat. , i. I, 24. ]

They who banish serious imaginations from their sports, do, says one, like him who dares not adore the statue of a saint, if not covered with aveil. We eat and drink, indeed, as beasts do; but these are not actionsthat obstruct the functions of the soul, in these we maintain ouradvantage over them; this other action subjects all other thought, and by its imperious authority makes an ass of all Plato's divinity andphilosophy; and yet there is no complaint of it. In everything else aman may keep some decorum, all other operations submit to the rules ofdecency; this cannot so much as in imagination appear other than viciousor ridiculous: find out, if you can, therein any serious and discreetprocedure. Alexander said, that he chiefly knew himself to be mortal bythis act and sleeping; sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties ofthe soul; the familiarity with women likewise dissipates and exhauststhem: doubtless 'tis a mark, not only of our original corruption, butalso of our vanity and deformity. 

On the one side, nature pushes us on to it, having fixed the most noble, useful, and pleasant of all her functions to this desire: and, on theother side, leaves us to accuse and avoid it, as insolent and indecent, to blush at it, and to recommend abstinence. Are we not brutes to callthat work brutish which begets us? People of so many differing religionshave concurred in several proprieties, as sacrifices, lamps, burningincense, fasts, and offerings; and amongst others, in the condemning thisact: all opinions tend that way, besides the widespread custom ofcircumcision, which may be regarded as a punishment. We have, peradventure, reason to blame ourselves for being guilty of so foolisha production as man, and to call the act, and the parts that are employedin the act, shameful (mine, truly, are now shameful and pitiful). TheEssenians, of whom Pliny speaks, kept up their country for several ageswithout either nurse or baby-clouts, by the arrival of strangers who, following this pretty humour, came continually to them: a whole nationbeing resolute, rather to hazard a total extermination, than to engagethemselves in female embraces, and rather to lose the succession of men, than to beget one. 'Tis said, that Zeno never had to do with a woman butonce in his life, and then out of civility, that he might not seem tooobstinately to disdain the sex. 

 [Diogenes Laertius, vii. 13. --What is there said, however, is that Zeno seldom had commerce with boys, lest he should be deemed a very misogynist. ]

Every one avoids seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die; todestroy him a spacious field is sought out in the face of the sun, but, to make him, we creep into as dark and private a corner as we can: 'tis aman's duty to withdraw himself bashfully from the light to create; but'tis glory and the fountain of many virtues to know how to destroy whatwe have made: the one is injury, the other favour: for Aristotle saysthat to do any one a kindness, in a certain phrase of his country, is tokill him. The Athenians, to couple the disgrace of these two actions, having to purge the Isle of Delos, and to justify themselves to Apollo, interdicted at once all births and burials in the precincts thereof:

 "Nostri nosmet paenitet. "

 ["We are ashamed of ourselves. "--Terence, Phoymio, i. 3, 20. ]

There are some nations that will not be seen to eat. I know a lady, andof the best quality, who has the same opinion, that chewing disfiguresthe face, and takes away much from the ladies' grace and beauty; andtherefore unwillingly appears at a public table with an appetite; and Iknow a man also, who cannot endure to see another eat, nor himself to beseen eating, and who is more shy of company when putting in than whenputting out. In the Turkish empire, there are a great number of men who, to excel others, never suffer themselves to be seen when they make theirrepast: who never have any more than one a week; who cut and mangle theirfaces and limbs; who never speak to any one: fanatic people who think tohonour their nature by disnaturing themselves; who value themselves upontheir contempt of themselves, and purport to grow better by being worse. What monstrous animal is this, that is a horror to himself, to whom hisdelights are grievous, and who weds himself to misfortune? There arepeople who conceal their life:

 "Exilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant, "

 ["And change for exile their homes and pleasant abodes. " --Virgil, Georg. , ii. 511. ]

and withdraw them from the sight of other men; who avoid health andcheerfulness, as dangerous and prejudicial qualities. Not only manysects, but many peoples, curse their birth, and bless their death; andthere is a place where the sun is abominated and darkness adored. We areonly ingenious in using ourselves ill: 'tis the real quarry ourintellects fly at; and intellect, when misapplied, is a dangerous tool!

 "O miseri! quorum gaudia crimen habent!"

 ["O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime!" --Pseudo Gallus, i. 180. ]

Alas, poor man! thou hast enough inconveniences that are inevitable, without increasing them by throe own invention; and art miserable enoughby nature, without being so by art; thou hast real and essentialdeformities enough, without forging those that are imaginary. Dost thouthink thou art too much at ease unless half thy ease is uneasy? dostthou find that thou hast not performed all the necessary offices thatnature has enjoined thee, and that she is idle in thee, if thou dost notoblige thyself to other and new offices? Thou dost not stick to infringeher universal and undoubted laws; but stickest to thy own special andfantastic rules, and by how much more particular, uncertain, andcontradictory they are, by so much thou employest thy whole endeavour inthem: the laws of thy parish occupy and bind thee: those of God and theworld concern thee not. Run but a little over the examples of this kind;thy life is full of them. 

Whilst the verses of these two poets, treat so reservedly and discreetlyof wantonness as they do, methinks they discover it much more openly. Ladies cover their necks with network, priests cover several sacredthings, and painters shadow their pictures to give them greater lustre:and 'tis said that the sun and wind strike more violently by reflectionthan in a direct line. The Egyptian wisely answered him who asked himwhat he had under his cloak, "It is hid under my cloak, " said he, "thatthou mayest not know what it is:" but there are certain other things thatpeople hide only to show them. Hear that one, who speaks plainer, "Et nudum pressi corpus ad usque meum:"

 ["And pressed her naked body to mine" (Or:) "My body I applied even to her naked side"--Ovid, Amor. , i. 5, 24. ]

methinks that he emasculates me. Let Martial turn up Venus as high as hemay, he cannot shew her so naked: he who says all that is to be saidgluts and disgusts us. He who is afraid to express himself, draws us onto guess at more than is meant; there is treachery in this sort ofmodesty, and specially when they half open, as these do, so fair a pathto imagination. Both the action and description should relish of theft. 

The more respectful, more timorous, more coy, and secret love of theSpaniards and Italians pleases me. I know not who of old wished histhroat as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what heswallowed; it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitouspleasure, especially in such natures as mine that have the fault of beingtoo prompt. To stay its flight and delay it with preambles: all things--a glance, a bow, a word, a sign, stand for favour and recompense betwixtthem. Were it not an excellent piece of thrift in him who could dine onthe steam of the roast? 'Tis a passion that mixes with very little solidessence, far more vanity and feverish raving; and we should serve and payit accordingly. Let us teach the ladies to set a better value and esteemupon themselves, to amuse and fool us: we give the last charge at thefirst onset; the French impetuosity will still show itself; by spinningout their favours, and exposing them in small parcels, even miserable oldage itself will find some little share of reward, according to its worthand merit. He who has no fruition but in fruition, who wins nothingunless he sweeps the stakes, who takes no pleasure in the chase but inthe quarry, ought not to introduce himself in our school: the more stepsand degrees there are, so much higher and more honourable is theuppermost seat: we should take a pleasure in being conducted to it, as inmagnificent palaces, by various porticoes and passages, long and pleasantgalleries, and many windings. This disposition of things would turn toour advantage; we should there longer stay and longer love; without hopeand without desire we proceed not worth a pin. Our conquest and entirepossession is what they ought infinitely to dread: when they whollysurrender themselves up to the mercy of our fidelity and constancy theyrun a mighty hazard; they are virtues very rare and hard to be found; theladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs:

 "Postquam cupidae mentis satiata libido est, Verba nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant;"

 ["When our desires are once satisfied, we care little for oaths and promises. "--Catullus, lxiv. 147. ]

And Thrasonides, a young man of Greece, was so in love with his passionthat, having, gained a mistress's consent, he refused to enjoy her, thathe might not by fruition quench and stupefy the unquiet ardour of whichhe was so proud, and with which he so fed himself. Dearness is a goodsauce to meat: do but observe how much the manner of salutation, particular to our nation, has, by its facilities, made kisses, whichSocrates says are so powerful and dangerous for the stealing of hearts, of no esteem. It is a displeasing custom and injurious for the ladies, that they must be obliged to lend their lips to every fellow who hasthree footmen at his heels, however ill-favoured he may be in himself:

 "Cujus livida naribus caninis Dependet glacies, rigetque barba . . . Centum occurrere malo culilingis:" Martial, vii. 94. 

and we ourselves barely gain by it; for as the world is divided, forthree beautiful women we must kiss fifty ugly ones; and to a tenderstomach, like those of my age, an ill kiss overpays a good one. 

In Italy they passionately court even their common women who sellthemselves for money, and justify the doing so by saying, "that there aredegrees of fruition, and that by such service they would procure forthemselves that which is most entire; the women sell nothing but theirbodies; the will is too free and too much of its own to be exposed tosale. " So that these say, 'tis the will they undertake and they havereason. 'Tis indeed the will that we are to serve and gain by wooing. I abhor to imagine mine, a body without affection: and this madness is, methinks, cousin-german to that of the boy who would needs pollute thebeautiful statue of Venus made by Praxiteles; or that of the furiousEgyptian, who violated the dead carcase of a woman he was embalming:which was the occasion of the law then made in Egypt, that the corpses ofbeautiful young women, of those of good quality, should be kept threedays before they should be delivered to those whose office it was to takecare for the interment. Periander did more wonderfully, who extended hisconjugal affection (more regular and legitimate) to the enjoyment of hiswife Melissa after she was dead. Does it not seem a lunatic humour inthe Moon, seeing she could no otherwise enjoy her darling Endymion, tolay-him for several months asleep, and to please herself with thefruition of a boy who stirred not but in his sleep? I likewise say thatwe love a body without a soul or sentiment when we love a body withoutits consent and desire. All enjoyments are not alike: there are somethat are hectic and languishing: a thousand other causes besidesgood-will may procure us this favour from the ladies; this is not asufficient testimony of affection: treachery may lurk there, as well aselsewhere: they sometimes go to't by halves:

 "Tanquam thura merumque parent Absentem marmoreamve putes:"

 ["As if they are preparing frankincense and wine . . . You might think her absent or marble. "--Martial, xi. 103, 12, and 59, 8. ]

I know some who had rather lend that than their coach, and who onlyimpart themselves that way. You are to examine whether your companypleases them upon any other account, or, as some strong-chined groom, for that only; in what degree of favour and esteem you are with them:

 "Tibi si datur uni, Quem lapide illa diem candidiore notat. "

 ["Wherefore that is enough, if that day alone is given us which she marks with a whiter stone. "--Catullus, lxviii. 147. ]

What if they eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasingimagination. 

 "Te tenet, absentes alios suspirat amores. "

 ["She has you in her arms; her thoughts are with other absent lovers. "--Tibullus, i. 6, 35. ]

What? have we not seen one in these days of ours who made use of this actfor the purpose of a most horrid revenge, by that means to kill andpoison, as he did, a worthy lady?

Such as know Italy will not think it strange if, for this subject, I seeknot elsewhere for examples; for that nation may be called the regent ofthe world in this. They have more generally handsome and fewer uglywomen than we; but for rare and excellent beauties we have as many asthey. I think the same of their intellects: of those of the common sort, they have evidently far more brutishness is immeasurably rarer there;but in individual characters of the highest form, we are nothing indebtedto them. If I should carry on the comparison, I might say, as touchingvalour, that, on the contrary, it is, to what it is with them, common andnatural with us; but sometimes we see them possessed of it to such adegree as surpasses the greatest examples we can produce: The marriagesof that country are defective in this; their custom commonly imposes sorude and so slavish a law upon the women, that the most distantacquaintance with a stranger is as capital an offence as the mostintimate; so that all approaches being rendered necessarily substantial, and seeing that all comes to one account, they have no hard choice tomake; and when they have broken down the fence, we may safely presumethey get on fire:

 "Luxuria ipsis vinculis, sicut fera bestia, irritata, deinde emissa. "

 ["Lust, like a wild beast, being more excited by being bound, breaks from his chains with greater wildness. "--Livy, xxxiv. 4. ]

They must give them a little more rein:

 "Vidi ego nuper equum, contra sua frena tenacem, Ore reluctanti fulminis ire modo":

 ["I saw, the other day, a horse struggling against his bit, rush like a thunderbolt. "--Ovid, Amor. , iii. 4, 13. ]

the desire of company is allayed by giving it a little liberty. We arepretty much in the same case they are extreme in constraint, we inlicence. 'Tis a good custom we have in France that our sons are receivedinto the best families, there to be entertained and bred up pages, as ina school of nobility; and 'tis looked upon as a discourtesy and anaffront to refuse this to a gentleman. I have taken notice (for, so manyfamilies, so many differing forms) that the ladies who have beenstrictest with their maids have had no better luck than those who allowedthem a greater liberty. There should be moderation in these things; onemust leave a great deal of their conduct to their own discretion; for, when all comes to all, no discipline can curb them throughout. But it istrue withal that she who comes off with flying colours from a school ofliberty, brings with her whereon to repose more confidence than she whocomes away sound from a severe and strict school. 

Our fathers dressed up their daughters' looks in bashfulness and fear(their courage and desires being the same); we ours in confidence andassurance; we understand nothing of the matter; we must leave it to theSarmatian women, who may not lie with a man till with their own handsthey have first killed another in battle. For me, who have no othertitle left me to these things but by the ears, 'tis sufficient if, according to the privilege of my age, they retain me for one of theircounsel. I advise them then, and us men too, to abstinence; but if theage we live in will not endure it, at least modesty and discretion. For, as in the story of Aristippus, who, speaking to some young men whoblushed to see him go into a scandalous house, said "the vice is in notcoming out, not in going in, " let her who has no care of her consciencehave yet some regard to her reputation; and though she be rotten within, let her carry a fair outside at least. 

I commend a gradation and delay in bestowing their favours: Plato'declares that, in all sorts of love, facility and promptness areforbidden to the defendant. 'Tis a sign of eagerness which theyought to disguise with all the art they have, so rashly, wholly, andhand-over-hand to surrender themselves. In carrying themselves orderlyand measuredly in the granting their last favours, they much more allureour desires and hide their own. Let them still fly before us, even thosewho have most mind to be overtaken: they better conquer us by flying, asthe Scythians did. To say the truth, according to the law that naturehas imposed upon them, it is not properly for them either to will ordesire; their part is to suffer, obey, and consent and for this it isthat nature has given them a perpetual capacity, which in us is but attimes and uncertain; they are always fit for the encounter, that they maybe always ready when we are so "Pati natee. "-["Born to suffer. "-Seneca, Ep. , 95. ]--And whereas she has ordered that our appetites shall bemanifest by a prominent demonstration, she would have theirs to be hiddenand concealed within, and has furnished them with parts improper forostentation, and simply defensive. Such proceedings as this that followsmust be left to the Amazonian licence: Alexander marching his armythrough Hyrcania, Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, came with threehundred light horse of her own-sex, well mounted, and armed, having leftthe remainder of a very great, army that followed her behind theneighbouring mountains to give him a visit; where she publicly and inplain terms told him that the fame of his valour and victories hadbrought her thither to see him, and to make him an offer of her forces toassist him in the pursuit of his enterprises; and that, finding him sohandsome, young, and vigorous, she, who was also perfect in all thosequalities, advised that they might lie together, to the end that from themost valiant woman of the world and the bravest man then living, theremight spring some great and wonderful issue for the time to come. Alexander returned her thanks for all the rest; but, to give leisure forthe accomplishment of her last demand, he detained her thirteen days inthat place, which were spent in royal feasting and jollity, for thewelcome of so courageous a princess. 

We are, almost throughout, unjust judges of their actions, as they are ofours. I confess the truth when it makes against me, as well as when 'tison my side. 'Tis an abominable intemperance that pushes them on so oftento change, and that will not let them limit their affection to any oneperson whatever; as is evident in that goddess to whom are attributed somany changes and so many lovers. But 'tis true withal that 'tis contraryto the nature of love if it be, not violent; and contrary to the natureof violence if it be constant. And they who wonder, exclaim, and keepsuch a clutter to find out the causes of this frailty of theirs, asunnatural and not to be believed, how comes it to pass they do notdiscern how often they are themselves guilty of the same, without anyastonishment or miracle at all? It would, peradventure, be more strangeto see the passion fixed; 'tis not a simply corporeal passion. If therebe no end to avarice and ambition, there is doubtless no more in desire;it still lives after satiety; and 'tis impossible to prescribe eitherconstant satisfaction or end; it ever goes beyond its possession. And bythat means inconstancy, peradventure, is in some sort more pardonable inthem than in us: they may plead, as well as we, the inclination tovariety and novelty common to us both; and secondly, without us, thatthey buy a cat in a sack: Joanna, queen of Naples, caused her firsthusband, Andrews, to be hanged at the bars of her window in a halter ofgold and silk woven with her own hand, because in matrimonialperformances she neither found his parts nor abilities answer theexpectation she had conceived from his stature, beauty, youth, andactivity, by which she had been caught and deceived. They may say thereis more pains required in doing than in suffering; and so they are ontheir part always at least provided for necessity, whereas on our part itmay fall out otherwise. For this reason it was, that Plato wisely made alaw that before marriage, to determine of the fitness of persons, thejudges should see the young men who pretended to it stripped stark naked, and the women but to the girdle only. When they come to try us they donot, perhaps, find us worthy of their choice:

 "Experta latus, madidoque simillima loro Inguina, nec lassa stare coacta manu, Deserit imbelles thalamos. "

 ["After using every endeavour to arouse him to action, she quits the barren couch. "--Martial, vii. 58. ]

'Tis not enough that a man's will be good; weakness and insufficiencylawfully break a marriage, "Et quaerendum aliunde foret nervosius illud, Quod posset zonam solvere virgineam:"

 ["And seeks a more vigorous lover to undo her virgin zone. " --Catullus, lxvii. 27. ]

why not? and according to her own standard, an amorous intelligence, more licentious and active, "Si blando nequeat superesse labori. "

 ["If his strength be unequal to the pleasant task. " --Virgil, Georg. , iii. 127. ]

But is it not great impudence to offer our imperfections andimbecilities, where we desire to please and leave a good opinion andesteem of ourselves? For the little that I am able to do now:

 "Ad unum Mollis opus. "

 ["Fit but for once. "--Horace, Epod. , xii. 15. ]

I would not trouble a woman, that I am to reverence and fear:

 "Fuge suspicari, Cujus undenum trepidavit aetas Claudere lustrum. "

 ["Fear not him whose eleventh lustrum is closed. " --Horace, Od. , ii. 4, 12, limits it to the eighth. ]

Nature should satisfy herself in having rendered this age miserable, without rendering it ridiculous too. I hate to see it, for one poor inchof pitiful vigour which comes upon it but thrice a week, to strut and setitself out with as much eagerness as if it could do mighty feats; a trueflame of flax; and laugh to see it so boil and bubble and then in amoment so congealed and extinguished. This appetite ought to appertainonly to the flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding thatindefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardour you think in you, forit will certainly leave you in a pretty corner; but rather transfer it tosome tender, bashful, and ignorant boy, who yet trembles at the rod, andblushes:

 "Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro Si quis ebur, vel mista rubent ubi lilia multa Alba rosa. "

 ["As Indian ivory streaked with crimson, or white lilies mixed with the damask rose. "--AEneid, xii. 67. ]

Who can stay till the morning without dying for shame to behold thedisdain of the fair eyes of her who knows so well his fumblingimpertinence, "Et taciti fecere tamen convicia vultus, "

 ["Though she nothing say, her looks betray her anger. " --Ovid, Amor. , i. 7, 21. ]

has never had the satisfaction and the glory of having cudgelled themtill they were weary, with the vigorous performance of one heroic night. When I have observed any one to be vexed with me, I have not presentlyaccused her levity, but have been in doubt, if I had not reason rather tocomplain of nature; she has doubtless used me very uncivilly andunkindly:

 "Si non longa satis, si non bene mentula crassa Nimirum sapiunt, videntque parvam Matronae quoque mentulam illibenter:"

 [The first of these verses is the commencement of an epigram of the Veterum Poetayurra Catalecta, and the two others are from an epigram in the same collection (Ad Matrones). They describe untranslatably Montaigne's charge against nature, indicated in the previous passage. ]

and done me a most enormous injury. Every member I have, as much one asanother, is equally my own, and no other more properly makes me a manthan this. 

I universally owe my entire picture to the public. The wisdom of myinstruction consists in liberty, in truth, in essence: disdaining tointroduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into thecatalogue of its real duties; all natural, general, and constant, of which civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but illegitimate. We are sure to have the vices of appearance, when we shall have had thoseof essence: when we have done with these, we run full drive upon theothers, if we find it must be so; for there is danger that we shall fancynew offices, to excuse our negligence towards the natural ones, and toconfound them: and to manifest this, is it not seen that in places wherefaults are crimes, crimes are but faults; that in nations where the lawsof decency are most rare and most remiss, the primitive laws of commonreason are better observed: the innumerable multitude of so many dutiesstifling and dissipating our care. The application of ourselves to lightand trivial things diverts us from those that are necessary and just. Oh, how these superficial men take an easy and plausible way incomparison of ours! These are shadows wherewith we palliate and pay oneanother; but we do not pay, but inflame the reckoning towards that greatjudge, who tucks up our rags and tatters above our shameful parts, andsuckles not to view us all over, even to our inmost and most secretordures: it were a useful decency of our maidenly modesty, could it keephim from this discovery. In fine, whoever could reclaim man from soscrupulous a verbal superstition, would do the world no great disservice. Our life is divided betwixt folly and prudence: whoever will write of itbut what is reverend and canonical, will leave above the one-half behind. I do not excuse myself to myself; and if I did, it should rather be formy excuses that I would excuse myself than for any other fault; I excusemyself of certain humours, which I think more strong in number than thosethat are on my side. In consideration of which, I will further say this(for I desire to please every one, though it will be hard to do):

 "Esse unum hominem accommodatum ad tantam morum ac sermonum et voluntatum varietatem, "

 ["For a man to conform to such a variety of manners, discourses, and will. "--Q. Cicero, De Pet. Consul, c. 14. ]

that they ought not to condemn me for what I make authorities, receivedand approved by so many ages, to utter: and that there is no reason thatfor want of rhyme they should refuse me the liberty they allow even tochurchmen of our nation and time, and these amongst the most notable, ofwhich here are two of their brisk verses:

 "Rimula, dispeream, ni monogramma tua est. "

 "Un vit d'amy la contente et bien traicte:"

 [St. Gelais, (Euvres Poetiques), p. 99, ed. Of Lyons, 1574. ]

besides how many others. I love modesty; and 'tis not out of judgmentthat I have chosen this scandalous way of speaking; 'tis nature that haschosen it for me. I commend it not, no more than other forms that arecontrary to common use: but I excuse it, and by circumstances bothgeneral and particular, alleviate its accusation. 

But to proceed. Whence, too, can proceed that usurpation of sovereignauthority you take upon you over the women, who favour you at their ownexpense, "Si furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte, "

 ["If, in the stealthy night, she has made strange gifts. " --Catullus, lxviii. 145. ]

so that you presently assume the interest, coldness, and authority of ahusband? 'Tis a free contract why do you not then keep to it, as youwould have them do? there is no prescription upon voluntary things. 'Tis against the form, but it is true withal, that I in my time haveconducted this bargain as much as the nature of it would permit, asconscientiously and with as much colour of justice, as any othercontract; and that I never pretended other affection than what I reallyhad, and have truly acquainted them with its birth, vigour, anddeclination, its fits and intermissions: a man does not always hold onat the same rate. I have been so sparing of my promises, that I thinkI have been better than my word. They have found me faithful even toservice of their inconstancy, a confessed and sometimes multipliedinconstancy. I never broke with them, whilst I had any hold at all, andwhat occasion soever they have given me, never broke with them to hatredor contempt; for such privacies, though obtained upon never so scandalousterms, do yet oblige to some good will: I have sometimes, upon theirtricks and evasions, discovered a little indiscreet anger and impatience;for I am naturally subject to rash emotions, which, though light andshort, often spoil my market. At any time they have consulted myjudgment, I never stuck to give them sharp and paternal counsels, and topinch them to the quick. If I have left them any cause to complain ofme, 'tis rather to have found in me, in comparison of the modern use, alove foolishly conscientious than anything else. I have kept my, word inthings wherein I might easily have been dispensed; they sometimessurrendered themselves with reputation, and upon articles that they werewilling enough should be broken by the conqueror: I have, more than once, made pleasure in its greatest effort strike to the interest of theirhonour; and where reason importuned me, have armed them against myself;so that they ordered themselves more decorously and securely by my rules, when they frankly referred themselves to them, than they would have doneby their own. I have ever, as much as I could, wholly taken upon myselfalone the hazard of our assignations, to acquit them; and have alwayscontrived our meetings after the hardest and most unusual manner, as lesssuspected, and, moreover, in my opinion, more accessible. They arechiefly more open, where they think they are most securely shut; thingsleast feared are least interdicted and observed; one may more boldly darewhat nobody thinks you dare, which by its difficulty becomes easy. Neverhad any man his approaches more impertinently generative; this way ofloving is more according to discipline but how ridiculous it is to ourpeople, and how ineffectual, who better knows than I? yet I shall notrepent me of it; I have nothing there more to lose:

 "Me tabula sacer Votiva paries, indicat uvida Suspendisse potenti Vestimenta maris deo:"

 ["The holy wall, by my votive table, shows that I have hanged up my wet clothes in honour of the powerful god of the sea. " --Horace, Od. , i. 5, 13. ]

'tis now time to speak out. But as I might, per adventure, say toanother, "Thou talkest idly, my friend; the love of thy time has littlecommerce with faith and integrity;"

 "Haec si tu postules Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas, Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias:"

 ["If you seek to make these things certain by reason, you will do no more than if you should seek to be mad in your senses. " --Terence, Eun. , act i. , sc. I, v. 16. ]

on the contrary, also, if it were for me to begin again, certainly itshould be by the same method and the same progress, how fruitless soeverit might be to me; folly and insufficiency are commendable in anincommendable action: the farther I go from their humour in this, Iapproach so much nearer to my own. As to the rest, in this traffic, Idid not suffer myself to be totally carried away; I pleased myself in it, but did not forget myself. I retained the little sense and discretionthat nature has given me, entire for their service and my own: a littleemotion, but no dotage. My conscience, also, was engaged in it, even todebauch and licentiousness; but, as to ingratitude, treachery, malice, and cruelty, never. I would not purchase the pleasure of this vice atany price, but content myself with its proper and simple cost:

 "Nullum intra se vitium est. "

 ["Nothing is a vice in itself. "--Seneca, Ep. , 95. ]

I almost equally hate a stupid and slothful laziness, as I do a toilsomeand painful employment; this pinches, the other lays me asleep. I likewounds as well as bruises, and cuts as well as dry blows. I found inthis commerce, when I was the most able for it, a just moderation betwixtthese extremes. Love is a sprightly, lively, and gay agitation; I wasneither troubled nor afflicted with it, but heated, and moreover, disordered; a man must stop there; it hurts nobody but fools. A youngman asked the philosopher Panetius if it were becoming a wise man to bein love? "Let the wise man look to that, " answered he, "but let not thouand I, who are not so, engage ourselves in so stirring and violent anaffair, that enslaves us to others, and renders us contemptible toourselves. " He said true that we are not to intrust a thing soprecipitous in itself to a soul that has not wherewithal to withstand itsassaults and disprove practically the saying of Agesilaus, that prudenceand love cannot live together. 'Tis a vain employment, 'tis true, unbecoming, shameful, and illegitimate; but carried on after this manner, I look upon it as wholesome, and proper to enliven a drowsy soul and torouse up a heavy body; and, as an experienced physician, I wouldprescribe it to a man of my form and condition, as soon as any otherrecipe whatever, to rouse and keep him in vigour till well advanced inyears, and to defer the approaches of age. Whilst we are but in thesuburbs, and that the pulse yet beats:

 "Dum nova canities, dum prima et recta senectus, Dum superest lachesi quod torqueat, et pedibus me Porto meis, nullo dextram subeunte bacillo, "

 ["Whilst the white hair is new, whilst old age is still straight shouldered, whilst there still remains something for Lachesis to spin, whilst I walk on my own legs, and need no staff to lean upon. " --Juvenal, iii. 26. ]

we have need to be solicited and tickled by some such nipping incitationas this. Do but observe what youth, vigour, and gaiety it inspired thegood Anacreon withal: and Socrates, who was then older than I, speakingof an amorous object:

"Leaning, " said he, "my shoulder to her shoulder, and my head to hers, aswe were reading together in a book, I felt, without dissembling, a suddensting in my shoulder like the biting of an insect, which I still feltabove five days after, and a continual itching crept into my heart. " Sothat merely the accidental touch, and of a shoulder, heated and altered asoul cooled and enerved by age, and the strictest liver of all mankind. And, pray, why not? Socrates was a man, and would neither be, nor seem, any other thing. Philosophy does not contend against natural pleasures, provided they be moderate, and only preaches moderation, not a totalabstinence; the power of its resistance is employed against those thatare adulterate and strange. Philosophy says that the appetites of thebody ought not to be augmented by the mind, and ingeniously warns us notto stir up hunger by saturity; not to stuff, instead of merely filling, the belly; to avoid all enjoyments that may bring us to want; and allmeats and drinks that bring thirst and hunger: as, in the service oflove, she prescribes us to take such an object as may simply satisfy thebody's need, and does not stir the soul, which ought only barely tofollow and assist the body, without mixing in the affair. But have I notreason to hold that these precepts, which, indeed, in my opinion, aresomewhat over strict, only concern a body in its best plight; and that ina body broken with age, as in a weak stomach, 'tis excusable to warm andsupport it by art, and by the mediation of the fancy to restore theappetite and cheerfulness it has lost of itself. 

May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison, that is purely either corporeal or spiritual; and that we injuriouslybreak up a man alive; and that it seems but reasonable that we shouldcarry ourselves as favourably, at least, towards the use of pleasure aswe do towards that of pain! Pain was (for example) vehement even toperfection in the souls of the saints by penitence: the body had therenaturally a sham by the right of union, and yet might have but littlepart in the cause; and yet are they not contented that it should barelyfollow and assist the afflicted soul: they have afflicted itself withgrievous and special torments, to the end that by emulation of oneanother the soul and body might plunge man into misery by so much moresalutiferous as it is more severe. In like manner, is it not injustice, in bodily pleasures, to subdue and keep under the soul, and say that itmust therein be dragged along as to some enforced and servile obligationand necessity? 'Tis rather her part to hatch and cherish them, there topresent herself, and to invite them, the authority of ruling belonging toher; as it is also her part, in my opinion, in pleasures that are properto her, to inspire and infuse into the body all the sentiment it iscapable of, and to study how to make them sweet and useful to it. For itis good reason, as they say, that the body should not pursue itsappetites to the prejudice of the mind; but why is it not also the reasonthat the mind should not pursue hers to the prejudice of the body?

I have no other passion to keep me in breath. What avarice, ambition, quarrels, lawsuits do for others who, like me, have no particularvocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to mevigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassuremy countenance, so that the grimaces of old age, those deformed anddismal looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me uponsound and wise studies, by which I might render myself more loved andesteemed, clearing my mind of the despair of itself and of its use, andredintegrating it to itself; would divert me from a thousand troublesomethoughts, a thousand melancholic humours that idleness and the illposture of our health loads us withal at such an age; would warm again, in dreams at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold upthe chin, and a little stretch out the nerves, the vigour and gaiety oflife of that poor man who is going full drive towards his ruin. But Ivery well understand that it is a commodity hard to recover: by weaknessand long experience our taste is become more delicate and nice; we askmost when we bring least, and are harder to choose when we least deserveto be accepted: and knowing ourselves for what we are, we are lessconfident and more distrustful; nothing can assure us of being beloved, considering our condition and theirs. I am out of countenance to seemyself in company with those young wanton creatures:

 "Cujus in indomito constantior inguine nervus, Quam nova collibus arbor inhaeret. "

 ["In whose unbridled reins the vigour is more inherent than in the young tree on the hills. "--Horace, Epod. , xii. 19. ]

To what end should we go insinuate our misery amid their gay andsprightly humour?

 "Possint ut juvenes visere fervidi. Multo non sine risu, Dilapsam in cineres facem. "

 ["As the fervid youths may behold, not without laughter, a burning torch worn to ashes. "--Horace, Od. , iv. 13, 21. ]

They have strength and reason on their side; let us give way; we havenothing to do there: and these blossoms of springing beauty suffer notthemselves to be handled by such benumbed hands nor dealt with by merematerial means, for, as the old philosopher answered one who jeered himbecause he could not gain the favour of a young girl he made love to:"Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese. " It is a commercethat requires relation and correspondence: the other pleasures we receivemay be acknowledged by recompenses of another nature, but this is not tobe paid but with the same kind of coin. In earnest, in this sport, thepleasure I give more tickles my imagination than that they give me; now, he has nothing of generosity in him who can receive pleasure where heconfers none--it must needs be a mean soul that will owe all, and can becontent to maintain relations with persons to whom he is a continualcharge; there is no beauty, grace, nor privacy so exquisite that agentleman ought to desire at this rate. If they can only be kind to usout of pity, I had much rather die than live upon charity. I would haveright to ask, in the style wherein I heard them beg in Italy: "Fate benper voi, "--["Do good for yourself. "]--or after the manner that Cyrusexhorted his soldiers, "Who loves himself let him follow me. "--"Consortyourself, " some one will say to me, "with women of your own condition, whom like fortune will render more easy to your desire. " O ridiculousand insipid composition!

 "Nolo Barbam vellere mortuo leoni. "

 ["I would not pluck the beard from a dead lion. "--Martial]

Xenophon lays it for an objection and an accusation against Menon, thathe never made love to any but old women. For my part, I take morepleasure in but seeing the just and sweet mixture of two young beauties, or only in meditating on it in my fancy, than myself in acting second ina pitiful and imperfect conjunction;

 [Which Cotton renders, "Than to be myself an actor in the second with a deformed creature. "]

I leave that fantastic appetite to the Emperor Galba, who was only forold curried flesh: and to this poor wretch:

 "O ego Di faciant talem to cernere possim, Caraque mutatis oscula ferre comis, Amplectique meis corpus non pingue lacertis!"

 [Ovid, who (Ex. Ponto, i. 4, 49) writes to his wife, "O would the gods arrange that such I might see thee, and bring dear kisses to thy changed locks, and embrace thy withered body with my arms"]

Amongst chief deformities I reckon forced and artificial beauties: Hemon, a young boy of Chios, thinking by fine dressing to acquire the beautythat nature had denied him, came to the philosopher Arcesilaus and askedhim if it was possible for a wise man to be in love--"Yes, " replied he, "provided it be not with a farded and adulterated beauty like thine. "

 [Diogenes Laertius, iv. 36. The question was whether a wise man could love him. Cotton has "Emonez, a young courtezan of Chios. "]

Ugliness of a confessed antiquity is to me less old and less ugly thananother that is polished and plastered up. Shall I speak it, without thedanger of having my throat cut? love, in my opinion, is not properly andnaturally in its season, but in the age next to childhood, "Quem si puellarum insereres choro, Mille sagaces falleret hospites, Discrimen obscurum, solutis Crinibus ambiguoque vultu:"

 ["Whom if thou shouldst place in a company of girls, it would require a thousand experts to distinguish him, with his loose locks and ambiguous countenance. "--Horace, Od. , ii. 5, 21. ]

nor beauty neither; for whereas Homer extends it so far as to the buddingof the beard, Plato himself has remarked this as rare: and the reason whythe sophist Bion so pleasantly called the first appearing hairs ofadolescence 'Aristogitons' and 'Harmodiuses'--[Plutarch, On Love, c. 34. ]--is sufficiently known. I find it in virility already in some sort alittle out of date, though not so much as in old age;

 "Importunus enim transvolat aridas Quercus. "

 ["For it uncivilly passes over withered oaks. " --Horace, Od. , iv. 13, 9. ]

and Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, like a woman, very far extends theadvantage of women, ordaining that it is time, at thirty years old, toconvert the title of fair into that of good. The shorter authority wegive to love over our lives, 'tis so much the better for us. Do butobserve his port; 'tis a beardless boy. Who knows not how, in his schoolthey proceed contrary to all order; study, exercise, and usage are theirways for insufficiency there novices rule:

 "Amor ordinem nescit. "

 ["Love ignores rules. " (Or:) "Love knows no rule. " --St. Jerome, Letter to Chyomatius. ]

Doubtless his conduct is much more graceful when mixed with inadvertencyand trouble; miscarriages and ill successes give him point and grace;provided it be sharp and eager, 'tis no great matter whether it beprudent or no: do but observe how he goes reeling, tripping, and playing:you put him in the stocks when you guide him by art and wisdom; and he isrestrained of his divine liberty when put into those hairy and callousclutches. 

As to the rest, I often hear the women set out this intelligence asentirely spiritual, and disdain to put the interest the senses there haveinto consideration; everything there serves; but I can say that I haveoften seen that we have excused the weakness of their understandings infavour of their outward beauty, but have never yet seen that in favour ofmind, how mature and full soever, any of them would hold out a hand to abody that was never so little in decadence. Why does not some one ofthem take it into her head to make that noble Socratical bargain betweenbody and soul, purchasing a philosophical and spiritual intelligence andgeneration at the price of her thighs, which is the highest price she canget for them? Plato ordains in his Laws that he who has performed anysignal and advantageous exploit in war may not be refused during thewhole expedition, his age or ugliness notwithstanding, a kiss or anyother amorous favour from any woman whatever. What he thinks to be sojust in recommendation of military valour, why may it not be the same inrecommendation of any other good quality? and why does not some womantake a fancy to possess over her companions the glory of this chastelove? I may well say chaste;

 "Nam si quando ad praelia ventum est, Ut quondam in stipulis magnus sine viribus ignis, Incassum furit:"

 ["For when they sometimes engage in love's battle, his sterile ardour lights up but as the flame of a straw. " --Virgil, Georg. , iii. 98. ]

the vices that are stifled in the thought are not the worst. 

To conclude this notable commentary, which has escaped from me in atorrent of babble, a torrent sometimes impetuous and hurtful, "Ut missum sponsi furtivo munere malum Procurrit casto virginis a gremio, Quod miserae oblitae molli sub veste locatuat, Dum adventu matris prosilit, excutitur, Atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu Huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor. "

 ["As when an apple, sent by a lover secretly to his mistress, falls from the chaste virgin's bosom, where she had quite forgotten it; when, starting at her mother's coming in, it is shaken out and rolls over the floor before her eyes, a conscious blush covers her face. " --Catullus, lxv. 19. ]

I say that males and females are cast in the same mould, and that, education and usage excepted, the difference is not great. Platoindifferently invites both the one and the other to the society of allstudies, exercises, and vocations, both military and civil, in hisCommonwealth; and the philosopher Antisthenes rejected all distinctionbetwixt their virtue and ours. It is much more easy to accuse one sexthan to excuse the other; 'tis according to the saying, "Le fourgon se moque de la paele. " ["The Pot and the Kettle. "]

 ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 A gallant man does not give over his pursuit for being refused A lady could not boast of her chastity who was never tempted Appetite is more sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age Certain other things that people hide only to show them Chiefly knew himself to be mortal by this act Dearness is a good sauce to meat Each amongst you has made somebody cuckold Eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing imagination Evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge Feminine polity has a mysterious procedure Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who have not repented it First thing to be considered in love matters: a fitting time Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese. Give the ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture Guess at our meaning under general and doubtful terms Hate all sorts of obligation and restraint Have ever had a great respect for her I loved Have no other title left me to these things but by the ears Heat and stir up their imagination, and then we find fault Husbands hate their wives only because they themselves do wrong I am apt to dream that I dream I do not say that 'tis well said, but well thought I had much rather die than live upon charity. I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence If I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me, stops me If they can only be kind to us out of pity In everything else a man may keep some decorum In those days, the tailor took measure of it Inclination to variety and novelty common to us both Inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation Interdiction incites, and who are more eager, being forbidden It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in Jealousy: no remedy but flight or patience Judgment of duty principally lies in the will Ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs "Let a man take which course he will, " said he; "he will repent. " Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think Love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty Love shamefully and dishonestly cured by marriage Love them the less for our own faults Love, full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure inflamed by difficulty Man must approach his wife with prudence and temperance Marriage rejects the company and conditions of love Men make them (the rules) without their (women's) help Misfortunes that only hurt us by being known Modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person (Homer) Most of my actions are guided by example, not by choice Neither continency nor virtue where there are no opposing desire No doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime O, the furious advantage of opportunity! Observed the laws of marriage, than I either promised or expect One may more boldly dare what nobody thinks you dare Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune Plato says, that the gods made man for their sport Pleasure of telling (a pleasure little inferior to that of doing) Priest shall on the wedding-day open the way to the bride Prudent man, when I imagine him in this posture Rage compelled to excuse itself by a pretence of good-will Rather be a less while old than be old before I am really so Represented her a little too passionate for a married Venus Revenge more wounds our children than it heals us Sex: To put fools and wise men, beasts and us, on a level Sharps and sweets of marriage, are kept secret by the wise Sins that make the least noise are the worst Sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of the soul Sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe The best authors too much humble and discourage me The impulse of nature, which is a rough counsellor The privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age Their disguises and figures only serve to cosen fools There is no allurement like modesty, if it be not rude These sleepy, sluggish sort of men are often the most dangerous They better conquer us by flying They buy a cat in a sack They err as much who too much forbear Venus They must become insensible and invisible to satisfy us They who would fight custom with grammar are triflers Those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be fear Those within (marriage) despair of getting out Tis all swine's flesh, varied by sauces To what friend dare you intrust your griefs Twas a happy marriage betwixt a blind wife and a deaf husband Unjust judges of their actions, as they are of ours Very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous Virtue is a pleasant and gay quality We ask most when we bring least We say a good marriage because no one says to the contrary. When jealousy seizes these poor souls When their eyes give the lie to their tongue Who escapes being talked of at the same rate Wisdom has its excesses, and has no less need of moderation Would in this affair have a man a little play the servant