is inadequate, but his case is bad to begin with.
6
MONTAIGNE
His intention is worse than his argumentation.
An able legist, government employe^ and ex-chief-
editor of the Moniteur, he brings into Hterature
the habits and prepossessions of his position. The
Academy, and the estabhshed reputations, look
coldly on the administration from which they are
systematically excluded. It is not from republican
principle, from antipathy to despotism that they
do so — it is from the repugnance which the lettered
and cultivated man feels for the official man who
is not so. Times are changed since the statesmen
in France were the writers — when to be a journ-
alist conferred portefeullles. Statistics is your only
reading now. Point and epigram, and sparkling
style — how childish to be governed by such instru-
ments. Let us have men of business, and have
done with mots. All the great men — Sully, Riche-
lieu — have been able administrators. And the great
writers too? " To be sure," is the answer, " and
in proof there is Aiontaigne. You think he was a
rustic recluse, who forswore the court for his old
Gascon chateau, but you are entirely mistaken."
This baseless theory is not worth refuting. The
real value of M. Griin's rie de Montaigne is as a
painstaking collection of the facts at present known.
It includes all the new discoveries, except those
that have come to light since its publication — and
though it is only six months old, there is already
a considerable harvest.
It would we conceive be more than individual
error, it would be a fundamental misconception ot
7
MARK PATTISON
the character of French literature, to lose sight of
the following general distinction. The literature
of the Steele is the literature of a court circle. It is
fashionably dressed, it is modish, Parisian. It comes
not from the study, but from the world. From a
world, however, of etiquette, of polished intrigue,
a world with all its licence, yet circumscribed by
conventional morals. Thought and judgment are
there, but they are conformed to a certain super-
ficial standard of good society. In a word, it is the
literature of the salons of Paris and Versailles. In
contrast with this, the few great pieces of literature
of the previous age, from Rabelais down to Pascal,
were the offspring of the cloister, the chateau, or
the wayside. They are the f^ox clamanth in deserto.
Their superior force and originality derive directly
from the rude independence of character, which
was generated by that free and unformal life. In
Montaigne especially, it is the force of individual
character, coming out on us in every page of his
book, that charms. He stands in awe of no Cafe
Procope, has heard of no rules of writing, he is
not composing. He has the hardy and fearless
spirit of a man who has no one to please but himself
" J'ay une ame libre et tout sienne, accoustumee
a se conduire a sa mode." ' He complains some-
where that his times had not produced any great
men. Greatness, to be manifested to the world,
depends on the conjunction of natural endowment
with opportunity, and must needs be rare. But
UI. 17.
8
MONTAIGNE
we may surely say that the average stamp of the
men of that day was great. Compared with the
feminine uniformity of the shaved and tailor-made
man of later court-dress days, how grand are the
bearded seigneurs of the sixteenth century! In-
trepid, not lawless; disciplined in the school of
action and suffering; and conscious of all the
restraints that limit human will, these men had
made their acquaintance with law in its grandest
form, not in that degenerate artificial shape in
which the victim of good society alone knows it.
Aiontaigne was born in 1533 and died in 1592.
His father's name was Pierre Eyquem. M. Gence,
the writer of the life in the Biographie Universelle,
says that the family was originally from England.
That a French biographer should be willing to
make over one of the greatest of his countrymen to
England might surprise us. It may well do so in
this instance, as the self-denial is wholly uncalled
for. We cannot in honesty accept the offer. " Ey-
quem," or rather " Eyckem," according to the old
spelling, is a compound of the common termin-
ation " ham " or " heim," and the name of that
tree, which in the English vocalisation is " oak."
The German " eiche," or the Flemish " ecke,"
come much nearer to the form in " Eyquem."
Accordingly, some of the biographers have thought
of looking to Flanders for the original stock of
the family. It is still an open question in " Mon-
taignologie," and M. Griin produces no evidence
for his positive assertion that the name is " essentially
9
MARK PATTISON
of Gascon origin." In the course of the sixteenth
century the personal was superseded by the terri-
torial appellation. This was derived from a domain
which they possessed five leagues from Bergerac,
in the department of the Dordogne. The chateau
is situated on a height — " une montagne " —
"jonchee sur une tertre," he says: in this tower
Montaigne was born, lived, and died. The posses-
sion of this domain was an acquisition, it should
appear, which the Eyquem had only recently made;
their nobility, therefore, was of very modern date.
Joseph Scaliger said in an off-hand way that the
father of Montaigne " etait vendeur de harenc " ^
M. Grun, with the bitterness habitual to French
writers when they have to speak of Scaliger, repels
this as a false and malevolent insinuation. The
main fact implied, however, that the ancestors of
Montaigne were " marchand," and, therefore,
" bourgeois," is indisputable. We must not omit,
as he has recorded it himself, that he was an eleven
months' child. As he was a third son of a family,
now noble and not rich, his father, an excellent
person, took particular pains about his education.
He was put out to nurse at a poor village on the
estate. Here he was kept all his infancy, with the
view both of accustoming his taste to rude diet,
and of inducing him to form attachments amongst
the poor. His sympathy with peasant life he pre-
served to the last. " The poor fellows," thus he
writes in a season of more than usual suffering in
* Scaliger ana Secunda, p. 457.
lo
MONTAIGNE
the country, " the poor fellows whom we see all
about, their heads bowed over their tasks, who never
heard of Aristotle, or Cato, from them nature
obtains heroic efforts of patient endurance, which
may shame us who have studied in the schools.
That man who is digging my garden, he has this
morning buried a son, or a father perhaps. They
never take to their beds but to die."
The most curious experiment made in his edu-
cation was that of teaching him Latin before
French. A German preceptor who could speak
no French was found for him. None of the rest
of the household, mother, maid, or man, were
allowed to speak anything but Latin to him.
It is not to be imagined how great an advantage
this proved to the whole familv. My father and
mother by this means learned Latin enough to
understand it perfectly well, as did also those of the
servants who were most with me. In short we Latined
it at such a rate that it overflowed to all the neigh-
bouring villages, where there yet remain, that have
established themselves by custom, several Latin
appellations of artisans and their tools. Thus I was
above six years of age before I understood either
French or Perigordin any more than Arabic, and
without art, book, grammar, or precept, whipping
or the expense of a tear, had by that time learned to
speak as pure Latin as my master himself.^
The same attention was extended to all the
minutiae of his training. To save him from the
shock of sudden awakening, some musical instru-
ment was played by his bedside in the morning.
U. 25.
II
MARK PATTISON
Our readers will recollect the same usage in the
early education of Bishop Home, as described by
his biographer Jones of Nayland.
When he quitted this careful paternal roof, it
was to go to the college of Guienne at Bordeaux.
At this school, quite recently established, some of
the best scholars then to be found in France were
masters. But as he left it at the age of thirteen, he
could not have profited much by the higher scholar-
ship which Muretus and George Buchanan were
capable of communicating. As the sword belonged
by birth to the eldest son, Michel, as the third, had
to choose between the church and the robe. He
chose, or rather his father chose for him, the latter.
At thirteen he must have been incapable of choice,
and he always looked to his excellent parent with
a mixture of respect and affection, which disposed
him to acquiesce in his least wishes. What school
of jurisprudence he attended is not known. M.
Griin makes it Toulouse, for he naturally wishes
*' Montaigne Magistrat " to have been a pupil of
the celebrated Cujas. It may have been so. There
is not a particle of evidence to show that it was.
The solitary text is Montaigne's own declaration:
" While a child, I was plunged up to the ears in
law, and it succeeded."
As soon as he was qualified, his father provided
him with a place in the Court of Aids of Perigueux.
The law was entered there, as the army is with us,
now, by purchase. We cannot stay to debate with
the antiquaries the knotty point whether Mon-
MONTAIGNE
taigne's father resigned in his son's favour, or
purchased him the place of some other counsellor.
In 1557 the Court of Aids of Perigueux was con-
solidated with the Parlement of Bordeaux. And
thus, at the early age of twenty-four, Montaigne
was seated on the bench of a Supreme Court of
Justice without either of the troublesome cere-
monies of purchase or examination.
Honourable it was for a younger son; but when
by the death of his father and both his brothers,
Michel became himself the Seigneur de Mon-
taigne, the long robe no longer befitted him. By
these events he became a " gentleman," and carried
arms, as the phrase was. Ill-natured people said
in after days that Montaigne was ashamed of
having been counsellor cleric, and did not like to
allude to that period of his life. M. Griin is able
to repel peremptorily this imputation. It proceeded
indeed from later days, when Parlements were
fallen, and the magistracy, especially the provincial
magistrature, was looked down upon by the courtier
The sneers of Balzac and the Port-Royalists are
in the spirit of their own time, and are quite mis-
calculated for the age of L' Hospital, Pasquier, and
De Thou. All Montaigne's friends, relations, and
connexions — his father, uncle, brother-in-law —
were parliament men. He himself married Fran-
goise de la Chassaigne, daughter of one of the
Bordelais counsellors and descendant of a parlia-
mentary family. His most cherished friend La
Boetie had been his colleague in the magistracy;
I
'O
MARK PATTISON
and all the friendships he retained through life
had been cemented during his own parliamentary
career. So much, however, is true, that Montaigne
did not relish his judicial functions. This distaste
had two causes: dislike of law, and dislike of the
religious fanaticism which animated the magistracy
of Bordeaux.
He was never really a lawyer. The plunge up
to his ears had succeeded in qualifying him for a
charge, but had not given him the professional dye.
The biographers have exaggerated this distaste
into disgust. They make Montaigne into a law
reformer; they ascribe to him an enlightened
jurist's view of the contradictions of the customary
law, and predilection for the luminous simplicity
of the civil. This, again, is to read the sixteenth
century by the reflected light of '89. Montaigne
imbibed the views and aims of the more enlightened
jurists of his own time, but he did not project the
Code Napoleon. The opinions he has left on
record on this subject are very general, but they
are those of a wise and humane moralist, not of a
jurist. They show how much of a philosopher
and how little of " a magistrate " he was. He has
first an abhorrence of litigation, not less for others
than himself; he declares against the multiplication
of enactments, the contradictory judgments, the
glosses of the commentators; but all this is in the
spirit of a man of taste; revolted at the bad Latin
of the Digest, and wishing to be reading his Cicero.
It is a declaration against the language of law alto-
14
MONTAIGNE
gether rather than against its abuse in chicane. He
condemns torture, and the horrible mutilations
which were practised on the bodies of the unhappy
criminals. But in this he only echoed the opinion
of all the moralists of all time, and had with him all
the great and wise of his own day. Against him,
however, were the churchmen and Rome. Those
passages in his Essays in which he pleads that all
beyond simple death is pure cruelty, presented one
of the chief obstacles to their passing the censure;
the other, we may mention, was his assigning a
high rank among Latin poets to Theodore Beza.
He eloquently denounces the practice of selling
the places in the courts of justice; and, to complete
the list, he ridicules entails, or, as he calls them,
" masculine substitutions." Sir W. Hamilton wishes
to trace this opinion of Montaigne to the tuition
of Buchanan.^ Buchanan having quitted the
college at Bordeaux in 1542, his pupil was only
nine years old — an age at which we may doubt if
he understood what " masculine substitution " was.
In truth we believe Montaigne, when he says
of himself 2 that he knew there was such a science
as jurisprudence, and that that was all he did know.
His amusing pleading against the lawyers ^ is
nothing more than one of the many popular dia-
tribes on that traditional butt. If it proves anything,
it proves that he was no lawyer; as his vituperation
1 Note in Hamilton's excellent edition of Dugald Stewart,
vol. i. p. 100.
♦ I. 24. ■' III. 13.
15
MARK PATTISON
in the same Essay of the medical practitioners does,
that he was no physician. He is, in fact, merely
using the contradictions of judges and the un-
certainties of medicine, to enforce his favourite
topic of the feebleness of human judgment. It is
as great a fallacy to class him with the enlightened
publicists, who saw and laboured to remedy the
monstrous evils of the French judicial system, as
it would be to class him among the revolutionists
of the practice of physic. The Montaigne adorers
exaggerate their idol in every direction. He is
great enough: he is a man of universal sympathies,
but they want to make him a man of profound
acquirement, which he was not — not even in his
own profession. We suspect that his professional
history was the common one where strong literary
tastes are early imbibed. Buchanan may have had
something to do with this — may have laid the
groundwork of classic predilections which made
steady application to law impossible. Montaigne
followed it as a career; he got a place, discharged
its duties; he never had a vocation for it, and gave
it up as soon as he wanted it no longer.
The second cause of distaste for his Parliamentary
functions, to which allusion has been already made,
was the violence of religious faction which dis-
turbed it. In no quarter of France had Protestantism
made more progress than in Guienne and Gascony.
Everywhere the Parlements showed themselves
the strenuous supporters of the Church. None
was more untiring in the zeal for persecution than
i6
MONTAIGNE
that of Bordeaux. Their registers for some years
are one series of edicts, each more cruel than the
last, against the professors of the new opinions.
Montaigne was attached throughout to the Catholic
and Royalist party. In this adhesion he never
wavered, and it belonged to his characteristic frank-
ness never to conceal it. But he was of too moderate
a temper to be carried away by the passionate
fanaticism of his party; too good-hearted not to
execrate their cruelty; and too wise not to see that
the violence of the Catholics only provoked the
more obstinate resistance of the Huguenots. But
wisdom and moderation are no titles to the respect
of religious faction. We shall not wonder then
that Montaigne, whose spirit of tolerance went
far beyond even that of tolerant men in that age,
was glad to terminate his connexion with a court
of justice, which seemed to have totally forgotten
the duty of judicial impartiality, and to have made
itself the organ of an infuriated party.
All the zeal of the antiquaries has not been able
to retrieve a history for the thirteen or more years
during which Montaigne occupied his seat in the
Parlement of Bordeaux. M. Griin goes through
the principal transactions of the Court during that
period — a useful resume and a very proper part of
a complete life, but too extensive for our purpose.
The single sentence in De Thou's history, " Olim
in senatu Burdigalensi assessor dignissimus," is
nearly the whole that is known of thirteen years
of Montaigne's life.
I 17 c
MARK PATTISON
The second period extends from 1570 to 1582,
cetat. 37-49, and is that portion of Montaigne's
life to which he owes his immortahty. This period
is really marked by a long and absolute retirement
in the chateau of Montaigne, by the composition
of the Essats, and by two or three journeys to Paris,
chiefly connected with their publication. It is
concluded by a long tour into Germany, Switzer-
land, and Italy. M. Griin, who will not resign
even this period from his " public life," interpolates
into it two visits to court, which are wholly im-
aginary; a campaign against Henri of Navarre, which
is in the highest degree improbable; and, by way of
mingling pleasure with business, he exhibits his hero
at the fetes and galas which marked the progress of
Catherine de Medicis in the south, in the year 1578.
The hypothetical history here spoils the authentic.
The legend misleads instead of assisting the im-
agination. This retirement in the chateau of Peri-
gueux, the solitary meditation in the turret chamber,
is the canonical fact. A biographer would do good
service who could paint for us in its true colours
this Gascon interior. Communicative, garrulous
even, as Montaigne has been about himself, what
he has told us has only given us a reason for desiring
to know the things he has not told us. He has
made us so much his friends that we require to
know all his secrets. He has drawn for us himself,
his library; it is on the third floor of one of the
turrets of the chateau. There are four stories in
the turret. The first floor is the chapel; above
18
MONTAIGNE
the chapel is a bed-room with suite, appropriated
to his own use. The Hbrary is above the lodging-
rooms. From its three bay windows it commanded
a view of nearly the entire premises, including the
garden, the front as well as the base court. In the
distance, the elevation on which the chateau stood
afforded a very extensive view over a flat country.
The shape of the room was that of the tower, round
— all but one straight side where the chair and table
were placed. From this seat the eye could command
all the books as they stood ranged in five tiers of
shelving round the walls: the room was sixteen
paces in diameter. Opening into the library was a
smaller cabinet; this was more elegantly furnished;
it was fitted with a fire-place, to which he might
retire in the winter. The only want he regretted
was a long gallery, or " promenoir," to agitate
his thoughts in by walking up and down. He could
not resolve on adding this: not the cost, but the
fuss, of building, deterred him. In this tower he
passed the greater part of his time. There was his
throne; there his rule was absolute. That only
corner he preserved from the invasion of wife,
children, or acquaintance. Elsewhere he possessed
but a divided authority; for this reason he rejoiced
that the access to his retreat was difficult, and of
itself defended him from intruders. Here he lived,
not studied; he did not so much read books, he
says, as turn them over — he did not so much
meditate as allow his reverie to follow its own
course. The retirement was so strict at first as to
19
MARK PATTISON
produce melancholy and engender fantastic chimeras
in his imagination. It was to allay these that he
first betook himself to note down his thoughts on
paper. Such was the parentage of the Essais.
The library, however, the imagination heated by
solitary musing, the melancholy grown of long
seclusion, should have given birth to a very different
progeny. We might have had a Pilgrim's Progress,
or a Castle of Otranto, or a third part of Huon de
Bordeaulx, but for one quality which Montaigne
brought with him into his retreat. This is the
thorough good sense, the tone of the man of the
world, which pervades, without being paraded,
every page of the book. It is not a mere rectitude
of judgment about men and things, but a judgment
which has been exercised and tempered by actual
trials and collisions — " a learned spirit of human
dealing." But for this life-giving flavour, the
Essais would not have been the book they are.
They might still have shown the varied reading
of the scholar or the amusing gossip of the egotist,
but they would not have been the universal favourite
of " courts, camps, and country mansions." It is
this which, with all their whimsical paradox, and
often commonplace moralising, makes them still
instructive. In tracing this element, M. Griin's
chapter, " Montaigne in his Relations with the
Court," affords all the materials that are to be had.
We cannot adopt his theory, which turns Mon-
taigne into a courtier, and cuts out of his Life that
period of privacy, almost cynical, which we think
20
MONTAIGNE
necessary to the conception of the Essais. But
there is evidence enough to show, what the Essays
themselves require, that Montaigne had seen much
of court axid courtiers before he wrote them.
The kings of France in the middle ages were
surrounded by the high officers attached to their
person. Their court was constituted by great
functionaries. The nobles of the provinces who had
no employments never approached the king except
when they fought by his side, or were summoned
by his order. The decay of the feudal manners,
and the policy of Francis I., broke through this
estrangement. He loved to surround himself with
a brilliant court. The gentlemen flocked to it.
They laid aside the rudeness of their manners, but
they lost at the same time the independence of
their character. The rivalry in luxury and expense
ruined them. To maintain their fortunes they
were obliged to seek office. Places were created on
purpose, and the once haughty nobles fought like
hungry hounds for these grants at the hands of
an absolute monarch who dispensed them. This
revolution was gradual. It was only in progress
in the sixteenth century. But Montaigne found
established the usage for French gentlemen to
present themselves to the sovereign without being
officially placed about his person. On succeeding
to the family estates, Montaigne did like the rest.
He was even appointed " Gentleman in Ordinary
of the Bed-chamber," an office which did not
demand residence at court, but was much sought
21
MARK PATTISON
after, and for which nobility was an indispensable
qualification. His complexion, he tells us,^ was not
averse to the movement of a court. He went gladly
into company; he liked city life, especially Paris.
Paris had possessed his affections from his earliest
youth ; ^ but these social impulses were combined
with another impulse urging him to seclusion:
The solitude I love and preach is no more than
what serves to retire my affections and to redeem
my thoughts. I v^^ould circumscribe not my steps,
but my desires. I would shun not so much the throng
of men as the importunity of affairs. Local solitari-
ness, to say truth, doth rather extend and enlarge
me outv\'ardly. I give my mind more readily to state
matters, and to the world, when I am alone. At the
Louvre, and in the crowd, I am apt to shrink into my
own skin {je me contrains en ma peaii). Assembhes
thrust me back within myself. I never commune
with my own spirit so fondly, freely, and so much
apart, as in the resorts of grand company and lordly
ceremonial. I go gaily into great assemblies, yet doth
this coyness of judgment of which I spoke attach me
perforce to privacy. Yea, even in mine own house I
see people more than a good many, yet few such as
I love to converse or communicate withal. Herein
I exercise an unusual privilege of liberty. I cry a
truce to the established courtesies so distressing to