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A criticism of Montaigne on the men of his day struck me, and it
bears equally well on those of ours. Our philosopher says somewhere
that he knows a fair number of men possessing various good
qualities--one, intelligence; another, heart; another, address,
conscience or knowledge, or skill in languages, each has his share:
"but of a great man as a whole, having so many good qualities
together, or one with such a degree of excellence that we ought to
admire him, or compare him with those we honour in the past, my
fortune has never shown me one." He afterwards made an exception in
favour of his friend Etienne de la Boetie, but he belonged to the
company of great men dead before attaining maturity, and showing
promise without having time to fulfil it. Montaigne's criticism
called up a smile. He did not see a true and wholly great man in his
time, the age of L'Hopital, Coligny, and the Guises. Well! how does
ours seem to you? We have as many great men as in Montaigne's time,
one distinguished for his intellect, another for his heart, a third
for skill, some (a rare thing) for conscience, many for knowledge
and language. But we too lack the perfect man, and he is greatly to
be desired. One of the most intelligent observers of our day
recognised and proclaimed it some years ago: "Our age," said M. de
Remusat, "is wanting in great men." [Footnote: Essais de
Philosophie, vol. i, p. 22]

How did Montaigne conduct himself in his duties as first magistrate
of a great city? If we take him literally and on a hasty first
glance we should believe he discharged them slackly and languidly.
Did not Horace, doing the honours to himself, say that in war he one
day let his shield fall (relicta non bene parmula)? We must not be
in too great a hurry to take too literally the men of taste who have
a horror of over-estimating themselves. Minds of a fine quality are
more given to vigilance and to action than they are apt to confess.
The man who boasts and makes a great noise, will, I am almost sure,
be less brave in the combat than Horace, and less vigilant at the
council board than Montaigne.

On entering office Montaigne was careful to warn the aldermen of
Bordeaux not to expect to find in him more than there really was; he
presented himself to them without affectation. "I represented to
them faithfully and conscientiously all that I felt myself to be,--a
man without memory, without vigilance, without experience, and
without energy; but also, without hate, without ambition, without
avarice, and without violence." He should be sorry, while taking the
affairs of the town in hand, that his feelings should be so strongly
affected as those of his worthy father had been, who in the end had
lost his place and health. The eager and ardent pledge to satisfy an
impetuous desire was not his method. His opinion was "that you must
lend yourself to others, and only give yourself to yourself." And
repeating his thought, according to his custom in all kinds of
metaphors and picturesque forms, he said again that if he some times
allowed himself to be urged to the management of other men's
affairs, he promised to take them in hand, not "into my lungs and
liver." We are thus forewarned, we know what to expect. The mayor
and Montaigne were two distinct persons; under his role and office
he reserved to himself a certain freedom and secret security. He
continued to judge things in his own fashion and impartially,
although acting loyally for the cause confided to him. He was far
from approving or even excusing all he saw in his party, and he
could judge his adversaries and say of them: "He did that thing
wickedly, and this virtuously." "I would have," he added, "matters
go well on our side; but if they do not, I shall not run mad. I am
heartily for the right party; but I do not affect to be taken notice
of for an especial enemy to others." And he entered into some
details and applications which at that time were piquant. Let us
remark, however, in order to explain and justify his somewhat
extensive profession of impartiality, that the chiefs of the party
then in evidence, the three Henris, were famous and considerable men
on several counts: Henri, Duke of Guise, head of the League; Henri,
King of Navarre, leader of the Opposition; and the King Henri III.
in whose name Montaigne was mayor, who wavered between the two. When
parties have neither chief nor head, when they are known by the body
only, that is to say, in their hideous and brutal reality, it is
more difficult and also more hazardous to be just towards them and
to assign to each its share of action.

The principle which guided him in his administration was to look
only at the fact, at the result, and to grant nothing to noise and
outward show: "How much more a good effect makes a noise, so much I
abate of the goodness of it." For it is always to be feared that it
was more performed for the sake of the noise than upon the account
of goodness: "Being exposed upon the stall, 'tis half sold." That
was not Montaigne's way: he made no show; he managed men and affairs
as quietly as he could; he employed in a manner useful to all alike
the gifts of sincerity and conciliation; the personal attraction
with which nature endowed him was a quality of the highest value in
the management of men. He preferred to warn men of evil rather than
to take on himself the honour of repressing it: "Is there any one
who desires to be sick that he may see his physician's practice? And
would not that physician deserve to be whipped who should wish the
plague amongst us that he might put his art into practice?" Far from
desiring that trouble and disorder in the affairs of the city should
rouse and honour his govern ment, he had ever willingly, he said,
contributed all he could to their tranquillity and ease. He is not
of those whom municipal honours intoxicate and elate, those
"dignities of office" as he called them, and of which all the noise
"goes from one cross-road to another." If he was a man desirous of
fame, he recognised that it was of a kind greater than that. I do
not know, however, if even in a vaster field he would have changed
his method and manner of proceed ing. To do good for the public
imperceptibly would always seem to him the ideal of skill and the
culminating point of happiness. "He who will not thank me," he said,
"for the order and quiet calm that has accompanied my administration,
cannot, however, deprive me of the share that belongs to me by the
title of my good fortune." And he is inexhaustible in describing in
lively and graceful expressions the kinds of effective and imperceptible
services he believed he had rendered--services greatly superior to
noisy and glorious deeds: "Actions which come from the workman's
hand carelessly and noiselessly have most charm, that some honest
man chooses later and brings from their obscurity to thrust them into
the light for their own sake." Thus fortune served Montaigne to
perfection, and even in his administration of affairs, in difficult
conjunctures, he never had to belie his maxim, nor to step very far
out of the way of life he had planned: "For my part I commend a gliding,
solitary, and silent life." He reached the end of his magistracy almost
satisfied with himself, having accomplished what he had promised
himself, and much more than he had promised others.

The letter lately discovered by M. Horace de Viel-Castel
corroborates the chapter in which Montaigne exhibits and criticises
himself in the period of his public life. "That letter," says M.
Payen, "is entirely on affairs. Montaigne is mayor; Bordeaux, lately
disturbed, seems threatened by fresh agitations; the king's
lieutenant is away. It is Wednesday, May 22, 1585; it is night,
Montaigne is wakeful, and writes to the governor of the province."
The letter, which is of too special and local an interest to be
inserted here, may be summed up in these words:--Montaigne regretted
the absence of Marshal de Matignon, and feared the consequences of
its prolongation; he was keeping, and would continue to keep, him
acquainted with all that was going on, and begged him to return as
soon as his circumstances would permit. "We are looking after our
gates and guards, and a little more carefully in your absence. . . .
If anything important and fresh occurs, I shall send you a messenger
immediately, so that if you hear no news from me, you may consider
that nothing has happened." He begs M. de Matignon to remember,
however, that he might not have time to warn him, "entreating you to
consider that such movements are usually so sudden, that if they do
occur they will take me by the throat without any warning." Besides,
he will do everything to ascertain the march of events beforehand.
"I will do what I can to hear news from all parts, and to that end
shall visit and observe the inclinations of all sorts of men."
Lastly, after keeping the marshal informed of everything, of the
least rumours abroad in the city, he pressed him to return, assuring
him "that we spare neither our care, nor, if need be, our lives to
preserve everything in obedience to the king." Montaigne was never
prodigal of protestations and praises, and what with others was a
mere form of speech, was with him a real undertaking and the truth.

Things, however, became worse and worse: civil war broke out;
friendly or hostile parties (the difference was not great) infested
the country. Montaigne, who went to his country house as often as he
could, whenever the duties of his office, which was drawing near its
term, did not oblige him to be in Bordeaux, was exposed to every
sort of insult and outrage. "I underwent," he said, "the
inconveniences that moderation brings along with it in such a
disease. I was pitied on all hands; to the Ghibelline I was a
Guelph, and to the Guelph a Ghibelline." In the midst of his
personal grievances he could disengage and raise his thoughts to
reflections on the public misfortunes and on the degradation of
men's characters. Considering closely the disorder of parties, and
all the abject and wretched things which developed so quickly, he
was ashamed to see leaders of renown stoop and debase themselves by
cowardly complacency; for in those circumstances we know, like him,
"that in the word of command to march, draw up, wheel, and the like,
we obey him indeed; but all the rest is dissolute and free." "It
pleases me," said Montaigne ironically, "to observe how much
pusillanimity and cowardice there is in ambition; by how abject and
servile ways it must arrive at its end." Despising ambition as he
did, he was not sorry to see it unmasked by such practices and
degraded in his sight. However, his goodness of heart overcoming his
pride and contempt, he adds sadly, "it displeases me to see good and
generous natures, and that are capable of justice, every day
corrupted in the management and command of this confusion. . . . We
had ill-contrived souls enough without spoiling those that were
generous and good." He rather sought in that misfortune an
opportunity and motive for fortifying and strengthening himself.
Attacked one by one by many disagreeables and evils, which he would
have endured more cheerfully in a heap--that is to say, all at once-
-pursued by war, disease, by all the plagues (July 1585), in the
course things were taking, he already asked himself to whom he and
his could have recourse, of whom he could ask shelter and
subsistence for his old age; and having looked and searched
thoroughly all around, he found himself actually destitute and
RUINED. For, "to let a man's self fall plumb down, and from so great
a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, and
fortunate friendship. They are very rare, if there be any." Speaking
in such a manner, we perceive that La Boetie had been some time
dead. Then he felt that he must after all rely on himself in his
distress, and must gain strength; now or never was the time to put
into practice the lofty lessons he spent his life in collecting from
the books of the philosophers. He took heart again, and attained all
the height of his virtue: "In an ordinary and quiet time, a man
prepares himself for moderate and common accidents; but in the
confusion wherein we have been for these thirty years, every
Frenchman, whether in particular or in general, sees himself every
hour upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of his fortune."
And far from being discouraged and cursing fate for causing him to
be born in so stormy an age, he suddenly congratulated himself: "Let
us thank fortune that has not made us live in an effeminate, idle
and languishing age." Since the curiosity of wise men seeks the past
for disturbances in states in order to learn the secrets of history,
and, as we should say, the whole physiology of the body social, "so
does my curiosity," he declares, "make me in some sort please myself
with seeing with my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public
death, its forms and symptoms; and, seeing I could not hinder it, am
content to be destined to assist in it, and thereby to instruct
myself." I shall not suggest a consolation of that sort to most
people; the greater part of mankind does not possess the heroic and
eager curiosity of Empedocles and the elder Pliny, the two intrepid
men who went straight to the volcanoes and the disturbances of
nature to examine them at close quarters, at the risk of destruction
and death. But to a man of Montaigne's nature, the thought of that
stoical observation gave him consolation even amid real evils.
Considering the condition of false peace and doubtful truce, the
regime of dull and profound corruption which had preceded the last
disturbances, he almost congratulated himself on seeing their
cessation; for "it was," he said of the regime of Henri III., "an
universal juncture of particular members, rotten to emulation of one
another, and the most of them with inveterate ulcers, that neither
required nor admitted of any cure. This conclusion therefore did
really more animate than depress me." Note that his health, usually
delicate, is here raised to the level of his morality, although what
it had suffered through the various disturbances might have been
enough to undermine it. He had the satisfaction of feeling that he
had some hold against fortune, and that it would take a greater
shock still to crush him.

Another consideration, humbler and more humane, upheld him in his
troubles, the consolation arising from a common misfortune, a
misfortune shared by all, and the sight of the courage of others.
The people, especially the real people, they who are victims and not
robbers, the peasants of his district, moved him by the manner in
which they endured the same, or even worse, troubles than his. The
disease or plague which raged at that time in the country pressed
chiefly on the poor; Montaigne learned from them resignation and the
practice of philosophy. "Let us look down upon the poor people that
we see scattered upon the face of the earth, prone and intent upon
their business, that neither know Aristotle nor Cato, example nor
precept. Even from these does nature every day extract effects of
constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we so
inquisitively study in the schools." And he goes on to describe them
working to the bitter end, even in their grief, even in disease,
until their strength failed them. "He that is now digging in my
garden has this morning buried his father, or his son. . . . They
never keep their beds but to die." The whole chapter is fine,
pathetic, to the point, evincing noble, stoical elevation of mind,
and also the cheerful and affable disposition which Montaigne said,
with truth, was his by inheritance, and in which he had been
nourished. There could be nothing better as regards "consolation in
public calamities," except a chapter of some not more human, but of
some truly divine book, in which the hand of God should be
everywhere visible, not perfunctorily, as with Montaigne, but
actually and lovingly present. In fact, the consolation Montaigne
gives himself and others is perhaps as lofty and beautiful as human
consolation without prayer can be.

He wrote the chapter, the twelfth of the third book, in the midst of
the evils described, and before they were ended. He concluded it in
his graceful and poetical way with a collection of examples, "a heap
of foreign flowers," to which he furnished only the thread for
fastening them together.

There is Montaigne to the life; no matter how seriously he spoke, it
was always with the utmost charm. To form an opinion on his style
you have only to open him indifferently at any page and listen to
his talk on any subject; there is none that he did not enliven and
make suggestive. In the chapter "Of Liars," for instance, after
enlarging on his lack of memory and giving a list of reasons by
which he might console himself, he suddenly added this fresh and
delightful reason, that, thanks to his faculty for forgetting, "the
places I revisit, and the books I read over again, always smile upon
me with a fresh novelty." It is thus that on every subject he
touched he was continually new, and created sources of freshness.

Montesquieu, in a memorable exclamation, said: "The four great
poets, Plato, Malebranche, Shaftesbury, Montaigne!" How true it is
of Montaigne! No French writer, including the poets proper, had so
lofty an idea of poetry as he had. "From my earliest childhood," he
said, "poetry had power over me to transport and transpierce me." He
considered, and therein shows penetration, that "we have more poets
than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write than
to understand." In itself and its pure beauty his poetry defies
definition; whoever desired to recognise it at a glance and discern
of what it actually consisted would see no more than "the brilliance
of a flash of lightning." In the constitution and continuity of his
style, Montaigne is a writer very rich in animated, bold similes,
naturally fertile in metaphors that are never detached from the
thought, but that seize it in its very centre, in its interior, that
join and bind it. In that respect, fully obeying his own genius, he
has gone beyond and some times exceeded the genius of language. His
concise, vigorous and always forcible style, by its poignancy,
emphasises and repeats the meaning. It may be said of his style that
it is a continual epigram, or an ever-renewed metaphor, a style that
has only been successfully employed by the French once, by Montaigne
himself. If we wanted to imitate him, supposing we had the power and
were naturally fitted for it--if we desired to write with his
severity, exact proportion, and diverse continuity of figures and
turns--it would be necessary to force our language to be more
powerful, and poetically more complete, than is usually our custom.
Style a la Montaigne, consistent, varied in the series and
assortment of the metaphors, exacts the creation of a portion of the
tissue itself to hold them. It is absolutely necessary that in
places the woof should be enlarged and extended, in order to weave
into it the metaphor; but in defining him I come almost to write
like him. The French language, French prose, which in fact always
savours more or less of conversation, does not, naturally, possess
the resources and the extent of canvas necessary for a continued
picture: by the side of an animated metaphor it will often exhibit a
sudden lacuna and some weak places. In filling this by boldness and
invention as Montaigne did, in creating, in imagining the expression
and locution that is wanting, our prose should appear equally
finished. Style a la Montaigne would, in many respects, be openly at
war with that of Voltaire. It could only come into being and
flourish in the full freedom of the sixteenth century, in a frank,
ingenious, jovial, keen, brave, and refined mind, of an unique
stamp, that even for that time, seemed free and somewhat licentious,
and that was inspired and emboldened, but not intoxicated by the
pure and direct spirit of ancient sources.

Such as he is, Montaigne is the French Horace; he is Horatian in the
groundwork, often in the form and expression, although in that he
sometimes approaches Seneca. His book is a treasure-house of moral
observations and of experience; at whatever page it is opened, and
in what ever condition of mind, some wise thought expressed in a
striking and enduring fashion is certain to be found. It will at
once detach itself and engrave itself on the mind, a beautiful
meaning in full and forcible words, in one vigorous line, familiar
or great. The whole of his book, said Etienne Pasquier, is a real
seminary of beautiful and remarkable sentences, and they come in so
much the better that they run and hasten on without thrusting them
selves into notice. There is something for every age, for every hour
of life: you cannot read in it for any time without having the mind
filled and lined as it were, or, to put it better, fully armed and
clothed. We have just seen how much useful counsel and actual
consolation it contains for an honourable man, born for private
life, and fallen on times of disturbance and revolution. To this I
shall add the counsel he gave those who, like myself and many men of
my acquaintance, suffer from political disturbances without in any
way provoking them, or believing ourselves capable of averting them.
Montaigne, as Horace would have done, counsels them, while
apprehending everything from afar off, not to be too much
preoccupied with such matters in advance; to take advantage to the
end of pleasant moments and bright intervals. Stroke on stroke come
his piquant and wise similes, and he concludes, to my thinking, with
the most delightful one of all, and one, besides, entirely
appropriate and seasonable: it is folly and fret, he said, "to take
out your furred gown at Saint John because you will want it at
Christmas."

WHAT IS A CLASSIC?

A delicate question, to which somewhat diverse solutions might be
given according to times and seasons. An intelligent man suggests it
to me, and I intend to try, if not to solve it, at least to examine
and discuss it face to face with my readers, were it only to
persuade them to answer it for themselves, and, if I can, to make
their opinion and mine on the point clear. And why, in criticism,
should we not, from time to time, venture to treat some of those
subjects which are not personal, in which we no longer speak of some
one but of some thing? Our neighbours, the English, have well
succeeded in making of it a special division of literature under the
modest title of "Essays." It is true that in writing of such
subjects, always slightly abstract and moral, it is advisable to
speak of them in a season of quiet, to make sure of our own
attention and of that of others, to seize one of those moments of
calm moderation and leisure seldom granted our amiable France; even
when she is desirous of being wise and is not making revolutions,
her brilliant genius can scarcely tolerate them.

A classic, according to the usual definition, is an old author
canonised by admiration, and an authority in his particular style.
The word classic was first used in this sense by the Romans. With
them not all the citizens of the different classes were properly
called classici, but only those of the chief class, those who
possessed an income of a certain fixed sum. Those who possessed a
smaller income were described by the term infra classem, below the
preeminent class. The word classicus was used in a figurative sense
by Aulus Gellius, and applied to writers: a writer of worth and
distinction, classicus assiduusque scriptor, a writer who is of
account, has real property, and is not lost in the proletariate
crowd. Such an expression implies an age sufficiently advanced to
have already made some sort of valuation and classification of
literature.

At first the only true classics for the moderns were the ancients.
The Greeks, by peculiar good fortune and natural enlightenment of
mind, had no classics but themselves. They were at first the only
classical authors for the Romans, who strove and contrived to
imitate them. After the great periods of Roman literature, after
Cicero and Virgil, the Romans in their turn had their classics, who
became almost exclusively the classical authors of the centuries
which followed. The middle ages, which were less ignorant of Latin
antiquity than is believed, but which lacked proportion and taste,
confused the ranks and orders. Ovid was placed above Homer, and
Boetius seemed a classic equal to Plato. The revival of learning in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries helped to bring this long
chaos to order, and then only was admiration rightly proportioned.
Thenceforth the true classical authors of Greek and Latin antiquity
stood out in a luminous background, and were harmoniously grouped on
their two heights.

Meanwhile modern literatures were born, and some of the more
precocious, like the Italian, already possessed the style of
antiquity. Dante appeared, and, from the very first, posterity
greeted him as a classic. Italian poetry has since shrunk into far
narrower bounds; but, whenever it desired to do so, it always found
again and preserved the impulse and echo of its lofty origin. It is
no indifferent matter for a poetry to derive its point of departure
and classical source in high places; for example, to spring from
Dante rather than to issue laboriously from Malherbe.

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