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Such amongst others (for examples sake) plaine and well-meaning
Froissard, who in his enterprise hath marched with so free and
genuine a puritie, that having committed some oversight, he is
neither ashamed to acknowledge nor afraid to correct the same,
wheresoever he hath either notice or warning of it; and who
representeth unto us the diversitie of the newes then current and
the different reports that were made unto him. The subject of an
historie should be naked, bare, and formelesse; each man according
to his capacitie or understanding may reap commoditie out of it. The
curious and most excellent have the sufficiencie to cull and chuse
that which is worthie to be knowne and may select of two relations
that which is most likely: from the condition of Princes and of
their humours, they conclude their counsels and attribute fit words
to them: they assume a just authoritie and bind our faith to theirs.
But truly that belongs not to many. Such as are betweene both (which
is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will
needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by
consequence to square and encline the storie according to their
fantasie; for, where the judgement bendeth one way, a man cannot
chuse but wrest and turne his narration that way. They undertake to
chuse things worthy to bee knowne, and now and then conceal either a
word or a secret action from us, which would much better instruct
us: omitting such things as they understand not as incredible: and
haply such matters as they know not how to declare, either in good
Latin or tolerable French. Let them boldly enstall their eloquence
and discourse: Let them censure at their pleasure, but let them also
give us leave to judge after them: And let them neither alter nor
dispense by their abridgements and choice anything belonging to the
substance of the matter; but let them rather send it pure and entire
with all her dimensions unto us. Most commonly (as chiefly in our
age) this charge of writing histories is committed unto base,
ignorant, and mechanicall kind of people, only for this
consideration that they can speake well; as if we sought to learne
the Grammer of them; and they have some reason, being only hired to
that end, and publishing nothing but their tittle-tattle to aime at
nothing else so much. Thus with store of choice and quaint words,
and wyre drawne phrases, they huddle up and make a hodge-pot of a
laboured contexture of the reports which they gather in the market
places or such other assemblies. The only good histories are those
that are written by such as commanded or were imploied themselves in
weighty affaires or that were partners in the conduct of them, or
that at least have had the fortune to manage others of like
qualitie. Such in a manner are all the Graecians and Romans. For
many eye-witnesses having written of one same subject (as it hapned
in those times when Greatnesse and Knowledge did commonly meet) if
any fault or over-sight have past them, it must be deemed exceeding
light and upon some doubtful accident. What may a man expect at a
Phisitians hand that discourseth of warre, or of a bare Scholler
treating of Princes secret designes? If we shall but note the
religion which the Romans had in that, wee need no other example:
Asinius Pollio found some mistaking or oversight in Caesars
Commentaries, whereinto he was falne, only because he could not
possiblie oversee all things with his owne eyes that hapned in his
Armie, but was faine to rely on the reports of particular men, who
often related untruths unto him: or else because he had not been
curiously advertized [Footnote: Minutely informed.] and distinctly
enformed by his Lieutenants and Captaines of such matters as they in
his absence had managed or effected. Whereby may be seen that
nothing is so hard or so uncertaine to be found out as the
certaintie of the truth, sithence [Footnote: Since.] no man can put
any assured confidence concerning the truth of a battel, neither in
the knowledge of him that was Generall or commanded over it, nor in
the soldiers that fought, of anything that hath hapned amongst them;
except after the manner of a strict point of law, the severall
witnesses are brought and examined face to face, and that all
matters be nicely and thorowly sifted by the objects and trials of
the successe of every accident. Verily the knowledge we have of our
owne affaires is much more barren and feeble. But this hath
sufficiently been handled by Bodin, and agreeing with my conception.
Somewhat to aid the weaknesse of my memorie and to assist her great
defects; for it hath often been my chance to light upon bookes which
I supposed to be new and never to have read, which I had not
understanding diligently read and run over many years before, and
all bescribled with my notes; I have a while since accustomed my
selfe to note at the end of my booke (I meane such as I purpose to
read but once) the time I made an end to read it, and to set downe
what censure or judgement I gave of it; that so it may at least at
another time represent unto my mind the aire and generall idea I had
conceived of the Author in reading him. I will here set downe the
Copie of some of my annotations, and especially what I noted upon my
Guicciardine about ten yeares since: (For what language soever my
books speake unto me I speake unto them in mine owne.) He is a
diligent Historiographer and from whom in my conceit a man may as
exactly learne the truth of such affaires as passed in his time, as
of any other writer whatsoever: and the rather because himselfe hath
been an Actor of most part of them and in verie honourable place.
There is no signe or apparance that ever he disguised or coloured
any matter, either through hatred, malice, favour, or vanitie;
whereof the free and impartiall judgements he giveth of great men,
and namely of those by whom he had been advanced or imployed in his
important charges, as of Pope Clement the seaventh, beareth
undoubted testimony. Concerning the parts wherein he most goeth
about to prevaile, which are his digressions and discourses, many of
them are verie excellent and enriched with faire ornaments, but he
hath too much pleased himselfe in them: for endeavouring to omit
nothing that might be spoken, having so full and large a subject,
and almost infinite, he proveth somewhat languishing, and giveth a
taste of a kind of scholasticall tedious babling. Moreover, I have
noted this, that of so severall and divers armes, successes, and
effects he judgeth of; of so many and variable motives, alterations,
and counsels, that he relateth, he never referreth any one unto
vertue, religion or conscience: as if they were all extinguished and
banished the world. And of all actions how glorious soever in
apparance they be of themselves, he doth ever impute the cause of
them to some vicious and blame-worthie occasion, or to some
commoditie and profit. It is impossible to imagine that amongst so
infinite a number of actions whereof he judgeth, some one have not
been produced and compassed by way of reason. No corruption could
ever possesse men so universally but that some one must of necessity
escape the contagion; which makes me to feare he hath had some
distaste or blame in his passion, and it hath haply fortuned that he
hath judged or esteemed of others according to himselfe. In my
Philip de Comines there is this: In him you shall find a pleasing-
sweet and gently-gliding speech, fraught with a purely sincere
simplicitie, his narration pure and unaffected, and wherein the
Authours unspotted good meaning doth evidently appeare, void of all
manner of vanitie or ostentation speaking of himselfe, and free from
all affection or envie-speaking of others; his discourses and
perswasions accompanied more with a well-meaning zeale and meere
[Footnote: Pure.] veritie than with any laboured and exquisite
sufficiencie, and allthrough with gravitie and authoritie,
representing a man well-borne and brought up in high negotiations.
Upon the Memoires and historic of Monsieur du Bellay: It is ever a
well-pleasing thing to see matters written by those that have as
said how and in what manner they ought to be directed and managed:
yet can it not be denied but that in both these Lords there will
manifestly appeare a great declination from a free libertie of
writing, which clearely shineth in ancient writers of their kind: as
in the Lord of louinille, familiar unto Saint Lewis; Eginard,
Chancellor unto Charlemaine; and of more fresh memorie in Philip de
Comines. This is rather a declamation or pleading for King Francis
against the Emperour Charles the fifth, than an Historic. I will not
beleeve they have altered or changed any thing concerning the
generalitie of matters, but rather to wrest and turne the judgement
of the events many times against reason, to our advantage, and to
omit whatsoever they supposed to be doubtful or ticklish in their
masters life: they have made a business of it: witnesse the
recoylings of the Lords of Momorancy and Byron, which therein are
forgotten; and which is more, you shall not so much as find the name
of the Ladie of Estampes mentioned at all. A man may sometimes
colour and haply hide secret actions, but absolutely to conceal that
which all the world knoweth, and especially such things as have
drawne-on publike effects, and of such consequence, it is an
inexcusable defect, or as I may say unpardonable oversight. To
conclude, whosoever desireth to have perfect information and
knowledge of king Francis the first, and of the things hapned in his
time, let him addresse himselfe elsewhere if he will give any credit
unto me. The profit he may reap here is by the particular
description of the battels and exploits of warre wherein these
gentlemen were present; some privie conferences, speeches, or secret
actions of some princes that then lived, and the practices managed,
or negotiations directed by the Lord of Langeay, in which doubtless
are verie many things well worthy to be knowne, and diverse
discourses not vulgare.
MONTAIGNE
WHAT IS A CLASSIC?
BY
CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
TRANSLATED BY
E. LEE
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, the foremost French critic of the
nineteenth century, and, in the view of many, the greatest literary
critic of the world, was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, December 23,
1804. He studied medicine, but soon abandoned it for literature; and
before he gave himself up to criticism he made some mediocre
attempts in poetry and fiction. He became professor at the College
de France and the Ecole Normale and was appointed Senator in 1865. A
course of lectures given at Lausanne in 1837 resulted in his great
"Histoire de Port-Royal" and another given at Liege in his
"Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire." But his most famous
productions were his critical essays published periodically in the
"Constitutionnel" the "Moniteur" and the "Temps" later collected in
sets under the names of "Critiques et Portraits Litteraires"
"Portraits Contemporains" "Causeries du Lundi" and "Nouveaux
Lundis." At the height of his vogue, these Monday essays were events
of European importance. He died in 1869.
Sainte-Beuve's work was much more than literary criticism as that
type of writing had been generally conceived before his time. In
place of the mere classification of books and the passing of a
judgment upon them as good or bad, he sought to illuminate and
explain by throwing light on a literary work from a study of the
life, circumstances, and aim of the writer, and by a comparison with
the literature of other times and countries. Thus his work was
historical, psychological, and ethical, as well as esthetic, and
demanded vast learning and a literary outlook of unparalleled
breadth. In addition to this equipment he had fine taste and an
admirable style; and by his universality, penetration, and balance
he raised to a new level the profession of critic.
MONTAIGNE
While the good ship France is taking a somewhat haphazard course,
getting into unknown seas, and preparing to double what the pilots
(if there is a pilot) call the Stormy Cape, while the look-out at
the mast-head thinks he sees the spectre of the giant Adamastor
rising on the horizon, many honourable and peaceable men continue
their work and studies all the same, and follow out to the end, or
as far as they can, their favourite hobbies. I know, at the present
time, a learned man who is collating more carefully than has ever
yet been done the different early editions of Rabelais--editions,
mark you, of which only one copy remains, of which a second is not
to be found: from the careful collation of the texts some literary
and maybe philosophical result will be derived with regard to the
genius of the French Lucian-Aristophanes. I know another scholar
whose devotion and worship is given to a very different man--to
Bossuet: he is preparing a complete, exact, detailed history of the
life and works of the great bishop. And as tastes differ, and "human
fancy is cut into a thousand shapes" (Montaigne said that),
Montaigne also has his devotees, he who, himself, was so little of
one: a sect is formed round him. In his lifetime he had Mademoiselle
de Gournay, his daughter of alliance, who was solemnly devoted to
him; and his disciple, Charron, followed him closely, step by step,
only striving to arrange his thoughts with more order and method. In
our time amateurs, intelligent men, practice the religion under
another form: they devote themselves to collecting the smallest
traces of the author of the Essays, to gathering up the slightest
relics, and Dr. Payen may be justly placed at the head of the group.
For years he has been preparing a book on Montaigne, of which the
title will be--"Michel de Montaigne, a collection of unedited or
little known facts about the author of the Essays, his book, and his
other writings, about his family, his friends, his admirers, his
detractors."
While awaiting the conclusion of the book, the occupation and
amusement of a lifetime, Dr. Payen keeps us informed in short
pamphlets of the various works and discoveries made about Montaigne.
If we separate the discoveries made during the last five or six
years from the jumble of quarrels, disputes, cavilling, quackery,
and law-suits (for there have been all those), they consist in this-
-
In 1846 M. Mace found in the (then) Royal Library, amongst the
"Collection Du Puys," a letter of Montaigne, addressed to the king,
Henri IV., September 2, 1590.
In 1847 M. Payen printed a letter, or a fragment of a letter of
Montaigne of February 16, 1588, a letter corrupt and incomplete,
coming from the collection of the Comtesse Boni de Castellane.
But, most important of all, in 1848, M. Horace de Viel-Castel found
in London, at the British Museum, a remarkable letter of Montaigne,
May 22, 1585, when Mayor of Bordeaux, addressed to M. de Matignon,
the king's lieutenant in the town. The great interest of the letter
is that it shows Montaigne for the first time in the full discharge
of his office with all the energy and vigilance of which he was
capable. The pretended idler was at need much more active than he
was ready to own.
M. Detcheverry, keeper of the records to the mayoralty of Bordeaux,
found and published (1850) a letter of Montaigne, while mayor, to
the Jurats, or aldermen of the town, July 30, 1585.
M. Achille Jubinal found among the manuscripts of the National
Library, and published (1850), a long, remarkable letter from
Montaigne to the king, Henri IV., January 18, 1590, which happily
coincides with that already found by M. Mace.
Lastly, to omit nothing and do justice to all, in a "Visit to
Montaigne's Chateau in Perigord," of which the account appeared in
1850, M. Bertrand de Saint-Germain described the place and pointed
out the various Greek and Latin inscriptions that may still be read
in Montaigne's tower in the third-storey chamber (the ground floor
counting as the first), which the philosopher made his library and
study.
M. Payen, collecting together and criticising in his last pamphlet
the various notices and discoveries, not all of equal importance,
allowed himself to be drawn into some little exaggeration of praise;
but we cannot blame him. Admiration, when applied to such noble,
perfectly innocent, and disinterested subjects, is truly a spark of
the sacred fire: it produces research that a less ardent zeal would
quickly leave aside, and sometimes leads to valuable results.
However, it would be well for those who, following M. Payen's
example, intelligently understand and greatly admire Montaigne, to
remember, even in their ardour, the advice of the wise man and the
master. "There is more to do," said he, speaking of the commentators
of his time, "in interpreting the interpretations than in
interpreting the things themselves; and more bdoks about books than
on any other subject. We do nothing, but everything swarms with
commentators; of authors there is a great rarity." Authors are of
great price and very scared at all times--that is to say, authors
who really increase the sum of human knowledge. I should like all
who write on Montaigne, and give us the details of their researches
and discoveries, to imagine one thing,--Montaigne himself reading
and criticising them. "What would he think of me and the manner in
which I am going to speak of him to the public?" If such a question
was put, how greatly it would suppress useless phrases and shorten
idle discussions! M. Payen's last pamphlet was dedicated to a man
who deserves equally well of Montaigne--M. Gustave Brunet, of
Bordeaux. He, speaking of M. Payen, in a work in which he pointed
out interesting and various corrections of Montaigne's text, said:
"May he soon decide to publish the fruits of his researches: he will
have left nothing for future Montaignologues" Montaignologues! Great
Heaven! what would Montaigne say of such a word coined in his
honour? You who occupy yourselves so meritoriously with him, but who
have, I think, no claim to appropriate him to yourselves, in the
name of him whom you love, and whom we all love by a greater or
lesser title, never, I beg of you, use such words; they smack of the
brotherhood and the sect, of pedantry and of the chatter of the
schools--things utterly repugnant to Montaigne.
Montaigne had a simple, natural, affable mind, and a very happy
disposition. Sprung from an excellent father, who, though of no
great education, entered with real enthusiasm into the movement of
the Renaissance and all the liberal novelties of his time, the son
corrected the excessive enthusiasm, vivacity, and tenderness he
inherited by a great refinement and justness of reflection; but he
did not abjure the original groundwork. It is scarcely more than
thirty years ago that whenever the sixteenth century was mentioned
it was spoken of as a barbarous epoch, Montaigne only excepted:
therein lay error and ignorance. The sixteenth century was a great
century, fertile, powerful, learned, refined in parts, although in
some aspects it was rough, violent, and seemingly coarse. What it
particularly lacked was taste, if by taste is meant the faculty of
clear and perfect selection, the extrication of the elements of the
beautiful. But in the succeeding centuries taste quickly became
distaste. If, however, in literature it was crude, in the arts
properly so-called, in those of the hand and the chisel, the
sixteenth century, even in France, is, in the quality of taste, far
greater than the two succeeding centuries: it is neither meagre nor
massive, heavy nor distorted. In art its taste is rich and of fine
quality,--at once unrestrained and complex, ancient and modern,
special to itself and original. In the region of morals it is
unequal and mixed. It was an age of contrasts, of contrasts in all
their crudity, an age of philosophy and fanaticism, of scepticism
and strong faith. Everything was at strife and in collision; nothing
was blended and united. Everything was in ferment; it was a period
of chaos; every ray of light caused a storm. It was not a gentle
age, or one we can call an age of light, but an age of struggle and
combat. What distinguished Montaigne and made a phenomenon of him
was, that in such an age he should have possessed moderation,
caution, and order.
Born on the last day of February, 1533, taught the ancient languages
as a game while still a child, waked even in his cradle by the sound
of musical instruments, he seemed less fitted for a rude and violent
epoch than for the commerce and sanctuary of the muses. His rare
good sense corrected what was too ideal and poetical in his early
education; but he preserved the happy faculty of saying everything
with freshness and wit. Married, when past thirty, to an estimable
woman who was his companion for twenty-eight years, he seems to have
put passion only into friendship. He immortalised his love for
Etienne de la Boetie, whom he lost after four years of the sweetest
and closest intimacy. For some time counsellor in the Parliament of
Bordeaux, Montaigne, before he was forty, retired from public life,
and flung away ambition to live in his tower of Montaigne, enjoying
his own society and his own intellect, entirely given up to his own
observations and thoughts, and to the busy idleness of which we know
all the sports and fancies. The first edition of the Essays appeared
in 1580, consisting of only two books, and in a form representing
only the first rough draft of what we have in the later editions.
The same year Montaigne set out on a voyage to Switzerland and
Italy. It was during that voyage that the aldermen of Bordeaux
elected him mayor of their town. At first he refused and excused
himself, but warned that it would be well to accept, and enjoined by
the king, he took the office, "the more beautiful," he said, "that
there was neither renunciation nor gain other than the honour of its
performance." He filled the office for four years, from July 1582 to
July 1586, being re-elected after the first two years. Thus
Montaigne, at the age of fifty, and a little against his will, re-
entered public life when the country was on the eve of civil
disturbances which, quieted and lulled to sleep for a while, broke
out more violently at the cry of the League. Although, as a rule,
lessons serve for nothing, since the art of wisdom and happiness
cannot be taught, let us not deny ourselves the pleasure of
listening to Montaigne; let us look on his wisdom and happiness; let
him speak of public affairs, of revolutions and disturbances, and of
his way of conducting himself with regard to them. We do not put
forward a model, but we offer our readers an agreeable recreation.
Although Montaigne lived in so agitated and stormy a time, a period
that a man who had lived through the Terror (M. Daunou) called the
most tragic century in all history, he by no means regarded his age
as the worst of ages. He was not of those prejudiced and afflicted
persons, who, measuring everything by their visual horizon, valuing
everything according to their present sensations, alway declare that
the disease they suffer from is worse than any ever before
experienced by a human being. He was like Socrates, who did not
consider himself a citizen of one city but of the world; with his
broad and full imagination he embraced the universality of countries
and of ages; he even judged more equitably the very evils of which
he was witness and victim. "Who is it," he said, "that, seeing the
bloody havoc of these civil wars of ours, does not cry out that the
machine of the world is near dissolution, and that the day of
judgment is at hand, without considering that many worse revolutions
have been seen, and that, in the mean time, people are being merry
in a thousand other parts of the earth for all this? For my part,
considering the license and impunity that always attend such
commotions, I admire they are so moderate, and that there is not
more mischief done. To him who feels the hailstones patter about his
ears, the whole hemisphere appears to be in storm and tempest." And
raising his thoughts higher and higher, reducing his own suffering
to what it was in the immensity of nature, seeing there not only
himself but whole kingdoms as mere specks in the infinite, he added
in words which foreshadowed Pascal, in words whose outline and
salient points Pascal did not disdain to borrow: "But whoever shall
represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great image of our
mother nature, portrayed in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in
her face shall read so general and so constant a variety, whoever
shall observe himself in that figure, and not himself but a whole
kingdom, no bigger than the least touch or prick of a pencil in
comparison of the whole, that man alone is able to value things
according to their true estimate and grandeur."
Thus Montaigne gives us a lesson, a useless lesson, but I state it
all the same, because among the many unprofitable ones that have
been written down, it is perhaps of greater worth than most. I do
not mean to underrate the gravity of the circumstances in which
France is just now involved, for I believe there is pressing need to
bring together all the energy, prudence, and courage she possesses
in order that the country may come out with honour [Footnote: This
essay appeared April 28, 1851]. However, let us reflect, and
remember that, leaving aside the Empire, which as regards internal
affairs was a period of calm, and before 1812 of prosperity, we who
utter such loud complaints, lived in peace from 1815 to 1830,
fifteen long years; that the three days of July only inaugurated
another order of things that for eighteen years guaranteed peace and
in dustrial prosperity; in all, thirty-two years of repose. Stormy
days came; tempests burst, and will doubtless burst again. Let us
learn how to live through them, but do not let us cry out every day,
as we are disposed to do, that never under the sun were such storms
known as we are enduring. To get away from the present state of
feeling, to restore lucidity and proportion to our judgments, let us
read every evening a page of Montaigne.
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