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MONTAGUE, GEORGE. 



MONTAIGNE, MICHEL, LORD OF. 



3C6 



literary labours however still left him leisure for pursuits of a very 

 different kind ; and while at Paris he pot involved in a dispute with a 

 Jew, which subjected him to a criminal prosecution. We presume it 

 was after he returned to England that, while still under age, he 

 married, as we are told by his niece, a woman of very low degree, con- 

 siderably older than himself, whom he forsook in a few weeks, and 

 nevf r saw again. His wife, who gave him no ground for divorcing 

 her, lived nearly as Ion? as himself; but nevertheless, it is added, 

 several other ladies successively passed by his name, some of whom 

 were married to him, others possibly not ; the last of them, at any 

 rate, had, like himself, been married before to a person who was still 

 alive. 



Notwithstanding all this profligacy and disregard of reputation, 

 Mr. Montagu, having procured a seat in the House of Commons, 

 retained it for two parliaments, till at last his extravagant expen- 

 diture involved him in such pecuniary embarrassments that he 

 defined it expedient once more to go abroad. He never returned to 

 England, but proceeding first to Italy, made himself remarkable there 

 by becoming a convert to popery, and then transferring himself to 

 Kgypt, excited a still greater sensation by turning Mohammedan. 

 The rest of his life he spent in the Levant, having in the mean time 

 been disinherited by his father and mother ; but he was on his way 

 back to England when big death took place at Padua in 1770. 

 Besides bis early tract he wrote another entitled ' An Examination 

 into the Causes of Earthquakes ;' and he also contributed some papers 

 to the ' Philosophical Transactions." Niebuhr, in his Travels (Ham- 

 burg, 1S37), tells a curious anecdote about Montagu marrying another 

 man's wife in Egypt ; and states some other facts which throw light 

 on the character of this eccentric man, who seems to have had more 

 ability than his family gave him credit for. The dislike between the 

 father and son appears to have been mutual. 



MONTAGUE," GEORGE, was descended from an ancient family 

 residing at Lackham, in the central part of Wilt-hire, where he had 

 an estate. He waa distinguished for his love of natural history, and 

 was one of the early members of the Linnseau Society of London. 

 In 1802 he published an ' Ornithological Dictionary, or Alphabetical 

 Synopsis of British Birds,' 2 vols. 8vo. This work exhibited much 

 research as well as an extensive knowledge of the department of 

 natural history to which it was devoted, and may be consulted with 

 advantage at the present day by the ornithological student. In 1803 

 he produced his 'Testacea Britauuica; or Natural History of British 

 Shell.", Marine, Land, and Fresh-water, including the most niiuu'e ; 

 systematically arranged and embellished with Figures,' London, 4to. 

 This work also contained a great mass of valuable information on the 

 subject on which it treated. A 'Supplement ' was published in 1809, 

 containing several plates and descriptions of new species. Besides 

 these two great works he published several papers in the ' Transactions 

 of the Linntean Society.' Of these the following are the principal : 

 1. ' Description of Three rare Species of British Birds.' Vol. iv., 

 1796. 2. ' Description of several Mariue Animals found on the south 

 coast of Devonshire.' Vol. vii., 1802. 3. ' On some Species of British 

 Quri-lrupeds, Birds, and Fishrs.' Vol. vii., 1803. 4. ' Of the larger 

 and leaser Species of Horse-shoe Bats, proving them to be distinct, 

 with a Description of Vtepertilio Barbastellies taken in the south 

 of Devonshire.' Vol. ix., Ib05. 5. 'On the Natural History of the 

 Falco Cyaueu.4 and Pygargus.' Vol. ix., 1807- 6. 'Of several New 

 or i; ire Animals, principally Marine, discovered on the south coast of 

 Devonshire.' Vol. xi.. 1811. 7. ' Of some New and Rare British 

 Mariue Shells and Animals.' Vol. xi., 1811. During the latter part 

 of his lifo Mr. Montague lived at Kuowle, near Eiugsbridge, in 

 Devonshire, where he died in 1815. 



MONTAIGNE, MICHEL, LORD OF, born in 1533, was a younger 

 son of a nobleman whose estate, from which he took his name, was 

 situated in the province of Perigord, near the river Dordogne. His 

 father, an eccentric blunt feudal baron, placed him under the care of 

 a German tutor, who did not speak French, and the intercourse 

 between tutor and pupil was carried on entirely in Latin ; and even 

 his parents made it a rule always to address him in that language, of 

 which they knew a sufficient number of words for common purposes. 

 The attendants were enjoined to follow the same practice. " They 

 all became Latinised," says Montaigne himself; "and even the 

 villagers in the neighbourhood learnt words in that language, some 

 of which took root in the country, aud became of common use among 

 the people." Thus without the aid of scholastic teaching, Montaigue 

 spoke Latin long before he could speak French, which he was after- 

 war s obliged to learn like a foreign language. He studied Greek in 

 the tame wanner, by way of pastime rather than as a task. He was 

 afterwards sent to the college of Guienne at Bordeaux ; and at the 

 age of thirteen he had completed his college education. He then 

 itudied the law, and in 1654 he was made " conseiller," or judge, in 

 the parliament of Bordeaux. He repaired several times to court, and 

 enjoyed the favour of Henri II., by whom, or, as some say, by 

 Charles IX., he was made a gentleman of the king's chamber and a 

 knight of the order of St. Michel. 



When he was thirty-three years of age Montaigne married Fran9ise 



de la Chas^aiioie, ; D order, as he says, to please his friends rather 



than himself, for he was not inclined to a married life. He however 



lived on good terms with Lis wife till his death. He l>ad only one 



BIOU. civ. vol.. iv. 



daughter by his marriage. He managed his own estate, on which he 

 generally resided, and from which he derived au income of about 

 6000 livres. 



In 1 569 Montaigne translated into French a Latin work of Raymond 

 de Sebonde or Sebon, a Spanish divine, on ' Natural Theology.' 

 France waa at that time desolated by civil and religious war, and 

 Montaigne, disapproving of the conduct of the court towards the 

 Protestants, and yet being by education a Roman Catholic, and by 

 principle and disposition loyal to the king, was glad to live in retire- 

 ment, and take no part in public affairs except by exhorting both 

 parties to moderation and mutual charity. By this conduct he 

 became, as might be expected, obnoxious to both sides. The massacre 

 of St. Bartholomew plunged him into a deep melancholy, for ha 

 detested cruelty and the shedding of blood. It was about thia 

 dismal epoch of 1572 that he began to write his ' Essais,' which were 

 published in March 1580, aud met with great success. 



With the view of restoring his health, which was not good, Mon- 

 taigne undertook a journey to Germany, Switzerland, and lastly to 

 Italy. At Rome he was well received by several cardinals aud other 

 persons of distinction, and was introduced to Pope Gregory XIII., 

 and received the freedom of the city of Rome by a bull of the pope, 

 of which he appears to have been very proud. Montaigne was 

 delighted with Rome ; he there found himself at home among those 

 scenes and monuments which were connected with his earliest studies 

 and the first impressions of his boyish years. He wrote a journal of 

 his tour, evidently not intended for publication, but the manuscript, 

 being discovered after nearly two centuries in an old chest in the 

 chateau of his family, was published in 1774, under the title of 

 ' Journal du Voyage de Michel de Montaigne en Italie, par la Suisse 

 et 1'Allemagne, en 1580-81.' It is one of the earliest descriptions of 

 Italy written in a modern language. 



While he wag abroad he was elected mayor of Bordeaux by the 

 votes of the citizens, an honour which he would have declined had 

 not the king, Henri III., insisted upon his accepting the office. At 

 the expiration of two years Montaigue was re-elected for an equal 

 period. On his retiring from office he returned to his patrimonial 

 estate. The war of the League was then raging in the country, and 

 Montaigne had some difficulty in saving his family and property from 

 the violence of the contending factions. 



At this time the plague also broke out in his neighbourhood (in 

 15S6), and obliged him to leave his residence aud wauder about various 

 parts of the country. He was at Paris in 1588, busy about a new 

 edition of the ' Essays.' It appears from De Thou's account that about 

 this time Montaigne was employed in negociatious with a view to 

 conclude a peace between Henri of Navarre, afterwards Henri IV., 

 and the Duke of Guise. At Paris he became acquainted with Made- 

 moiselle de Gouruay, a young lady who had conceived a kind of 

 sentimental affection for him from reading his book. Attended by 

 her mother she visited him, and introduced herself to him, and from 

 that time he called her his "fille d'alliance," or adopted daughter, 

 a title which she retained for the rest of her life, as she never married. 

 Montaigne was then fifty-five years of age. This attachment, which, 

 though warm and reciprocal, has every appearance of having been of 

 a purely Platonic nature, is one of the remarkable incidents of Mon- 

 taigne's life. At the time of his death Mademoiselle du Gouruay aud 

 her mother crossed one half of France, notwithstanding the civil 

 troubles and the insecurity of the roads, to repair to Montaigne's 

 residence and mingle their tears with those of his widow aud daughter. 

 On his return from Paris in the latter part of 1588, Montaigne 

 stopped at Blois with De Thou, Pasquier, and other friends. The 

 States-General were then assembled in that city, in which the Duke 

 de Guise aud his brother the cardinal were treacherously murdered, 

 on the 23rd and 24th of December of that year. Montaigne had long 

 foreseen that the civil dissensions could only terminate with the death 

 of one of the great party leaders. He had also said to De Thou that 

 Henri of Navarre was inclined to adopt the Roman Catholic faith, but 

 that he was afraid of being forsaken by his party ; and that on the 

 other side Guise himself would not have been averse from embracing 

 the Protestant religion, if he could thereby have promoted his 

 ambitious views. After the catastrophe Montaigne returned to his 

 chateau. In the following year he became acquainted with Pierre 

 Charron, a theological writer of considerable reputation, and formed 

 an intimate friendship with him. Cuarrou, in his book 'De la 

 Sagesse,' borrowed many ideas from Montaigne's ' Essays.' Montaigne 

 by his will empowered Charron to a-sutiie the coat of arms of his 

 family, as he himself had no male issue. 



Montaigne's health was in a declining state for a considerable time 

 before his death ; he was afflicted with the gravel and the colic, and 

 he obstinately refused to consult medical men, of whom he had 

 generally an indifferent opinion. In September 1592, he fell ill of a 

 malignant quinsy, which kept him speechless for three days, during 

 which he had recourse to his pen to signify to his wife his last wishes. 

 He also requested that several gentlemen of the neighbourhood 

 should be invited, in order that he might take leave of them. When 

 they were all assembled in his room, a priest said mass, and at the 

 elevation of the host, Montaigne half raised himself up in his bed, 

 with his bauds joined together as in prayer, and in that attitude he 

 expired, on the 13th of September 1592, in the sixtieth year of his age. 



