NOTES. 379 



" Scoffer, ' qui mockat, mockabitur.' Let mee tell you, (that 

 " you may tell him) what the wittie French-man sayes in such 

 " a case." The extract then follows, and a marginal note refers 

 to the authority. The edition of Montaigne's Essays used by 

 Walton, was in all probability that marked No. 29, in the fore- 

 going list : the passage alluded to will be found in chap. xii. 

 " An Apologie of Raymond De Sebonde," and on page 250 of 

 the volume, but the paraphrase which has been given at the 

 place above quoted, is far more beautiful and copious than the 

 original. Michel De Montaigne, whose amusing and instructive 

 Essays Walton seems carefully to have read, was born at the 

 Chateau De Montagne, in Perigord, on February the 28th 1533. 

 As soon as he could sprak he was sent into Germany to learn 

 Latin, which he understood perfectly when he was only six 

 years old ; the Greek he also acquired with considerable ease ; 

 and by the time he was thirteen, his education was finished. 

 As he was intended for the profession of the Law, he married 

 Franchise Dela Chassaigne, the daughter of a Councillor of the 

 Parliament of Bourdeaux ; but although he was extensively 

 employed and caressed in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, the 

 retirement of study was most congenial to his feelings. Charles 

 IX. of France invested him with the Order of St. Michael, and 

 he died on his own estate on the 15th of September 1592. His 

 principal work is his Moral, Political, and Military Essays, which 

 are replete with information on all subjects, and especially on 

 natural history ; but he also published a volume of travels, and 

 a French translation of the Natural Theology of Raymond De 

 Sebonde. John Florio, the Resolute, as he styled himself, who 

 made that translation of Montaigne's Essays, consulted by 

 Walton, was the son of Italian parents who wire Waldenses, 

 and who lied to London to avoid the Papal persecutions. In 

 that city he was bom in the reign of Henry VIII. Florio 

 taught Italian and French in the University of Oxford, and also 

 to Anne, the Queen of James I. and Prince Henry his son. He 

 died of the plague at Fulhain, in L625, at the age of 80. 



Page i'i. I hiijjf in tmir ta disabuse you. 



This expression is now nearly obsolete; it is derived from 

 the old French Desabuser, to Undeceive. In Chap. in. page 59, 

 the same word occurs again, and in the Rev. H.J. Todd's edition 

 of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, the first of the foregoing passages 

 is given, as one of the authorities for the use of the expression. 

 The verb to abuse, put for deception, will be found in Wotton's 

 verses on page 256. — " Abused mortals did you know." In 

 the original edition of this work, in which there are two speakers 

 only in the first chapter, the dialogue immediately passes to 

 Piscator's illustrations of the antiquity of angling. 



