•Clnber a Boawoob wttb /iDontatane 



himself with deliciously spiced and cun- 

 ningly brewed appreciation ; but " sus- 

 pended judgment " discloses no philosophy 

 — it is but a beaker of literary bragget. 

 Emerson's ** Montaigne ; or, The Skeptic," 

 is a fine, trenchant literary review, inimi- 

 tably rich in phrases and sentences choicely 

 descriptive of Montaigne's style and mental 

 vigor. It is a model, in its way, of liter- 

 ary substance made heavy with a fragrant 

 sap of genius ; but where does Montaigne's 

 philosophy come in? 



Yet these two papers — Emerson's and 

 Pater's — in different ways expose with 

 charming effect the splendid inner core 

 of Montaigne's literary gift to the world. 

 Here we are enlightened and helped. 

 Montaigne was not a philosopher, for 

 suspended judgment is not philosophy; 

 no more is mere impartial skepticism. 

 He was a belletrist with a superb capacity 

 for saying just what he thought, and with 

 an incomparable genius for thinking the 

 most engaging, the most enticing, the 

 most amazingly acicular, and, alas! often 

 the most disgusting things in the world. 

 256 



