IHnDer a S^ogwooO witb /iDontatgne 



than the author ever dreamed of saying " ; 

 then he adds that a look and a sense of 

 greater richness is somehow given them ; 

 which reminds us of our erudite Browning 

 commentators and our Whitman enthusi- 

 asts. As for Montaigne himself, one has 

 but to read his essay on pedants (Book I, 

 Chapter XXIV) to see that he understands 

 the trick of which he complains; indeed, 

 he openly winks at his own pedantry, and 

 in his long critique (to call it that) on 

 some verses of Vergil he gives a fine prac- 

 tical demonstration of how to get the 

 blood of a turnip out of the pulp of a pear. 

 What Vergil never dreamed of is what the 

 critic is most busied withal. 



From the glimpses we have given one 

 might safely guess what Montaigne's man- 

 ner, as a philosopher, would be. He ad- 

 mits that his aim in writing the " Essais " 

 was to make a patchwork without form, 

 flung together as if by chance, adding that 

 his book would not have a likeness in all 

 literature. He has been denounced as an 

 infidel : he was not one ; nor was he a 

 skeptic in the narrow sense. His philoso- 

 279 



