XPln&er a 2)o0woot» w(tb /iDontatgne 



genius of essay; and the Romans, as is 

 best seen in Horace, were ironical and 

 satirical rather than humorously clever. 

 In a word, ancient humor, like that of our 

 greatest American genius, Poe, was apt to 

 choose a grotesque expression. Some- 

 times a most serious Greek mood hits the 

 modern mind with a dull stroke; as, for 

 example, in this epitaph by Simonides : 



Kp-fj? ■^sve:cai Bpotaxo? FopTuvio? evBaSe usTjiat 

 0& itara tout' eXStuv, aXXa v.az' efXTtopiav. 



I, Brotachus from Gortyna, here lie ; but I came 

 here not to be buried, only to trade ! 



Upon the whole, it seems to be a pretty 

 good joke on the merchant that he got 

 into the ground instead of a trade. 



Montaigne's father educated him in 

 perhaps the best possible way to make an 

 essayist of him; and he was a lifelong 

 student, with the wonder of literary 

 suggestion continually exploding in his 

 mind, even at times when the world 

 around him spun madly in the throes 

 of pestilence, political dissolution, and 

 268 



