TUn&er a 2)o0woo& witb ^ontaf^ne 



how candid, how punctiliously suave and 

 literary! What one poet had said chal- 

 lenged his diligence to find usable verses 

 by a dozen more. His philosophy seems 

 to step from quotation to quotation in 

 crossing dangerous rapids; nor does it 

 matter with him how contradictory or 

 morally repugnant his excerpts may ap- 

 pear; his turn is served by the nicety 

 with which they are made to range them- 

 selves in the intervals so as to hold him up 

 out of his own eddies and riffles. 



Montaigne talked with his pen instead 

 of his tongue, as Emerson intimates, yet 

 he was vigilantly mindful of his diction ; 

 he made literature, and it was bookish, 

 lamp-smoked literature, smelling of old 

 tomes and fringed with cobwebs. Take 

 away from the "Essais " what conscious and 

 patient literary craftsmanship put into 

 them and they will be gri'evously shredded. 



It is a very scant and defective biog- 

 raphy that can be constructed from what 

 the "Essais" tell of Michel de Montaigne's 

 life. The result is scarcely better when 

 we attempt to set up his philosophy. Like 

 274 



