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did what absolute ignorance of sanitary 

 science suggested. So it is well to bear in 

 mind that, like Carlyle, Montaigne was a 

 literary invalid ; but, Hke Burns and Lamb, 

 he gained by suffering, if not absolute 

 Greek joyousness, certainly a fine jocund 

 air, which refracts our rays of vision and 

 hangs a glamour over his most amazing 

 improprieties. 



We have remarked that his education 

 could scarcely have been better suited to 

 his need as an essayist; but education 

 includes more than mere schooling. The 

 historic atmosphere in which a man lived 

 — the ozone and the miasma of his time — 

 must always be taken largely into our 

 measurements of what he knew and how 

 he was influenced by it. Montaigne's fa- 

 ther probably noticed, being a curious and 

 shrewd person, that Michel, his third son, 

 had an extraordinary mind, for he began, 

 in the boy's early childhood, experiment- 

 ing upon his intelligence with unorthodox 

 modes of teaching. The future essayist 

 was cradled and suckled by a peasant 

 I woman, and his first six years were spent 

 '9 289 



