The Press.
London, England, 1858-01-02 00:00:00

Xitcrature.

Montaigne the Essayist. By Bayle St John.
Two Vols. London : Chapman and Hall.
MR. BATLE ST. JOHN has evidently taken on
himself the mission of a special illustrator of
French literature. The necessity for such a
vocation may be doubted. French is a lan-
guage of almost universal acquisition, and we
think that the classics of France fare worse on
translation than the masterpieces of other
countries. Mr. St. John would, we thiuk,
appear to more advantage as an illustrator of
German literature, if he devoted himself to
its study. However, we must take him as
he is.

" Montaigne the Essayist " is not a good
subject for a biography in two volumes.
Incident was wanted in his life, and he had
not the influence of a mar► of action It is
seldom indeed that the biography of a mere
author can he rendered popularly attractive,
and the instance of Montaigne is no exception
to the rule. We have the man and his mind
painted in his " Essays." Hence there is a
dryness and want of vivacity in this work
which has a certain appearance of heaviness
It reads like an article in a biographical die.
tionary expanded into two volumes ; and we
think that some of Mr. St. John's former
works had more strength and brilliancy of
style.
Whether Montaigne himself is popularly
relished in England seems to us more than
doubtful. It is true that authors, scholars,
and professed " great readers " like " down-
right Montaigne," but he is not the sort of
writer that Englishmen generally admire. To
open grave questions, and not to settle them
decisively, is contrary to English taste. Loose
and slippery views on deep problems in
morals ought not to he encouraged; and Atter-
bury echoed the English feeling when he
wrote to Pope,—" I hate to see a book gravely
" written, and in all the forms of arguments
" tion, which proves nothing, and which says
" nothing, and endeavours only to put us in a
" way of distrusting onr faculties, and doubting
" whether the marks of truth and falsehood

" can in any way be distinguished from each
" other." If his merits are many, his faults
are not a few. It is difficult to say, when he is
in our hand, whether we aro reading himself
or other writers, whose matter is so skilfully
interwoven with his own. " I purposely con-
ceal," said he, "the authors from whom I
borrow, to check the presumption of those
who are apt to censure what they find in a
" modern. lam content that they should
" lash Seneca and Plutarch through my sides."
His style is thus more composite than at first
appears, and we admit that one of his charms
is the variety of colour produced by his pecu-
liar mode of writing. He stands at the head
of the sauntering school of essayists, and he
has no prototype, nor any exact parallel, in the
literature of any other country. We see in
his writings much of the spirit of the times in
which he lived,. and we catch the tone of a
French gentleman while France had still a
healthy provincial life, and before the State
had erected a dominating bureaucracy at Paris.
In the opening passage of this work there
is both abruptness of tone and much exagge-
ration :

No French writer has exerted so much influence on
English literature—with the exception, perhaps, of
Behehtts—us Montaigne. The Essays are known in sub-
stnnee far beydnd the oirele of readers who can decipher
their idiomatic Freuel, studded with Gaston phrases, or
relish the quaint old English translations by Florio and
Cotton, however modernised. From Sliakspeate and
Bacon, down to the humblest essayist earnest enough to
make, mail -the theme of his speculations, we find names
of communion with Montaigne. His acquaintance is
immetimes acknowledged, oftener implied. Butler and
rope quote, but Swift and Sterne show that they were
fstuiyiar with him. There is something marvelionsly
festinating in his society; whith explains this influence
fir mare than any poverty of thought in our great writers.
No man. Gen pass an hour with him without feeiing wiser
and more inclined to be sententious. The range of his
observations was so vast, that to borrow from the Essays
seems equivalent to borrowing from the collective experi-
unce.tif hurnanity. Montaigne would have been the lust
Men to tomplaio of snely ie4tizirait ; for if nil, his sue.
esteem espeenelly. in nor Wand, 143til taken from la in, he
took from all Me predeeessora. We are never sure, urinal
we •pen the Sows awl gird dazzled by some sa)iog. that
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