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

THE PRE S S, JANUARY 2, 1858.

Plutarch, Seneca, or Montaigne. To point out, therefore,
that English writers are under obligation to this wonder-
ful speculator, is nut to diminish their value, but to show
that it is a debt of gratitude in us to study his career.
Mr. St. John overstates the amount of influence
of Montaigne upon English literature. Swift
was little moved by Montaigne, and their
tempers were extreinly unlike; and we do
not know that any English author ever aimed
at being an English Montaigne. Was it in
Montaigne that Sterne found his pathos, or
Pope his condensed energy of precise expres-
sion ?

In the concluding note to the second
volume is the following passage, which is cri-;
tically just :
But when we have read all that has been written about
Montaigne—a small library in itself—we feel that, though
we know multitudes of facts, the true character of the man,
as we faintly conceited it when we first read the Essays,
has been tampered with somewhat. The Montaigne of
Pascal and Mtdebranch is an esprit fort of the seven-
teenth century ; the Montaigne of I3ayle is a gentlemanly
sceptic ; the Montaigne of the Voltaireans is a scoffer ; the
Montaigne of the Abbe Laborderie is a Capuchin Friar
the Montaigne of Mr. Emerson is Mr. Emerson himself;
the. Montaigne of Dr. Payee is the property of Dr. Payen;
and the Montaigne of M. (Iran is a Prefet of the Gironde.
Just so. Most of the illustrators have brought
their own prejudices to the study of Mon-
taigne. Coleridge said " It is tee who are Ham-
" let," alluding to the facility which every one
has of making a Hamlet for himself out of
Shakespeare's words; and a similar remark
might almost be made upon the ease with
which opposite kinds of natures find sympathy
with Montaigne.

Mr. St. John succeeds best when he describes
external reality which has come under his own
observation. The pen that wrote the vivid
"Purple Tints of Paris " can be seen in this
account of the modern visitors to the Chateau
de Montaigne :

They are not led thither by that passionate fondness,
that mysterious and almost sinful affection, which converts
into valuably property every place where Rousseau suffered
or was eloquent ; but by a calm sympathy, an honest
admiration of worth, circumscribed in its manifestation
by cheerful egotism, which is one of the characteristics
that finds the sympathy of the steady readers for whom
these pages are chiefly written. You will generally ob-
serve that the admirers of Montaigne have a great many
books of their own, not modern cheap elitions, but solid
calf-bound volumes, bought at second-hand much cheaper ;
that they are, if not exactly eccentric people, people of
marked features of character ; that they have often a good
sober-looking volume in their pockets, and form, in fact,
a coterie of observers and thinkers, who run toget:ier like
quicksilver when they meet, and are rather formed to
instruct youth and suggest wisdom to the idle or impetuous,
than themselves to take any very active part in this world's
affairs.

A flavour of rural enjoyment adds to the aroma
of Montaigne's con4osition, awl Mr. St. John
well observes :

The Essays bear many marks of having been written
by a country gentleman. The murmur bout the farm-
yard sometimes resounds through Montaigne's sentences ;
and breezes from orchard, and hill, and valley, fan our
cheeks as we flutter his leaves. He is no minute de-
scriber: he does not paint the ronghnesses of tree bark or
count the veins of a leaf; but the masses, around cast
impressions into his mind which he reproduces. " When
I dance, I dance," says he; explaining how each pursuit
absorbed him in its turn. " When I slumber, I slumber;
and when I stroll alone beneath the branches of a fair
orchard, if T allow my thoughts to commune awhile with
things remote and foreign, some other while I recall them
to my stroll, to the orchard, to the sweetness of the soli-
tude, and to myself." This fair orchard belonged to him
and still exists behind the chateau, gently spread on the
eastern elope of the hill. All his illustrations of a similar
kind seem gathered under the shadow of his castle, on the
day he uses them. They are like fresh-picked flowers,
which have not yet felt the warmth of the bosom on which
they glow. lle finds them in every corner of the vnlley
" We do not advance in this life, we are carried along,
like trifles floating on a stream ; now lapsing gently, now
hurrying rapidly, as the water is lively or slow." He is
evidently down on the banks of the Didoire, which indeed,
when I last ruffled its grassy banks, creating an image to
flit by me through those solitudes—for our minds are the
tombs from which ghosts conic out to haunt the world—
was here whirling autumn leaves along in a narrow bed,
there allowing them to rest in tiny reaches. But he goes
further, and notices the progress which the Dordogne is
making in eating sway its banks, so as to carry off many
houses by the foundations. This, and the destruction of
his brother's estate in Metloc by the sea, enabled him to
understand the supposed disappearance of the Atlantis.
Mr. St. John, in the following passal2e,
attempts to define critically the aims of Mon-
taigne :
If we escape from the influence of particular passages
and circumstanoes, alleged as pro on one side or the
other, and take into consideration the general verdict of
blttrspe, which has never troubled itself about this contro-
versy !Jetts-Loa the Cmireliattel re.ts-t 11.11v,;111. in Fnittee, we
Anti cothe to the ohnolaslett that gout Lague was a sceptic

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