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ment or amusement of the artist; but which, on that account, are the more likely to be useful in developing the germs of similar endowments in others.

Without a union of these two powers (reflection and observation), the study of Man can never be successfully prosecuted. It is only by retiring within ourselves that we can obtain a key to the characters of others; and it is only by observing and comparing the characters of others, that we can thoroughly understand and appreciate

our own.

After all, however, it may be fairly questioned, notwithstanding the scrupulous fidelity with which Montaigne has endeavoured to delineate his own portrait, if he has been always sufficiently aware of the secret folds and reduplications of the human heart. That he was by no means exempted from the common delusions of selflove and self-deceit, has been fully evinced in a very acute, though somewhat uncharitable, section of the Port Royal logic; but this consideration, so far from diminishing the value of his Essays, is one of the most instructive lessons they afford to those who, after the example of the author, may undertake the salutary but humiliating task of self-examination.

As Montaigne's scientific knowledge was, according to his own account, "very vague and imperfect; "* and his book learning rather sententious and gossiping, than comprehensive and systematical, it would be unreasonable to expect, in his philosophical arguments, much either of depth or of solidity. The sentiments he hazards are to be regarded but as the impressions of the moment; consisting chiefly of the more obvious doubts and difficulties, which, on all metaphysical and moral questions, are apt to present themselves to a speculative mind, when it first attempts to dig below the surface of

Book i. ch. 25.

† Montaigne's education, however, had not been neglected by his father. On the contrary, he tells us himself, that "George Buchanan, the great poet of Scotland, and Marcus Antonius Muretus, the best orator of his time, were among the number of his domestic preceptors."-" Buchanan," he adds, "when I saw him afterwards in the retinue of the late Mareschal de Brissac, told me, that he was about to write a treatise on the education of children, and that he would take the model of it from mine." Book i. chap. 25.

common opinions. In reading Montaigne, accordingly, what chiefly strikes us, is not the novelty or the refinement of his ideas, but the liveliness and felicity with which we see embodied in words the previous wanderings of our own imaginations. It is probably owing to this circumstance, rather than to any direct plagiarism, that his Essays appear to contain the germs of so many of the paradoxical theories which, in later times, Helvetius and others have labored to systematize and to support with the parade of metaphysical discussion. In the mind of Montaigne, the same paradoxes may be easily traced to those deceitful appearances, which, in order to stimulate our faculties to their best exertions, nature seems purposely to have thrown in our way, as stumbling-blocks in the pursuit of truth; and it is only to be regretted on such occasions, for the sake of his own happiness, that his genius and temper qualified and disposed him more to start the problem, than to investigate the solution.

When Montaigne touches on religion, he is, in general, less pleasing than on other subjects. His constitutional temper, it is probable, predisposed him to scepticism ; but this original bias could not fail to be mightily strengthened by the disputes, both religious and political, which, during his lifetime, convulsed Europe, and more particularly his own country. On a mind like his, it may be safely presumed that the writings of the reformers, and the instructions of Buchanan, were not altogether without offect; and hence, in all probability, the perpetual struggle, which he is at no pains to conceal, between the creed of his infancy, and the lights of his mature understanding. He speaks, indeed, of "reposing tranquilly on the pillow of doubt;" but this language is neither reconcileable with the general complexion of his works, nor with the most authentic accounts we have received of his dying moments. It is a maxim of his own, that, "in forming a judgment of a man's life, particular regard should be paid to his behaviour at the end of it;" to which he pathetically adds, "that the chief study of his own life was, that his latter end might be decent, calm, and silent." The fact is (if we may credit the testimony

of his biographers,) that, in his declining years, he exchanged his boasted pillow of doubt for the more powerful opiates prescribed by the infallible church; and that he expired in performing, what his old preceptor Buchanan would not have scrupled to describe as an act of idolatry.* The scepticism of Montaigne seems to have been of a very peculiar cast, and to have had little in common with that either of Bayle or of Hume. The great aim of the two latter writers evidently was, by exposing the uncertainty of our reasonings whenever we pass the limit of sensible objects, to inspire their readers with a complete distrust of the human faculties on all moral and metaphysical topics. Montaigne, on the other hand, never thinks of forming a sect; but, yielding passively to the current of his reflections and feelings, argues, at different times, according to the varying state of his impressions and temper, on opposite sides of the same question. On all occasions, he preserves an air of the most perfect sincerity; and it was to this, I presume, much more than to the superiority of his reasoning powers, that Montesquieu alluded, when he said, "In the greater part of authors I see the writer; in Montaigne I see nothing but the thinker." The radical fault of his understanding consisted in an incapacity of forming, on disputable points, those decided and fixed opinions, which can alone impart either force or consistency to intellectual character. For remedying this weakness, the religious controversies, and the civil wars recently engendered by the Reformation, were but ill calculated. The minds of the most serious men, all over Christendom, must have been then unsettled in an extraordinary degree; and where any predisposition to scepticism existed, every external circumstance must have conspired to cherish and confirm it. Of the extent to which it was carried, about the same period, in England, some judgment may be formed from the following description of a Sceptic, by a writer not many years posterior to Montaigne..

"Sentant sa fin approcher, fit dire la messe dans sa chambre. A l'élévation de l'hostie, il se leva sur son lit pour l'adorer; mais une foiblesse l'enleva dans ce moment même, le 15 Septembre, 1592, à 60 ans." Nouveau Dict. Histor. à Lyon, 1804. Art. Montaigne.

"A sceptic in religion is one that hangs in the balance with all sorts of opinions; whereof not one but stirs him, and none sways him. A man guiltier of credulity than he is taken to be; for it is out of his belief of every thing that he believes nothing. Each religion scares him from its contrary; none persuades him to itself. He would be wholly a Christian, but that he is something of an Atheist; and wholly an Atheist, but that he is partly a Christian; and a perfect Heretic, but that there are so many to distract him. He finds reason in all opinions, truth in none; indeed, the least reason perplexes him, and the best will not satisfy him. He finds doubts and scruples better than resolves them, and is always too hard for himself."* If this portrait had been presented to Montaigne, I have little doubt that he would have had the candor to acknowledge, that he recognised in it some of the most prominent and characteristical features of his own mind.+

The most elaborate, and seemingly the most serious, of all Montaigne's essays, is his long and somewhat tedious Apology for Raimond de Sebonde, contained in the twelfth chapter of his second book. This author appears, from Montaigne's account, to have been a Spaniard, who professed physic at Thoulouse, towards the end of the fourteenth century; and who published a treatise, entitled Theologia Naturalis, which was put into the hands of Montaigne's father by a friend, as a useful antidote against the innovations with which Luther was then beginning to disturb the ancient faith. That, in this particular instance, the book answered the intended purpose, may be presumed from the request of old Montaigne to his son,

• Mico-cosmography, or a Piece of the World Discovered, in Essays and Characters. For a short notice of the author of this very curious book, (Bishop Earle,) see Letters from the Bodleian Library, vol. I. p. 141. I understand it has been lately reprinted in London, but have only seen one of the old editions (the seventh), printed in 1638. The chapter from which I have transcribed the above passage is entitled A Skeptic in Religion; and it has plainly suggested to Lord Clarendon some of the ideas, and even expressions, which occur in his account of Chillingworth.

"The writings of the best authors among the ancients," Montaigne tells us on one occasion, "being full and solid, tempt and carry me which way almost they will. He that I am reading seems always to have the most force; and I find that every one in turn has reason, though they contradict one another." Book ii. chap. 12.

a few days before his death, to translate it into French from the Spanish original. His request was accordingly complied with; and the translation is referred to by Montaigne in the first edition of his Essays, printed at Bourdeaux in 1580; but the execution of this filial duty seems to have produced on Montaigne's own mind very different effects from what his father had anticipated.*

The principle aim of Sebonde's book, according to Montaigne, is to show that "Christians are in the wrong to make human reasoning the basis of their belief, since the object of it is only conceived by faith, and by a special inspiration of the divine grace." To this doctrine Montaigne professes to yield an implicit assent; and, under the shelter of it, contrives to give free vent to all the extravagancies of scepticism. The essential distinction between the reason of man, and the instincts of the lower animals, is at great length, and with no inconsiderable ingenuity, disputed; the powers of the human understanding, in all inquiries, whether physical or moral, are held up to ridicule; an universal Pyrrhonism is recommended; and we are again and again reminded, that "the senses are the beginning and the end of all our knowledge." Whoever has the patience to peruse this chapter with attention, will be surprised to find in it the rudiments of a great part of the licentious philosophy of the eighteenth century; nor can he fail to remark the address with which the author avails himself of the language afterwards adopted by Bayle, Helvetius, and Hume:"That, to be a philosophical sceptic, is the first step towards becoming a sound believing Christian."† It is a melancholy fact in ecclesiastical history, that this insidious maxim should have been sanctioned, in our times, by some theologians of no common pretensions to orthodoxy; who, in direct contradiction to the words of Scripture, have ventured to assert, that "he who comes to God must first believe that he is NOT." Is it necessary

*The very few particulars known with respect to Sebonde have been collected by Bayle. See his Dictionary, Art. Sebonde.

This expression is Mr. Hume's; but the same proposition, in substance, is frequently repeated by the two other writers, and is very fully enlarged upon by Bayle in the Illustration upon the Sceptics, annexed to his Dictionary.

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