Part 1

THE

CABINET CYCLOPÆDIA.

CONDUCTED BY THE

REV. DIONYSIUS LARDNER, LL.D. F.R.S. L.& E.

M.R.I.A. F.R.A.S. F.L.S. F.Z.S. Hon. F.C.P.S. &c. &c.

ASSISTED BY

EMINENT LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

Biography.

EMINENT

LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN

OF FRANCE.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR

LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS,

PATERNOSTER-ROW;

AND JOHN TAYLOR,

UPPER GOWER STREET.

1838.

CONTENTS

MONTAIGNE RABELAIS CORNEILLE ROCHEFOUCAULD MOLIÈRE LA FONTAINE PASCAL SÉVIGNÉ (Madame de) BOILEAU RACINE FÉNÉLON

LIVES

OF

EMINENT

LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN.

MONTAIGNE

1533—1592

There is scarcely any man into whose character we have more insight than that of Montaigne. He has written four volumes of "Essays," which are principally taken up by narrations of what happened to himself, or dissertations on his own nature, and this in an enlightened and philosophical, though quaint and naïve style, which renders him one of the most delightful authors in the world. It were easy to fabricate a long biography, by drawing from this source, and placing in a consecutive view, the various information he affords. We must abridge, however, into a few pages several volumes; while, by seizing on the main topics, a faithful and interesting picture will be presented.

Michel de Montaigne was born at his paternal castle of that name[1], in Périgord, on the 8th of February, 1533. He was the son of Pierre Eyquem, esquire--seigneur of Montaigne, and at one time elected mayor of Bordeaux. This portion of France, Gascony and Guienne, gives birth to a race peculiar to itself; vivacious, warm-hearted, and vain--they are sometimes boastful, but never false; often rash, but never disloyal; and Montaigne evidently inherited much of the disposition peculiar to his province. He speaks of his family as honourable and virtuous:--"We are a race noted as good parents, good brothers, good relations," he says,--and his father himself seems eminently to deserve the gratitude and praise which his son bestows. His description of him is an interesting specimen of a French noble of those days:--"He spoke little and well, and mixed his discourse with allusions to modern books, mostly Spanish; his demeanour was grave, tempered by gentleness, modesty, and humility; he took peculiar care of the neatness and cleanliness of his dress, whether on horseback or on foot; singularly true in his conversation, and conscientious and pious, almost even to superstition. For a short slight man he was very strong; his figure was upright and well proportioned; he was dexterous and graceful in all noble exercises; his agility was almost miraculous; and I have seen him, at more than sixty years of age, throw himself on a horse, leap over the table, with only his thumb on it, and never going to his room without springing up three or four stairs at a time." Michel was the eldest of five sons. His father was eager to give him a good education, and even before his birth consulted learned and clever men on the subject. On these consultations and on his own admirable judgment he formed a system, such as may in some sort be considered the basis of Rousseau's; and which shows that, however we may consider one age more enlightened than another, the natural reason of men of talent leads them to the same conclusions, whether living in an age when warfare, struggle, and the concomitant ignorance were rife, or when philosophers set the fashion of the day. "The good father whom God gave me," says Montaigne, "sent me, while in my cradle, to one of his poor villages, and kept me there while I was at nurse and longer, bringing me up to the hardest and commonest habits of life. He had another notion, also, which was to ally me with the people, and that class of men who need our assistance; desiring that I should rather give my attention to those who should stretch out their arms to me, than those who would turn their backs; and for this reason he selected people of the lowest condition for my baptismal sponsors, that I might attach myself to them." He was taught, also, in his infancy directness of conduct, and never to mingle any artifice or trickery with his games. With regard to learning, his good father meditated long on the received modes of initiating his son in the rudiments of knowledge. He was struck by the time given to, and the annoyance a child suffers in, the acquirement of the dead languages; this was exaggerated to him as a pause why the moderns were so inferior to the ancients in greatness of soul and wisdom. He hit, therefore, on the expedient of causing Latin to be the first language that his son should hear and speak. He engaged the services of a German, well versed in Latin, and wholly ignorant of French. "This man," continues Montaigne, "whom he sent for expressly, and who was liberally paid, had me perpetually in his arms. Two others of less learning, accompanied to relieve him; they never spoke to me except in Latin; and it was the invariable rule of the house, that neither my father nor my mother, nor domestic, nor maid, should utter in my presence any thing except the few Latin phrases they had learnt for the purpose of talking with me. It is strange the progress that every one made. My father and mother learnt enough Latin to understand it, and to speak it on occasions, as did also the other servants attached to me;--in short, we talked so much Latin, that it overflowed even into our neighbouring villages, where there still remain, and have taken root, several Latin names for workmen and their tools. As for me, at the age of six, I knew no more French than Arabic; and, without study, book, grammar, or instruction,--without rod and tears--I learnt as pure a Latin as my schoolmaster could teach, for I could not mix it with any other language. If, after the manner of colleges, I had a theme set me, it was given, not in French, but in bad Latin, to be turned into good; and my early master, George Buchanan and others, have often told me that I was so ready with my Latin in my infancy, that they feared to address me. Buchanan, whom I afterwards saw in the suite of the marshal de Brissac, told me that he was about to write on education, and should give mine as an example. As to Greek, of which I scarcely know any thing, my father intended that I should not learn it as a study, but as a game--for he had been told to cause me to acquire knowledge of my own accord and will, and not by force, and to nourish my soul in all gentleness and liberty, without severity or restraint, and this to almost a superstitious degree; for having heard that it hurts a child's brain to be awoke suddenly, and torn from sleep with violence, he caused me to be roused in the morning by the sound of music, and there was always a man in my service for that purpose.

"The rest maybe judged of by this specimen, which proves the prudence and affection of my excellent father, who must not be blamed if he gathered no fruits worthy of such exquisite culture. This is to be attributed to two causes: the first is the sterile and troublesome soil; for although my health was good, and my disposition was docile and gentle, I was, notwithstanding, so heavy, dull, and sleepy, that I could not be roused from my indolence even to play. I saw well what I saw; and beneath this dull outside I nourished a bold imagination, and opinions beyond my age. My mind was slow, and it never moved unless it was led--my understanding tardy--my invention idle--and, amidst all, an incredible want of memory. With all this it is not strange that he succeeded so ill. Secondly, as all those who are furiously eager for a cure are swayed by all manner of advice, so the good man, fearing to fail in a thing he had so much at heart, allowed himself at last to be carried away by the common opinion; and, not having those around him who gave him the ideas of education which he brought from Italy, sent me, at six years of age, to the public school of Guienne, which was then very flourishing, and the best in France. It was impossible to exceed the care he then took to choose accomplished private tutors; but still it was a school: my Latin deteriorated, and I have since lost all habit of speaking it; and my singular initiation only served to place me at once in the first classes; for when I left college, at the age of thirteen, I had finished my course, but, truly, without any fruit at present useful to me.

"The first love I had for books came to me through the pleasure afforded by the fables in Ovid's Metamorphoses. For, at the age of seven or eight, I quitted every other pleasure to read them; the more that its language was my maternal one, and that it was the easiest book I knew, and, considering the matter, the best adapted to my age. I was more careless of my other studies, and in this was lucky in having a clever man for my preceptor, who connived at this and similar irregularities of mine; for I thus read through the Æneid, and then Terence and Plautus, led on by delight in the subject. If he had been so foolish as to prevent me, I believe I should have brought from college a hatred of all books, as most of our young nobles do. He managed cleverly, pretending not to see; and sharpened my appetite by only allowing me to devour these volumes by stealth, and being easy with me with regard to my other lessons; for the principal qualities which my father sought in those who had charge of me were kindness and good humour; consequently idleness and laziness were my only vices. There was no fear that I should do harm, but that I should do nothing--no one expected that I should become wicked, but only useless. It has continued the same: the complaints I hear are of this sort: that I am indolent, slow to perform acts of friendship, too scrupulous, and disdainful of public employments. Meanwhile my soul had its private operations, and formed sure and independent opinions concerning the subjects it understood, digesting them alone, without communication; and among other things, I believe it had been incapable of submitting to force or violence."

It would require a volume almost to examine the effect that this singular education had on Montaigne's character. If absence of constraint strengthened the defects of his character, at least it implanted no extraneous ones. His defective memory was not cultivated, and therefore remained defective to the end. His indolence continued through life: he became somewhat of a humourist; but his faculties were not deadened, nor his heart hardened, by opposition and severity.

Montaigne's heart was warm; his temper cheerful[2], though unequal; his imagination lively[3]; his affections exalted to enthusiasm; and this ardour of disposition, joined to the sort of personal indolence which he describes, renders him a singular character. On leaving college he studied law, being destined for that profession; but he disliked it; and, though he was made counsellor to the parliament of Bordeaux, he, in the sequel, gave up the employment as by no means suited to him. He lived in troubled times. Religious parties ran high, and were so well balanced, the kingly power being diminished through the minority of Charles IX., and that of the nobles increasing in consequence, that the struggle between the two was violent and deadly. Montaigne was a catholic and a lover of peace. He did not mingle with the dissensions of the times, avoided all public employments, and it is not in the history of his times that we must seek for the events of his life.

[Sidenote: 1559. Ætat. 26.]

The chief event, so to call it, that he himself records with fondness and care, is his friendship for Étienne de la Boëtie. To judge by the only writing we possess of this friend, composed when he was scarcely more than seventeen, his Essay on "Voluntary Servitude," he evidently deserved the high esteem in which Montaigne held him, though apparently very dissimilar from him in character. Boldness and vigour mark the thoughts and style; love of freedom, founded on a generous independence of soul, breathes in every line; the bond between him and Montaigne rested on the integrity and lofty nature of their dispositions--on their talents--on the warmth of heart that distinguished both--and a fervid imagination, without which the affections seldom rise into enthusiasm. Montaigne often refers to this beloved friend in his essays. "The greatest man I ever knew," he writes, "was Étienne de la Boëtie. His was indeed a soul full of perfections, a soul of the old stamp, and which would have produced great effects had fate permitted, having by learning and study added greatly to his rich natural gifts."[4] In another essay, which is entitled "Friendship," he recounts the history of their intimacy. "We sought each other," he writes, "before we met, on account of what we heard of each other, which influenced our inclinations more than there seems to have been reason for, I think through a command of Heaven. We, as it were, embraced each other's names; and at our first meeting, which was by chance, and at a large assembly, we found ourselves so drawn together, so known to each other, that nothing hereafter was nearer than we were one to the other. He wrote a beautiful Latin poem to excuse the precipitation of our intimacy, which so promptly arrived at its perfection. As it was destined to last so short a time, and began so late, for we were both arrived at manhood, and he was several years the elder, it had no time to lose; it could not regulate itself by slow and regular friendships, which require the precaution of a long preluding acquaintance. Ours had no idea foreign to itself, and could refer to itself alone; it did not depend on one special cause, nor on two, nor three, nor four, nor a thousand, but was the quintessence of all which seized on _my_ will, and forced it to merge and lose itself in his, and which, having seized _his_ will, led him to merge and lose his in mine, with equal desire and eagerness. I use the word _lose_ as the proper one, for we neither reserved any thing that was not common to both. Our souls mingled so entirely, and penetrated with such ardent affection into the very essence of each other, that not only was I as well acquainted with his as with my own, but certainly I should have more readily trusted him than myself. This attachment must not be put in the same rank with common friendships. I have known the most perfect of a slighter kind; and, if the rules are confounded, people will deceive themselves. In other friendships you must proceed bridle in hand; in the more exalted one, the offices and benefits which support other intimacies do not deserve even to be named. The perfect union of the friends causes them to hate and banish all those words that imply division and difference, such as benefit, obligation, gratitude, entreaty, thanks, and the like. All is in common with them; and, if in such a friendship one could give to the other, it would be him who received that would benefit his companion. Menander pronounced him happy who should meet only with the shadow of such a friend: he was right; for if I compare the rest of my life, though, with the blessing of God, I have passed it agreeably and peacefully, and, save from the loss of such a friend, exempt from any poignant affliction, with a tranquil mind, having taken the good that came to me originally and naturally, without seeking others; yet, if I compare the whole of it, I say, with the four years during which it was given me to enjoy the dear society of this person, it is mere smoke,--it is a dark and wearisome night. I have dragged it out painfully since I lost him; and the very pleasures that have offered themselves to me, instead of consoling, doubled the sense of my loss. We used to share every thing, and methinks I rob him of his portion. I was so accustomed to be two in every thing that I seem now but half of myself. There is no action nor idea that does not present the thought of the good he would have done me, for as he surpassed me infinitely in every talent and virtue, so did he in the duties of friendship."

[Sidenote: 1553. Ætat. 30.]

A severe illness of a few days carried off this admirable friend. Montaigne recounts, in a letter to his father, the progress of the malady, and his death bed; and nothing can be more affecting, nor better prove the noble and virtuous qualities of both, than these sad hours when the one prepared to die, and the other ministered to the dying. This loss was never forgotten; and we find, in the journal of his travels in Italy, written eighteen years after, an observation, that he fell one morning into so painful a reverie concerning M. de la Boëtie that his health was affected by it.

Montaigne married at the age of thirty-three: he married neither from wish nor choice. "Of my own will," he says, "I would have shunned marrying Wisdom herself, had she asked me. But we strive in vain; custom, and the uses of common life, carry us away: example, not choice, leads me in almost all my actions. In this, truly, I did not go of my own accord, but was led, or carried, by extraneous circumstances; and certainly I was then less prepared, and more averse than now that I have tried it. But I have conducted myself better than I expected. One may keep one's liberty prudently; but, when once one has entered on the obligation, one must observe the laws of a common duty." Montaigne made, therefore, a good husband, though not enthusiastically attached, and a good father--indeed, in all the duties of life, he acted better than was expected of him. At his death, his father[5] left him his estate, fancying that it would be wasted through his indolence and carelessness; but Montaigne's faults were negative; and he easily brought himself to regard his income as the limit of his expenses, and even kept within it. His hatred of business and trouble, joined to sound common sense, led him to understand that ease could be best attained by limiting his desires to his means, and by the degree of order necessary to know what these means were; and his practice accorded with this conclusion.

Montaigne's father lived to old age. He married late in life, and we are ignorant of the date of his death; from that period Montaigne himself seems to have lived chiefly at his paternal castle. It would appear that he was at that time under forty[6]; and henceforth his time was, to a great degree, spent in domestic society, among the few books he loved, writing his essays, and attending to the cares that wait upon property. It is not to be supposed, however, that he lived a wholly sedentary and inactive life. Though he adhered to no party, and showed no enthusiasm in the maintenance of his opinions, his disposition was inquisitive to eagerness, ardent and fiery. The troubles that desolated his country throughout his life fostered the activity of mind of which his writings are so full. He often travelled about France, and, above all, was well acquainted with Paris and the court. He loved the capital, and calls himself a Frenchman only through his love of Paris, which he names the glory of France, and one of the noblest ornaments of the world. He attended the courts at the same time of the famous duke de Guise and the king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. He had predicted that the death of one or the other of these princes could alone put an end to the civil war, and even foresaw the likelihood there was that Henry of Navarre should change his religion. He was at Blois when the duke de Guise was assassinated; but that event took place long subsequent to the period of which we at present write.

During his whole life civil war raged between catholic and huguenot. Montaigne, attached to the kingly and catholic party, abstained, however, from mingling in the mortal struggles going on.[7] Yet sometimes they intruded on his quiet, and he was made to feel the disturbances that desolated his country. It is a strange thing to picture France divided into two parties, belonging to which were men who risked all for the dearest privilege of life, freedom of thought and faith; and were either forced, or fancied that they were forced, to expose life and property to attain it; and to compare these religionists in arms with the tranquil philosopher, who dissected human nature in his study, and sounded the very depths of all our knowledge in freedom and ease, because he abstained from certain watchwords, and had no desire for proselytes or popular favour. "I regard our king," he says, "with a mere legitimate and political affection, neither attracted nor repelled by private interest; and in this I am satisfied with myself. In the same way I am but moderately and tranquilly attached to the general cause, and am not subject to entertain opinions in a deep-felt and enthusiastic manner. Let Montaigne, if it must, be swallowed up in the public ruin; but, if there is no necessity, I shall be thankful to fortune to save it. I treat both parties equally, and say nothing to one that I could not say to the other, with the accent only a little changed; and there is no motive of utility that could induce me to lie." This moderation, on system, of course led him, in his heart, to be inimical to the reformers. "They seek reformation," he says, in the worst of destructions, "and aim at salvation by the exact modes in which we are sure to reap damnation; and think to aid divine justice and humanity by overturning law and the rulers, under whose care God has placed them, tearing their mother (_the church_) to pieces, to give portions to be gnawed by her ancient enemies, filling their country with parricidal hatreds." This is no lofty view of the great and holy work of reformation, the greatest and (however stained by crime, the effect of the most cruel persecutions) the most beneficent change operated in modern times in human institutions. Montaigne goes on:--"The people suffered greatly then, both for the present and the future, from the devastation of the country. I suffered worse, for I encountered all those injuries which moderation brings during such troubles--I was pillaged by all parties. The situation of my house, and my alliance with my neighbours, gave me one appearance, my life and actions another; no formal accusations were made, for they could get no hold against me; but mute suspicion was secretly spread. A thousand injuries were done me one after another, which I could have borne better had they come altogether."