CHAPTER VII.
MONTAIGNE AND BRANTÔME.
Disenchantment of the late Renaissance.
A period of enthusiasm passes naturally and almost necessarily into one of scepticism, and it is in no way surprising that the prominent literary figure of the second half of the sixteenth century in France should have taken for his motto rather 'Que sais-je?' than, like Rabelais, 'Sursum Corda.' The early hopes of the Renaissance had been curiously disappointed. The Reformation had resulted not merely in cruel and destructive civil war, but in the formation, in too many cases, of a Protestantism not less imperious and far more illiberal than the Catholicism against which it protested. The economic and social effects of the discovery of the New World had been equally discouraging, and even the recovery of classical learning had produced a race of pedants almost as trifling as the last doting defenders of scholasticism. The evils of the civil state of France, moreover, drove nearly all the best men into the sect of Politiques, or Trimmers, who avowedly regarded high questions of truth and faith as subordinate to a politic opportunism. The age had not lost its power of enjoyment of affairs and of pleasure, but its appetite for higher things was somewhat blunted. In this state of matters a few persons, of whom Montaigne was incomparably the most important, philosophised sceptically about life, and a great many, of whom Brantôme is the most typical, took pleasure in describing the ways and acts of an aristocracy which combined extraordinary luxury and corruption with great love of wit, singular intellectual ability, and a keen interest in war and business.
Montaigne.
Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne[213], was born, 'between eleven and twelve o'clock of the day' (the detail is characteristic), on the 28th of February, 1533, at the château from which he derived his name, and which he has made illustrious. Montaigne is situated in the old province of Perigord, or, according to modern nomenclature, in the department of Dordogne and the arrondissement of Bergerac. It is at no great distance from Bordeaux. The family was long believed from a phrase of Montaigne's own to have been of English extraction, introduced during the long tenure of Aquitaine by our sovereigns. But recent and industrious researches have shown that it may with greater probability have been of local origin and yeoman status. Pierre Eyquem, the father, had filled many important municipal offices at Bordeaux. Michel was his third son among nine children, but by the death of his elder brothers he inherited the family estate. He was educated early, and after the manner of a time when education was a subject on which almost all men of independent thought rode hobbies. Latin he learnt by conversation at a very early age, Greek as a kind of amusement. At the mature age of six he was placed at the Collège de Guyenne in Bordeaux, not the least famous of the famous schools of the time, for there it was that Buchanan, Muretus, and Guérente, by the Latin plays which they wrote for their scholars to act, introduced the Senecan drama into France and showed the way to the French tragedy of the Pléiade. Seven years of study completed Montaigne's school education at the age of thirteen, when nowadays boys quit their preparatory cradles. He was set to work at law, but little positive is known of him for many years. In 1554, being then twenty-one, he was made counsellor in the Bordeaux Parlement, and in 1566 he married Françoise de la Chassaigne, daughter of one of his colleagues. Except casual references in the Essays, which are seldom precise, all we know of him during these years is his friendship with Étienne de la Boëtie. He almost certainly served one or more campaigns; but the most positive thing that can be said of his middle life is that, according to an existing inscription of his own, he finally retired, in 1571, on his thirty-eighth birthday, to the château which had become his by his father's death two years previously. He had already translated the Theologia Naturalis of Raymond de Sebonde. In the year of his retirement he edited the works of La Boëtie. But he now began a much more important task. The first two books of the Essais appeared in 1580; and immediately afterwards Montaigne, who suffered from severe internal disorders, undertook a long journey into Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, which occupied nearly a year and a-half. While sojourning at the baths of Lucca, he received the news of his appointment as mayor of Bordeaux, and hastened home. In 1588 he published the third Book of the Essays, and had troubles with the Leaguers in Paris. Four years afterwards, on the 13th September, 1592, he died of quinsy. Although Montaigne's municipal and legal appointments at Bordeaux are all that we know him to have enjoyed, he is styled 'gentleman in ordinary to the king,' and letters extant from and to Charles IX., Henri III., and Henri IV., show him to have enjoyed a considerable social as well as literary position. He was a knight of the Order of St. Michael. By his wife he had several children, but all died young, except one daughter, who survived him and left offspring. His adopted daughter, however, Mademoiselle de Gournay, a celebrated character of the next age, and the first editor of his complete works after his death, is better known.
A complete abstract of Montaigne's work cannot be here attempted, and indeed no such thing is possible, because the work itself is absolutely destitute of general plan and exhibits no unity but a unity of spirit and treatment. Whether Montaigne himself invented the famous title Essays or not, is a matter of the very smallest importance. It is certain that he was the first to give the word its modern meaning, though he dealt with his subjects in a spirit of audacious desultoriness, which many of his successors have endeavoured to imitate, but which few have imitated successfully. His nominal subject is, as a rule, merely a starting-point, or at the most a text. He allows himself to be diverted from it by any game which crosses his path, and diverges as readily from his new direction. Abundant citation from the classics is one of his chief characteristics; but the two main points which differentiate him are, first, the audacious egotism and frankness with which he discourses of his private affairs and exhibits himself in undress; secondly, the flavour of subtle scepticism which he diffuses over his whole work. Both these are susceptible of a good deal of misconstruction, and both no doubt have been a good deal misconstrued. His egotism, like most egotism, is a compound of frankness and affectation, and its sincerity is not, as an attraction, equal to the easy garrulity for which it affords an occasion of display. His scepticism, however, is altogether sui generis. It is not exuberant, like that of Rabelais, nor sneering, like that of Voltaire, nor despairing, like that of Pascal, nor merely inquisitive and scholarly, like that of Bayle. There is no reason for disbelieving Montaigne's sincere and conscious orthodoxy in the ecclesiastical sense. But his own temperament, assisted no doubt by the political and ecclesiastical circumstances already described, by indifferent bodily health, and by the period, if not exactly of excess, at any rate of free living, in his younger days, to which he so constantly alludes, had produced in him a general feeling that the pros and cons of different opinions and actions balance each other more evenly than is generally thought. He looks on life with a kind of ironical enjoyment, and the three books of his Essays might be described as a vast gallery of pictures illustrating the results of his contemplations.
There are some considerable differences between the earlier and later Essays, one of the most obvious of which concerns the point of length. Thus the first book consists of fifty-seven essays, occupying rather more than 500 pages[214], or an average of less than ten pages each. The second (exclusive of the long 'Apologie de Raymond Sebonde,' which occupies 300 pages by itself) contains thirty-six essays, of nearly 500 pages in all, or about twelve pages each. These books were published together, and may be presumed to have been written more or less at the same time. But the third and last book, though it contains full 550 pages, has only thirteen essays, which thus average more than forty pages each, though their length is very unequal. Montaigne had, no doubt, found that his pillar-to-post method of discourse was sufficiently attractive to make fresh starting-points and definite titles unnecessary; thus in the third book, his subjects (at least his professed subjects) are sometimes much wider, and sometimes much more whimsical, than in the two first. Oedipus himself could hardly divine the actual subject of the essay 'Sur des Vers de Virgile,' or guess that a paper 'Sur les Coches' would in reality busy itself with the question what virtues are most proper to a sovereign. On the other hand, such large titles as 'De la Vanité de l'Expérience,' etc. give room for almost any and every excursion. All these are in the last book; the shorter essays of the two first for the most part deal more definitely with their nominal subjects, which are most frequently moral brocards: such as 'Le Profit de l'Un est Dommage de l'Autre,' 'Par Divers Moyens on arrive à Pareille Fin,' etc.