13. It may be deemed a symptom of wanting a thorough love of truth when a man overrates, as much as when he overlooks, the difficulties he deals with. Montaigne is perhaps not exempt from this failing. Though sincere and candid in his general temper, he is sometimes more ambitious of setting forth his own ingenuity than desirous to come to the bottom of his subject. Hence he is apt to run into the fallacy common to this class of writers, and which La Mothe le Vayer employed much more—that of confounding the variations of the customs of mankind in things morally indifferent with those which affect the principles of duty; and hence the serious writers on philosophy in the next age, Pascal, Arnauld, Malebranche, animadvert with much severity on Montaigne. They considered him, not perhaps unjustly, as an enemy to the candid and honest investigation of truth, both by his bias towards Pyrrhonism, and by the great indifference of his temperament; scarcely acknowledging so much as was due the service he had done by chasing the servile pedantry of the schools, and preparing the way for closer reasoners than himself. But the very tone of their censures is sufficient to prove the vast influence he had exerted over the world.
14. Montaigne is the earliest classical writer in the French language, the first whom a gentleman is ashamed not to have read. So long as an unaffected style and an appearance of the utmost simplicity and good nature shall charm, so long as the lovers of desultory and cheerful conversation shall be more numerous than those who prefer a lecture or a sermon, so long as reading is sought by the many as an amusement in idleness, or a resource in pain, so long will Montaigne be among the favourite authors of mankind. I know not whether the greatest blemish of his Essays has much impeded their popularity; they led the way to the indecency so characteristic of French literature, but in no writer on serious topics, except Bayle, more habitual than in Montaigne. It may be observed, that a larger portion of this quality distinguishes the third book, published after he had attained a reputation, than the two former. It is also more overspread by egotism; and it is not agreeable to perceive that the two leading faults of his disposition became more unrestrained and absorbing as he advanced in life.
Writers on Morals in Italy. 15. The Italians have a few moral treatises of this period, but chiefly scarce and little read. The Instituzioni Morali of Alexander Piccolomini, the Instituzioni di Tutta la Vita dell’Uomo Nato Nobile e in città Libera, by the same author, the Latin treatise of Mazzoni de Triplici Vita, which, though we mention it here as partly ethical, seems to be rather an attempt to give a general survey of all science, are among the least obscure, though they have never been of much reputation in Europe.[1068] But a more celebrated work, relating indeed to a minor department of ethics, the rules of polite and decorous behaviour, is the Galateo of Casa, bishop of Benevento, and an elegant writer of considerable reputation. This little treatise is not only accounted superior in style to most Italian prose, but serves to illustrate the manners of society in the middle of the sixteenth century. Some of the improprieties which he censures are such as we should hardly have expected to find in Italy, and almost remind us of a strange but graphic poem of one Dedekind, on the manners of Germany in the sixteenth century, called Grobianus. But his own precepts in other places, though hardly striking us as novel, are more refined, and relate to the essential principles of social intercourse, rather than to its conventional forms.[1069] Casa wrote also a little book on the duties to be observed between friends of equal ranks. The inferior, he advises, should never permit himself to jest upon his patron; but, if he is himself stung by any unpleasing wit or sharp word, ought to receive it with a smiling countenance, and to answer so as to conceal his resentment. It is probable that this art was understood in an Italian palace without the help of books.
[1068] For these books see Tiraboschi, Corniani, and Ginguéné. Niceron, vol. xxiii., observes of Piccolomini, that he was the first who employed the Italian language in moral philosophy. This must, however, be taken very strictly, for in a general sense of the word, we have seen earlier instances than his Instituzioni Morali in 1575.
[1069] Casa inveighs against the punctilious and troublesome ceremonies, introduced, as he supposes, from Spain, making distinctions in the mode of addressing different ranks of nobility. One of these innovations was the use of the third person for the second in letters.
In England. 16. There was never a generation in England which, for worldly prudence and wise observation of mankind, stood higher than the subjects of Elizabeth. Rich in men of strong mind, that age had given them a discipline unknown to ourselves; the strictness of the Tudor government, the suspicious temper of the queen, the spirit not only of intolerance, but of inquisitiveness as to religious dissent, the uncertainties of the future, produced a caution rather foreign to the English character, accompanied by a closer attention to the workings of other men’s minds, and their exterior signs. This, for similar reasons, had long distinguished the Italians; but it is chiefly displayed, perhaps, in their political writings. We find it, in a larger and more philosophical sense, near the end of Elizabeth’s reign, when our literature made its first strong shoot, prompting the short condensed reflections of Burleigh and Raleigh, or saturating with moral observation the mighty soul of Shakspeare.
Bacon’s Essays. 17. The first in time, and we may justly say, the first in excellence of English writings on moral prudence are the Essays of Bacon. But these, as we now read them, though not very bulky, are greatly enlarged since their first publication in 1597. They then were but ten in number:—entitled, 1. Of Studies; 2. Of Discourse; 3. Of Ceremonies and Respects; 4. Of Followers and Friends; 5. Of Suitors; 6. Of Expense; 7. Of Regimen of Health; 8. Of Honour and Reputation; 9. Of Faction; 10. Of Negotiating. And even these few have been expanded in later editions to nearly double their extent. The rest were added chiefly in 1612, and the whole were enlarged in 1625. The pith indeed of these ten essays will be found in the edition of 1597; the editions being merely to explain, correct, or illustrate. But, as a much greater number were incorporated with them in the next century, we shall say no more of Bacon’s Essays for the present.
Sect. II.—On Political Philosophy.
Freedom of Writing on Government at this Time—Its Causes—Hottoman—Languet—La Boetie—Buchanan—Rose—Mariana—The Jesuits—Botero and Paruta—Bodin—Analysis of his Republic.