[25] According to Henri Estienne, Postell himself vended strange heresies, one being to the effect that to make a good religion there were needed three—the Christian, the Jewish, and the Turkish. Apologie pour Hérodote, liv. i, ed. 1607, pp. 98–100. [↑]
[26] Published at Antwerp. It was reprinted in 1582, 1583, and 1590; translated into Latin in 1583, and frequently reprinted in that form; translated into English (begun by Sir Philip Sidney and completed by Arthur Golding) in 1587, and in that form at least thrice reprinted in blackletter. [↑]
[27] Ed. 1582, p. 18. Eng. tr. 1601, p. 10. [↑]
[28] Or even in modifying philosophic doctrine, save perhaps as regards Descartes, later. Cp. Bartholmess, Hist. crit. des doctr. relig. de la philos. moderne, 1855, i, 21–22. [↑]
[29] See Owen, Skeptics of the French Renaissance, pp. 631–36—a fairer and more careful estimate, than that of Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 111–13. [↑]
[30] Essais, bk. ii, ch. xiii, ed. Firmin-Didot, vol. ii, 2–3; King Lear, i, 2, near end; Les Amants Magnifiques, i, 2; iii, 1. Montaigne echoes Pliny (Hist. Nat. ii, 8), as Molière does Cicero, De Divinatione, ii, 43. [↑]
[31] “Our religion,” he writes, “is made to extirpate vices; it protects, nourishes, and incites them” (Essais, liv. ii, ch. xii; éd. Firmin-Didot, ii, 464). “There is no enmity so extreme as the Christian.” (I quote in general Florio’s translation for the flavour’s sake; but it should be noted that he makes many small slips.) [↑]
[32] Owen was mistaken (Skeptics of the French Renaissance, p. 414) in supposing that Montaigne spent several years over this translation. By Montaigne’s own account at the beginning of the Apologie, it was done in a few days. Cp. Miss Lowndes’s excellent monograph, Michel de Montaigne, pp. 103, 106. [↑]