To the Right Honourable Ladie Elizabeth Grey. (She was a daughter of Count Shrewsbury, a Talbot.) Of honorable TALBOT honored farre, The forecast and the fortune, by his WORD Montaigne here descrives; what by his Sword, What by his wit; this, as the guiding starre; That, as th' Aetolian blast, in peace or warre, At sea, or land, as cause did use afforde, Avant le vent, to tacke his sails aboarde, So as his course no orethwart crosse might barre, But he would sweetly sail before the wind; For Princes service, Countries good, his fame. Heire-Daughter of that prudent, constant kinde, Joyning thereto of GREY as great a name, Of both chief glories shrining in your minde, Honour him that your Honor doth proclaime.'
We have already learned from the preface of the first book of the Essais how Florio was 'sea-tosst, weather-beaten,' 'ship-wrackt,' 'almost drowned,' when exerting himself to capture the whale—Montaigne—and drag him through 'the rocke-rough Ocean' with the assistance of his colleague Diodati, whom he compares to 'a guide-fish.' Hamlet calls Polonius a fish-monger. The latter fools Hamlet by pretending that yonder cloud is in the shape of a whale, which just before appeared to him like the back of a weasel. Every word almost in this wonderful drama is a well-directed hit.
72: Essay III. 5.
73: Ibid. 13.
74: Ibid. 2.
75: The quarto of 1623 has only the third verse.
76: The old song has the word 'crouch.'
77: Essay III. 5, p. 460. Florio, p. 529.
78: We think it is worth while to quote the following verse Montaigne (III. 5) mentions when speaking of that nature of woman, which he thinks suggests to her every possible act of libidinousness:—
Nec tantum niveo gavisa est ulla columbo
Compar, vel si quid dicitur improbius,
Oscula mordenti semper decerpere rostro,
Quantum praecipue multivola est mulier.