Ye, loved books, no more
Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore,
To works that ne'er shall forfeit their renown,
Adding immortal labours of his own.—Wordsworth.
(Inscription for a monument in Crosthwaite Church).
P. 32. Montaigne.—Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne, began to write his essays in his château at Montaigne in Périgord in 1572, at the age of thirty-nine. The essays were published in 1580, and five editions had appeared before his death in 1592.
The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne translated by John Florio were first published in 1603. The translator was born in London about 1553, and he died in 1625. It is this translation from which my excerpts are given, and it is the only book known to have been in Shakespeare's library; the volume contains his autograph, and is now in the British Museum.
Emerson classes Montaigne in his Representative Men as the Sceptic. He calls to mind that Gibbon reckoned, in the bigoted times of the period, but two men of liberality in France—Henry IV and Montaigne—and adds, 'Though a Biblical plainness, coupled with a most uncanonical levity, may shut his pages to many sensitive readers, yet the offence is superficial.... I know not anywhere the book that seems less written. It is the language of conversation transferred to a book.'
P. 33. Denham.—Dominico Mancini wrote the Libellus de quattuor Virtutibus, published in Paris, 1484.
P. 37. Johnson.—The excerpts from Johnson and from Boswell's Life are taken, where possible, from Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Oxford edition.
P. 41. Rabelais.—The translation is that of Peter Anthony Motteux (1660-1718) and of Sir Thomas Urquhart (1611-1660).
It may be remembered that Pantagruel on his travels found in Paris 'the library of St. Victor, a very stately and magnificent one, especially in some books which were there', of which the Repertory or Catalogue is given. A few of the titles are:—The Pomegranate of Vice, The Henbane of the Bishops, The Crucible of Contemplation, The Flimflams of the Law, The Pleasures of the Monachal Life, Sixty-nine fat Breviaries, and The Chimney-sweeper of Astrology. Some of the titles are too 'Rabelaesian', or what some booksellers call 'curious', to print. A certain number of the books appear to have actually existed outside the author's imagination.
P. 45. Herrick.—These are, of course, separate poems, scattered fruit of the Hesperides. See also the note on page [390].