The thick net of deceit and of harm
Which the priests have spread over the world
Shall be rent and in laughter be hurled.
Bring me wine! I the earth will subdue.
Bring me wine! I the heaven will storm through.
Bring me wine, bring it quick, make no halt!
To the throne of both worlds will I vault.
All is in the red streamlet divine.
Bring me wine! O my host, bring me wine!"
'Etienne de la Boéce' gets its title (with Emersonian variations) from the name of one of Montaigne's most intimate friends,--Estienne de la Boëtie. Montaigne tells us about him in Chapter xxvii of his Essays, affirming that he would have accomplished miracles, had he lived. He died when only thirty-three at Bordeaux (1563). His scholarship was solid, his translations from the Greek excellent. He was so eager to read Greek that he copied whole volumes with his own hand. A French critic says, "Les qualités qui brillaient en lui imprimaient à toute sa personne un cachet distingué et un charme sévère." Yet he seems to have been something of an imitator of his great friend; and it is in this aspect of his life that Emerson regards him, using him, perhaps somewhat unjustly to his powers and developing genius, as the type of a too imitative disciple:--