Literary and Philosophical Essays_ French_ German and Italian Friedrich Schiller_ Gotthold Ephraim Lessing_ Michel de Montaigne_ Immanuel Kant_ Ernest Renan_ Charles Augustin Saint

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Title: Literary and Philosophical Essays: French, German and Italian

Author: Michel de Montaigne
Immanuel Kant
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Giuseppe Mazzini
Ernest Renan
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Friedrich Schiller

Release date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #5637]
Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5637

Credits: David Turner, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY AND
PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS: FRENCH, GERMAN AND ITALIAN ***

David Turner, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.

LITERARY AND
PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS
HARVARD CLASSICS V32

CONTENTS

THAT WE SHOULD NOT JUDGE OF OUR HAPPINESS UNTIL AFTER
OUR DEATH THAT
TO PHILOSOPHISE IS TO LEARNE How TO DIE OF THE
INSTITUTION AND
EDUCATION OF CHILDREN OF FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKES BY
MONTAIGNE

MONTAIGNE

WHAT IS A CLASSIC? BY CHASLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE

THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES BY ERNEST RENAN

THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE BY GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING

LETTERS UPON THE AESTHETIC EDUCATION OF MAN BY J. C. FRIEDRICH VON
SCHILLER

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSIC OF MORALS

TRANSITION FROM POPULAR MORAL PHILOSOPHY TO THE METAPHYSIC OF
MORALS

IMMANUEL KANT

BYRON AND GOETHE BY GIUSEPPE MAZZINI

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Michel Eyquem De Montaigne, the founder of the modern Essay, was born
February 28, 1533, at the chateau of Montaigne in Pirigord. He came of a
family of wealthy merchants of Bordeaux, and was educated at the College
de Guyenne, where he had among his teachers the great Scottish Latinist,
George Buchanan. Later he studied law, and held various public offices; but
at the age of thirty-eight he retired to his estates, where he lived apart from
the civil wars of the time, and devoted himself to study and thought. While
he was traveling in Germany and Italy, in 1580-81, he was elected mayor of
Bordeaux, and this office he filled for four years. He married in 1565, and
had six daughters, only one of whom grew up. The first two books of his
"Essays" appeared in 1580; the third in 1588; and four years later he died.

These are the main external facts of Montaigne's life: of the man himself
the portrait is to be found in his book. "It is myself I portray," he declares;
and there is nowhere in literature a volume of self-revelation surpassing his
in charm and candor. He is frankly egotistical, yet modest and
unpretentious; profoundly wise, yet constantly protesting his ignorance;
learned, yet careless, forgetful, and inconsistent. His themes are as wide and
varied as his observation of human life, and he has written the finest eulogy
of friendship the world has known. Bacon, who knew his book and
borrowed from it, wrote on the same subject; and the contrast of the essays
is the true reflection of the contrast between the personalities of their
authors.

Shortly after Montaigne's death the "Essays" were translated into English
by John Florio, with less than exact accuracy, but in a style so full of the
flavor of the age that we still read Montaigne in the version which
Shakespeare knew. The group of examples here printed exhibits the author

in a variety of moods, easy, serious, and, in the essay on "Friendship," as
nearly impassioned as his philosophy ever allowed him to become.

Reader, be here a well-meaning Booke. It doth at the firth entrance
forewarne thee, that in contriving the same I have proposed unto my selfe
no other than a familiar and private end: I have no respect or consideration
at all, either to thy service, or to my glory: my forces are not capable of any
such desseigne. I have vowed the same to the particular commodity of my
kinsfolks and friends: to the end, that losing me (which they are likely to
doe ere long), they may therein find some lineaments of my conditions and
humours, and by that meanes reserve more whole, and more lively foster
the knowledge and acquaintance they have had of me. Had my intention
beene to forestal and purchase the world's opinion and favour, I would
surely have adorned myselfe more quaintly, or kept a more grave and
solemne march. I desire therein to be delineated in mine owne genuine,
simple and ordinarie fashion, without contention, art or study; for it is
myself e I pourtray. My imperfections shall therein be read to the life, and
my naturall forme discerned, so farre-forth as publike reverence hath
permitted me. For if my fortune had beene to have lived among those
nations which yet are said to live under the sweet liberty of Nature's first
and uncorrupted lawes, I assure thee, I would most willingly have
pourtrayed my selfe fully and naked. Thus, gentle Reader, myself I am the
groundworke of my booke: it is then no reason thou shouldest employ thy
time about so frivolous and vaine a subject.

Therefore farewell.

From MONTAIGNE,
The First of March, 1580.

THAT WE SHOULD NOT JUDGE OF OUR
HAPPINESSE UNTILL AFTER OUR DEATH

scilicet ultima semper
Expectanda dies homini est, dicique beatus
Ante obitum nemo, supremaque funera debat.
[Footnote: Ovid. Met. 1, iii. 135.]

We must expect of man the latest day,
Nor ere he die, he's happie, can we say.

The very children are acquainted with the storie of Croesus to this
purpose: who being taken by Cyrus, and by him condemned to die, upon the
point of his execution, cried out aloud: "Oh Solon, Solon!" which words of
his, being reported to Cyrus, who inquiring what he meant by them, told
him, hee now at his owne cost verified the advertisement Solon had before
times given him; which was, that no man, what cheerefull and blandishing
countenance soever fortune shewed them, may rightly deeme himselfe
happie, till such time as he have passed the last day of his life, by reason of
the uncertaintie and vicissitude of humane things, which by a very light
motive, and slight occasion, are often changed from one to another cleane
contrary state and degree. And therefore Agesilaus answered one that
counted the King of Persia happy, because being very young, he had gotten
the garland of so mightie and great a dominion: "yea but said he, Priam at

the same age was not unhappy." Of the Kings of Macedon that succeeded
Alexander the Great, some were afterward seene to become Joyners and
Scriveners at Rome: and of Tyrants of Sicilie, Schoolemasters at Corinth.
One that had conquered halfe the world, and been Emperour over so many,
Armies, became an humble and miserable suter to the raskally officers of a
king of AEgypte: At so high a rate did that great Pompey purchase the
irkesome prolonging of his life but for five or six moneths. And in our
fathers daies, Lodowicke Sforze, tenth Duke of Millane, under whom the
State of Italic had so long beene turmoiled and shaken, was seene to die a
wretched prisoner at Loches in France, but not till he had lived and lingered
ten yeares in thraldom, which was the worst of his bargaine. The fairest
Queene, wife to the greatest King of Christendome, was she not lately scene
to die by the hands of an executioner? Oh unworthie and barbarous cruelties
And a thousand such examples. For, it seemeth that as the sea-billowes and
surging waves, rage and storme against the surly pride and stubborne height
of our buildings, so are there above, certaine spirits that envie the rising
prosperities and greatnesse heere below.

Vsque adeb res humanas vis abdita quadam
Obterit, et pulchros fasces sav&sque secures
Proculcare, ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur.
[Footnote: LUCRET. I. v. 1243.]

A hidden power so mens states hath out-worne
Faire swords, fierce scepters, signes of honours borne,
It seemes to trample and deride in scorne.

And it seemeth Fortune doth sometimes narrowly watch the last day of
our life, thereby to shew her power, and in one moment to overthrow what
for many yeares together she had been erecting, and makes us cry after
Laberius, Nimirum hoc die una plus vixi, mihi quam vivendum fuit.

[Footnote: MACHOB, 1, ii. 7.] Thus it is, "I have lived longer by this one
day than I should." So may that good advice of Solon be taken with reason.
But forsomuch as he is a Philosopher, with whom the favours or disfavours
of fortune, and good or ill lucke have no place, and are not regarded by him;
and puissances and greatnesses, and accidents of qualitie, are well-nigh
indifferent: I deeme it very likely he had a further reach, and meant that the
same good fortune of our life, which dependeth of the tranquillitie and
contentment of a welborne minde, and of the resolution and assurance of a
well ordered soule, should never be ascribed unto man, untill he have beene
scene play the last act of his comedie, and without doubt the hardest. In all
the rest there may be some maske: either these sophisticall discourses of
Philosophie are not in us but by countenance, or accidents that never touch
us to the quick, give us alwaies leasure to keep our countenance setled. But
when that last part of death, and of our selves comes to be acted, then no
dissembling will availe, then is it high time to speake plaine English, and
put off all vizards: then whatsoever the pot containeth must be shewne, be it
good or bad, foule or cleane, wine or water.

Nam vera voces tum demum pectore ab imo
Ejiciuntur, et eripitur persona, manet res.
[Footnote: LUCEET. 1. iii. 57.]

For then are sent true speeches from the heart,
We are ourselves, we leave to play a part.

Loe heere, why at this last cast, all our lives other actions must be tride
and touched. It is the master-day, the day that judgeth all others: it is the
day, saith an auncient Writer, that must judge of all my forepassed yeares.
To death doe I referre the essay [Footnote: Assay, exact weighing.] of my
studies fruit. There shall wee see whether my discourse proceed from my
heart, or from my mouth. I have scene divers, by their death, either in good

or evill, give reputation to all their forepassed life. Scipio, father-in-law to
Pompey, in well dying, repaired the ill opinion which untill that houre men
had ever held of him. Epaminondas being demanded which of the three he
esteemed most, either Chabrias, or Iphicrates, or himselfe: "It is necessary,"
said he, "that we be scene to die, before your question may well be
resolved." [Footnote: Answered.] Verily, we should steale much from him,
if he should be weighed without the honour and greatnesse of his end. God
hath willed it, as he pleased: but in my time three of the most execrable
persons that ever I knew in all abomination of life, and the most infamous,
have beene seen to die very orderly and quietly, and in every circumstance
composed even unto perfection. There are some brave and fortunate deaths.
I have seene her cut the twine of some man's life, with a progresse of
wonderful advancement, and with so worthie an end, even in the flowre of
his growth and spring of his youth, that in mine opinion, his ambitious and
haughtie couragious signes, thought nothing so high as might interrupt them
who without going to the place where he pretended, arived there more
gloriously and worthily than either his desire or hope aimed at, and by his
fall fore-went the power and name, whither by his course he aspired. When
I judge of other men's lives, I ever respect how they have behaved
themselves in their end; and my chiefest study is, I may well demeane my
selfe at my last gaspe, that is to say, quietly and constantly.

THAT TO PHILOSOPHISE IS TO LEARNE
HOW TO DIE

Cicero saith, that to Philosophise is no other thing than for a man to prepare
himselfe to death: which is the reason that studie and contemplation doth in
some sort withdraw our soule from us, and severally employ it from the
body, which is a kind of apprentisage and resemblance of death; or else it is,
that all the wisdome and discourse of the world, doth in the end resolve
upon this point, to teach us not to feare to die. Truly either reason mockes
us, or it only aimeth at our contentment, and in fine, bends all her travell to
make us live well, and as the holy Scripture saith, "at our ease." All the
opinions of the world conclude, that pleasure is our end, howbeit they take
divers meanes unto and for it, else would men reject them at their first
comming. For, who would give eare unto him, that for it's end would
establish our paine and disturbance? The dissentions of philosophicall sects
in this case are verbal: Transcurramus solertissimas Hugos [Footnote:
Travails, labours.] "Let us run over such over-fine fooleries and subtill
trifles." There is more wilfulnesse and wrangling among them, than pertains
to a sacred profession. But what person a man undertakes to act, he doth
ever therewithal! personate his owne. Allthough they say, that in vertue it
selfe, the last scope of our aime is voluptuousnes. It pleaseth me to
importune their eares still with this word, which so much offends their
hearing. And if it imply any chief pleasure or exceeding contentments, it is
rather due to the assistance of vertue, than to any other supply,

voluptuousnes being more strong, sinnowie, sturdie, and manly, is but more
seriously voluptuous. And we should give it the name of pleasure, more
favorable, sweeter, and more naturall; and not terme it vigor, from which it
hath his denomination. Should this baser sensuality deserve this faire name,
it should be by competencie, and not by privilege. I finde it lesse void of
incommodities and crosses than vertue. And besides that> her taste is more
fleeting, momentarie, and fading, she hath her fasts, her eyes, and her
travels, and both sweat and blood. Furthermore she hath particularly so
many wounding passions, and of so severall sorts, and so filthie and
loathsome a societie waiting upon her, that shee is equivalent to penitencie.
Wee are in the wrong, to thinke her incommodities serve her as a
provocation and seasoning to her sweetnes, as in nature one contrarie is
vivified by another contrarie: and to say, when we come to vertue, that like
successes and difficulties overwhelme it, and yeeld it austere and
inaccessible. Whereas much more properly then unto voluptuousnes, they
ennobled, sharpen, animate, and raise that divine and perfect pleasure,
which it meditates and procureth us. Truly he is verie unworthie her
acquaintance, that counter-ballanceth her cost to his fruit, and knowes
neither the graces nor use of it. Those who go about to instruct us, how her
pursuit is very hard and laborious, and her jovisance [Footnote: Enjoyment]
well-pleasing and delightfull: what else tell they us, but that shee is ever
unpleasant and irksome? For what humane meane [Footnote: Human
meana. man's life is subject, it is not with an equall care: as well because
accidents are not of such a necessitie, for most men passe their whole life
without feeling any want or povertie, and othersome without feeling any
griefe or sicknes, as Xenophilus the Musitian, who lived an hundred and six
yeares in perfect and continuall health: as also if the worst happen, death
may at all times, and whensoever it shall please us, cut off all other
inconveniences and crosses. But as for death, it is inevitable.] did ever
attaine unto an absolute enjoying of it? The perfectest have beene content

but to aspire and approach her, without ever possessing her. But they are
deceived; seeing that of all the pleasures we know, the pursute of them is
pleasant. The enterprise is perceived by the qualitie of the thing, which it
hath regard unto: for it is a good portion of the effect, and consubstantiall.
That happines and felicitie, which shineth in vertue, replenisheth her
approaches and appurtenances, even unto, the first entrance and utmost
barre. Now of all the benefits of vertue, the contempt of death is the
chiefest, a meane that furnisheth our life with an ease-full tranquillitie, and
gives us a pure and amiable taste of it: without which every other
voluptuousnes is extinguished. Loe, here the reasons why all rules
encounter and agree with this article. And albeit they all leade us with a
common accord to despise povertie, and other accidental! crosses, to which

Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Versatur urna, serius, ocius
Sors exitura, et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae,
[Footnote: Hor. I. iii. Od. iii. 25.]

All to one place are driv'n, of all
Shak't is the lot-pot, where-hence shall
Sooner or later drawne lots fall,
And to deaths boat for aye enthrall.

And by consequence, if she makes us affeard, it is a continual subject of
torment, and which can no way be eased. There is no starting-hole will hide
us from her, she will finde us wheresoever we are, we may as in a suspected
countrie start and turne here and there: quae quasi saxum Tantalo semper
impendet.[Footnote: Cic. De Fin. I. i.] "Which evermore hangs like the
stone over the head of Tantalus:" Our lawes doe often condemne and send
malefactors to be executed in the same place where the crime was

committed: to which whilest they are going, leade them along the fairest
houses, or entertaine them with the best cheere you can,

non Siculae dapes Dulcem elaborabunt saporem:
Non avium, citharaeque cantus
Somnum reducent.
[Footnote: Hor. I. iii. Od. i, 12.]

Not all King Denys daintie fare,
Can pleasing taste for them prepare:
No song of birds, no musikes sound
Can lullabie to sleepe profound.

Doe you thinke they can take any pleasure in it? or be any thing
delighted? and that the finall intent of their voiage being still before their
eies, hath not altered and altogether distracted their taste from all these
commodities and allurements?

Audit iter, numeratque dies, spatioque viarum
Metitur vitam, torquetur peste futura.
[Footnote: Claud, in Ruff. 1. ii. 137]

He heares his journey, counts his daies, so measures he
His life by his waies length, vext with the ill shall be.

The end of our cariere is death, it is the necessarie object of our aime: if it
affright us, how is it possible we should step one foot further without an
ague? The remedie of the vulgar sort is, not to think on it. But from what
brutall stupiditie may so grosse a blindnesse come upon him? he must be
made to bridle his Asse by the taile,

Qiti capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro.
[Footnote: Lucret. 1. iv. 474]

Who doth a course contrarie runne
With his head to his course begunne.

It is no marvell if he be so often taken tripping; some doe no sooner heare
the name of death spoken of, but they are afraid, yea the most part will
crosse themselves, as if they heard the Devill named. And because mention
is made of it in mens wils and testaments, I warrant you there is none will
set his hand to them, til the physitian hath given his last doome, and utterly
forsaken him. And God knowes, being then betweene such paine and feare,
with what sound judgment they endure him. For so much as this syllable
sounded so unpleasantly in their eares, and this voice seemed so ill boding
and unluckie, the Romans had learned to allay and dilate the same by a
Periphrasis. In liew of saying, he is dead, or he hath ended his daies, they
would say, he hath lived. So it be life, be it past or no, they are comforted:
from whom we have borrowed our phrases quondam, alias, or late such a
one. It may haply be, as the common saying is, the time we live is worth the
mony we pay for it. I was borne betweene eleven of the clocke and noone,
the last of Februarie 1533, according to our computation, the yeare
beginning the first of Januarie. It is but a fortnight since I was 39 yeares old.
I want at least as much more. If in the meane time I should trouble my
thoughts with a matter so farre from me, it were but folly. But what? we see
both young and old to leave their life after one selfe-same condition. No
man departs otherwise from it, than if he but now came to it, seeing there is
no man so crazed,[Footnote: Infirm] bedrell, [Footnote: Bedridden.] or
decrepit, so long as he remembers Methusalem, but thinkes he may yet live
twentie yeares. Moreover, seely [Footnote: Simple, weak.] creature as thou
art, who hath limited the end of thy daies? Happily thou presumest upon
physitians reports. Rather consider the effect and experience. By the

common course of things long since thou livest by extraordinarie favour.
Thou hast alreadie over-past the ordinarie tearmes of common life: And to
prove it, remember but thy acquaintances, and tell me how many more of
them have died before they came to thy age, than have either attained or
outgone the same: yea, and of those that through renoune have ennobled
their life, if thou but register them, I will lay a wager, I will finde more that
have died before they came to five and thirty years, than after. It is
consonant with reason and pietie, to take example by the humanity of Jesus
Christ, who ended his humane life at three and thirtie yeares. The greatest
man that ever was, being no more than a man, I meane Alexander the Great,
ended his dayes, and died also of that age. How many severall meanes and
waies hath death to surprise us!

Quid quisque vitet, nunquam homini satis
Cautum est in horas
[Footnote: Hor. 1. ii. Od. xiii. 13.]

A man can never take good heed,
Hourely what he may shun and speed.

I omit to speak of agues and pleurisies; who would ever have imagined
that a Duke of Brittanie should have beene stifled to death in a throng of
people, as whilome was a neighbour of mine at Lyons, when Pope Clement
made his entrance there? Hast thou not seene one of our late Kings slaine in
the middest of his sports? and one of his ancestors die miserably by the
chocke [Footnote: Shock.] of an hog? Eschilus fore threatned by the fall of
an house, when he stood most upon his guard, strucken dead by the fall of a
tortoise shell, which fell out of the tallants of an eagle flying in the air? and
another choaked with the kernell of a grape? And an Emperour die by the
scratch of a combe, whilest he was combing his head? And Aemylius
Lepidus with hitting his foot against a doore-seele? And Aufidius with

stumbling against the Consull-chamber doore as he was going in thereat?
And Cornelius Gallus, the Praetor, Tigillinus, Captaine of the Romane
watch, Lodowike, sonne of Guido Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, end their
daies betweene womens thighs? And of a farre worse example Speusippus,
the Platonian philosopher, and one of our Popes? Poore Bebius a Judge,
whilest he demurreth the sute of a plaintife but for eight daies, be hold, his
last expired: And Caius Iulius a Physitian, whilest he was annointing the
eies of one of his patients, to have his owne sight closed for ever by death.
And if amongst these examples, I may adde one of a brother of mine, called
Captain Saint Martin, a man of three and twentie yeares of age, who had
alreadie given good testimonie of his worth and forward valour, playing at
tennis, received a blow with a ball, that hit him a little above the right eare,
without apparance of any contusion, bruse, or hurt, and never sitting or
resting upon it, died within six houres after of an apoplexie, which the blow
of the ball caused in him. These so frequent and ordinary examples,
hapning, and being still before our eies, how is it possible for man to forgo
or for get the remembrance of death? and why should it not continually
seeme unto us, that shee is still ready at hand to take us by the throat? What
matter is it, will you say unto me, how and in what manner it is, so long as a
man doe not trouble and vex himselfe therewith? I am of this opinion, that
howsoever a man may shrowd or hide himselfe from her dart, yea, were it
under an oxe-hide, I am not the man would shrinke backe: it sufficeth me to
live at my ease; and the best recreation I can have, that doe I ever take; in
other matters, as little vain glorious, and exemplare as you list.

—praetulerim delirus inersque videri,
Dum mea delectent mala me, vel denique fallant,
Quam sapere et ringi
[Footnote: Hor. 1. ii. Episi. ii 126]

A dotard I had rather seeme, and dull,
Sooner my faults may please make me a gull,
Than to be wise, and beat my vexed scull.

But it is folly to thinke that way to come unto it. They come, they goe,
they trot, they daunce: but no speech of death. All that is good sport. But if
she be once come, and on a sudden and openly surprise, either them, their
wives, their children, or their friends, what torments, what out cries, what
rage, and what despaire doth then overwhelme them? saw you ever
anything so drooping, so changed, and so distracted? A man must looke to
it, and in better times fore-see it. And might that brutish carelessenesse
lodge in the minde of a man of understanding (which I find altogether
impossible) she sels us her ware at an overdeere rate: were she an enemie
by mans wit to be avoided, I would advise men to borrow the weapons of
cowardlinesse: but since it may not be, and that be you either a coward or a
runaway, an honest or valiant man, she overtakes you,

Nempe et fugacem persequitur virum,
Nec parcit imbellis juventae
Poplitibus, timidoque tergo.
[Footnote: Hor. 1. iii. Od. ii. 14.]

Shee persecutes the man that flies,
Shee spares not weake youth to surprise,
But on their hammes and backe turn'd plies.

And that no temper of cuirace [Footnote: Cuirass.] may shield or defend
you,

Ille licet ferro cauius se condat et aere,
Mors tamen inclusum protraket inde caput.
[Footnote: Propert. 1. iii. et xvii. 5]

Though he with yron and brasse his head empale,
Yet death his head enclosed thence will hale.

Let us learne to stand, and combat her with a resolute minde. And being
to take the greatest advantage she hath upon us from her, let us take a cleane
contrary way from the common, let us remove her strangenesse from her,
let us converse, frequent, and acquaint our selves with her, let us have
nothing so much in minde as death, let us at all times and seasons, and in
the ugliest manner that may be, yea with all faces shapen and represent the
same unto our imagination. At the stumbling of a horse, at the fall of a
stone, at the least prick with a pinne, let us presently ruminate and say with
our selves, what if it were death it selfe? and thereupon let us take heart of
grace, and call our wits together to confront her. Amiddest our bankets,
feasts, and pleasures, let us ever have this restraint or object before us, that
is, the remembrance of our condition, and let not pleasure so much mislead
or transport us, that we altogether neglect or forget, how many waies, our
joyes, or our feastings, be subject unto death, and by how many hold-fasts
shee threatens us and them. So did the AEgyptians, who in the middest of
their banquetings, and in the full of their greatest cheere, caused the
anatomie [Footnote: Skeleton] of a dead man to be brought before them, as
a memorandum and warning to their guests.

Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum,
Grata superveniet; quae non sperabitur, hora?
[Footnote: Hor. 1. i. Epist. iv. 13.]

Thinke every day shines on thee as thy last,
Welcome it will come, whereof hope was past.

It is uncertaine where death looks for us; let us expect her everie where:
the premeditation of death, is a forethinking of libertie. He who hath
learned to die, hath unlearned to serve. There is no evill in life, for him that

hath well conceived, how the privation of life is no evill. To know how to
die, doth free us from all subjection and constraint. Paulus AEmilius
answered one, whom that miserable king of Macedon his prisoner sent to
entreat him he would not lead him in triumph, "Let him make that request
unto himselfe." Verily, if Nature afford not some helpe in all things, it is
very hard that art and industrie should goe farre before. Of my selfe, I am
not much given to melancholy, but rather to dreaming and sluggishness.
There is nothing wherewith I have ever more entertained my selfe, than
with the imaginations of death, yea in the most licentious times of my age.

Iucundum, cum atas florida ver ageret
[Footnote: Catul. Eleg. iv. 16.]

When my age flourishing
Did spend its pleasant spring.

Being amongst faire Ladies, and in earnest play, some have thought me
busied, or musing with my selfe, how to digest some jealousie, or
meditating on the uncertaintie of some conceived hope, when God he
knowes, I was entertaining my selfe with the remembrance of some one or
other, that but few daies before was taken with a burning fever, and of his
sodaine end, comming from such a feast or meeting where I was my selfe,
and with his head full of idle conceits, of lore, and merry glee; supposing
the same, either sickness or end, to be as neere me as him.

Iam fuerit, nec post, unquam revocare licebit.
[Footnote: Lucr. I. iii. 947.]

Now time would be, no more You can this time restore.

I did no more trouble my selfe or frowne at such conceit, [Idea.] than at
any other. It is impossible we should not apprehend or feele some motions

or startings at such imaginations at the first, and comming sodainely upon
us; but doubtlesse, he that shall manage and meditate upon them with an
impartiall eye, they will assuredly, in tract [Course.] of time, become
familiar to him: Otherwise, for my part, I should be in continuall feare and
agonie; for no man did ever more distrust his life, nor make lesse account of
his continuance: Neither can health, which hitherto I have so long enjoied,
and which so seldome hath beene crazed, [Enfeebled.] lengthen my hopes,
nor any sicknesse shorten them of it. At every minute me thinkes I make an
escape. And I uncessantly record unto my selfe, that whatsoever may be
done another day, may be effected this day. Truly hazards and dangers doe
little or nothing approach us at our end: And if we consider, how many
more there remaine, besides this accident, which in number more than
millions seeme to threaten us, and hang over us; we shall find, that be we
sound or sicke, lustie or weake, at sea or at land, abroad or at home, fighting
or at rest, in the middest of a battell or, in our beds, she is ever alike neere
unto us. Nemo altero fragilior est, nemo in crastinum sui certior: "No man
is weaker then other; none surer of himselfe (to live) till to morrow."
Whatsoever I have to doe before death, all leasure to end the same seemeth
short unto me, yea were it but of one houre. Some body, not long since
turning over my writing tables, found by chance a memoriall of something I
would have done after my death: I told him (as indeed it was true), that
being but a mile from my house, and in perfect health and lustie, I had made
haste to write it, because I could not assure my self I should ever come
home in safety: As one that am ever hatching of mine owne thoughts, and
place them in my selfe: I am ever prepared about that which I may be: nor
can death (come when she please) put me in mind of any new thing. A man
should ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready booted to take his journey,
and above all things, looke he have then nothing to doe but with himselfe.

Quid brevi fortes jaculamur aevo
Multa:

[Footnote: Hor. 1. ii. Od. Xiv]

To aime why are we ever bold,
At many things in so short hold?

For then we shall have worke sufficient, without any more accrease.
Some man complaineth more that death doth hinder him from the assured
course of an hoped for victorie, than of death it selfe; another cries out, he
should give place to her, before he have married his daughter, or directed
the course of his childrens bringing up; another bewaileth he must forgoe
his wives company; another moaneth the losse of his children, the chiefest
commodities of his being. I am now by meanes of the mercy of God in such
a taking, that without regret or grieving at any worldly matter, I am
prepared to dislodge, whensoever he shall please to call me: I am every
where free: my farewell is soone taken of all my friends, except of my selfe.
No man did ever pre pare himselfe to quit the world more simply and fully,
or more generally spake of all thoughts of it, than I am assured I shall doe.
The deadest deaths are the best.

—Miser, de miser (aiunt) omnia ademit.
Vna dies infesta mihi tot praemia vitae:
[Footnote: Luce. 1. iii. 941.]

O wretch, O wretch (friends cry), one day,
All joyes of life hath tane away:

And the builder,

—manent (saith he) opera interrupta, minaeque Murorum ingentes.
[Footnote: Virg. Aen. 1. iv. 88.]

The workes unfinisht lie,
And walls that threatned hie.

A man should designe nothing so long afore-hand, or at least with such
an intent, as to passionate[Footnote: Long passionately.] himselfe to see the
end of it; we are all borne to be doing.

Cum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus
[Footnote: Ovid. Am. 1. ii. El. x. 36]

When dying I my selfe shall spend,
Ere halfe my businesse come to end.

I would have a man to be doing, and to prolong his lives offices as much
as lieth in him, and let death seize upon me whilest I am setting my cabiges,
carelesse of her dart, but more of my unperfect garden. I saw one die, who
being at his last gaspe, uncessantly complained against his destinie, and that
death should so unkindly cut him off in the middest of an historie which he
had in hand, and was now come to the fifteenth or sixteenth of our Kings.

Illud in his rebus non addunt, nec tibi earum,
Iam desiderium rerum super insidet uno.
[Footnote: Luce. 1. iii. 44.]

Friends adde not that in this case, now no more
Shalt thou desire, or want things wisht before.

A man should rid himselfe of these vulgar and hurtful humours. Even as
Churchyards were first place adjoyning unto churches, and in the most
frequented places of the City, to enure (as Lycurgus said) the common
people, women and children, not to be skared at the sight of a dead man,

and to the end that continuall spectacle of bones, sculs, tombes, graves and
burials, should forewarne us of our condition, and fatall end.

Quin etiam exhilarare viris convivia caede
Mos olim, et miscere epulis spectacula dira
Certantum ferro, saepe et super ipsa cadentum
Pocula, respersis non parco sanguine mensis.
[Footnote: Syl. 1. xi. 51]

Nay more, the manner was to welcome guests,
And with dire shewes of slaughter to mix feasts.
Of them that fought at sharpe, and with bords tainted
Of them with much bloud, who o'er full cups fainted.

And even as the AEgyptians after their feastings and carousings caused a
great image of death to be brought in and shewed to the guests and
bytanders, by one that cried aloud, "Drinke and be merry, for such shalt
thou be when thou art dead: "So have I learned this custome or lesson, to
have alwaies death, not only in my imagination, but continually in my
mouth. And there is nothing I desire more to be informed of than of the
death of men; that is to say, what words, what countenance, and what face
they shew at their death; and in reading of histories, which I so attentively
observe. It appeareth by the shuffling and hudling up[Footnote: Collecting]
of my examples, I affect[Footnote: Like] no subject so particularly as this.
Were I a composer of books, I would keepe a register, commented of the
divers deaths, which in teaching men to die, should after teach them to live.
Dicearcus made one of that title, but of another and lesse profitable end.
Some man will say to mee, the effect exceeds the thought so farre, that there
is no fence so sure, or cunning so certaine, but a man shall either lose or
forget if he come once to that point; let them say what they list: to
premeditate on it, giveth no doubt a great advantage: and it is nothing, at the

least, to goe so farre without dismay or alteration, or without an ague?
There belongs more to it: Nature her selfe lends her hand, and gives us
courage. If it be a short and violent death, wee have no leisure to feare it; if
otherwise, I perceive that according as I engage my selfe in sicknesse, I doe
naturally fall into some disdaine and contempt of life. I finde that I have
more adoe to digest this resolution, that I shall die when I am in health, than
I have when I am troubled with a fever: forsomuch as I have no more such
fast hold on the commodities of life, whereof I begin to lose the use and
pleasure, and view death in the face with a lesse undanted looke, which
makes me hope, that the further I goe from that, and the nearer I approach
to this, so much more easily doe I enter in composition for their exchange.
Even as I have tried in many other occurrences, which Caesar affirmed, that
often some things seeme greater, being farre from us, than if they bee neere
at hand: I have found that being in perfect health, I have much more beene
frighted with sicknesse, than when I have felt it. The jollitie wherein I live,
the pleasure and the strength make the other seeme so disproportionable
from that, that by imagination I amplifie these commodities by one moitie,
and apprehended them much more heavie and burthensome, than I feele
them when I have them upon my shoulders. The same I hope will happen to
me of death. Consider we by the ordinary mutations, and daily declinations
which we suffer, how Nature deprives us of the sight of our losse and
empairing; what hath an aged man left him of his youths vigor, and of his
forepast life?

Heu senibus vita portio quanta manet
[Footnote: Com. Gal. 1. i. 16.]

Alas to men in yeares how small
A part of life is left in all?

Caesar, to a tired and crazed [Footnote: diseased] Souldier of his guard,
who in the open street came to him, to beg leave he might cause himselfe to
be put to death; viewing his decrepit behaviour, answered pleasantly:
"Doest thou thinke to be alive then?" Were man all at once to fall into it, I
doe not thinke we should be able to beare such a change, but being faire and
gently led on by her hand, in a slow, and as it were unperceived descent, by
little and little, and step by step, she roules us into that miserable state, and
day by day seekes to acquaint us with it. So that when youth failes in us, we
feele, nay we perceive no shaking or transchange at all in our selves: which
in essence and veritie is a harder death, than that of a languishing and
irkesome life, or that of age. Forsomuch as the leape from an ill being unto
a not being, is not so dangerous or steepie; as it is from a delightfull and
flourishing being unto a painfull and sorrowfull condition. A weake
bending, and faint stopping bodie hath lesse strength to beare and under goe
a heavie burden: So hath our soule. She must bee rouzed and raised against
the violence and force of this adversarie. For as it is impossible she should
take any rest whilest she feareth: whereof if she be assured (which is a thing
exceeding humane [Footnote: human] condition) she may boast that it is
impossible unquietnesse, torment, and feare, much lesse the least
displeasure should lodge in her.

Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida, neque Auster,
Dux inquieti turbidus Adria,
Nec fulminantis magna Jovis manus.
[Footnote: Hor. I. iii. Od. iii.]

No urging tyrants threatning face,
Where minde is found can it displace,
No troublous wind the rough seas Master,
Nor Joves great hand, the thunder-caster.

She is made Mistris of her passions and concupiscence, Lady of
indulgence, of shame, of povertie, and of all for tunes injuries. Let him that
can, attaine to this advantage: Herein consists the true and soveraigne
liberty, that affords us meanes wherewith to jeast and make a scorne of
force and injustice, and to deride imprisonment, gives [Footnote: Gyves,
shackles] or fetters.

—in manicis, et
Compedibus, savo te sub custode tenebo.
Ipse Deus simui atque volam, me solvet: opinor
Hoc sentit, moriar. Mors ultima linea rerum est.
[Footnote: Hor. I. i. Ep. xvi. 76.]

In gyves and fetters I will hamper thee,
Under a Jayler that shall cruell be:
Yet, when I will, God me deliver shall,
He thinkes, I shall die: death is end of all.

Our religion hath had no surer humane foundation than the contempt of
life. Discourse of reason doth not only call and summon us unto it. For why
should we feare to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be moaned? but
also, since we are threatened by so many kinds of death, there is no more
inconvenience to feare them all, than to endure one: what matter is it when
it commeth, since it is unavoidable? Socrates answered one that told him,
"The thirty tyrants have condemned thee to death." "And Nature them," said
he. What fondnesse is it to carke and care so much, at that instant and
passage from all exemption of paine and care? As our birth brought us the
birth of all things, so shall our death the end of all things. Therefore is it as
great follie to weepe, we shall not live a hundred yeeres hence, as to waile
we lived not a hundred yeeres agoe. "Death is the beginning of another
life." So wept we, and so much did it cost us to enter into this life; and so

did we spoile us of our ancient vaile in entring into it. Nothing can be
grievous that is but once. Is it reason so long to fear a thing of so short
time? Long life or short life is made all one by death. For long or short is
not in things that are no more. Aristotle saith, there are certaine little beasts
alongst the river Hyspanis, that live but one day; she which dies at 8
o'clocke in the morning, dies in her youth, and she that dies at 5 in the
afternoon, dies in her decrepitude, who of us doth not laugh, when we shall
see this short moment of continuance to be had in consideration of good or
ill fortune? The most and the least is ours, if we compare it with eternitie, or
equall it to the lasting of mountains, rivers, stars, and trees, or any other
living creature, is not lesse ridiculous. But nature compels us to it. Depart
(saith she) out of this world, even as you came into it. The same way you
came from death to life, returne without passion or amazement, from life to
death: your death is but a peece of the worlds order, and but a parcell of the
worlds life.

—inter se mortales mutua vivunt,
Et quasi cursores vitae lampada tradunt.
[Footnote: Lucret. ii. 74. 77.]

Mortall men live by mutuall entercourse:
And yeeld their life-torch, as men in a course.

Shal I not change this goodly contexture of things for you? It is the
condition of your creation: death is a part of yourselves: you flie from
yourselves. The being you enjoy is equally shared betweene life and death.
The first day of your birth doth as wel addresse you to die, as to live.

Prima quae vitam dedit, hora, carpsit.
[Footnote: Sen. Her. Sw. ckor. Iii.]

The first houre, that to men
Gave life, strait, cropt it then.

Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet:
[Footnote: Manil. At. l. iv]

As we are borne we die; the end
Doth of th' originall depend.

All the time you live, you steale it from death: it is at her charge. The
continuall worke of your life, is to contrive death: you are in death, during
the time you continue in life: for, you are after death, when you are no
longer living. Or if you had rather have it so, you are dead after life: but
during life, you are still dying: and death doth more rudely touch the dying
than the dead, and more lively and essentially. If you have profited by life,
you have also beene fed thereby, depart then satisfied.

Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis?
[Footnote: Lucret. 1. iii. 982.]

Why like a full-fed guest,
Depart you not to rest?

If you have not knowne how to make use of it: if it were unprofitable to
you, what need you care to have lost it to what end would you enjoy it
longer?

—cur amplius addere quaeris Rursum quod pereat male, et
ingratum occidat omne? [Footnote: Lucret. 1. iii. 989.]

Why seeke you more to gaine, what must againe
All perish ill, and passe with griefe or paine?

Life in itselfe is neither good nor evill: it is the place of good or evill,
according as you prepare it for them. And if you have lived one day, you
have seene all: one day is equal to all other daies. There is no other light,
there is no other night. This Sunne, this Moone, these Starres, and this
disposition, is the very same which your forefathers enjoyed, and which
shall also entertaine your posteritie.

Non alium videre patres, aliumve nepotes
Aspicient.
[Footnote: Manil. i. 523.]

No other saw our Sires of old,
No other shall their sonnes behold.

And if the worst happen, the distribution and varietie of all the acts of my
comedie, is performed in one yeare. If you have observed the course of my
foure seasons; they containe the infancie, the youth, the viriltie, and the old
age of the world. He hath plaied his part: he knowes no other wilinesse
belonging to it, but to begin againe, it will ever be the same, and no other.

Versamur ibidem, atque insumus usque,
[Footnote: Lucret. 1. iii. 123.]

We still in one place turne about,
Still there we are, now in, now out.

Atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus.
[Footnote: Virg. Georg. 1. ii. 403.]

The yeare into it selfe is cast
By those same steps, that it hath past.

I am not purposed to devise you other new sports.

Nam tibi praterea quod machiner, inveniamque
Quod placeat nihil est; eadem suni omnia semper.
[Footnote: Lucret. 1. ii. 978.]

Else nothing, that I can devise or frame,
Can please thee, for all things are still the same.

Make roome for others, as others have done for you. Equalitie is the
chiefe ground-worke of equitie, who can complaine to be comprehended
where all are contained? So may you live long enough, you shall never
diminish anything from the time you have to die: it is bootlesse; so long
shall you continue in that state which you feare, as if you had died, being in
your swathing-clothes, and when you were sucking.

—licet, quot vis, vivendo vincere secla.
Mors sterna tamen, nihilominus ilia manebit.
[Footnote: Ib. 1126.]

Though yeares you live, as many as you will,
Death is eternall, death remaineth still.

And I will so please you, that you shall have no discontent.

In vera nescis nullum fore morte alium te,
Qui possit vivus tibi te lugere peremptum,
Stansque jacentem.
[Footnote: Idt. 1. Iii. 9.]

Thou know'st not there shall be not other thou,
When thou art dead indeed, that can tell how
Alive to waile thee dying, Standing to waile thee lying.

Nor shall you wish for life, which you so much desire

Nec sibi enim quisquam tum se vitamque requirit,
[Footnote: ib. 963.]
Nec desiderium nostri nos afficit ullum.
[Footnote: Ib. 966.]

For then none for himselfe or life requires:
Nor are we of our selves affected with desires.

Death is lesse to be feared than nothing, if there were anything lesse than
nothing.

—multo mortem minus ad nos esse putandum,
Si minus esse potest quam quod nihil esse videmus.
[Footnote: Ib. 970.]

Death is much less to us, we ought esteeme,
If lesse may be, than what doth nothing seeme.

Nor alive, nor dead, it doth concern you nothing. Alive because you are:
Dead, because you are no more. Moreover, no man dies before his houre.
The time you leave behinde was no more yours than that which was before
your birth, and concerneth you no more.

Respice enim quam nil ad nos anteacta vetustas
Temporis aeterni fuerit.
[Footnote: Ib. 1016.]

For marke, how all antiquitie foregone
Of all time ere we were, to us was none.

Wheresoever your life ended, there is it all. The profit of life consists not
in the space, but rather in the use. Some man hath lived long, that hath a
short life, Follow it whilst you have time. It consists not in number of

yeeres, but in your will, that you have lived long enough. Did you thinke
you should never come to the place, where you were still going? There is no
way but hath an end. And if company may solace you, doth not the whole
world walke the same path?

—Omnia te, vita perfuncta, sequentur.
[Footnote: Ib. 1012.]

Life past, all things at last
Shall follow thee as thou hast past.

Doe not all things move as you doe, or keepe your course? Is there any
thing grows not old together with yourselfe? A thousand men, a thousand
beasts, and a thousand other creatures die in the very instant that you die.

Nam nox nulla diem, neque noctem aurora sequuta est,
Que non audierit mistus vagitibus aegris
Ploratus, mortis comites et funeris atri.
[Footnote: Id. i. ii. 587.]

No night ensued day light; no morning followed night,
Which heard not moaning mixt with sick-mens groaning,
With deaths and funerals joyned was that moaning.

To what end recoile you from it, if you cannot goe backe. You have seene
many who have found good in death, ending thereby many many miseries.
But have you seene any that hath received hurt thereby? Therefore it is
meere simplicitie to condemne a thing you never approve, neither by
yourselfe nor any other. Why doest thou complaine of me and of destinie?
Doe we offer thee any wrong? is it for thee to direct us, or for us to governe
thee? Although thy age be not come to her period, thy life is. A little man is
a whole man as well as a great man. Neither men nor their lives are

measured by the Ell. Chiron refused immortalitie, being informed of the
conditions thereof, even by the God of time and of continuance, Saturne his
father. Imagine truly how much an ever-during life would be lesse tolerable
and more painfull to a man, than is the life which I have given him. Had
you not death you would then uncessantly curse, and cry out against me,
that I had deprived you of it. I have of purpose and unwittingly blended
some bitternesse amongst it, that so seeing the commoditie of its use, I
might hinder you from over- greedily embracing, or indiscreetly calling for
it. To continue in this moderation that is, neither to fly from life nor to run
to death (which I require of you) I have tempered both the one and other
betweene sweetnes and sowrenes. I first taught Thales, the chiefest of your
Sages and Wisemen, that to live and die were indifferent, which made him
answer one very wisely, who asked him wherefore he died not: "Because,"
said he, "it is indifferent. The water, the earth, the aire, the fire, and other
members of this my universe, are no more the instruments of thy life than of
thy death. Why fearest thou thy last day? He is no more guiltie, and
conferreth no more to thy death, than any of the others. It is not the last step
that causeth weariness: it only declares it. All daies march towards death,
only the last comes to it." Behold heere the good precepts of our universall
mother Nature. I have oftentimes bethought my self whence it proceedeth,
that in times of warre, the visage of death (whether wee see it in us or in
others) seemeth without all comparison much lesse dreadful and terrible
unto us, than in our houses, or in our beds, otherwise it should be an armie
of Physitians and whiners, and she ever being one, there must needs bee
much more assurance amongst countrie-people and of base condition, than
in others. I verily believe, these fearefull lookes, and astonishing
countenances wherewith we encompass it, are those that more amaze and
terrifie us than death: a new forme of life; the out cries of mothers; the
wailing of women and children; the visitation of dismaid and swouning
friends; the assistance of a number of pale-looking, distracted, and whining

servants; a darke chamber; tapers burning round about; our couch beset
round with Physitians and Preachers; and to conclude, nothing but horror
and astonishment on every side of us: are wee not already dead and buried?
The very children are afraid of their friends, when they see them masked;
and so are we. The maske must as well be taken from things as from men,
which being removed, we shall find nothing hid under it, but the very same
death, that a seely[Footnote: weak, simple] varlet, or a simple maid-servant,
did latterly suffer without amazement or feare. Happie is that death which
takes all leasure from the preparations of such an equipage.

OF THE INSTITUTION AND EDUCATION OF
CHILDREN; TO THE LADIE DIANA OF FOIX,
COUNTESSE OF GURSON

I never knew father, how crooked and deformed soever his sonne were, that
would either altogether cast him off, or not acknowledge him for his owne:
and yet (unlesse he be meerely besotted or blinded in his affection) it may
not be said, but he plainly perceiveth his defects, and hath a feeling of his
imperfections. But so it is, he is his owne. So it is in my selfe. I see better
than any man else, that what I have set downe is nought but the fond
imaginations of him who in his youth hath tasted nothing but the paring,
and seen but the superficies of true learning: whereof he hath retained but a
generall and shapelesse forme: a smacke of every thing in generall, but
nothing to the purpose in particular: After the French manner. To be short, I
know there is an art of Phisicke; a course of lawes; foure parts of the
Mathematikes; and I am not altogether ignorant what they tend unto. And
perhaps I also know the scope and drift of Sciences in generall to be for the
service of our life. But to wade further, or that ever I tired my selfe with
plodding upon Aristotle (the Monarch of our moderne doctrine 1) or
obstinately continued in search of any one science: I confesse I never did it.
Nor is there any one art whereof I am able so much as to draw the first
lineaments. And there is no scholler (be he of the lowest forme) that may
not repute himselfe wiser than I, who am not able to oppose him in his first
lesson: and if I be forced to it, I am constrained verie impertinently to draw

in matter from some generall discourse, whereby I examine, and give a
guesse at his naturall judgement: a lesson as much unknowne to them as
theirs is to me. I have not dealt or had commerce with any excellent booke,
except Plutarke or Seneca, from whom (as the Danaides) I draw my water,
uncessantly filling, and as fast emptying: some thing whereof I fasten to this
paper, but to my selfe nothing at all. And touching bookes: Historie is my
chiefe studie, Poesie my only delight, to which I am particularly affected:
for as Cleanthes said, that as the voice being forciblie pent in the narrow
gullet of a trumpet, at last issueth forth more strong and shriller, so me
seemes, that a sentence cunningly and closely couched in measure keeping
Posie, darts it selfe forth more furiously, and wounds me even to the quicke.
And concerning the naturall faculties that are in me (whereof behold here
an essay), I perceive them to faint under their owne burthen; my conceits,
[Footnote: Ideas.] and my judgement march but uncertaine, and as it were
groping, staggering, and stumbling at every rush: And when I have gone as
far as I can, I have no whit pleased my selfe: for the further I saile the more
land I descrie, and that so dimmed with fogges, and overcast with clouds,
that my sight is so weakned, I cannot distinguish the same. And then
undertaking to speake indifferently of all that presents it selfe unto my
fantasie, and having nothing but mine owne naturall meanes to imploy
therein, if it be my hap (as commonly it is) among good Authors, to light
upon those verie places which I have undertaken to treat off, as even now I
did in Plutarke reading his discourse of the power of imagination, wherein
in regard of those wise men, I acknowledge my selfe so weake and so
poore, so dull and grose-headed, as I am forced both to pittie and disdaine
my selfe, yet am I pleased with this, that my opinions have often the grace
to jump with theirs, and that I follow them a loofe-off, [Footnote: At a
distance.] and thereby possesse at least, that which all other men have not;
which is, that I know the utmost difference betweene them and my selfe: all
which notwithstanding, I suffer my inventions to run abroad, as weake and

faint as I have produced them, without bungling and botching the faults
which this comparison hath discovered to me in them. A man had need have
a strong backe, to undertake to march foot to foot with these kind of men.
The indiscreet writers of our age, amidst their triviall [Footnote:
Commonplace.] compositions, intermingle and wrest in whole sentences
taken from ancient Authors, supposing by such filching-theft to purchase
honour and reputation to themselves, doe cleane contrarie. For, this infinite
varietie and dissemblance of lustres, makes a face so wan, so il-favored, and
so uglie, in respect of theirs, that they lose much more than gaine thereby.
These were two contrarie humours: The Philosopher Chrisippus was wont
to foist-in amongst his bookes, not only whole sentences and other long-
long discourses, but whole bookes of other Authors, as in one, he brought in
Euripides his Medea. And Apollodorus was wont to say of him, that if one
should draw from out his bookes what he had stolne from others, his paper
would remaine blanke. Whereas Epicurus cleane contrarie to him in three
hundred volumes he left behind him, had not made use of one allegation.
[Footnote: Citation.] It was my fortune not long since to light upon such a
place: I had languishingly traced after some French words, so naked and
shallow, and so void either of sense or matter, that at last I found them to be
nought but meere French words; and after a tedious and wearisome travell, I
chanced to stumble upon an high, rich, and even to the clouds-raised piece,
the descent whereof had it been somewhat more pleasant or easie, or the
ascent reaching a little further, it had been excusable, and to be borne with-
all; but it was such a steepie downe-fall, and by meere strength hewen out
of the maine rocke, that by reading of the first six words, me thought I was
carried into another world: whereby I perceive the bottome whence I came
to be so low and deep, as I durst never more adventure to go through it; for,
if I did stuffe any one of my discourses with those rich spoiles, it would
manifestly cause the sottishnesse [Footnote: Foolishness.] of others to
appeare. To reprove mine owne faults in others, seemes to me no more

unsufferable than to reprehend (as I doe often) those of others in my selfe.
They ought to be accused every where, and have all places of Sanctuarie
taken from them: yet do I know how over boldly, at all times I adventure to
equall my selfe unto my filchings, and to march hand in hand with them;
not without a fond hardie hope, that I may perhaps be able to bleare the
eyes of the Judges from discerning them. But it is as much for the benefit of
my application, as for the good of mine invention and force. And I doe not
furiously front, and bodie to bodie wrestle with those old champions: it is
but by flights, advantages, and false offers I seek to come within them, and
if I can, to give them a fall. I do not rashly take them about the necke, I doe
but touch them, nor doe I go so far as by my bargaine I would seeme to doe;
could I but keepe even with them, I should then be an honest man; for I
seeke not to venture on them, but where they are strongest. To doe as I have
seen some, that is, to shroud themselves under other armes, not daring so
much as to show their fingers ends unarmed, and to botch up all their works
(as it is an easie matter in a common subject, namely for the wiser sort)
with ancient inventions, here and there hudled up together. And in those
who endeavoured to hide what they have filched from others, and make it
their owne, it is first a manifest note of injustice, then a plaine argument of
cowardlinesse; who having nothing of any worth in themselves to make
show of, will yet under the countenance of others sufficiencie goe about to
make a faire offer: Moreover (oh great foolishnesse) to seek by such
cosening [Footnote: Cheating.] tricks to forestall the ignorant approbation
of the common sort, nothing fearing to discover their ignorance to men of
understanding (whose praise only is of value) who will soone trace out such
borrowed ware. As for me, there is nothing I will doe lesse. I never speake
of others, but that I may the more speake of my selfe. This concerneth not
those mingle-mangles of many kinds of stuffe, or as the Grecians call them
Rapsodies, that for such are published, of which kind I have (since I came
to yeares of discretion) seen divers most ingenious and wittie; amongst

others, one under the name of Capilupus; besides many of the ancient
stampe. These are wits of such excellence, as both here and elsewhere they
will soone be perceived, as our late famous writer Lipsius, in his learned
and laborious work of the Politikes: yet whatsoever come of it, for so much
as they are but follies, my intent is not to smother them, no more than a bald
and hoarie picture of mine, where a Painter hath drawne not a perfect
visage, but mine owne. For, howsoever, these are but my humors and
opinions, and I deliver them but to show what my conceit [Footnote:
notion] is, and not what ought to be beleeved. Wherein I ayme at nothing
but to display my selfe, who peradventure (if a new prentiship change me)
shall be another to morrow. I have no authoritie to purchase beliefe, neither
do I desire it; knowing well that I am not sufficiently taught to instruct
others. Some having read my precedent Chapter [Footnote: "Of
Pedantism"], told me not long since in mine owne house, I should
somewhat more have extended my selfe in the discourse concerning the
institution of children. Now (Madam) if there were any sufficiencie in me
touching that subject, I could not better employ the same than to bestow it
as a present upon that little lad, which ere long threatneth to make a happie
issue from out your honorable woombe; for (Madame) you are too generous
to begin with other than a man childe. And having had so great a part in the
conduct of your successeful marriage, I may challenge some right and
interest in the greatnesse and prosperitie of all that shall proceed from it:
moreover, the ancient and rightfull possession, which you from time to time
have ever had, and still have over my service, urgeth me with more than
ordinarie respects, to wish all honour, well-fare and advantage to
whatsoever may in any sort concerne you and yours. And truly, my meaning
is but to show that the greatest difficultie, and importing all humane
knowledge, seemeth to be in this point, where the nurture and institution of
young children is in question. For, as in matters of husbandrie, the labor that
must be used before sowing, setting, and planting, yea in planting itselfe, is

most certaine and easie. But when that which was sowen, set and planted,
commeth to take life; before it come to ripenesse, much adoe, and great
varietie of proceeding belongeth to it. So in men, it is no great matter to get
them, but being borne, what continuall cares, what diligent attendance, what
doubts and feares, doe daily wait to their parents and tutors, before they can
be nurtured and brought to any good? The fore-shew of their inclination
whilest they are young is so uncertaine, their humours so variable, their
promises so changing, their hopes so false, and their proceedings so
doubtful, that it is very hard (yea for the wisest) to ground any certaine
judgment, or assured successe upon them. Behold Cymon, view
Themistocles, and a thousand others, how they have differed, and fallen to
better from themselves, and deceive the expectation of such as knowe them.
The young whelps both of Dogges and Beares at first sight shew their
naturall disposition, but men headlong embracing this custome or fashion,
following that humor or opinion, admitting this or that passion, allowing of
that or this law, are easily changed, and soone disguised; yet it is hard to
force the naturall propension or readinesse of the mind, whereby it
followeth, that for want of heedie fore-sight in those that could not guide
their course well, they often employ much time in vaine, to addresse young
children in those matters whereunto they are not naturally addicted. All
which difficulties notwithstanding, mine opinion is, to bring them up in the
best and profitablest studies, and that a man should slightly passe over those
fond presages, and deceiving prognostikes, which we over precisely gather
in their infancie. And (without offence be it said) me thinks that Plato in his
"Commonwealth" allowed them too- too much authoritie.

Madame, Learning joyned with true knowledge is an especiall and
gracefull ornament, and an implement of wonderful use and consequence,
namely, in persons raised to that degree of fortune wherein you are. And in
good truth, learning hath not her owne true forme, nor can she make shew
of her beauteous lineaments, if she fall into the hands of base and vile

persons. [For, as famous Torquato Tasso saith: "Philosophie being a rich
and noble Queene, and knowing her owne worth, graciously smileth upon
and lovingly embraceth Princes and noble men, if they become suiters to
her, admitting them as her minions, and gently affoording them all the
favours she can; whereas upon the contrarie, if she be wooed, and sued unto
by clownes, mechanicall fellowes, and such base kind of people, she holds
herselfe disparaged and disgraced, as holding no proportion with them. And
therefore see we by experience, that if a true Gentleman or nobleman follow
her with any attention, and woo her with importunitie, he shall learne and
know more of her, and prove a better scholler in one yeare, than an ungentle
or base fellow shall in seven, though he pursue her never so attentively."]
She is much more readie and fierce to lend her furtherance and direction in
the conduct of a warre, to attempt honourable actions, to command a
people, to treat a peace with a prince of forraine nation, than she is to forme
an argument in Logick, to devise a Syllogisme, to canvase a case at the
barre, or to prescribe a receit of pills. So (noble Ladie) forsomuch as I
cannot perswade myselfe, that you will either forget or neglect this point,
concerning the institution of yours, especially having tasted the sweetnesse
thereof, and being descended of so noble and learned a race. For we yet
possesse the learned compositions of the ancient and noble Earles of Foix,
from out whose heroicke loynes your husband and you take your of-spring.
And Francis Lord of Candale, your worthie uncle, doth daily bring forth
such fruits thereof, as the knowledge of the matchlesse qualitie of your
house shall hereafter extend itselfe to many ages; I will therefore make you
acquainted with one conceit of mine, which contrarie to the common use I
hold, and that is all I am able to affoord you concerning that matter. The
charge of the Tutor, which you shall appoint your sonne, in the choice of
whom consisteth the whole substance of his education and bringing up; on
which are many branches depending, which (forasmuch as I can adde
nothing of any moment to it) I will not touch at all. And for that point,

wherein I presume to advise him, he may so far forth give credit unto it, as
he shall see just cause. To a gentleman borne of noble parentage, and heire
of a house that aymeth at true learning, and in it would be disciplined, not
so much for gane or commoditie to himselfe (because so abject an end is far
unworthie the grace and favour of the Muses, and besides, hath a regard or
dependencie of others) nor for externall shew and ornament, but to adorne
and enrich his inward minde, desiring rather to shape and institute an able
and sufficient man, than a bare learned man; my desire is therefore, that the
parents or overseers of such a gentleman be very circumspect, and careful
in chusing his director, whom I would rather commend for having a well
composed and temperate braine, than a full stuft head, yet both will doe
well. And I would rather prefer wisdome, judgement, civill customes, and
modest behaviour, than bare and meere literall learning; and that in his
charge he hold a new course. Some never cease brawling in their schollers
eares (as if they were still pouring in a tonell) to follow their booke, yet is
their charge nothing else but to repeat what hath beene told them before. I
would have a tutor to correct this part, and that at first entrance, according
to the capacitie of the wit he hath in hand, he should begin to make shew of
it, making him to have a smacke of all things, and how to choose and
distinguish them, without helpe of others, sometimes opening him the way,
other times leaving him to open it by himselfe. I would not have him to
invent and speake alone, but suffer his disciple to speake when his turne
commeth. Socrates, and after him Arcesilaus, made their schollers to speake
first, and then would speake themselves. Obest plerumque iis qui discere
volunt, auctoritas eorum qui docent: [Footnote: CIC. De Nat. 1. i] "Most
commonly the authoritie of them that teach, hinders them that would
learne."

It is therefore meet that he make him first trot-on before him, whereby he
may the better judge of his pace, and so guesse how long he will hold out,
that accordingly he may fit his strength; for want of which proportion we

often marre all. And to know how to make a good choice, and how far forth
one may proceed (still keeping a due measure), is one of the hardest labours
I know. It is a signe of a noble, and effect of an undanted spirit, to know
how to second, and how far forth he shall condescend to his childish
proceedings, and how to guide them. As for myselfe, I can better and with
more strength walke up than downe a hill. Those which, according to our
common fashion, undertake with one selfe-same lesson, and like maner of
education, to direct many spirits of divers formes and different humours, it
is no marvell if among a multitude of children, they scarce meet with two or
three that reap any good fruit by their discipline, or that come to any
perfection. I would not only have him to demand an accompt of the words
contained in his lesson, but of the sense and substance thereof, and judge of
the profit he hath made of it, not by the testimonie of his memorie, but by
the witnesse of his life. That what he lately learned, he cause him to set
forth and pourtray the same into sundrie shapes, and then to accommodate it
to as many different and severall subjects, whereby he shal perceive,
whether he have yet apprehended the same, and therein enfeoffed himselfe,
[Footnote: Taken possession.] at due times taking his instruction from the
institution given by Plato. It is a signe of cruditie and indigestion for a man
to yeeld up his meat, even as he swallowed the same; the stomacke hath not
wrought his full operation, unlesse it have changed forme, and altered
fashion of that which was given him to boyle and concoct.

[Wee see men gape after no reputation but learning, and when they say,
such a one is a learned man, they thinke they have said enough;] Our minde
doth move at others pleasure, and tyed and forced to serve the fantasies of
others, being brought under by authoritie, and forced to stoope to the lure of
their bare lesson; wee have beene so subjected to harpe upon one string,
that we have no way left us to descant upon voluntarie; our vigor and
libertie is cleane extinct. Nunquam tutelae suae fiunt: "They never come to
their owne tuition." It was my hap to bee familiarlie acquainted with an

honest man at Pisa, but such an Aristotelian, as he held this infallible
position; that a conformitie to Aristotles doctrine was the true touchstone
and squire [Footnote: Square.] of all solid imaginations and perfect veritie;
for, whatsoever had no coherencie with it, was but fond Chimeraes and idle
humors; inasmuch as he had knowne all, seene all, and said all. This
proposition of his being somewhat over amply and injuriously interpreted
by some, made him a long time after to be troubled in the inquisition of
Rome. I would have him make his scholler narrowly to sift all things with
discretion, and harbour nothing in his head by mere authoritie, or upon
trust. Aristotles principles shall be no more axiomes unto him, than the
Stoikes or Epicurians. Let this diversitie of judgements be proposed unto
him, if he can, he shall be able to distinguish the truth from falsehood, if
not, he will remaine doubtful.

Che non men che saper dubbiar m'aggrata.
[Footnote: DANTE, Inferno, cant. xi. 93.]

No lesse it pleaseth me,
To doubt, than wise to be.

For if by his owne discourse he embrace the opinions of Xenophon or of
Plato, they shall be no longer theirs, but his. He that meerely followeth
another, traceth nothing, and seeketh nothing: Non sumus sub Rege, sibi
quisque se vindicet: [Footnote: SEN. Epist. xxxiii.] "We are not under a
Kings command, every one may challenge himselfe, for let him at least
know that he knoweth." It is requisite he endevour as much to feed himselfe
with their conceits, as labour to learne their precepts; which, so he know
how to applie, let him hardily forget, where or whence he had them. Truth
and reason are common to all, and are no more proper unto him that spake
them heretofore, then unto him that shall speake them hereafter. And it is no
more according to Platoes opinion than to mine, since both he and I

understand and see alike. The Bees do here and there sucke this and cull
that flower, but afterward they produce the hony, which is peculiarly their
owne, then is it no more Thyme or Majoram. So of peeces borrowed of
others, he may lawfully alter, transforme, and confound them, to shape out
of them a perfect peece of worke, altogether his owne; alwaies provided his
judgement, his travell, [Footnote: Travail, labor.] studie, and institution tend
to nothing, but to frame the same perfect. Let him hardily conceale where or
whence he hath had any helpe, and make no shew of anything, but of that
which he hath made himselfe. Pirates, pilchers, and borrowers, make a shew
of their purchases and buildings, but not of that which they have taken from
others: you see not the secret fees or bribes Lawyers take of their Clients,
but you shall manifestly discover the alliances they make, the honours they
get for their children, and the goodly houses they build. No man makes
open shew of his receits, but every one of his gettings. The good that comes
of studie (or at least should come) is to prove better, wiser and honester. It
is the understanding power (said Epicharmus) that seeth and heareth, it is it
that profiteth all and disposeth all, that moveth, swayeth, and ruleth all: all
things else are but blind, senselesse, and without spirit. And truly in barring
him of libertie to doe any thing of himselfe, we make him thereby more
servile and more coward. Who would ever enquire of his scholler what he
thinketh of Rhetorike, of Grammar, of this or of that sentence of Cicero?
Which things thoroughly fethered (as if they were oracles) are let flie into
our memorie; in which both letters and syllables are substantiall parts of the
subject. To know by roat is no perfect knowledge, but to keep what one hath
committed to his memories charge, is commendable: what a man directly
knoweth, that will he dispose of, without turning still to his booke or
looking to his pattern. A meere bookish sufficiencie is unpleasant. All I
expect of it is an imbellishing of my actions, and not a foundation of them,
according to Platoes mind, who saith, constancie, faith, and sinceritie are
true Philosophie; as for other Sciences, and tending elsewhere, they are but

garish paintings. I would faine have Paluel or Pompey, those two excellent
dauncers of our time, with all their nimblenesse, teach any man to doe their
loftie tricks and high capers, only with seeing them done, and without
stirring out of his place, as some Pedanticall fellowes would instruct our
minds without moving or putting it in practice. And glad would I be to find
one that would teach us how to manage a horse, to tosse a pike, to shoot-off
a peece, to play upon the lute, or to warble with the voice, without any
exercise, as these kind of men would teach us to judge, and how to speake
well, without any exercise of speaking or judging. In which kind of life, or
as I may terme it, Prentiship, what action or object soever presents itselfe
into our eies, may serve us in stead of a sufficient booke. A prettie pranke of
a boy, a knavish tricke of a page, a foolish part of a lackey, an idle tale or
any discourse else, spoken either in jest or earnest, at the table or in
companie, are even as new subjects for us to worke upon: for furtherance
whereof, commerce or common societie among men, visiting of forraine
countries, and observing of strange fashions, are verie necessary, not only to
be able (after the manner of our yong gallants of France) to report how
many paces the Church of Santa Rotonda is in length or breadth, or what
rich garments the curtezan Signora Livia weareth, and the worth of her
hosen; or as some do, nicely to dispute how much longer or broader the face
of Nero is, which they have seene in some old ruines of Italie, than that
which is made for him in other old monuments else-where. But they should
principally observe, and be able to make certaine relation of the humours
and fashions of those countries they have seene, that they may the better
know how to correct and prepare their wits by those of others. I would
therefore have him begin even from his infancie to travell abroad; and first,
that at one shoot he may hit two markes he should see neighbour- countries,
namely where languages are most different from ours; for, unlesse a mans
tongue be fashioned unto them in his youth, he shall never attaine to the
true pronunciation of them if he once grow in yeares. Moreover, we see it

received as a common opinion of the wiser sort, that it agreeth not with
reason, that a childe be alwaies nuzzled, cockered, dandled, and brought up
in his parents lap or sight; forsomuch as their naturall kindnesse, or (as I
may call it) tender fondnesse, causeth often, even the wisest to prove so
idle, so over-nice, and so base-minded. For parents are not capable, neither
can they find in their hearts to see them checkt, corrected, or chastised, nor
indure to see them brought up so meanly, and so far from daintinesse, and
many times so dangerously, as they must needs be. And it would grieve
them to see their children come home from those exercises, that a
Gentleman must necessarily acquaint himselfe with, sometimes all wet and
bemyred, other times sweatie and full of dust, and to drinke being either
extreme hot or exceeding cold; and it would trouble them to see him ride a
rough-untamed horse, or with his weapon furiously incounter a skilful
Fencer, or to handle or shoot-off a musket; against which there is no
remedy, if he will make him prove a sufficient, compleat, or honest man: he
must not be spared in his youth; and it will come to passe, that he shall
many times have occasion and be forced to shocke the rules of Physicke.

Vitamque sub dio et trepidis agat
In rebus.
[Footnote: Hor. I. i. Od. ii. 4.]

Leade he his life in open aire,
And in affaires full of despaire.

It is not sufficient to make his minde strong, his muskles must also be
strengthened: the mind is over-borne if it be not seconded: and it is too
much for her alone to discharge two offices. I have a feeling how mine
panteth, being joyned to so tender and sensible [Footnote: Sensitive.] a
bodie, and that lieth so heavie upon it And in my lecture, I often perceive
how my Authors in their writings sometimes commend examples for

magnanimitie and force, that rather proceed from a thicke skin and hardnes
of the bones. I have knowne men, women and children borne of so hard a
constitution, that a blow with a cudgell would lesse hurt them, than a filip
would doe me, and so dull and blockish, that they will neither stir tongue
nor eyebrowes, beat them never so much. When wrestlers goe about to
counterfeit the Philosophers patience, they rather shew the vigor of their
sinnewes than of their heart. For the custome to beare travell, is to tolerate
griefe: Labor callum obducit dolori. [Footnote: Cic. Tusc. Qu. I. ii.]
"Labour worketh a hardnesse upon sorrow." Hee must be enured to suffer
the paine and hardnesse of exercises, that so he may be induced to endure
the paine of the colicke, of cauterie, of fals, of sprains, and other diseases
incident to mans bodie: yea, if need require, patiently to beare
imprisonment and other tortures, by which sufferance he shall come to be
had in more esteeme and accompt: for according to time and place, the
good as well as the bad man may haply fall into them; we have seen it by
experience. Whosoever striveth against the lawes, threats good men with
mischiefe and extortion. Moreover, the authoritie of the Tutor (who should
be soveraigne over him) is by the cockering and presence of the parents,
hindred and interrupted: besides the awe and respect which the houshold
beares him, and the knowledge of the meane, possibilities, and greatnesse
of his house, are in my judgement no small lets [Footnote: Hindrances.]in a
young Gentleman. In this schoole of commerce, and societie among men, I
have often noted this vice, that in lieu of taking acquaintance of others, we
only endevour to make our selves knowne to them: and we are more ready
to utter such merchandize as we have, than to ingrosse and purchase new
commodities. Silence and modestie are qualities very convenient to civil
conversation. It is also necessary that a young man be rather taught to be
discreetly-sparing and close-handed, than prodigally-wastfull and lavish in
his expences, and moderate in husbanding his wealth when he shall come to
possesse it. And not to take pepper in the nose for every foolish tale that

shall be spoken in his presence, because it is an uncivil importunity to
contradict whatsoever is not agreeing to our humour: let him be pleased to
correct himselfe. And let him not seeme to blame that in others which he
refuseth to doe himselfe, nor goe about to withstand common fashions,
Licet sapere sine pompa, sine invidia: [Footnote: SEN. Epist. ciii. f.] "A
man may bee wise without ostentation, without envie." Let him avoid those
imperious images of the world, those uncivil behaviours and childish
ambition wherewith, God wot, too-too many are possest: that is, to make a
faire shew of that which is not in him: endevouring to be reputed other than
indeed he is; and as if reprehension and new devices were hard to come by,
he would by that meane acquire into himselfe the name of some peculiar
vertue. As it pertaineth but to great Poets to use the libertie of arts; so is it
tolerable but in noble minds and great spirits to have a preheminence above
ordinarie fashions. Si quid Socrates et Aristippus contra morem et
consuetudinem fecerunt, idem sibi ne arbitretur licere: Magis enim illi et
divinis bonis hanc licentiam assequebantur: [Footnote: CIC. Off. 1. i.] "If
Socrates and Aristippus have done ought against custome or good manner,
let not a man thinke he may doe the same: for they obtained this licence by
their great and excellent good parts:" He shall be taught not to enter rashly
into discourse or contesting, but when he shall encounter with a Champion
worthie his strength; And then would I not have him imploy all the tricks
that may fit his turne, but only such as may stand him in most stead. That he
be taught to be curious in making choice of his reasons, loving pertinency,
and by consequence brevitie. That above all, he be instructed to yeeld, yea
to quit his weapons unto truth, as soone as he shall discerne the same,
whether it proceed from his adversarie, or upon better advice from
himselfe; for he shall not be preferred to any place of eminencie above
others, for repeating of a prescript [Footnote: Fixed beforehand.] part; and
he is not engaged to defend any cause, further than he may approove it; nor
shall he bee of that trade where the libertie for a man to repent and re-advise

himselfe is sold for readie money, Neque, ut omnia, que praescripta et
imperata sint, defendat, necessitate ulla cogitur: [Footnote: CIC. Acad. Qu.
I. iv.] "Nor is he inforced by any necessitie to defend and make good all that
is prescribed and commanded him." If his tutor agree with my humour, he
shall frame his affection to be a most loyall and true subject to his Prince,
and a most affectionate and couragious Gentleman in al that may concerne
the honor of his Soveraigne or the good of his countrie, and endevour to
suppresse in him all manner of affection to undertake any action Otherwise
than for a publike good and dutie. Besides many inconveniences, which
greatly prejudice our libertie by reason of these particular bonds, the
judgment of a man that is waged and bought, either it is lesse free and
honest, or else it is blemisht with oversight and ingratitude. A meere and
precise Courtier can neither have law nor will to speake or thinke otherwise
than favourablie of his Master, who among so many thousands of his
subjects hath made choice of him alone, to institute and bring him up with
his owne hand. These favours, with the commodities that follow minion
[Footnote: Favorite.] Courtiers, corrupt (not without some colour of reason)
his libertie, and dazle his judgement. It is therefore commonly scene that
the Courtiers- language differs from other mens, in the same state, and to be
of no great credit in such matters. Let therefore his conscience and vertue
shine in his speech, and reason be his chiefe direction, Let him be taught to
confesse such faults as he shall discover in his owne discourses, albeit none
other perceive them but himselfe; for it is an evident shew of judgement,
and effect of sinceritie, which are the chiefest qualities he aymeth at. That
wilfully to strive, and obstinately to contest in words, are common qualities,
most apparent in basest mindes: That to readvise and correct himselfe, and
when one is most earnest, to leave an ill opinion, are rare, noble, and
Philosophicall conditions. Being in companie, he shall be put in minde, to
cast his eyes round about, and every where: For I note, that the chiefe
places are usually seezed upon by the most unworthie and lesse capable;

and that height of fortune is seldome joyned with sufficiencie. I have scene
that whilst they at the upper end of a board were busie entertaining
themselves with talking of the beautie of the hangings about a chamber, or
of the taste of some good cup of wine, many good discourses at the lower
end have utterly been lost. He shall weigh the carriage of every man in his
calling, a Heardsman, a Mason, a Stranger, or a Traveller; all must be
imployed; every one according to his worth; for all helps to make up
houshold; yea, the follie and the simplicitie of others shall be as instructions
to him. By controlling the graces and manners of others, he shall acquire
unto himselfe envie of the good and contempt of the bad. Let him hardly be
possest with an honest curiositie to search out the nature and causes of all
things: let him survay whatsoever is rare and singular about him; a building,
a fountaine, a man, a place where any battell hath been fought, or the
passages of Caesar or Charlemaine.

Quae tellus sit lenta gelu, qua putris ab aestu,
Ventus in Italiam quis bene vela ferat.
[Footnote: Prop. 1. iv. El. iii. 39.]

What land is parcht with heat, what clog'd with frost.
What wind drives kindly to th' Italian coast.

He shall endevour to be familiarly acquainted with the customes, with the
meanes, with the state, with the dependances and alliances of all Princes;
they are things soone and pleasant to be learned, and most profitable to be
knowne. In this acquaintance of men, my intending is, that hee chiefely
comprehend them, that live but by the memorie of bookes. He shall, by the
help of Histories, in forme himselfe of the worthiest minds that were in the
best ages. It is a frivolous studie, if a man list, but of unvaluable worth to
such as can make use of it, and as Plato saith, the only studie the
Lacedemonians reserved for themselves. What profit shall he not reap,

touching this point, reading the lives of our Plutark? Alwayes conditioned,
the master bethinke himselfe whereto his charge tendeth, and that he
imprint not so much in his schollers mind the date of the ruine of Carthage,
as the manners of Hanniball and Scipio, nor so much where Marcellus died,
as because he was unworthy of his devoire [Footnote: Task.] he died there:
that he teach him not so much to know Histories as to judge of them. It is
amongst things that best agree with my humour, the subject to which our
spirits doe most diversly applie themselves. I have read in Titus Livius a
number of things, which peradventure others never read, in whom Plutarke
haply read a hundred more than ever I could read, and which perhaps the
author himselfe did never intend to set downe. To some kind of men it is a
meere gramaticali studie, but to others a perfect anatomie [Footnote:
Dissection, analytical exposition.] of Philosophie; by meanes whereof the
secretest part of our nature is searched into. There are in Plutarke many
ample discourses most worthy to be knowne: for in my judgement, he is the
chiefe work- master of such works, whereof there are a thousand, whereat
he hath but slightly glanced; for with his finger he doth but point us out a
way to walke in, if we list; and is sometimes pleased to give but a touch at
the quickest and maine point of a discourse, from whence they are by
diligent studie to be drawne, and so brought into open market. As that
saying of his, That the inhabitants of Asia served but one alone, because
they could not pronounce one onely syllable, which is Non, gave perhaps
both subject and occasion to my friend Boetie to compose his booke of
voluntarie servitude. If it were no more but to see Plutarke wrest a slight
action to mans life, or a word that seemeth to beare no such sence, it will
serve for a whole discourse. It is pittie men of understanding should so
much love brevitie; without doubt their reputation is thereby better, but we
the worse. Plutarke had rather we should commend him for his judgement
than for his knowledge, he loveth better to leave a kind of longing-desire in
us of him, than a satietie. He knew verie well that even in good things too

much may be said: and that Alexandridas did justly reprove him who spake
verie good sentences to the Ephores, but they were over tedious. Oh
stranger, quoth he, thou speakest what thou oughtest, otherwise then
[Footnote: Than.] thou shouldest. Those that have leane and thin bodies
stuffe them up with bumbasting. [Footnote: Padding.] And such as have but
poore matter, will puffe it up with loftie words. There is a marvelous
cleerenesse, or as I may terme it an enlightning of mans judgement drawne
from the commerce of men, and by frequenting abroad in the world; we are
all so contrived and compact in our selves, that our sight is made shorter by
the length of our nose. When Socrates was demaunded whence he was, he
answered, not of Athens, but of the world; for he, who had his imagination
more full and farther stretching, embraced all the world for his native Citie,
and extended his acquaintance, his societie, and affections to all man- kind:
and not as we do, that looke no further than our feet. If the frost chance to
nip the vines about my village, my Priest doth presently argue that the wrath
of God hangs over our head, and threatneth all mankind: and judgeth that
the Pippe [Footnote: A disease.] is alreadie falne upon the Canibals.

In viewing these intestine and civill broiles of ours, who doth not
exclaime, that this worlds vast frame is neere unto a dissolution, and that
the day of judgement is readie to fall on us? never remembering that many
worse revolutions have been seene, and that whilest we are plunged in
griefe, and overwhelmed in sorrow, a thousand other parts of the world
besides are blessed with happinesse, and wallow in pleasures, and never
thinke on us? whereas, when I behold our lives, our licence, and impunitie,
I wonder to see them so milde and easie. He on whose head it haileth,
thinks all the Hemispheare besides to be in a storme and tempest. And as
that dull-pated Savoyard said, that if the seelie [Footnote 31: Simple.] King
of France could cunningly have managed his fortune, he might verie well
have made himselfe chiefe Steward of his Lords household, whose
imagination conceived no other greatnesse than his Masters; we are all

insensible of this kind of errour: an errour of great consequence and
prejudice. But whosoever shall present unto his inward eyes, as it were in a
Table, the Idea of the great image of our universall mother Nature, attired in
her richest robes, sitting in the throne of her Majestic, and in her visage
shall read so generall and so constant a varietie; he that therein shall view
himselfe, not himselfe alone, but a whole Kingdome, to be in respect of a
great circle but the smallest point that can be imagined, he onely can value
things according to their essentiall greatnesse and proportion. This great
universe (which some multiplie as Species under one Genus) is the true
looking-glasse wherein we must looke, if we will know whether we be of a
good stamp or in the right byase. To conclude, I would have this worlds-
frame to be my Schollers choise-booke. [Footnote: Book of examples] So
many strange humours, sundrie sects, varying judgements, diverse opinions,
different lawes, and fantasticall customes teach us to judge rightly of ours,
and instruct our judgement to acknowledge his imperfections and naturall
weaknesse, which is no easie an apprentiship: So many innovations of
estates, so many fals of Princes, and changes of publike fortune, may and
ought to teach us, not to make so great accompt of ours: So many names, so
many victories, and so many conquests buried in darke oblivion, makes the
hope to perpetuate our names but ridiculous, by the surprising of ten Argo-
lettiers, [Footnote: Mounted Bowmen.] or of a small cottage, which is
knowne but by his fall. The pride and fiercenesse of so many strange and
gorgeous shewes: the pride-puft majestie of so many courts, and of their
greatnesse, ought to confirme and assure our sight, undauntedly to beare the
affronts and thunder-claps of ours, without feeling our eyes: So many
thousands of men, lowlaide in their graves afore us, may encourage us not
to feare, or be dismaied to go meet so good companie in the other world,
and so of all things else. Our life (said Pithagoras) drawes neare unto the
great and populous assemblies of the Olympike games, wherein some, to
get the glorie and to win the goale of the games, exercise their bodies with

all industrie; others, for greedinesse of gaine, bring thither marchandise to
sell: others there are (and those be not the worst) that seek after no other
good, but to marke how wherefore, and to what end, all things are done: and
to be spectators or observers of other mens lives and actions, that so they
may the better judge and direct their owne. Unto examples may all the most
profitable Discourses of Philosophic be sorted, which ought to be the touch-
stone of human actions, and a rule to square them by, to whom may be said,

—-quid fas optare, quid asper Vtile nummus habet, patriae
charisque propinquis Quantum elargiri deceat, quem te Deus esse
lussit, et humana qua parte locaius es in re. [Footnote: Pers. Sat. iii.
69.] Quid sumus, aut quidnam victuri gignimur. [Footnote: Ib. 67.]

What thou maiest wish, what profit may come cleare,
From new-stampt coyne, to friends and countrie deare
What thou ought'st give: whom God would have thee bee,
And in what part mongst men he placed thee.
What we are, and wherefore,
To live heer we were bore.

What it is to know, and not to know (which ought to be the scope of
studie), what valour, what temperance, and what justice is: what difference
there is betweene ambition and avarice, bondage and freedome, subjection
and libertie, by which markes a man may distinguish true and perfect
contentment, and how far-forth one ought to feare or apprehend death,
griefe, or shame.

Et quo quemque modo fugiatque. feratque laborem.
[Footnote: Virg. Aen. 1. iii. 853.]

How ev'ry labour he may plie,
And beare, or ev'ry labour flie.

What wards or springs move us, and the causes of so many motions in us:
For me seemeth, that the first discourses, wherewith his conceit should be
sprinkled, ought to be those that rule his manners and direct his sense;
which will both teach him to know himselfe, and how to live and how to die
well. Among the liberall Sciences, let us begin with that which makes us
free: Indeed, they may all, in some sort stead us, as an instruction to our
life, and use of it, as all other things else serve the same to some purpose or
other. But let us make especiall choice of that which may directly and
pertinently serve the same. If we could restraine and adapt the
appurtenances of our life to their right byase and naturall limits, we should
find the best part of the Sciences that now are in use, cleane out of fashion
with us: yea, and in those that are most in use, there are certaine by-wayes
and deep-flows most profitable, which we should do well to leave, and
according to the institution of Socrates, limit the course of our studies in
those where profit is wanting.

——sapere aude,
Incipe: vivendi qui recte prorogat horam,
Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, at ille
Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis avum.
[Footnote: Hor. I. i. Epist. ii. 40.]

Be bold to be wise: to begin, be strong,
He that to live well doth the time prolong,
Clowne-like expects, till downe the streame be run,
That runs, and will run, till the world be done.

It is mere simplicitie to teach our children,

Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis,
Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua.
[Footnote: Prop. I. El. i. 85.]

What Pisces move, or hot breath'd Leos beames,
Or Capricornus bath'd in western streames,

the knowledge of the starres, and the motion of the eighth spheare,
before their owne;
[Greek text quote omited]
[Footnote: Anacr. Od. xvii. 10, 12.]

What longs it to the seaven stars, and me,
Or those about Bootes be.

Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, saith, "With what sense can I amuse
my selfe in the secrets of the Starres, having continually death or bondage
before mine eyes?" For at that time the Kings of Persia were making
preparations to war against his Countrie. All men ought to say so: Being
beaten with ambition, with avarice, with rashnesse, and with superstition,
and having such other enemies unto life within him. Wherefore shall I study
and take care about the mobility and variation of the world? When hee is
once taught what is fit to make him better and wiser, he shall be entertained
with Logicke, naturall Philosophy, Geometry, and Rhetoricke, then having
setled his judgement, looke what science he doth most addict himselfe unto,
he shall in short time attaine to the perfection of it. His lecture shall be
somtimes by way of talke and sometimes by booke: his tutor may now and
then supply him with the same Author, as an end and motive of his
institution: sometimes giving him the pith and substance of it ready chewed.
And if of himselfe he be not so throughly acquainted with bookes, that hee
may readily find so many notable discourses as are in them to effect his
purpose, it shall not be amisse that some learned man bee appointed to
keepe him, company, who at any time of need may furnish him with such
munition as hee shall stand in need of; that hee may afterward distribute and
dispense them to his best use. And that this kind of lesson be more easie and

naturall than that of Gaza, who will make question? Those are but harsh,
thornie, and unpleasant precepts; vaine, idle and immaterial words, on
which small hold may be taken; wherein is nothing to quicken the minde. In
this the spirit findeth substance to bide and feed upon. A fruit without all
comparison much better, and that will soone be ripe. It is a thing worthy
consideration, to see what state things are brought unto in this our age; and
how Philosophie, even to the wisest, and men of best understanding, is but
an idle, vaine and fantasticall name, of small use and lesse worth, both in
opinion and effect. I thinke these Sophistries are the cause of it, which have
forestalled the wayes to come unto it: They doe very ill that goe about to
make it seeme as it were inaccessible for children to come unto, setting it
foorth with a wrimpled [Footnote: wrinkled.] gastlie, and frowning visage;
who hath masked her with so counterfet, pale, and hideous a countenance?
There is nothing more beauteous, nothing more delightful, nothing more
gamesome; and as I may say, nothing more fondly wanton: for she
presenteth nothing to our eyes, and preacheth nothing to our eares, but sport
and pastime. A sad and lowring looke plainly declareth that that is not her
haunt. Demetrius the Gramarian, finding a companie of Philosophers sitting
close together in the Temple of Delphos, said unto them, "Either I am
deceived, or by your plausible and pleasant lookes, you are not in any
serious and earnest discourse amongst your selves;" to whom one of them,
named Heracleon the Megarian, answered, "That belongeth to them, who
busie themselves in seeking whether the future tense of the verbe ___, hath
a double, or that labour to find the derivation of the comparatives, [omitted]
and of the superlatives [omitted], it is they that must chafe in intertaining
themselves with their science: as for discourses of Philosophie they are
wont to glad, rejoyce, and not to vex and molest those that use them."

Deprendas animi tormenta latentis in agro
Corpore, deprendas et gaudia; sumit utrumque

Inde habitum facies.
[Footnote: Juven, SAT. ix, 18]

You may perceive the torments of the mind,
Hid in sicke bodie, you the joyes may find;
The face such habit takes in either kind.

That mind which harboureth Philosophie, ought by reason of her sound
health, make that bodie also sound and healthie: it ought to make her
contentment to through-shine in all exteriour parts: it ought to shapen and
modell all outward demeanours to the modell of it: and by consequence
arme him that doth possesse it, with a gracious stoutnesse and lively
audacite, with an active and pleasing gesture, and with a setled and
cheerefull countenance. The most evident token and apparant signe of true
wisdome is a constant and unconstrained rejoycing, whose estate is like
unto all things above the Moone, that is ever cleare, alwaies bright. It is
Baroco [Footnote: Mnemonic words invented by the scholastic logicians]
and Baralipton [Footnote: Mnemonic words invented by the scholastic
logicians], that makes their followers prove so base and idle, and not
Philosophie; they know her not but by heare-say; what? Is it not shee that
cleereth all stormes of the mind? And teacheth miserie, famine, and
sicknesse to laugh? Not by reason of some imaginarie Epicicles [Footnote:
A term of the old astronomy.], but by naturall and palpable reasons. Shee
aymeth at nothing but vertue; it is vertue shee seekes after; which as the
schoole saith, is not pitcht on the top of an high, steepie, or inaccessible hill;
for they that have come unto her, affirme that cleane-contrarie shee keeps
her stand, and holds her mansion in a faire, flourishing, and pleasant plaine,
whence as from an high watch tower, she survaieth all things, to be subject
unto her, to whom any man may with great facilitie come, if he but know
the way or entrance to her palace: for, the pathes that lead unto her are
certaine fresh and shadie greene allies, sweet and flowrie waies, whose

ascent is even, easie, and nothing wearisome, like unto that of heavens
vaults. Forsomuch as they have not frequented this vertue, who gloriously,
as in a throne of Majestie sits soveraigne, goodly, triumphant, lovely,
equally delicious, and couragious, protesting her selfe to be a professed and
irreconcileable enemie to all sharpnesse, austeritie, feare, and compulsion;
having nature for her guide, fortune and voluptuousnesse for her
companions; they according to their weaknesse have imaginarily fained her,
to have a foolish, sad, grim, quarelous, spitefull, threatning, and disdainfull
visage, with an horride and unpleasant looke; and have placed her upon a
craggie, sharpe, and unfrequented rocke, amidst desert cliffes and uncouth
crags, as a scar-crow, or bugbeare, to affright the common people with.
Now the tutour, which ought to know that he should rather seek to fill the
mind and store the will of his disciple, as much, or rather more, with love
and affection, than with awe, and reverence unto vertue, may shew and tell
him, that Poets follow common humours, making him plainly to perceive,
and as it were palpably to feele, that the Gods have rather placed labour and
sweat at the entrances which lead to Venus chambers, than at the doores that
direct to Pallas cabinets.

And when he shall perceive his scholler to have a sensible feeling of
himselfe, presenting Bradamant [Footnote: A warlike heroine in Boiardo's
"Orlando Innamorato" and Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso."] or Angelica
[Footnote: The faithless princess, on account of whom Orlando goes mad,
in the same poems.] before him, as a Mistresse to enjoy, embelished with a
naturall, active, generous, and unspotted beautie not uglie or Giant-like, but
blithe and livelie, in respect of a wanton, soft, affected, and artificiall-
flaring beautie; the one attired like unto a young man, coyfed with a bright-
shining helmet, the other disguised and drest about the head like unto an
impudent harlot, with embroyderies, frizelings, and carcanets of pearles: he
will no doubt deeme his owne love to be a man and no woman, if in his
choice he differ from that effeminate shepheard of Phrygia. In this new kind

of lesson he shall declare unto him, that the prize, the glorie, and height of
true vertue, consisted in the facilitie, profit, and pleasure of his exercises: so
far from difficultie and incumbrances, that children as well as men, the
simple as soone as the wise, may come unto her. Discretion and
temperance, not force or way-wardnesse are the instruments to bring him
unto her. Socrates (vertues chiefe favorite) that he might the better walke in
the pleasant, naturall, and open path of her progresses, doth voluntarily and
in good, earnest, quit all compulsion. Shee is the nurse and foster-mother of
all humane [Footnote: Human.] pleasures, who in making them just and
upright, she also makes them sure and sincere. By moderating them, she
keepeth them in ure [Footnote: Practice.] and breath. In limiting and cutting
them off, whom she refuseth; she whets us on toward those she leaveth unto
us; and plenteously leaves us them, which Nature pleaseth, and like a kind
mother giveth us over unto satietie, if not unto wearisomnesse, unlesse we
will peradventure say that the rule and bridle, which stayeth the drunkard
before drunkennesse, the glutton before surfetting, and the letcher before
the losing of his haire, be the enemies of our pleasures. If common fortune
faile her, it cleerely scapes her; or she cares not for her, or she frames
another unto herselfe, altogether her owne, not so fleeting nor so rowling.
She knoweth the way how to be rich, mightie and wise, and how to lie in
sweet-perfumed beds. She loveth life; she delights in beautie, in glorie, and
in health. But her proper and particular office is, first to know how to use
such goods temperately, and how to lose them constantly. An office much
more noble than severe, without which all course of life is unnaturall,
turbulent, and deformed, to which one may lawfully joyne those rocks,
those incumbrances, and those hideous monsters. If so it happen, that his
Disciple prove of so different a condition, that he rather love to give eare to
an idle fable than to the report of some noble voiage, or other notable and
wise discourse, when he shall heare it; that at the sound of a Drum or clang
of a Trumpet, which are wont to rowse and arme the youthly heat of his

companions, turneth to another that calleth him to see a play, tumbling,
jugling tricks, or other idle lose-time sports; and who for pleasures sake
doth not deeme it more delightsome to returne all sweatie and wearie from a
victorious combat, from wrestling, or riding of a horse, than from a Tennis-
court or dancing schoole, with the prize or honour of such exercises; The
best remedy I know for such a one is, to put him prentice to some base
occupation, in some good towne or other, yea, were he the sonne of a Duke;
according to Platoes rule, who saith "That children must be placed, not
according to their fathers conditions, but the faculties of their mind." Since
it is Philosophie that teacheth us to live, and that infancie as well as other
ages, may plainly read her lessons in the same, why should it not be
imparted unto young Schollers?

Vdum et molle lutum est, nunc nunc properandus, et acri
Fingendus sine fine rota.
[Footnote: PES. Sat. iii. 23.]

He's moist and soft mould, and must by and by
Be cast, made up, while wheele whirls readily.

We are taught to live when our life is well-nigh spent. Many schollers
have been infected with that loathsome and marrow-wasting disease before
ever they came to read Aristotles treatise of Temperance. Cicero was wont
to say, "That could he out-live the lives of two men, he should never find
leasure to study the Lyrike Poets." And I find these Sophisters both worse
and more unprofitable. Our childe is engaged in greater matters; And but
the first fifteene or sixteene yeares of his life are due unto Pedantisme, the
rest unto action: let us therefore imploy so short time as we have to live in
more necessarie instructions. It is an abuse; remove these thornie quiddities
of Logike, whereby our life can no whit be amended, and betake our selves
to the simple discourses of Philosophy; know how to chuse and fitly to

make use of them: they are much more easie to be conceived than one of
Bocace his tales. A childe comming from nurse is more capable of them,
than he is to learne to read or write. Philosophy hath discourses, whereof
infancie as well as decaying old-age may make good use. I am of Plutarkes
mind, which is, that Aristotle did not so much ammuse his great Disciple
about the arts how to frame Syllogismes, or the principles of Geometric, as
he endevoured to instruct him with good precepts concerning valour,
prowesse, magnanimitie, and temperance, and an undanted assurance not to
feare any thing; and with such munition he sent him, being yet verie young,
to subdue the Empire of the world, only with 30000 footmen, 4000
horsemen, and 42000 Crownes in monie. As for other arts and sciences; he
saith Alexander honoured them, and commended their excellencie and
comlinesse; but for any pleasure he tooke in them, his affection could not
easily be drawne to exercise them.

—petite hinc juvenesque senesque
Finem animo certum, miserisque viatica canis.
[Footnote: Sat. v. 64]

Young men and old, draw hence (in your affaires)
Your minds set marke, provision for gray haires.

It is that which Epicurus said in the beginning of his letter to Memiceus:
"Neither let the youngest shun nor the oldest wearie himselfe in
philosophying, for who doth otherwise seemeth to say, that either the season
to live happily is not yet come, or is already past." Yet would I not have this
young gentleman pent-up, nor carelesly cast-off to the heedlesse choler, or
melancholy humour of the hasty Schoole-master. I would not have his
budding spirit corrupted with keeping him fast-tied, and as it were
labouring fourteene or fifteene houres a day poaring on his booke, as some
doe, as if he were a day-labouring man; neither doe I thinke it fit, if at any

time, by reason of some solitairie or melancholy complexion, he should be
scene with an over-indiscreet application given to his booke, it should be
cherished in him; for, that doth often make him both unapt for civill
conversation and distracts him from better imployments: How many have I
scene in my daies, by an over-greedy desire of knowledge, become as it
were foolish? Carneades was so deeply plunged, and as I may say besotted
in it, that he could never have leasure to cut his haire, or pare his nailes: nor
would I have his noble manners obscured by the incivilitie and barbarisme
of others. The French wisdome hath long since proverbially been spoken of
as verie apt to conceive study in her youth, but most unapt to keepe it long.
In good truth, we see at this day that there is nothing lovelier to behold than
the young children of France; but for the most part, they deceive the hope
which was fore-apprehended of them: for when they once become men,
there is no excellencie at all in them. I have heard men of understanding
hold this opinion, that the Colleges to which they are sent (of which there
are store) doe thus besot them: whereas to our scholler, a cabinet, a gardin,
the table, the bed, a solitarinesse, a companie, morning and evening, and all
houres shall be alike unto him, all places shall be a study for him: for
Philosophy (as a former of judgements, and modeler of customes) shall be
his principall lesson, having the privilege to entermeddle her selfe with all
things, and in all places. Isocrates the Orator, being once requested at a
great banket to speake of his art, when all thought he had reason to answer,
said, "It is not now time to doe what I can, and what should now be done, I
cannot doe it; For, to present orations, or to enter into disputation of
Rhetorike, before a companie assembled together to be merrie, and make
good cheere, would be but a medley of harsh and jarring musicke." The like
may be said of all other Sciences. But touching Philosophy, namely, in that
point where it treateth of man, and of his duties and offices, it hath been the
common judgement of the wisest, that in regard of the pleasantnesse of her
conversatione, she ought not to be rejected, neither at banquets nor at

sports. And Plato having invited her to his solemne feast, we see how kindly
she entertaineth the companie with a milde behaviour, fitly suting her selfe
to time and place, notwithstanding it be one of his learned'st and profitable
discourses.

AEque pauperibus prodest, locupletibus aque,
Et neglecta aeque pueris senibusque nocebit.
[Footnote: HOR. 1. i. Epist. 125.]

Poore men alike, alike rich men it easeth,
Alike it, scorned, old and young displeaseth.

So doubtlesse he shall lesse be idle than others; for even as the paces we
bestow walking in a gallerie, although they be twice as many more, wearie
us not so much as those we spend in going a set journey: So our lesson
being past over, as it were, by chance, or way of encounter, without strict
observance of time or place, being applied to all our actions, shall be
digested, and never felt. All sports and exercises shall be a part of his study;
running, wrestling, musicke, dancing, hunting, and managing of armes and
horses. I would have the exterior demeanor or decencie, and the disposition
of his person to be fashioned together with his mind: for, it is not a mind, it
is not a body that we erect, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts
of him. And as Plato saith, They must not be erected one without another,
but equally be directed, no otherwise than a couple of horses matched to
draw in one selfe-same teeme. And to heare him, doth he not seeme to
imploy more time and care in the exercises of his bodie: and to thinke that
the minde is together with the same exercised, and not the contrarie? As for
other matters, this institution ought to be directed by a sweet- severe
mildnesse; Not as some do, who in liew of gently-bidding children to the
banquet of letters, present them with nothing but horror and crueltie. Let me
have this violence and compulsion removed, there is nothing that, in my

seeming, doth more bastardise and dizzie a welborne and gentle nature: If
you would have him stand in awe of shame and punishment, doe not so
much enure him to it: accustome him patiently to endure sweat and cold,
the sharpnesse of the wind, the heat of the sunne, and how to despise all
hazards. Remove from him all nicenesse and quaintnesse in clothing, in
lying, in eating, and in drinking: fashion him to all things, that he prove not
a faire and wanton-puling boy, but a lustie and vigorous boy: When I was a
child, being a man, and now am old, I have ever judged and believed the
same. But amongst other things, I could never away with this kind of
discipline used in most of our Colleges. It had peradventure been lesse
hurtfull, if they had somewhat inclined to mildnesse, or gentle entreatie. It
is a verie prison of captivated youth, and proves dissolute in punishing it
before it be so. Come upon them when they are going to their lesson, and
you heare nothing but whipping and brawling, both of children tormented,
and masters besotted with anger and chafing. How wide are they, which go
about to allure a childs mind to go to its booke, being yet but tender and
fearefull, with a stearne-frowning countenance, and with hands full of rods?
Oh wicked and pernicious manner of teaching! which Quintillian hath very
wel noted, that this imperious kind of authoritie, namely, this way of
punishing of children, drawes many dangerous inconveniences within. How
much more decent were it to see their school-houses and formes strewed
with greene boughs and flowers, than with bloudy burchen-twigs? If it lay
in me, I would doe as the Philosopher Speusippus did, who caused the
pictures of Gladness and Joy, of Flora and of the Graces, to be set up round
about his school-house. Where their profit lieth, there should also be their
recreation. Those meats ought to be sugred over, that are healthful for
childrens stomakes, and those made bitter that are hurtfull for them. It is
strange to see how carefull Plato sheweth him selfe in framing of his lawes
about the recreation and pastime of the youth of his Citie, and how far he
extends him selfe about their exercises, sports, songs, leaping, and dancing,

whereof he saith, that severe antiquitie gave the conduct and patronage unto
the Gods themselves, namely, to Apollo, to the Muses, and to Minerva.
Marke but how far-forth he endevoreth to give a thousand precepts to be
kept in his places of exercises both of bodie and mind. As for learned
Sciences, he stands not much upon them, and seemeth in particular to
commend Poesie, but for Musickes sake. All strangenesse and selfe-
particularitie in our manners and conditions, is to be shunned, as an enemie
to societie and civill conversation. Who would not be astonished at
Demophons complexion, chiefe steward of Alexanders household, who was
wont to sweat in the shadow, and quiver for cold in the sunne? I have seene
some to startle at the smell of an apple more than at the shot of a peece;
some to be frighted with a mouse, some readie to cast their gorge [Footnote:
Vomit.] at the sight of a messe of creame, and others to be scared with
seeing a fether bed shaken: as Germanicus, who could not abide to see a
cock, or heare his crowing. There may haply be some hidden propertie of
nature, which in my judgement might easilie be removed, if it were taken in
time. Institution hath gotten this upon me (I must confesse with much adoe)
for, except beere, all things else that are mans food agree indifferently with
my taste. The bodie being yet souple, ought to be accommodated to all
fashions and customes; and (alwaies provided, his appetites and desires be
kept under) let a yong man boldly be made fit for al Nations and
companies; yea, if need be, for al disorders and surfetings; let him acquaint
him selfe with al fashions; That he may be able to do al things, and love to
do none but those that are commendable. Some strict Philosophers
commend not, but rather blame Calisthenes, for losing the good favour of
his Master Alexander, only because he would not pledge him as much as he
had drunke to him. He shall laugh, jest, dally, and debauch himselfe with
his Prince. And in his debauching, I would have him out-go al his fellowes
in vigor and constancie, and that he omit not to doe evill, neither for want of
strength or knowledge, but for lacke of will. Multum interest utrum peccare

quis nolit, aut nesciat: [Footnote: HOR. Epist. xvii. 23.] "There is a great
difference, whether one have no will, or no wit to doe amisse." I thought to
have honoured a gentleman (as great a stranger, and as far from such riotous
disorders as any is in France) by enquiring of him in verie good companie,
how many times in all his life he had bin drunke in Germanie during the
time of his abode there, about the necessarie affaires of our King; who
tooke it even as I meant it, and answered three times, telling the time and
manner how. I know some, who for want of that qualitie, have been much
perplexed when they have had occasion to converse with that nation. I have
often noted with great admiration, that wonderfull nature of Alcibiades, to
see how easilie he could sute himselfe to so divers fashions and different
humors, without prejudice unto his health; sometimes exceeding the
sumptuousnesse and pompe of the Persians, and now and then surpassing.
the austeritie and frugalitie of the Lacedemonians; as reformed in Sparta, as
voluptuous in Ionia.

Omnis Atistippum decuit color, et status, et res.
[Footnote: HOR. Epist. xvii. 25.]

All colours, states, and things are fit
For courtly Aristippus wit.

Such a one would I frame my Disciple,

—quem duplici panno patientia velat,
Mirabor, vita via si conversa decebit.

Whom patience clothes with sutes of double kind,
I muse, if he another way will find.

Personavnque feret non inconcinnus utramque.
[Footnote: CIC. Tusc. Qu. 1. iv.]

He not unfitly may,
Both parts and persons play.

Loe here my lessons, wherein he that acteth them, profiteth more than he
that but knoweth them, whom if you see, you heare, and if you heare him,
you see him. God forbid, saith some bodie in Plato, that to Philosophize, be
to learne many things, and to exercise the arts. Hanc amplissimam omnium
artium bene vivendi disciplinam, vita magis quant litteris persequntd sunt
[Footnote: Ib. 29.] "This discipline of living well, which is the amplest of
all other arts, they followed rather in their lives than in their learning or
writing." Leo Prince of the Phliasians, enquiring of Heraclides Ponticus,
what art he professed, he answered, "Sir, I professe neither art nor science;
but I am a Philosopher." Some reproved Diogenes, that being an ignorant
man, he did neverthelesse meddle with Philosophie, to whom he replied,
"So much the more reason have I and to greater purpose doe I meddle with
it." Hegesias praid him upon a time to reade some booke unto him: "You are
a merry man," said he: "As you chuse naturall and not painted, right and not
counterfeit figges to eat, why doe you not likewise chuse, not the painted
and written, but the true and naturall exercises?" He shall not so much
repeat, as act his lesson. In his actions shall he make repetition of the same.
We must observe, whether there bee wisdome in his enterprises, integritie in
his demeanor, modestie in his jestures, justice in his actions, judgement and
grace in his speech, courage in his sicknesse, moderation in his sports,
temperance in his pleasures, order in the government of his house, and
indifference in his taste, whether it be flesh, fish, wine, or water, or
whatsoever he feedeth upon. Qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem
scientiae sed legem vitae putet: quique obtemperet ipse sibi, et decretis
pareat [Footnote: Ib. I. ii.] "Who thinks his learning not an ostentation of
knowledge, but a law of life, and himselfe obayes himselfe, and doth what
is decreed."

The true mirror of our discourses is the course of our lives. Zeuxidamus
answered one that demanded of him, why the Lacedemonians did not draw
into a booke, the ordinances of prowesse, that so their yong men might read
them; "it is," saith he, "because they would rather accustome them to deeds
and actions, than to bookes and writings." Compare at the end of fifteene or
sixteene yeares one of these collegiall Latinizers, who hath imployed all
that while onely in learning how to speake, to such a one as I meane. The
world is nothing but babling and words, and I never saw man that doth not
rather speake more than he ought, than lesse. Notwithstanding halfe our age
is consumed that way. We are kept foure or five yeares learning to
understand bare words, and to joine them into clauses, then as long in
proportioning a great bodie extended into foure or five parts; and five more
at least ere we can succinctly know how to mingle, joine, and interlace them
handsomly into a subtil fashion, and into one coherent orbe. Let us leave it
to those whose profession is to doe nothing else. Being once on my journey
to Orleans, it was my chance to meet upon that plaine that lieth on this side
Clery, with two Masters of Arts, traveling toward Bordeaux, about fiftie
paces one from another; far off behind them, I descride a troupe of
horsemen, their Master riding formost, who was the Earle of Rochefocault;
one of my servants enquiring of the first of those Masters of Arts, what
Gentleman he was that followed him; supposing my servant had meant his
fellow-scholler, for he had not yet seen the Earles traine, answered
pleasantly, "He is no gentleman, Sir, but a Gramarian, and I am a Logitian."
Now, we that contrariwise seek not to frame a Gramarian, nor a Logitian,
but a compleat gentleman, let us give them leave to mispend their time; we
have else-where, and somewhat else of more import to doe. So that our
Disciple be well and sufficiently stored with matter; words will follow
apace, and if they will hot follow gently, he shall hale them on perforce. I
heare some excuse themselves, that they cannot expresse their meaning, and
make a semblance that their heads are so full stuft with many goodly things,

but for want of eloquence they can neither titter nor make show of them. It
is a meere fopperie. And will you know what, in my seeming, the cause is?
They are shadows and Chimeraes, proceeding of some formelesse
conceptions, which they cannot distinguish or resolve within, and by
consequence are not able to produce them in as-much as they understand
not themselves: And if you but marke their earnestnesse, and how they
stammer and labour at the point of their deliverle, you would deeme that
what they go withall, is but a conceiving, and therefore nothing neere
downelying; and that they doe but licke that imperfect and shapelesse lump
of matter. As for me, I am of opinion, and Socrates would have it so, that he
who had a cleare and lively imagination in his mind, may easilie produce
and utter the same, although it be in Bergamaske [Footnote: A rustic dialect
of the north of Italy.] or Welsh, and if he be dumbe, by signes and tokens.

Verbaque praevisam rem non invita sequentur.
[Footnote: HOR. Art. Poet. 311.]

When matter we fore-know,
Words voluntarie flow.

As one said, as poetically in his prose, Cum res animum occupavere,
verba ambiunt; [Footnote: SED. Controv. 1. vii. prae.] "When matter hath
possest their minds, they hunt after words:" and another: Ipsa res verba
rapiunt: [Footnote: CIC. de Fin. I. iii. c. 5.] "Things themselves will catch
and carry words:" He knowes neither Ablative, Conjunctive, Substantive,
nor Gramar, no more doth his Lackey, nor any Oyster-wife about the streets,
and yet if you have a mind to it he will intertaine you, your fill, and
peradventure stumble as little and as seldome against the rules of his
tongue, as the best Master of arts in France. He hath no skill in Rhetoricke,
nor can he with a preface fore-stall and captivate the Gentle Readers good
will: nor careth he greatly to know it. In good sooth, all this garish painting

is easilie defaced, by the lustre of an in-bred and simple truth; for these
dainties and quaint devices serve but to ammuse the vulgar sort; unapt and
incapable to taste the most solid and firme meat: as Afer verie plainly
declareth in Cornelius Tacitus. The Ambassadours of Samos being come to
Cleomenes King of Sparta, prepared with a long prolix Oration, to stir him
up to war against the tyrant Policrates, after he had listned a good while
unto them, his answer was: "Touching your Exordium or beginning I have
forgotten it; the middle I remember not; and for your conclusion I will do
nothing in it." A fit, and (to my thinking) a verie good answer; and the
Orators were put to such a shift; as they knew not what to replie. And what
said another? the Athenians from out two of their cunning Architects, were
to chuse one to erect a notable great frame; the one of them more affected
and selfe presuming, presented himselfe before them, with a smooth fore-
premeditated discourse, about the subject of that piece of worke, and
thereby drew the judgements of the common people unto his liking; but the
other in few words spake thus: "Lords of Athens, what this man hath said I
will performe." In the greatest earnestnesse of Ciceroes eloquence many
were drawn into a kind of admiration; But Cato jesting at it, said, "Have we
not a pleasant Consull?" A quicke cunning Argument, and a wittie saying,
whether it go before or come after, it is never out of season. If it have no
coherence with that which goeth before, nor with what commeth after; it is
good and commendable in it selfe. I am none of those that think a good
Ryme, to make a good Poeme; let him hardly (if so he please) make a short
syllable long, it is no great matter; if the invention be rare and good, and his
wit and judgement have cunningly played their part. I will say to such a
one; he is a good Poet, but an ill Versifier.

Emunciae naris, durus componere versus.
[Footnote: HOR. 1. i. Sat. iv.]

A man whose sense could finely pierce,
But harsh and hard to make a verse.

Let a man (saith Horace) make his worke loose all seames, measures, and
joynts.

Tempora certa moddsque, et quod prius ordine verbum est,
[Footnote: Ib. 58.]
Posterius facias, praeponens ultima primis:
Invenias etiam disjecti membra Poetae.
[Footnote: Ib. 62.]

Set times and moods, make you the first word last,
The last word first, as if they were new cast:
Yet find th' unjoynted Poets joints stand fast.

He shall for all that, nothing gain-say himselfe, every piece will make a
good shew. To this purpose answered Menander those that chid him, the day
being at hand, in which he had promised a Comedy, and had not begun the
same, "Tut-tut," said he, "it is alreadie finished, there wanteth nothing but to
adde the verse unto it;" for, having ranged and cast the plot in his mind, he
made small accompt of feet, of measures, or cadences of verses, which
indeed are but of small import in regard of the rest. Since great Ronsarde
and learned Bellay have raised our French Poesie unto that height of honour
where it now is: I see not one of these petty ballad-makers, or prentise
dogrell rymers, that doth not bombast his labours with high-swelling and
heaven-disimbowelling words, and that doth not marshall his cadences
verie neere as they doe. Plus sonat quam valet. [Footnote: Sen, Epist. xl.]
"The sound is more than the weight or worth." And for the vulgar sort there
were never so many Poets, and so few good: but as it hath been easie for
them to represent their rymes, so come they far short in imitating the rich
descriptions of the one, and rare inventions of the other. But what shall he

doe, if he be urged with sophisticall subtilties about a Sillogisme? A
gammon of Bacon makes a man drink, drinking quencheth a mans thirst;
Ergo, a gammon of bacon quencheth a mans thirst. Let him mock at it, it is
more wittie to be mockt at than to be answered. Let him borrow this
pleasant counter-craft of Aristippus; "Why shall I unbind that, which being
bound doth so much trouble me?" Some one proposed certaine Logicall
quiddities against Cleanthes, to whom Chrisippus said; use such jugling
tricks to play with children, and divert not the serious thoughts of an aged
man to such idle matters. If such foolish wiles, Contorta et aculeata
sophismata, [Footnote: Cic. Acad. Qu. 1. iv.] "Intricate and stinged
sophismes," must perswade a lie, it is dangerous: but if they proove void of
any effect, and move him but to laughter, I see not why he shall beware of
them. Some there are so foolish that will go a quarter of a mile out of the
way to hunt after a quaint new word, if they once get in chace; Aut qui non
verba rebus aptant, sed res extrinsecus arcessunt, quibus verba conveniant:
"Or such as fit not words to matter, but fetch matter from abroad, whereto
words be fitted." And another, Qui alicujus verbi decore placentis, vocentur
ad id quod non proposuerant scribere: [Footnote: Sen. Epist. liii.] "Who are
allured by the grace of some pleasing word, to write what they intended not
to write." I doe more willingly winde up a wittie notable sentence, that so I
may sew it upon me, than unwinde my thread to go fetch it. Contrariwise, it
is for words to serve and wait upon the matter, and not for matter to attend
upon words, and if the French tongue cannot reach unto it, let the Gaskonie,
or any other. I would have the matters to surmount, and so fill the
imagination of him that harkeneth, that he have no remembrance at all of
the words. It is a naturall, simple, and unaffected speech that I love, so
written as it is spoken, and such upon the paper, as it is in the mouth, a
pithie, sinnowie, full, strong, compendious and materiall speech, not so
delicate and affected as vehement and piercing.

Hac demum sapiet dictio qua feriet.
[Footnote: Epitaph on Lucan, 6.]

In fine, that word is wisely fit,
Which strikes the fence, the marke doth hit.

Rather difficult than tedious, void of affection, free, loose and bold, that
every member of it seeme to make a bodie; not Pedanticall, nor Frier-like,
nor Lawyer-like, but rather downe right, Souldier-like. As Suetonius calleth
that of Julius Caesar, which I see no reason wherefore he calleth it. I have
sometimes pleased myselfe in imitating that licenciousnesse or wanton
humour of our youths, in wearing of their garments; as carelessly to let their
cloaks hang downe over one shoulder; to weare their cloakes scarfe or
bawdrikewise, and their stockings loose hanging about their legs. It
represents a kind of disdainful fiercenesse of these forraine embellishings,
and neglect carelesnesse of art: But I commend it more being imployed in
the course and forme of speech. All manner of affectation, namely
[Footnote: Especially,] in the livelinesse and libertie of France, is
unseemely in a Courtier. And in a Monarchie every Gentleman ought to
addresse himselfe unto [Footnote: Aim at] a Courtiers carriage. Therefore
do we well somewhat to incline to a native and carelesse behaviour. I like
not a contexture, where the seames and pieces may be seen: As in a well
compact bodie, what need a man distinguish and number all the bones and
veines severally? Quae veritati operam dat oratio, incomposita sit et
simplex [Footnote: Sen. Epist. xl] Quis accurate loquitur nisi qui vult putide
loqui [Footnote: Ib. Epist. ixxr.] "The speach that intendeth truth must be
plaine and unpollisht: Who speaketh elaborately, but he that meanes to
speake unfavourably?" That eloquence offereth injurie unto things, which
altogether drawes us to observe it. As in apparell, it is a signe of
pusillanimitie for one to marke himselfe, in some particular and unusuall
fashion: so likewise in common speech, for one to hunt after new phrases,

and unaccustomed quaint words, proceedeth of a scholasticall and childish
ambition. Let me use none other than are spoken in the hals of Paris.
Aristophanes the Gramarian was somewhat out of the way, when he
reproved Epicurus, for the simplicitie of his words, and the end of his art
oratorie, which was onely perspicuitie in speech. The imitation of speech,
by reason of the facilitie of it, followeth presently a whole nation. The
imitation of judging and inventing comes more slow. The greater number of
Readers, because they have found one self-same kind of gowne, suppose
most falsely to holde one like bodie. Outward garments and cloakes may be
borrowed, but never the sinews and strength of the bodie. Most of those that
converse with me, speake like unto these Essayes; but I know not whether
they think alike. The Athenians (as Plato averreth) have for their part great
care to be fluent and eloquent in their speech; The Lacedemonians endevour
to be short and compendious; and those of Creet labour more to bee
plentifull in conceits than in language. And these are the best. Zeno was
wont to say, "That he had two sorts of disciples; the one he called [Greek
word omitted], curious to learne things, and those were his darlings, the
other he termed [Greek word omitted], who respected nothing more than
the language." Yet can no man say, but that to speake well, is most gracious
and commendable, but not so excellent as some make it: and I am grieved
to see how we imploy most part of our time about that onely. I would first
know mine owne tongue perfectly, then my neighbours with whom I have
most commerce. I must needs acknowledge, that the Greeke and Latine
tongues are great ornaments in a gentleman, but they are purchased at over-
high a rate. Use it who list, I will tell you how they may be gotten better,
cheaper, and much sooner than is ordinarily used, which was tried in
myselfe. My late father, having, by all the meanes and industrie that is
possible for a man, sought amongst the wisest, and men of best
understanding, to find a most exquisite and readie way of teaching, being
advised of the inconveniences then in use; was given to understand that the

lingring while, and best part of our youth, that we imploy in learning the
tongues, which cost them nothing, is the onely cause we can never attaine to
that absolute perfection of skill and knowledge of the Greekes and
Romanes. I doe not beleeve that to be the onely cause. But so it is, the
expedient my father found out was this; that being yet at nurse, and before
the first loosing of my tongue, I was delivered to a Germane (who died
since, a most excellent Physitian in France) he being then altogether
ignorant of the French tongue, but exquisitely readie and skilfull in the
Latine. This man, whom my father had sent for of purpose, and to whom he
gave verie great entertainment, had me continually in his armes, and was
mine onely overseer. There were also joyned unto him two of his
countrimen, but not so learned; whose charge was to attend, and now and
then to play with me; and all these together did never entertaine me with
other than the Latine tongue. As for others of his household, it was an
inviolable rule, that neither himselfe, nor my mother, nor man, nor maid-
servant, were suffered to speake one word in my companie, except such
Latine words as every one had learned to chat and prattle with me. It were
strange to tell how every one in the house profited therein. My Father and
my Mother learned so much Latine, that for a need they could understand it,
when they heard it spoken, even so did all the household servants, namely
such as were neerest and most about me. To be short, we were all so
Latinized, that the townes round about us had their share of it; insomuch as
even at this day, many Latine names both of workmen and of their tooles
are yet in use amongst them. And as for myselfe, I was about six years old,
and could understand no more French or Perigordine than Arabike; and that
without art, without bookes, rules, or grammer, without whipping or
whining, I had gotten as pure a Latin tongue as my Master could speake; the
rather because I could neither mingle or confound the same with other
tongues. If for an Essay they would give me a Theme, whereas the fashion
in Colleges is, to give it in French, I had it in bad Latine, to reduce the same

into good. And Nicholas Grouchy, who hath written De comitiis
Romanorum, William Guerente, who hath commented Aristotele: George
Buchanan, that famous Scottish Poet, and Marke Antonie Muret, whom
(while he lived) both France and Italie to this day, acknowledge to have
been the best orator: all which have beene my familiar tutors, have often
told me, that in mine infancie I had the Latine tongue so readie and so
perfect, that themselves feared to take me in hand. And Buchanan, who
afterward I saw attending on the Marshall of Brissacke, told me, he was
about to write a treatise of the institution of children, and that he tooke the
model and patterne from mine: for at that time he had the charge and
bringing up of the young Earle of Brissack, whom since we have scene
prove so worthy and so valiant a Captaine. As for the Greeke, wherein I
have but small understanding, my father purposed to make me learne it by
art; But by new and uncustomed meanes, that is, by way of recreation and
exercise. We did tosse our declinations and conjugations to and fro, as they
doe, who by way of a certaine game at tables learne both Arithmetike and
Geometrie. For, amongst other things he had especially beene persuaded to
make me taste and apprehend the fruits of dutie and science by an unforced
kinde of will, and of mine owne choice; and without any compulsion or
rigor to bring me up in all mildnesse and libertie: yea with such kinde of
superstition, that, whereas some are of opinion that suddenly to awaken
young children, and as it were by violence to startle and fright them out of
their dead sleepe in a morning (wherein they are more heavie and deeper
plunged than we) doth greatly trouble and distemper their braines, he would
every morning cause me to be awakened by the sound of some instrument;
and I was never without a servant who to that purpose attended upon me.
This example may serve to judge of the rest; as also to commend the
judgement and tender affection of so carefull and loving a father: who is not
to be blamed, though hee reaped not the fruits answerable to his exquisite
toyle and painefull manuring. [Footnote: Cultivation.] Two things hindered

the same; first the barrennesse and unfit soyle: for howbeit I were of a
sound and strong constitution, and of a tractable and yeelding condition, yet
was I so heavie, so sluggish, and so dull, that I could not be rouzed (yea
were it to goe to play) from out mine idle drowzinesse. What I saw, I saw it
perfectly; and under this heavy, and as it were Lethe-complexion did I breed
hardie imaginations, and opinions farre above my yeares. My spirit was
very slow, and would goe no further than it was led by others; my
apprehension blockish, my invention poore; and besides, I had a marvelous
defect in my weake memorie: it is therefore no wonder, if my father could
never bring me to any perfection. Secondly, as those that in some dangerous
sicknesse, moved with a kind of hope-full and greedie desire of perfect
health againe, give eare to every Leach or Emperike, [Footnote: Doctor or
quack.] and follow all counsels, the good man being exceedingly fearefull
to commit any oversight, in a matter he tooke so to heart, suffered himselfe
at last to be led away by the common opinion, which like unto the Cranes,
followeth ever those that go before, and yeelded to customer having those
no longer about him, that had given him his first directions, and which they
had brought out of Italie. Being but six yeares old I was sent to the College
of Guienne, then most flourishing and reputed the best in France, where it is
impossible to adde any thing to the great care he had, both to chuse the best
and most sufficient masters that could be found, to reade unto me, as also
for all other circumstances partaining to my education; wherein contrary to
usuall customes of Colleges, he observed many particular rules. But so it is,
it was ever a College. My Latin tongue was forthwith corrupted, whereof by
reason of discontinuance, I afterward lost all manner of use: which new
kind of institution stood me in no other stead, but that at my first admittance
it made me to overskip some of the lower formes, and to be placed in the
highest. For at thirteene yeares of age, that I left the College, I had read
over the whole course of Philosophie (as they call it) but with so small
profit, that I can now make no account of it. The first taste or feeling I had

of bookes, was of the pleasure I tooke in reading the fables of Ovids
Metamorphosies; for, being but seven or eight yeares old, I would steale
and sequester my selfe from all other delights, only to reade them:
Forsomuch as the tongue wherein they were written was to me naturall; and
it was the easiest booke I knew, and by reason of the matter therein
contained most agreeing with my young age. For of King Arthur, of
Lancelot du Lake, of Amadis, of Huon of Burdeaux, and such idle time
consuming and wit-besotting trash of bookes wherein youth doth commonly
ammuse it selfe, I was not so much as acquainted with their names, and to
this day know not their bodies, nor what they containe: So exact was my
discipline. Whereby I became more carelesse to studie my other prescript
lessons. And well did it fall out for my purpose, that I had to deale with a
very discreet Master, who out of his judgement could with such dexterite
winke at and second my untowardlinesse, and such other faults that were in
me. For by that meanes I read over Virgils AEneados, Terence, Plautus, and
other Italian Comedies, allured thereunto by the pleasantnesse of their
severall subjects: Had he beene so foolishly- severe, or so severely froward
as to crosse this course of mine, I thinke verily I had never brought any
thing from the College, but the hate and contempt of Bookes, as doth the
greatest part of our Nobilitie. Such was his discretion, and so warily did he
behave himselfe, that he saw and would not see: hee would foster and
increase my longing: suffering me but by stealth and by snatches to glut my
selfe with those Bookes, holding ever a gentle hand over me, concerning
other regular studies. For, the chiefest thing my father required at their
hands (unto whose charge he had committed me) was a kinde of well
conditioned mildnesse and facilitie of complexion. [Footnote: Easiness of
disposition.] And, to say truth, mine had no other fault, but a certaine dull
languishing and heavie slothfullnesse. The danger was not, I should doe ill,
but that I should doe nothing.

No man did ever suspect I would prove a bad, but an unprofitable man:
foreseeing in me rather a kind of idlenesse than a voluntary craftinesse. I
am not so selfe-conceited but I perceive what hath followed. The
complaints that are daily buzzed in mine eares are these; that I am idle,
cold, and negligent in offices of friendship, and dutie to my parents and
kinsfolkes; and touching publike offices, that I am over singular and
disdainfull. And those that are most injurious cannot aske, wherefore I have
taken, and why I have not paied? but may rather demand, why I doe not
quit, and wherefore I doe not give? I would take it as a favour, they should
wish such effects of supererogation in me. But they are unjust and over
partiall, that will goe about to exact that from me which I owe not, with
more vigour than they will exact from themselves that which they owe;
wherein if they condemne me, they utterly cancell both the gratifying of the
action, and the gratitude, which thereby would be due to me. Whereas the
active well doing should be of more consequence, proceeding from my
hand, in regard I have no passive at all. Wherefore I may so much the more
freely dispose of my fortune, by how much more it is mine, and of my selfe
that am most mine owne. Notwithstanding, if I were a great blazoner of
mine owne actions, I might peradventure barre such reproches, and justly
upraid some, that they are not so much offended, because I doe not enough,
as for that I may, and it lies in my power to doe much more than I doe. Yet
my minde ceased not at the same time to have peculiar unto it selfe well
setled motions, true and open judgements concerning the objects which it
knew; which alone, and without any helpe or communication it would
digest. And amongst other things, I verily beleeve it would have proved
altogether incapable and unfit to yeeld unto force, or stoope unto violence.
Shall I account or relate this qualitie of my infancie, which was, a kinde of
boldnesse in my lookes, and gentle softnesse in my voice, and affabilitie in
my gestures, and a dexterite in conforming my selfe to the parts I
undertooke? for before the age of the

Alter ab undecimo turn me vix ceperat annus.
[Footnote: Virg. Buc. Ecl. viii. 39.]

Yeares had I (to make even)
Scarce two above eleven.

I have under-gone and represented the chiefest part in the Latin Tragedies
of Buchanan, Guerente, and of Muret; which in great state were acted and
plaid in our College of Guienne: wherein Andreas Goveanus our Rector
principall; who as in all other parts belonging to his charge, was without
comparison the chiefest Rector of France, and my selfe (without ostentation
be it spoken) was reputed, if not a chiefe-master, yet a principall Actor in
them. It is an exercise I rather commend than disalow in young Gentlemen:
and have seene some of our Princes (in imitation of some of former ages)
both commendably and honestly, in their proper persons act and play some
parts in Tragedies. It hath heretofore been esteemed a lawfull exercise, and
a tolerable profession in men of honor, namely in Greece. Aristoni tragico
actori rem aperit: huic et genus et fortuna honesta erant: nec ars, quia nihil
tale apud Graecos pudori est, ea deformabat. [Footnote: Liv. Deo. iii. 1. iv.]
"He imparts the matter to Ariston a Player of tragedies, whose progenie and
fortune were both honest; nor did his profession disgrace them, because no
such matter is a disparagement amongst the Grecians."

And I have ever accused them of impertinencie, that condemne and
disalow such kindes of recreations, and blame those of injustice, that refuse
good and honest Comedians, or (as we call them) Players, to enter our good
townes, and grudge the common people such publike sports. Politike and
wel ordered commonwealths endevour rather carefully to unite and
assemble their Citizens together; as in serious offices of devotion, so in
honest exercises of recreation. Common societie and loving friendship is
thereby cherished and increased. And besides, they cannot have more

formal and regular pastimes allowed them, than such as are acted and
represented in open view of all, and in the presence of the magistrates
themselves; And if I might beare sway, I would thinke it reasonable, that
Princes should sometimes, at their proper charges, gratifie the common
people with them, as an argument of a fatherly affection, and loving
goodnesse towards them: and that in populous and frequented cities, there
should be Theatres and places appointed for such spectacles; as a diverting
of worse inconveniences, and secret actions. But to come to my intended
purpose there is no better way to allure the affection, and to entice the
appetite: otherwise a man shall breed but asses laden with Bookes. With
jerks of rods they have their satchels full of learning given them to keepe.
Which to doe well, one must not only harbor in himselfe, but wed and
marry the same with his minde.

OF FRIENDSHIP

Considering the proceeding of a Painters worke I have, a desire hath
possessed mee to imitate him: He maketh choice of the most convenient
place and middle of everie wall, there to place a picture, laboured with all
his skill and sufficiencie; and all void places about it he filleth up with
antike Boscage [Footnote: Foliated ornament] or Crotesko [Footnote:
Grotesque] works; which are fantasticall pictures, having no grace, but in
the variety and strangenesse of them. And what are these my compositions
in truth, other than antike workes, and monstrous bodies, patched and
hudled up together of divers members, without any certaine or well ordered
figure, having neither order, dependencie, or proportion, but casuall and
framed by chance?

Definit in piscem mulier formosa superne.
[Footnote: Hon. Art. Poet. 4.]

A woman faire for parts superior,
Ends in a fish for parts inferior.

Touching this second point I goe as farre as my Painter, but for the other
and better part I am farre behinde: for my sufficiency reacheth not so farre
as that I dare undertake a rich, a polished, and, according to true skill, an
art-like table. I have advised myselfe to borrow one of Steven de la Boetie,
who with this kinde of worke shall honour all the world. It is a discourse he

entitled Voluntary Servitude, but those who have not knowne him, have
since very properly rebaptized the same, The Against-one. In his first youth
he writ, by way of Essaie, in honour of libertie against Tyrants. It hath long
since beene dispersed amongst men of understanding, not without great and
well deserved commendations: for it is full of wit, and containeth as much
learning as may be: yet doth it differ much from the best he can do. And if
in the age I knew him in, he would have undergone my dessigne to set his
fantasies downe in writing, we should doubtlesse see many rare things, and
which would very neerely approch the honour of antiquity: for especially
touching that part of natures gifts, I know none may be compared to him.
But it was not long of him, that ever this Treatise came to mans view, and I
beleeve he never saw it since it first escaped his hands: with certaine other
notes concerning the edict of Januarie, famous by reason of our intestine
warre, which haply may in other places finde their deserved praise. It is all I
could ever recover of his reliques (whom when death seized, he by his last
will and testament, left with so kinde remembrance, heire and executor of
his librarie and writings) besides the little booke, I since caused to be
published: To which his pamphlet I am particularly most bounden, for so
much as it was the instrumentall meane of our first acquaintance. For it was
shewed me long time before I saw him; and gave me the first knowledge of
his name, addressing, and thus nourishing that unspotted friendship which
we (so long as it pleased God) have so sincerely, so entire and inviolably
maintained betweene us, that truly a man shall not commonly heare of the
like; and amongst our moderne men no signe of any such is scene. So many
parts are required to the erecting of such a one, that it may be counted a
wonder if fortune once in three ages contract the like. There is nothing to
which Nature hath more addressed us than to societie. And Aristotle saith
that perfect Law- givers have had more regardfull care of friendship than of
justice. And the utmost drift of its perfection is this. For generally, all those
amities which are forged and nourished by voluptuousnesse or profit,

publike or private need, are thereby so much the lesse faire and generous,
and so much the lesse true amities, in that they intermeddle other causes,
scope, and fruit with friendship, than it selfe alone: Nor doe those foure
ancient kindes of friendships, Naturall, sociall, hospitable, and venerian,
either particularly or conjointly beseeme the same. That from children to
parents may rather be termed respect: Friendship is nourished by
communication, which by reason of the over-great disparitie cannot bee
found in them, and would happly offend the duties of nature: for neither all
the secret thoughts of parents can be communicated unto children, lest it
might engender an unbeseeming familiaritie betweene them, nor the
admonitions and corrections (which are the chiefest offices of friendship)
could be exercised from children to parents. There have nations beene
found, where, by custome, children killed their parents, and others where
parents slew their children, thereby to avoid the hindrance of enterbearing
[Footnote: Mutually supporting.] one another in after-times: for naturally
one dependeth from the ruine of another. There have Philosophers beene
found disdaining this naturall conjunction: witnesse Aristippus, who being
urged with the affection he ought [Footnote: Owed.] his children, as
proceeding from his loyns, began to spit, saying, That also that excrement
proceeded from him, and that also we engendred wormes and lice. And that
other man, whom Plutarke would have perswaded to agree with his brother,
answered, "I care not a straw the more for him, though he came out of the
same wombe I did." Verily the name of Brother is a glorious name, and full
of loving kindnesse, and therefore did he and I terme one another sworne
brother: but this commixture, dividence, and sharing of goods, this joyning
wealth to wealth, and that the riches of one shall be the povertie of another,
doth exceedingly distemper and distract all brotherly alliance, and lovely
conjunction: If brothers should conduct the progresse of their advancement
and thrift in one same path and course, they must necessarily oftentimes
hinder and crosse one another. Moreover, the correspondencie and relation

that begetteth these true and mutually perfect amities, why shall it be found
in these? The father and the sonne may very well be of a farre differing
complexion, and so many brothers: He is my sonne, he is my kinsman; but
he may be a foole, a bad, or a peevish-minded man. And then according as
they are friendships which the law and dutie of nature doth command us, so
much the lesse of our owne voluntarie choice and libertie is there required
unto it: And our genuine libertie hath no production more properly her
owne, than that of affection and amitie. Sure I am, that concerning the same
I have assaied all that might be, having had the best and most indulgent
father that ever was, even to his extremest age, and who from father to
sonne was descended of a famous house, and touching this rare-seene
vertue of brotherly concord very exemplare:

——et ipse
Notus in fratres animi paterni.
[Footnote: Hor. 1. ii. Qd. li. 6.]

To his brothers knowne so kinde.
As to beare a fathers minde.

To compare the affection toward women unto it, although it proceed from
our owne free choice, a man cannot, nor may it be placed in this ranke: Her
fire, I confesse it to be more

(—-neque enim est dea nescia nostri
Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem.)
[Footnote: Catul. Epig. lxvi.]

(Nor is that Goddesse ignorant of me,
Whose bitter-sweets with my cares mixed be.)

active, more fervent, and more sharpe. But it is a rash and wavering fire,
waving and divers: the fire of an ague subject to fits and stints, and that hath
but slender hold-fast of us. In true friendship, it is a generall and universall
heat, and equally tempered, a constant and setled heat, all pleasure and
smoothnes, that hath no pricking or stinging in it, which the more it is in
lustfull love, the more is it but a raging and mad desire in following that
which flies us,

Come segue la lepre il cacciatore
Alfreddo, al caldo, alia montagna, a lito,
Ne pin l'estima poi che presa vede,
E sol dietro a chi fugge affretta il piede.
[Footnote: Ariost. can. x. st. 7.]

Ev'n as the huntsman doth the hare pursue,
In cold, in heat, on mountaines, on the shore,
But cares no more, when he her ta'en espies
Speeding his pace only at that which flies.

As soone as it creepeth into the termes of friendship, that is to say, in the
agreement of wits, it languisheth and vanisheth away: enjoying doth lose it,
as having a corporall end, and subject to satietie. On the other side,
friendship is enjoyed according as it is desired, it is neither bred, nourished,
nor increaseth but in jovissance, as being spirituall, and the minde being
refined by use custome. Under this chiefe amitie, these fading affections
have sometimes found place in me, lest I should speake of him, who in his
verses speakes but too much of it. So are these two passions entered into me
in knowledge one of another, but in comparison never: the first flying a
high, and keeping a proud pitch, disdainfully beholding the other to passe
her points farre under it. Concerning marriage, besides that it is a covenant
which hath nothing free but the entrance, the continuance being forced and

constrained, depending else-where than from our will, and a match
ordinarily concluded to other ends: A thousand strange knots are therein
commonly to be unknit, able to break the web, and trouble the whole course
of a lively affection; whereas in friendship there is no commerce or busines
depending on the same, but it selfe. Seeing (to speake truly) that the
ordinary sufficiency of women cannot answer this conference and
communication, the nurse of this sacred bond: nor seeme their mindes
strong enough to endure the pulling of a knot so hard, so fast, and durable.
And truly, if without that, such a genuine and voluntarie acquaintance might
be contracted, where not only mindes had this entire jovissance, [Footnote:
Enjoyment.] but also bodies, a share of the alliance, and where a man might
wholly be engaged: It is certaine, that friendship would thereby be more
compleat and full: But this sex could never yet by any example attaine unto
it, and is by ancient schooles rejected thence. And this other Greeke licence
is justly abhorred by our customes, which notwithstanding, because
according to use it had so necessarie a disparitie of ages, and difference of
offices betweene lovers, did no more sufficiently answer the perfect union
and agreement, which here we require: Quis est enim iste amor amicitiae?
cur neque deformem adolescentem quisquam amat, neque formosum
senem? [Footnote: Cic. Tusc. Qu. lv. c. 33.] "For, what love is this of
friendship? why doth no man love either a deformed young man, or a
beautifull old man?" For even the picture the Academic makes of it, will not
(as I suppose) disavowe mee, to say thus in her behalfe: That the first furie,
enspired by the son of Venus in the lovers hart, upon the object of tender
youths-flower, to which they allow all insolent and passionate violences, an
immoderate heat may produce, was simply grounded upon an externall
beauty; a false image of corporall generation: for in the spirit it had no
power, the sight whereof was yet concealed, which was but in his infancie,
and before the age of budding. For, if this furie did seize upon a base
minded courage, the meanes of its pursuit were riches, gifts, favour to the

advancement of dignities, and such like vile merchandice, which they
reprove. If it fell into a more generous minde, the interpositions [Footnote:
Means of approach.] were likewise generous: Philosophicall instructions,
documents [Footnote: Teachings.] to reverence religion, to obey the lawes,
to die for the good of his countrie: examples of valor, wisdome and justice;
the lover endevoring and studying to make himselfe acceptable by the good
grace and beauty of his minde (that of his body being long since decayed)
hoping by this mentall society to establish a more firme and permanent
bargaine. When this pursuit attained the effect in due season (for by not
requiring in a lover, he should bring leasure and discretion in his enterprise,
they require it exactly in the beloved; forasmuch as he was to judge of an
internall beauty, of difficile knowledge, and abstruse discovery) then by the
interposition of a spiritual beauty was the desire of a spiritual conception
engendred in the beloved. The latter was here chiefest; the corporall,
accidentall and second, altogether contrarie to the lover. And therefore doe
they preferre the beloved, and verifie that the gods likewise preferre the
same: and greatly blame the Poet AEschylus, who in the love betweene
Achilles and Patroclus ascribeth the lovers part unto Achilles, who was in
the first and beardlesse youth of his adolescency, and the fairest of the
Graecians. After this general communitie, the mistris and worthiest part of
it, predominant and exercising her offices (they say the most availefull
commodity did thereby redound both to the private and publike). That it
was the force of countries received the use of it, and the principall defence
of equitie and libertie: witnesse the comfortable loves of Hermodius and
Aristogiton. Therefore name they it sacred and divine, and it concerns not
them whether the violence of tyrants, or the demisnesse of the people be
against them: To conclude, all that can be alleged in favour of the Academy,
is to say, that it was a love ending in friendship, a thing which hath no bad
reference unto the Stoical definition of love: Amorem conatum esse
amicitiae faciendae ex pulchritudinis specie: [Footnote: Cic. Tusc. Qu. ir. c.

34. ] "That love is an endevour of making friendship, by the shew of
beautie." I returne to my description in a more equitable and equall manner.
Omnino amicitiae, corroboratis jam confirmatisque ingeniis et aetatibus,
judicandae sunt. [Footnote: Cic. Amic.] "Clearely friendships are to be
judged by wits, and ages already strengthened and confirmed." As for the
rest, those we ordinarily call friendes and amities, are but acquaintances and
familiarities, tied together by some occasion or commodities, by meanes
whereof our mindes are entertained. In the amitie I speake of, they
entermixe and confound themselves one in the other, with so universall a
commixture, that they weare out and can no more finde the seame that hath
conjoined them together. If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I
feele it cannot be expressed, but by answering; Because it was he, because
it was my selfe. There is beyond all my discourse, and besides what I can
particularly report of it, I know not what inexplicable and fatall power, a
meane and Mediatrix of this indissoluble union. We sought one another
before we had scene one another, and by the reports we heard one of
another; which wrought a greater violence in us, than the reason of reports
may well beare; I thinke by some secret ordinance of the heavens, we
embraced one another by our names. And at our first meeting, which was by
chance at a great feast, and solemne meeting of a whole towneship, we
found our selves so surprized, so knowne, so acquainted, and so
combinedly bound together, that from thence forward, nothing was so neer
unto us as one unto anothers. He writ an excellent Latyne Satyre since
published; by which he excuseth and expoundeth the precipitation of our
acquaintance, so suddenly come to her perfection; Sithence it must continue
so short a time, and begun so late (for we were both growne men, and he
some yeares older than my selfe) there was no time to be lost. And it was
not to bee modelled or directed by the paterne of regular and remisse
[Footnote: Slight, languid.] friendship, wherein so many precautions of a
long and preallable conversation [Footnote: Preceding intercourse.] are

required. This hath no other Idea than of it selfe, and can have no reference
but to itselfe. It is not one especiall consideration, nor two, nor three, nor
foure, nor a thousand: It is I wot not what kinde of quintessence, of all this
commixture, which having seized all my will, induced the same to plunge
and lose it selfe in his, which likewise having seized all his will, brought it
to lose and plunge it selfe in mine, with a mutuall greedinesse, and with a
semblable concurrance. I may truly say, lose, reserving nothing unto us, that
might properly be called our owne, nor that was either his or mine. When
Lelius in the presence of the Romane Consuls, who after the condemnation
of Tiberius Gracchus, pursued all those that had beene of his acquaintance,
came to enquire of Caius Blosius (who was one of his chiefest friends) what
he would have done for him, and that he answered, "All things." "What, all
things?" replied he. "And what if he had willed thee to burne our Temples?"
Blosius answered, "He would never have commanded such a thing." "But
what if he had done it?" replied Lelius. The other answered, "I would have
obeyed him." If hee were so perfect a friend to Gracchus as Histories report,
he needed not offend the Consuls with this last and bold confession, and
should not have departed from the assurance hee had of Gracchus his
minde. But yet those who accuse this answer as seditious, understand not
well this mysterie: and doe not presuppose in what termes he stood, and that
he held Gracchus his will in his sleeve, both by power and knowledge. They
were rather friends than Citizens, rather friends than enemies of their
countrey, or friends of ambition and trouble. Having absolutely committed
themselves one to another, they perfectly held the reines of one anothers
inclination: and let this yoke be guided by vertue and conduct of reason
(because without them it is altogether impossible to combine and proportion
the same). The answer of Blosius was such as it should be. If their
affections miscarried, according to my meaning, they were neither friends
one to other, nor friends to themselves. As for the rest, this answer sounds
no more than mine would doe, to him that would in such sort enquire of me;

if your will should command you to kill your daughter, would you doe it?
and that I should consent unto it: for, that beareth no witnesse of consent to
doe it: because I am not in doubt of my will, and as little of such a friends
will. It is not in the power of the worlds discourse to remove me from the
certaintie I have of his intentions and judgments of mine: no one of its
actions might be presented unto me, under what shape soever, but I would
presently finde the spring and motion of it. Our mindes have jumped
[Footnote: Agreed.] so unitedly together, they have with so fervent an
affection considered of each other, and with like affection so discovered and
sounded, even to the very bottome of each others heart and entrails, that I
did not only know his, as well as mine owne, but I would (verily) rather
have trusted him concerning any matter of mine, than my selfe. Let no man
compare any of the other common friendships to this. I have as much
knowledge of them as another, yea of the perfectest of their kinde: yet wil I
not perswade any man to confound their rules, for so a man might be
deceived. In these other strict friendships a man must march with the bridle
of wisdome and precaution in his hand: the bond is not so strictly tied but a
man may in some sort distrust the same. Love him (said Chilon) as if you
should one day hate him againe. Hate him as if you should love him againe.
This precept, so abhominable in this soveraigne and mistris Amitie, is
necessarie and wholesome in the use of vulgar and customarie friendships:
toward which a man must employ the saying Aristotle was wont so often
repeat, "Oh you my friends, there is no perfect friend."

In this noble commerce, offices and benefits (nurses of other amities)
deserve not so much as to bee accounted of: this confusion so full of our
wills is cause of it: for even as the friendship I beare unto my selfe, admits
no accrease, [Footnote: Increase.] by any succour I give my selfe in any
time of need, whatsoever the Stoickes allege; and as I acknowledge no
thanks unto my selfe for any service I doe unto myselfe, so the union of
such friends, being truly perfect, makes them lose the feeling of such duties,

and hate, and expell from one another these words of division, and
difference: benefit, good deed, dutie, obligation, acknowledgement, prayer,
thanks, and such their like. All things being by effect common betweene
them; wils, thoughts, judgements, goods, wives, children, honour, and life;
and their mutual agreement, being no other than one soule in two bodies,
according to the fit definition of Aristotle, they can neither lend or give
ought to each other. See here the reason why Lawmakers, to honour
marriage with some imaginary resemblance of this divine bond, inhibite
donations between husband and wife; meaning thereby to inferre, that all
things should peculiarly bee proper to each of them, and that they have
nothing to divide and share together. If in the friendship whereof I speake,
one might give unto another, the receiver of the benefit should binde his
fellow. For, each seeking more than any other thing to doe each other good,
he who yeelds both matter and occasion, is the man sheweth himselfe
liberall, giving his friend that contentment, to effect towards him what he
desireth most. When the Philosopher Diogenes wanted money, he was wont
to say that he redemanded the same of his friends, and not that he demanded
it: And to show how that is practised by effect, I will relate an ancient
singular example. Eudamidas the Corinthiam had two friends: Charixenus a
Sycionian, and Aretheus a Corinthian; being upon his death-bed, and very
poore, and his two friends very rich, thus made his last will and testament:
"To Aretheus, I bequeath the keeping of my mother, and to maintaine her
when she shall be old: To Charixenus the marrying of my daughter, and to
give her as great a dowry as he may: and in case one of them shall chance to
die before, I appoint the survivor to substitute his charge, and supply his
place." Those that first saw this testament laughed and mocked at the same;
but his heires being advertised thereof, were very well pleased, and received
it with singular contentment. And Charixenus, one of them, dying five daies
after Eudamidas, the substitution being declared in favour of Aretheus, he
carefully and very kindly kept and maintained his mother, and of five

talents that he was worth he gave two and a halfe in marriage to one only
daughter he had, and the other two and a halfe to the daughter of
Eudamidas, whom he married both in one day. This example is very ample,
if one thing were not, which is the multitude of friends: For, this perfect
amity I speake of, is indivisible; each man doth so wholly give himselfe
unto his friend, that he hath nothing left him to divide else-where: moreover
he is grieved that he is not double, triple, or quadruple, and hath not many
soules, or sundry wils, that he might conferre them all upon this subject.
Common friendships may bee divided; a man may love beauty in one,
facility of behaviour in another, liberality in one, and wisdome in another,
paternity in this, fraternity in that man, and so forth: but this amitie which
possesseth the soule, and swaies it in all sovereigntie, it is impossible it
should be double. If two at one instant should require helpe, to which would
you run? Should they crave contrary offices of you, what order would you
follow? Should one commit a matter to your silence, which if the other
knew would greatly profit him, what course would you take? Or how would
you discharge your selfe? A singular and principall friendship dissolveth all
other duties, and freeth all other obligations. The secret I have sworne not to
reveale to another, I may without perjurie impart it unto him, who is no
other but my selfe. It is a great and strange wonder for a man to double
himselfe; and those that talke of tripling know not, nor cannot reach into the
height of it. "Nothing is extreme that hath his like." And he who shal
presuppose that of two I love the one as wel as the other, and that they
enter-love [Footnote: Love mutually.] one another, and love me as much as
I love them: he multiplied! in brotherhood, a thing most singular, and a
lonely one, and than which one alone is also the rarest to be found in the
world. The remainder of this history agreeth very wel with what I said; for,
Eudamidas giveth us a grace and favor to his friends to employ them in his
need: he leaveth them as his heires of his liberality, which consisteth in
putting the meanes into their hands to doe him good. And doubtlesse the

force of friendship is much more richly shewen in his deed than in
Aretheus. To conclude, they are imaginable effects to him that hath not
tasted them; and which makes me wonderfully to honor the answer of that
young Souldier to Cyrus, who enquiring of him what he would take for a
horse with which he had lately gained the prize of a race, and whether he
would change him for a Kingdome? "No surely, my Liege (said he), yet
would I willingly forgot him to game a true friend, could I but finde a man
worthy of so precious an alliance." He said not ill, in saying "could I but
finde." For, a man shall easily finde men fit for a superficiall acquaintance;
but in this, wherein men negotiate from the very centre of their harts, and
make no spare of any thing, it is most requisite all the wards and springs be
sincerely wrought and perfectly true. In confederacies, which hold but by
one end, men have nothing to provide for, but for the imperfections, which
particularly doe interest and concerne that end and respect. It is no great
matter what religion my Physician or Lawyer is of: this consideration hath
nothing common with the offices of that friendship they owe mee. So doe I
in the familiar acquaintances that those who serve me contract with me. I
am nothing inquisitive whether a Lackey be chaste or no, but whether he be
diligent: I feare not a gaming Muletier, so much as if he be weake: nor a hot
swearing Cooke, as one that is ignorant and unskilfull; I never meddle with
saying what a man should doe in the world; there are over many others that
doe it; but what my selfe doe in the world.

Mihi sic usus est: Tibi, ut opus est facto, face
[Footnote: Ter. Heau. act. i. sc. i, 28.]

So is it requisite for me:
Doe thou as needfull is for thee.

Concerning familiar table-talke, I rather acquaint my selfe with and
follow a merry conceited [Footnote: Fanciful] humour, than a wise man:

And in bed I rather prefer beauty than goodnesse; and in society or
conversation of familiar discourse, I respect rather sufficiency, though
without Preud'hommie, [Footnote: Probity.] and so of all things else. Even
as he that was found riding upon an hobby-horse, playing with his children
besought him who thus surprized him not to speake of it untill he were a
father himselfe, supposing the tender fondnesse and fatherly passion which
then would posesse his minde should make him an impartiall judge of such
an action; so would I wish to speake to such as had tried what I speake of:
but knowing how far such an amitie is from the common use, and how seld
scene and rarely found, I looke not to finde a competent judge. For, even the
discourses, which sterne antiquitie hath left us concerning this subject,
seeme to me but faint and forcelesse in respect of the feeling I have of it;
And in that point the effects exceed the very precepts of Philosophie.

Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico.
[Footnote: Hor. 1. i. Sat. vii. 44]

For me, be I well in my wit,
Nought, as a merry friend, so fit.

Ancient Menander accounted him happy that had but met the shadow of
a true friend: verily he had reason to say so, especially if he had tasted of
any: for truly, if I compare all the rest of my forepassed life, which although
I have, by the meere mercy of God, past at rest and ease, and except the
losse of so deare a friend, free from all grievous affliction, with an ever-
quietnesse of minde, as one that have taken my naturall and originall
commodities in good payment, without searching any others: if, as I say, I
compare it all unto the foure yeares I so happily enjoied the sweet company
and deare- deare society of that worthy man, it is nought but a vapour,
nought but a darke and yrkesome light. Since the time I lost him,

quem semper acerbum,
Semper honoratum (sic Dii voluistis) habebo,
[Footnote: Virg. AEn. iii. 49.]

Which I shall ever hold a bitter day,
Yet ever honour'd (so my God t' obey),

I doe but languish, I doe but sorrow: and even those pleasures, all things
present me with, in stead of yeelding me comfort, doe but redouble the
griefe of his losse. We were copartners in all things. All things were with us
at halfe; me thinkes I have stolne his part from him.

—Nee fas esse iilla me voluptate hic frui
Decrevi, tantisper dum ille abest meus particeps.
[Footnote: Ter. Heau. act. i. sc. i, 97.]

I have set downe, no joy enjoy I may,
As long as he my partner is away.

I was so accustomed to be ever two, and so enured [Footnote:
Accustomed] to be never single, that me thinks I am but halfe my selfe.

Illam mea si partem animce tulit,
Maturior vis, quid moror altera.
Nec charus aeque nec superstes,
Integer? Ille dies utramque
Duxit ruinam.
[Footnote: Hor. 1. ii. Od. xvii.]

Since that part of my soule riper fate reft me,
Why stay I heere the other part he left me?

Nor so deere, nor entire, while heere I rest:
That day hath in one mine both opprest.

There is no action can betide me, or imagination possesse me, but I heare
him saying, as indeed he would have done to me: for even as he did excell
me by an infinite distance in all other sufficiencies and vertues, so did he in
all offices and duties of friendship.

Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus,
Tam chari capitis?
[Footnote: Id. 1. i. Od. xxiv.]

What modesty or measure may I beare,
In want and wish of him that was so deare?

O misero frater adempte mihi!
Omnia tecum una perieruni gaudia nostra.
Qua tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor.
[Footnote: CATUL. Eleg. iv. 20, 92, 26, 95.]
Tu mea, tu moriens fregisti commoda frater.
[Footnote: Ib. 21.]
Tecum una tota est nostra sepulta anima,
Cujus ego interitu tota de mente fugavi
Hac studia, atque omnes delicias animi
[Footnote: CATUL. Bl. iv. 94.]
Alloquar? audiero nunquam tua verba loquentem?
[Footnote: Ib. 25.]
Nunquam ego te vita frater amabilior,
Aspiciam posthac? at certe semper amabo.
[Footnote: El. i. 9.]

O brother rest from miserable me,
All our delights are perished with thee,
Which thy sweet love did nourish in my breath.
Thou all my good hast spoiled in thy death:
With thee my soule is all and whole enshrinde,
At whose death I have cast out of my minde
All my mindes sweet-meats, studies of this kinde;
Never shall I, heare thee speake, speake with thee?
Thee brother, than life dearer, never see?
Yet shalt them ever be belov'd of mee.

But let us a little feare this yong man speake, being but sixteene yeares of
age.

Because I have found this worke to have since beene published (and to an
ill end) by such as seeke to trouble and subvert the state of our common-
wealth, nor caring whether they shall reforme it or no; which they have
fondly inserted among other writings of their invention, I have revoked my
intent, which was to place it here. And lest the Authors memory should any
way be interessed with those that could not thoroughly know his opinions
and actions, they shall understand that this subject was by him treated of in
his infancie, only by way of exercise, as a subject, common, bareworne, and
wyer- drawne in a thousand bookes. I will never doubt but he beleeved what
he writ, and writ as he thought: for hee was so conscientious that no lie did
ever passe his lips, yea were it but in matters of sport or play: and I know,
that had it beene in his choyce, he would rather have beene borne at Venice
than at Sarlac; and good, reason why: But he had another maxime deepely
imprinted in his minde, which was, carefully to obey, and religiously to
submit himselfe to the lawes, under which he was borne. There was never a
better citizen, nor more affected to the welfare and quietnesse of his
countrie, nor a sharper enemie of the changes, innovations, newfangles, and

hurly- burlies of his time: He would more willingly have imployed the
utmost of his endevours to extinguish and suppresse, than to favour or
further them: His minde was modelled to the patterne of other best ages.
But yet in exchange of his serious treatise, I will here set you downe
another, more pithie, materiall, and of more consequence, by him likewise
produced at that tender age.

OF BOOKS

I make no doubt but it shall often befall me to speake of things which are
better, and with more truth, handled by such as are their crafts-masters.
Here is simply an essay of my natural faculties, and no whit of those I have
acquired. And he that shall tax me with ignorance shall have no great
victory at my hands; for hardly could I give others reasons for my
discourses that give none unto my selfe, and am not well satisfied with
them. He that shall make search after knowledge, let him seek it where it is
there is nothing I professe lesse. These are but my fantasies by which I
endevour not to make things known, but my selfe. They may haply one day
be knowne unto me, or have bin at other times, according as fortune hath
brought me where they were declared or manifested. But I remember them
no more. And if I be a man of some reading, yet I am a man of no
remembering, I conceive no certainty, except it bee to give notice how farre
the knowledge I have of it doth now reach. Let no man busie himselfe about
the matters, but on the fashion I give them. Let that which I borrow be
survaied, and then tell me whether I have made good choice of ornaments
to beautifie and set foorth the invention which ever comes from mee. For I
make others to relate (not after mine owne fantasie but as it best falleth out)
what I cannot so well expresse, either through unskill of language or want
of judgement. I number not my borrowings, but I weigh them. And if I
would have made their number to prevail, I would have had twice as many.
They are all, or almost all, of so famous and ancient names, that me thinks

they sufficiently name themselves without mee. If in reasons, comparisons,
and arguments, I transplant any into my soile, or confound them with mine
owne, I purposely conceale the author, thereby to bridle the rashnesse of
these hastie censures that are so headlong cast upon all manner of
compositions, namely young writings of men yet living; and in vulgare that
admit all the world to talke of them, and which seemeth to convince the
conception and publike designe alike. I will have them to give Plutarch a
barb [Footnote: Thrust, taunt] upon mine own lips, and vex themselves in
wronging Seneca in mee. My weaknesse must be hidden under such great
credits. I will love him that shal trace or unfeather me; I meane through
clearenesse of judgement, and by the onely distinction of the force and
beautie of my discourses. For my selfe, who for want of memorie am ever
to seeke how to trie and refine them by the knowledge of their country,
knowe perfectly, by measuring mine owne strength, that my soyle is no way
capable of some over-pretious flowers that therein I find set, and that all the
fruits of my increase could not make it amends. This am I bound to answer
for if I hinder my selfe, if there be either vanitie or fault in my discourses
that I perceive not or am not able to discerne if they be showed me. For
many faults do often escape our eyes; but the infirmitie of judgement
consisteth in not being able to perceive them when another discovereth
them unto us. Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgement, and
we may have judgment without them: yea, the acknowledgement of
ignorance is one of the best and surest testimonies of judgement that I can
finde. I have no other sergeant of band to marshall my rapsodies than
fortune. And looke how my humours or conceites present themselves, so I
shuffle them up. Sometimes they prease out thicke and three fold, and other
times they come out languishing one by one. I will have my naturall and
ordinarie pace scene as loose and as shuffling as it is. As I am, so I goe on
plodding. And besides, these are matters that a man may not be ignorant of,
and rashly and casually to speake of them. I would wish to have a more

perfect understanding of things, but I will not purchase it so deare as it cost.
My intention is to passe the remainder of my life quietly and not
laboriously, in rest and not in care. There is nothing I will trouble or vex
myselfe about, no not for science it selfe, what esteeme soever it be of. I
doe not search and tosse over books but for an honester recreation to please,
and pastime to delight my selfe: or if I studie, I only endevour to find out
the knowledge that teacheth or handleth the knowledge of my selfe, and
which may instruct me how to die well and how to live well.

Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus.
[Footnote: Propeet. 1. iv. El. i. 70]

My horse must sweating runne,
That this goale may be wonne.

If in reading I fortune to meet with any difficult points, I fret not my selfe
about them, but after I have given them a charge or two, I leave them as I
found them. Should I earnestly plod upon them, I should loose both time
and my selfe, for I have a skipping wit. What I see not at the first view, I
shall lesse see it if I opinionate my selfe upon it. I doe nothing without
blithnesse; and an over obstinate continuation and plodding contention doth
dazle, dul, and wearie the same: my sight is thereby confounded and
diminished. I must therefore withdraw it, and at fittes goe to it againe. Even
as to judge well of the lustre of scarlet we are taught to cast our eyes over it,
in running over by divers glances, sodaine glimpses and reiterated
reprisings. [Footnote: Repeated observations.] If one booke seeme tedious
unto me I take another, which I follow not with any earnestnesse, except it
be at such houres as I am idle, or that I am weary with doing nothing. I am
not greatly affected to new books, because ancient Authors are, in my
judgement, more full and pithy: nor am I much addicted to Greeke books,
forasmuch as my understanding cannot well rid [Footnote: Accomplish.] his

worke with a childish and apprentise intelligence. Amongst moderne
bookes meerly pleasant, I esteeme Bocace his Decameron, Rabelais, and the
kisses of John the second (if they may be placed under this title), worth the
paines-taking to reade them. As for Amadis and such like trash of writings,
they had never the credit so much as to allure my youth to delight in them.
This I will say more, either boldly or rashly, that this old and heavie-pased
minde of mine will no more be pleased with Aristotle, or tickled with good
Ovid: his facility and quaint inventions, which heretofore have so ravished
me, they can now a days scarcely entertaine me. I speake my minde freely
of all things, yea, of such as peradventure exceed my sufficiencie, and that
no way I hold to be of my jurisdiction. What my conceit is of them is told
also to manifest the proportion of my insight, and not the measure of things.
If at any time I finde my selfe distasted of Platoes Axiochus, as of a forceles
worke, due regard had to such an Author, my judgement doth nothing
beleeve it selfe: It is not so fond-hardy, or selfe-conceited, as it durst dare to
oppose it selfe against the authority of so many other famous ancient
judgements, which he reputeth his regents and masters, and with whom hee
had rather erre. He chafeth with, and condemneth himselfe, either to rely on
the superficiall sense, being unable to pierce into the centre, or to view the
thing by some false lustre. He is pleased only to warrant himselfe from
trouble and unrulinesse: As for weaknesse, he acknowledgeth and
ingeniously avoweth the same. He thinks to give a just interpretation to the
apparences which his conception presents unto him, but they are shallow
and imperfect. Most of AEsopes fables have divers senses, and severall
interpretations: Those which Mythologize them, chuse some kinde of colour
well suting with the fable; but for the most part, it is no other than the first
and superficiall glosse: There are others more quicke, more sinnowie, more
essentiall, and more internall, into which they could never penetrate; and
thus thinke I with them. But to follow my course, I have ever deemed that
in Poesie, Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace, doe doubtles by far hold

the first ranke: and especially Virgil in his Georgiks, which I esteeme to be
the most accomplished peece of worke of Poesie: In comparison of which
one may easily discerne, that there are some passages in the AEneidos to
which the Author (had he lived) would no doubt have given some review or
correction: The fifth booke whereof is (in my mind) the most absolutely
perfect. I also love Lucan, and willingly read him, not so much for his stile,
as for his owne worth and truth of his opinion and judgement. As for good
Terence, I allow the quaintnesse and grace of his Latine tongue, and judge
him wonderfull conceited and apt, lively to represent the motions and
passions of the minde, and the condition of our manners: our actions make
me often remember him. I can never reade him so often but still I discover
some new grace and beautie in him. Those that lived about Virgil's time,
complained that some would compare Lucretius unto him. I am of opinion
that verily it is an unequall comparison; yet can I hardly assure my selfe in
this opinion whensoever I finde my selfe entangled in some notable passage
of Lucretius. If they were moved at this comparison, what would they say
now of the fond, hardy and barbarous stupiditie of those which now adayes
compare Ariosto unto him? Nay, what would Ariosto say of it himselfe?

O seclum insipiens et infacetutn.
[Footnote: Catul. Epig, xl. 8.]

O age that hath no wit,
And small conceit in it.

I thinke our ancestors had also more reason to cry out against those that
blushed not to equall Plautus unto Terence (who makes more show to be a
Gentleman) than Lucretius unto Virgil. This one thing doth greatly
advantage the estimation and preferring of Terence, that the father of the
Roman eloquence, of men of his quality doth so often make mention of
him; and the censure [Footnote: Opinion.] which the chiefe Judge of the

Roman Poets giveth of his companion. It hath often come unto my minde,
how such as in our dayes give themselves to composing of comedies (as the
Italians who are very happy in them) employ three or foure arguments of
Terence and Plautus to make up one of theirs. In one onely comedy they
will huddle up five or six of Bocaces tales. That which makes them so to
charge themselves with matter, is the distrust they have of their owne
sufficiency, and that they are not able to undergoe so heavie a burthen with
their owne strength. They are forced to finde a body on which they may rely
and leane themselves: and wanting matter of their owne wherewith to
please us, they will have the story or tale to busie and ammuse us: where as
in my Authors it is cleane contrary: The elegancies, the perfections and
ornaments of his manner of speech, make us neglect and lose the longing
for his subject. His quaintnesse and grace doe still retaine us to him. He is
every where pleasantly conceited, [Footnote: Full of pleasant notions.]

Liquidus puroque simillimus amni
[Footnote: Hor. 1. ii. Epist. II. 120.]

So clearely-neate, so neately-cleare,
As he a fine-pure River were,

and doth so replenish our minde with his graces that we forget those of
the fable. The same consideration drawes me somewhat further. I perceive
that good and ancient Poets have shunned the affectation and enquest, not
only of fantasticall, new fangled, Spagniolized, and Petrarchisticall
elevations, but also of more sweet and sparing inventions, which are the
ornament of all the Poeticall workes of succeeding ages. Yet is there no
competent Judge that findeth them wanting in those Ancient ones, and that
doth not much more admire that smoothly equall neatnesse, continued
sweetnesse, and flourishing comelinesse of Catullus his Epigrams, than all
the sharpe quips and witty girds wherewith Martiall doth whet and

embellish the conclusions of his. It is the same reason I spake of erewhile,
as Martiall of himselfe. Minus illi ingenio laborandum fuit, in cuius locum
materia successerat. [Footnote: Mart. Praf. 1. viii.] "He needed the lesse
worke with his wit, in place whereof matter came in supply." The former
without being moved or pricked cause themselves to be heard lowd enough:
they have matter to laugh at every where, and need not tickle themselves;
where as these must have foraine helpe: according as they have lesse spirit,
they must have more body. They leape on horsebacke, because they are not
sufficiently strong in their legs to march on foot. Even as in our dances,
those base conditioned men that keepe dancing-schooles, because they are
unfit to represent the port and decencie of our nobilitie, endevour to get
commendation by dangerous lofty trickes, and other strange tumbler-like
friskes and motions. And some Ladies make a better shew of their
countenances in those dances, wherein are divers changes, cuttings,
turnings, and agitations of the body, than in some dances of state and
gravity, where they need but simply to tread a naturall measure, represent an
unaffected cariage, and their ordinary grace; And as I have also seene some
excellent Lourdans, or Clownes, attired in their ordinary worky-day clothes,
and with a common homely countenance, affoord us all the pleasure that
may be had from their art: but prentises and learners that are not of so high
a forme, besmeare their faces, to disguise themselves, and in motions
counterfeit strange visages and antickes, to enduce us to laughter. This my
conception is no where better discerned than in the comparison betweene
Virgils AEneidos and Orlando Furioso. The first is seene to soare aloft with
full-spread wings, and with so high and strong a pitch, ever following his
point; the other faintly to hover and flutter from tale to tale, and as it were
skipping from bough to bough, always distrusting his owne wings, except it
be for some short flight, and for feare his strength and breath should faile
him, to sit downe at every fields- end;

Excursusque breves tentat.
[Footnote: Virg. AEn. 1. iv. 194.]

Out-lopes [Footnote: Wanderings out.] sometimes he doth assay,
But very short, and as he may.

Loe here then, concerning this kinde of subjects, what Authors please me
best: As for my other lesson, which somewhat more mixeth profit with
pleasure, whereby I learne to range my opinions and addresse my
conditions, the Bookes that serve me thereunto are Plutarke (since he spake
[Footnote: Was translated by Angot] French) and Seneca; both have this
excellent commodity for my humour, that the knowledge I seeke in them is
there so scatteringly and loosely handled, that whosoever readeth them is
not tied to plod long upon them, whereof I am uncapable. And so are
Plutarkes little workes and Senecas Epistles, which are the best and most
profitable parts of their writings. It is no great matter to draw mee to them,
and I leave them where I list. For they succeed not and depend not one of
another. Both jumpe [Footnote: Agree] and suit together, in most true and
profitable opinions: And fortune brought them both into the world in one
age. Both were Tutors unto two Roman Emperours: Both were strangers,
and came from farre Countries; both rich and mighty in the common-
wealth, and in credit with their masters. Their instruction is the prime and
creame of Philosophy, and presented with a plaine, unaffected, and
pertinent fashion. Plutarke is more uniforme and constant; Seneca more
waving and diverse. This doth labour, force, and extend himselfe, to arme
and strengthen vertue against weaknesse, feare, and vitious desires; the
other seemeth nothing so much to feare their force or attempt, and in a
manner scorneth to hasten or change his pace about them, and to put
himselfe upon his guard. Plutarkes opinions are Platonicall, gentle and
accommodable unto civill societie: Senecaes Stoicall and Epicurian, further
from common use, but in my conceit [Footnote: Opinion.] more proper,

particular, and more solid. It appeareth in Seneca that he somewhat
inclineth and yeeldeth to the tyrannic of the Emperors which were in his
daies; for I verily believe, it is with a forced judgement he condemneth the
cause of those noblie- minded murtherers of Caesar; Plutarke is every
where free and open hearted; Seneca full-fraught with points and sallies;
Plutarke stuft with matters. The former doth move and enflame you more;
the latter content, please, and pay you better: This doth guide you, the other
drive you on. As for Cicero, of all his works, those that treat of Philosophie
(namely morall) are they which best serve my turne, and square with my
intent. But boldly to confess the truth (for, since the bars of impudencie
were broken downe, all curbing is taken away), his manner of writing
seemeth verie tedious unto me, as doth all such like stuffe. For his prefaces,
definitions, divisions, and Etymologies consume the greatest part of his
works; whatsoever quick, wittie, and pithie conceit is in him is surcharged
and confounded by those his long and far-fetcht preambles. If I bestow but
one hour in reading them, which is much for me, and let me call to minde
what substance or juice I have drawne from him, for the most part I find
nothing but wind and ostentation in him; for he is not yet come to the
arguments which make for his purpose, and reasons that properly concerne
the knot or pith I seek after. These Logicall and Aristotelian ordinances are
not avail full for me, who onely endeavour to become more wise and
sufficient, and not more wittie or eloquent. I would have one begin with the
last point: I understand sufficiently what death and voluptuousnesse are: let
not a man busie himselfe to anatomize them. At the first reading of a booke
I seeke for good and solid reasons that may instruct me how to sustaine
their assaults. It is neither grammaticall subtilties nor logicall quiddities, nor
the wittie contexture of choice words or arguments and syllogismes, that
will serve my turne. I like those discourses that give the first charge to the
strongest part of the doubt; his are but flourishes, and languish everywhere.
They are good for schooles, at the barre, or for Orators and Preachers,

where we may slumber: and though we wake a quarter of an houre after, we
may finde and trace him soone enough. Such a manner of speech is fit for
those judges that a man would corrupt by hooke or crooke, by right or
wrong, or for children and the common people, unto whom a man must tell
all, and see what the event would be. I would not have a man go about and
labour by circumlocutions to induce and winne me to attention, and that (as
our Heralds or Criers do) they shall ring out their words: Now heare me,
now listen, or ho-yes. [Footnote: Oyez, hear.] The Romanes in their religion
were wont to say, "Hoc age; [Footnote: Do this.] "which in ours we say,
"Sursum corda. [Footnote: Lift up your hearts.] There are so many lost
words for me. I come readie prepared from my house. I neede no allurement
nor sawce, my stomacke is good enough to digest raw meat: And whereas
with these preparatives and flourishes, or preambles, they thinke to sharpen
my taste or stir my stomacke, they cloy and make it wallowish. [Footnote:
Mawkish.] Shall the privilege of times excuse me from this sacrilegious
boldnesse, to deem Platoes Dialogismes to be as languishing, by over-filling
and stuffing his matter? And to bewaile the time that a man who had so
many thousands of things to utter, spends about so many, so long, so vaine,
and idle interloqutions, and preparatives? My ignorance shall better excuse
me, in that I see nothing in the beautie of his language. I generally enquire
after bookes that use sciences, and not after such as institute them. The two
first, and Plinie, with others of their ranke, have no Hoc age in them, they
will have to doe with men that have forewarned themselves; or if they have,
it is a materiall and substantial! Hoc age, and that hath his bodie apart I
likewise love to read the Epistles and ad Atticum, not onely because they
containe a most ample instruction of the historic and affaires of his times,
but much more because in them I descrie his private humours. For (as I
have said elsewhere) I am wonderfull curious to discover and know the
minde, the soul, the genuine disposition and naturall judgement of my
authors. A man ought to judge their sufficiencie and not their customes, nor

them by the shew of their writings, which they set forth on this world's
theatre. I have sorrowed a thousand times that ever we lost the booke that
Brutus writ of Vertue. Oh it is a goodly thing to learne the Theorike of such
as understand the practice well. But forsomuch as the Sermon is one thing
and the Preacher an other, I love as much to see Brutus in Plutarke as in
himself: I would rather make choice to know certainly what talk he had in
his tent with some of his familiar friends, the night fore-going the battell,
than the speech he made the morrow after to his Armie; and what he did in
his chamber or closet, than what in the senate or market place. As for
Cicero, I am of the common judgement, that besides learning there was no
exquisite [Footnote: Overelaborate.] eloquence in him: He was a good
citizen, of an honest, gentle nature, as are commonly fat and burly men: for
so was he: But to speake truly of thim? full of ambitious vanity and remisse
niceness. [Footnote: Ineffectual fastidiousness.] And I know not well how to
excuse him, in that he deemed his Poesie worthy to be published. It is no
great imperfection to make bad verses, but it is an imperfection in him that
he never perceived how unworthy they were of the glorie of his name.
Concerning his eloquence, it is beyond all comparison, and I verily beleeve
that none shall ever equall it. Cicero the younger, who resembled his father
in nothing but in name, commanding in Asia, chanced one day to have
many strangers at his board, and amongst others, one Caestius sitting at the
lower end, as the manner is to thrust in at great mens tables: Cicero inquired
of one of his men what he was, who told him his name, but he dreaming on
other matters, and having forgotten what answere his man made him, asked
him his name twice or thrice more: the servant, because he would not be
troubled to tell him one thing so often, and by some circumstance to make
him to know him better, "It is," said he, "the same Caestius of whom some
have told you that, in respect of his owne, maketh no accompt of your
fathers eloquence:" Cicero being suddainly mooved, commanded the said
poore Caestius to be presently taken from the table, and well whipt in his

presence: Lo heere an uncivill and barbarous host. Even amongst those
which (all things considered) have deemed his eloquence matchlesse and
incomparable, others there have been who have not spared to note some
faults in it. As great Brutus said, that it was an eloquence broken, halting,
and disjoynted, fractam et elumbem: "Incoherent and sinnowlesse." Those
Orators that lived about his age, reproved also in him the curious care he
had of a certaine long cadence at the end of his clauses, and noted these
words, esse videatur, which he so often useth. As for me, I rather like a
cadence that falleth shorter, cut like Iambikes: yet doth he sometimes
confounde his numbers, [Footnote: Confuse his rhythm.] but it is seldome: I
have especially observed this one place: "Ego vero me minus diu senem
esse mallem, quam esse senem, antequam essem? [Footnote: Cic. De
Senect.] "But I had rather not be an old man, so long as I might be, than to
be old before I should be." Historians are my right hand, for they are
pleasant and easie; and therewithall the man with whom I desire generally
to be acquainted may more lively and perfectly be discovered in them than
in any other composition: the varictic and truth of his inward conditions, in
grosse and by retale: the diversitie of the meanes of his collection and
composing, and of the accidents that threaten him. Now those that write of
mens lives, forasmuch as they ammuse and busie themselves more about
counsels than events, more about that which commeth from within than that
which appeareth outward; they are fittest for me: And that's the reason why
Plutarke above all in that kind doth best please me. Indeed I am not a little
grieved that we have not a dozen of Laertius, or that he is not more knowne,
or better understood; for I am no lesse curious to know the fortunes and
lives of these great masters of the world than to understand the diversitie of
their decrees and conceits. In this kind of studie of historie a man must,
without distinction, tosse and turne over all sorts of Authors, both old and
new, both French and others, if he will learne the things they so diversly
treat of. But me thinkes that Caesar above all doth singularly deserve to be

studied, not onely for the understanding of the historie as of himselfe; so
much perfection and excellencie is there in him more than in others,
although Salust be reckoned one of the number. Verily I read that author
with a little more reverence and respects than commonly men reade profane
and humane Workes: sometimes considering him by his actions and
wonders of his greatnesse, and other times waighing the puritie and
inimitable polishing and elegancie of his tongue, which (as Cicero saith)
hath not onely exceeded all historians, but haply Cicero himselfe: with such
sinceritie in his judgement, speaking of his enemies, that except the false
colours wherewith he goeth about to cloake his bad cause, and the
corruption and filthinesse of his pestilent ambition, I am perswaded there is
nothing in him to be found fault with: and that he hath been over-sparing to
speake of himselfe; for so many notable and great things could never be
executed by him, unlesse he had put more of his owne into them than he
setteth downe. I love those Historians that are either very simple or most
excellent. The simple who have nothing of their owne to adde unto the
storie and have but the care and diligence to collect whatsoever come to
their knowledge, and sincerely and faithfully to register all things, without
choice or culling, by the naked truth leave our judgment more entire and
better satisfied.

Such amongst others (for examples sake) plaine and well-meaning
Froissard, who in his enterprise hath marched with so free and genuine a
puritie, that having committed some oversight, he is neither ashamed to
acknowledge nor afraid to correct the same, wheresoever he hath either
notice or warning of it; and who representeth unto us the diversitie of the
newes then current and the different reports that were made unto him. The
subject of an historie should be naked, bare, and formelesse; each man
according to his capacitie or understanding may reap commoditie out of it.
The curious and most excellent have the sufficiencie to cull and chuse that
which is worthie to be knowne and may select of two relations that which is

most likely: from the condition of Princes and of their humours, they
conclude their counsels and attribute fit words to them: they assume a just
authoritie and bind our faith to theirs. But truly that belongs not to many.
Such as are betweene both (which is the most common fashion), it is they
that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a
law to judge, and by consequence to square and encline the storie according
to their fantasie; for, where the judgement bendeth one way, a man cannot
chuse but wrest and turne his narration that way. They undertake to chuse
things worthy to bee knowne, and now and then conceal either a word or a
secret action from us, which would much better instruct us: omitting such
things as they understand not as incredible: and haply such matters as they
know not how to declare, either in good Latin or tolerable French. Let them
boldly enstall their eloquence and discourse: Let them censure at their
pleasure, but let them also give us leave to judge after them: And let them
neither alter nor dispense by their abridgements and choice anything
belonging to the substance of the matter; but let them rather send it pure and
entire with all her dimensions unto us. Most commonly (as chiefly in our
age) this charge of writing histories is committed unto base, ignorant, and
mechanicall kind of people, only for this consideration that they can speake
well; as if we sought to learne the Grammer of them; and they have some
reason, being only hired to that end, and publishing nothing but their tittle-
tattle to aime at nothing else so much. Thus with store of choice and quaint
words, and wyre drawne phrases, they huddle up and make a hodge-pot of a
laboured contexture of the reports which they gather in the market places or
such other assemblies. The only good histories are those that are written by
such as commanded or were imploied themselves in weighty affaires or that
were partners in the conduct of them, or that at least have had the fortune to
manage others of like qualitie. Such in a manner are all the Graecians and
Romans. For many eye-witnesses having written of one same subject (as it
hapned in those times when Greatnesse and Knowledge did commonly

meet) if any fault or over-sight have past them, it must be deemed
exceeding light and upon some doubtful accident. What may a man expect
at a Phisitians hand that discourseth of warre, or of a bare Scholler treating
of Princes secret designes? If we shall but note the religion which the
Romans had in that, wee need no other example: Asinius Pollio found some
mistaking or oversight in Caesars Commentaries, whereinto he was falne,
only because he could not possiblie oversee all things with his owne eyes
that hapned in his Armie, but was faine to rely on the reports of particular
men, who often related untruths unto him: or else because he had not been
curiously advertized [Footnote: Minutely informed.] and distinctly
enformed by his Lieutenants and Captaines of such matters as they in his
absence had managed or effected. Whereby may be seen that nothing is so
hard or so uncertaine to be found out as the certaintie of the truth, sithence
[Footnote: Since.] no man can put any assured confidence concerning the
truth of a battel, neither in the knowledge of him that was Generall or
commanded over it, nor in the soldiers that fought, of anything that hath
hapned amongst them; except after the manner of a strict point of law, the
severall witnesses are brought and examined face to face, and that all
matters be nicely and thorowly sifted by the objects and trials of the
successe of every accident. Verily the knowledge we have of our owne
affaires is much more barren and feeble. But this hath sufficiently been
handled by Bodin, and agreeing with my conception. Somewhat to aid the
weaknesse of my memorie and to assist her great defects; for it hath often
been my chance to light upon bookes which I supposed to be new and never
to have read, which I had not understanding diligently read and run over
many years before, and all bescribled with my notes; I have a while since
accustomed my selfe to note at the end of my booke (I meane such as I
purpose to read but once) the time I made an end to read it, and to set
downe what censure or judgement I gave of it; that so it may at least at
another time represent unto my mind the aire and generall idea I had

conceived of the Author in reading him. I will here set downe the Copie of
some of my annotations, and especially what I noted upon my Guicciardine
about ten yeares since: (For what language soever my books speake unto
me I speake unto them in mine owne.) He is a diligent Historiographer and
from whom in my conceit a man may as exactly learne the truth of such
affaires as passed in his time, as of any other writer whatsoever: and the
rather because himselfe hath been an Actor of most part of them and in
verie honourable place. There is no signe or apparance that ever he
disguised or coloured any matter, either through hatred, malice, favour, or
vanitie; whereof the free and impartiall judgements he giveth of great men,
and namely of those by whom he had been advanced or imployed in his
important charges, as of Pope Clement the seaventh, beareth undoubted
testimony. Concerning the parts wherein he most goeth about to prevaile,
which are his digressions and discourses, many of them are verie excellent
and enriched with faire ornaments, but he hath too much pleased himselfe
in them: for endeavouring to omit nothing that might be spoken, having so
full and large a subject, and almost infinite, he proveth somewhat
languishing, and giveth a taste of a kind of scholasticall tedious babling.
Moreover, I have noted this, that of so severall and divers armes, successes,
and effects he judgeth of; of so many and variable motives, alterations, and
counsels, that he relateth, he never referreth any one unto vertue, religion or
conscience: as if they were all extinguished and banished the world. And of
all actions how glorious soever in apparance they be of themselves, he doth
ever impute the cause of them to some vicious and blame-worthie occasion,
or to some commoditie and profit. It is impossible to imagine that amongst
so infinite a number of actions whereof he judgeth, some one have not been
produced and compassed by way of reason. No corruption could ever
possesse men so universally but that some one must of necessity escape the
contagion; which makes me to feare he hath had some distaste or blame in
his passion, and it hath haply fortuned that he hath judged or esteemed of

others according to himselfe. In my Philip de Comines there is this: In him
you shall find a pleasing- sweet and gently-gliding speech, fraught with a
purely sincere simplicitie, his narration pure and unaffected, and wherein
the Authours unspotted good meaning doth evidently appeare, void of all
manner of vanitie or ostentation speaking of himselfe, and free from all
affection or envie-speaking of others; his discourses and perswasions
accompanied more with a well-meaning zeale and meere [Footnote: Pure.]
veritie than with any laboured and exquisite sufficiencie, and allthrough
with gravitie and authoritie, representing a man well-borne and brought up
in high negotiations. Upon the Memoires and historic of Monsieur du
Bellay: It is ever a well-pleasing thing to see matters written by those that
have as said how and in what manner they ought to be directed and
managed: yet can it not be denied but that in both these Lords there will
manifestly appeare a great declination from a free libertie of writing, which
clearely shineth in ancient writers of their kind: as in the Lord of louinille,
familiar unto Saint Lewis; Eginard, Chancellor unto Charlemaine; and of
more fresh memorie in Philip de Comines. This is rather a declamation or
pleading for King Francis against the Emperour Charles the fifth, than an
Historic. I will not beleeve they have altered or changed any thing
concerning the generalitie of matters, but rather to wrest and turne the
judgement of the events many times against reason, to our advantage, and
to omit whatsoever they supposed to be doubtful or ticklish in their masters
life: they have made a business of it: witnesse the recoylings of the Lords of
Momorancy and Byron, which therein are forgotten; and which is more,
you shall not so much as find the name of the Ladie of Estampes mentioned
at all. A man may sometimes colour and haply hide secret actions, but
absolutely to conceal that which all the world knoweth, and especially such
things as have drawne-on publike effects, and of such consequence, it is an
inexcusable defect, or as I may say unpardonable oversight. To conclude,
whosoever desireth to have perfect information and knowledge of king

Francis the first, and of the things hapned in his time, let him addresse
himselfe elsewhere if he will give any credit unto me. The profit he may
reap here is by the particular description of the battels and exploits of warre
wherein these gentlemen were present; some privie conferences, speeches,
or secret actions of some princes that then lived, and the practices managed,
or negotiations directed by the Lord of Langeay, in which doubtless are
verie many things well worthy to be knowne, and diverse discourses not
vulgare.

MONTAIGNE

WHAT IS A CLASSIC?

BY

CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE

TRANSLATED BY

E. LEE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, the foremost French critic of the nineteenth
century, and, in the view of many, the greatest literary critic of the world,
was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, December 23, 1804. He studied medicine,
but soon abandoned it for literature; and before he gave himself up to
criticism he made some mediocre attempts in poetry and fiction. He became
professor at the College de France and the Ecole Normale and was
appointed Senator in 1865. A course of lectures given at Lausanne in 1837
resulted in his great "Histoire de Port-Royal" and another given at Liege in
his "Chateaubriand et son groupe litteraire." But his most famous
productions were his critical essays published periodically in the
"Constitutionnel" the "Moniteur" and the "Temps" later collected in sets
under the names of "Critiques et Portraits Litteraires" "Portraits
Contemporains" "Causeries du Lundi" and "Nouveaux Lundis." At the
height of his vogue, these Monday essays were events of European
importance. He died in 1869.

Sainte-Beuve's work was much more than literary criticism as that type
of writing had been generally conceived before his time. In place of the
mere classification of books and the passing of a judgment upon them as
good or bad, he sought to illuminate and explain by throwing light on a
literary work from a study of the life, circumstances, and aim of the writer,
and by a comparison with the literature of other times and countries. Thus

his work was historical, psychological, and ethical, as well as esthetic, and
demanded vast learning and a literary outlook of unparalleled breadth. In
addition to this equipment he had fine taste and an admirable style; and by
his universality, penetration, and balance he raised to a new level the
profession of critic.

MONTAIGNE

While the good ship France is taking a somewhat haphazard course, getting
into unknown seas, and preparing to double what the pilots (if there is a
pilot) call the Stormy Cape, while the look-out at the mast-head thinks he
sees the spectre of the giant Adamastor rising on the horizon, many
honourable and peaceable men continue their work and studies all the same,
and follow out to the end, or as far as they can, their favourite hobbies. I
know, at the present time, a learned man who is collating more carefully
than has ever yet been done the different early editions of Rabelais—
editions, mark you, of which only one copy remains, of which a second is
not to be found: from the careful collation of the texts some literary and
maybe philosophical result will be derived with regard to the genius of the
French Lucian-Aristophanes. I know another scholar whose devotion and
worship is given to a very different man—to Bossuet: he is preparing a
complete, exact, detailed history of the life and works of the great bishop.
And as tastes differ, and "human fancy is cut into a thousand shapes"
(Montaigne said that), Montaigne also has his devotees, he who, himself,
was so little of one: a sect is formed round him. In his lifetime he had
Mademoiselle de Gournay, his daughter of alliance, who was solemnly
devoted to him; and his disciple, Charron, followed him closely, step by
step, only striving to arrange his thoughts with more order and method. In
our time amateurs, intelligent men, practice the religion under another form:
they devote themselves to collecting the smallest traces of the author of the

Essays, to gathering up the slightest relics, and Dr. Payen may be justly
placed at the head of the group. For years he has been preparing a book on
Montaigne, of which the title will be—"Michel de Montaigne, a collection
of unedited or little known facts about the author of the Essays, his book,
and his other writings, about his family, his friends, his admirers, his
detractors."

While awaiting the conclusion of the book, the occupation and
amusement of a lifetime, Dr. Payen keeps us informed in short pamphlets of
the various works and discoveries made about Montaigne.

If we separate the discoveries made during the last five or six years from
the jumble of quarrels, disputes, cavilling, quackery, and law-suits (for there
have been all those), they consist in this- -

In 1846 M. Mace found in the (then) Royal Library, amongst the
"Collection Du Puys," a letter of Montaigne, addressed to the king,
Henri IV., September 2, 1590.

In 1847 M. Payen printed a letter, or a fragment of a letter of Montaigne
of February 16, 1588, a letter corrupt and incomplete, coming from the
collection of the Comtesse Boni de Castellane.

But, most important of all, in 1848, M. Horace de Viel-Castel found in
London, at the British Museum, a remarkable letter of Montaigne, May 22,
1585, when Mayor of Bordeaux, addressed to M. de Matignon, the king's
lieutenant in the town. The great interest of the letter is that it shows
Montaigne for the first time in the full discharge of his office with all the
energy and vigilance of which he was capable. The pretended idler was at
need much more active than he was ready to own.

M. Detcheverry, keeper of the records to the mayoralty of Bordeaux,
found and published (1850) a letter of Montaigne, while mayor, to the
Jurats, or aldermen of the town, July 30, 1585.

M. Achille Jubinal found among the manuscripts of the National
Library, and published (1850), a long, remarkable letter from
Montaigne to the king, Henri IV., January 18, 1590, which happily
coincides with that already found by M. Mace.

Lastly, to omit nothing and do justice to all, in a "Visit to Montaigne's
Chateau in Perigord," of which the account appeared in 1850, M. Bertrand
de Saint-Germain described the place and pointed out the various Greek and
Latin inscriptions that may still be read in Montaigne's tower in the third-
storey chamber (the ground floor counting as the first), which the
philosopher made his library and study.

M. Payen, collecting together and criticising in his last pamphlet the
various notices and discoveries, not all of equal importance, allowed
himself to be drawn into some little exaggeration of praise; but we cannot
blame him. Admiration, when applied to such noble, perfectly innocent, and
disinterested subjects, is truly a spark of the sacred fire: it produces research
that a less ardent zeal would quickly leave aside, and sometimes leads to
valuable results. However, it would be well for those who, following M.
Payen's example, intelligently understand and greatly admire Montaigne, to
remember, even in their ardour, the advice of the wise man and the master.
"There is more to do," said he, speaking of the commentators of his time,
"in interpreting the interpretations than in interpreting the things
themselves; and more bdoks about books than on any other subject. We do
nothing, but everything swarms with commentators; of authors there is a
great rarity." Authors are of great price and very scared at all times—that is
to say, authors who really increase the sum of human knowledge. I should

like all who write on Montaigne, and give us the details of their researches
and discoveries, to imagine one thing,—Montaigne himself reading and
criticising them. "What would he think of me and the manner in which I am
going to speak of him to the public?" If such a question was put, how
greatly it would suppress useless phrases and shorten idle discussions! M.
Payen's last pamphlet was dedicated to a man who deserves equally well of
Montaigne—M. Gustave Brunet, of Bordeaux. He, speaking of M. Payen,
in a work in which he pointed out interesting and various corrections of
Montaigne's text, said: "May he soon decide to publish the fruits of his
researches: he will have left nothing for future Montaignologues"
Montaignologues! Great Heaven! what would Montaigne say of such a
word coined in his honour? You who occupy yourselves so meritoriously
with him, but who have, I think, no claim to appropriate him to yourselves,
in the name of him whom you love, and whom we all love by a greater or
lesser title, never, I beg of you, use such words; they smack of the
brotherhood and the sect, of pedantry and of the chatter of the schools—
things utterly repugnant to Montaigne.

Montaigne had a simple, natural, affable mind, and a very happy
disposition. Sprung from an excellent father, who, though of no great
education, entered with real enthusiasm into the movement of the
Renaissance and all the liberal novelties of his time, the son corrected the
excessive enthusiasm, vivacity, and tenderness he inherited by a great
refinement and justness of reflection; but he did not abjure the original
groundwork. It is scarcely more than thirty years ago that whenever the
sixteenth century was mentioned it was spoken of as a barbarous epoch,
Montaigne only excepted: therein lay error and ignorance. The sixteenth
century was a great century, fertile, powerful, learned, refined in parts,
although in some aspects it was rough, violent, and seemingly coarse. What
it particularly lacked was taste, if by taste is meant the faculty of clear and
perfect selection, the extrication of the elements of the beautiful. But in the

succeeding centuries taste quickly became distaste. If, however, in literature
it was crude, in the arts properly so-called, in those of the hand and the
chisel, the sixteenth century, even in France, is, in the quality of taste, far
greater than the two succeeding centuries: it is neither meagre nor massive,
heavy nor distorted. In art its taste is rich and of fine quality,—at once
unrestrained and complex, ancient and modern, special to itself and
original. In the region of morals it is unequal and mixed. It was an age of
contrasts, of contrasts in all their crudity, an age of philosophy and
fanaticism, of scepticism and strong faith. Everything was at strife and in
collision; nothing was blended and united. Everything was in ferment; it
was a period of chaos; every ray of light caused a storm. It was not a gentle
age, or one we can call an age of light, but an age of struggle and combat.
What distinguished Montaigne and made a phenomenon of him was, that in
such an age he should have possessed moderation, caution, and order.

Born on the last day of February, 1533, taught the ancient languages as a
game while still a child, waked even in his cradle by the sound of musical
instruments, he seemed less fitted for a rude and violent epoch than for the
commerce and sanctuary of the muses. His rare good sense corrected what
was too ideal and poetical in his early education; but he preserved the happy
faculty of saying everything with freshness and wit. Married, when past
thirty, to an estimable woman who was his companion for twenty-eight
years, he seems to have put passion only into friendship. He immortalised
his love for Etienne de la Boetie, whom he lost after four years of the
sweetest and closest intimacy. For some time counsellor in the Parliament
of Bordeaux, Montaigne, before he was forty, retired from public life, and
flung away ambition to live in his tower of Montaigne, enjoying his own
society and his own intellect, entirely given up to his own observations and
thoughts, and to the busy idleness of which we know all the sports and
fancies. The first edition of the Essays appeared in 1580, consisting of only
two books, and in a form representing only the first rough draft of what we

have in the later editions. The same year Montaigne set out on a voyage to
Switzerland and Italy. It was during that voyage that the aldermen of
Bordeaux elected him mayor of their town. At first he refused and excused
himself, but warned that it would be well to accept, and enjoined by the
king, he took the office, "the more beautiful," he said, "that there was
neither renunciation nor gain other than the honour of its performance." He
filled the office for four years, from July 1582 to July 1586, being re-
elected after the first two years. Thus Montaigne, at the age of fifty, and a
little against his will, re- entered public life when the country was on the
eve of civil disturbances which, quieted and lulled to sleep for a while,
broke out more violently at the cry of the League. Although, as a rule,
lessons serve for nothing, since the art of wisdom and happiness cannot be
taught, let us not deny ourselves the pleasure of listening to Montaigne; let
us look on his wisdom and happiness; let him speak of public affairs, of
revolutions and disturbances, and of his way of conducting himself with
regard to them. We do not put forward a model, but we offer our readers an
agreeable recreation.

Although Montaigne lived in so agitated and stormy a time, a period that
a man who had lived through the Terror (M. Daunou) called the most tragic
century in all history, he by no means regarded his age as the worst of ages.
He was not of those prejudiced and afflicted persons, who, measuring
everything by their visual horizon, valuing everything according to their
present sensations, alway declare that the disease they suffer from is worse
than any ever before experienced by a human being. He was like Socrates,
who did not consider himself a citizen of one city but of the world; with his
broad and full imagination he embraced the universality of countries and of
ages; he even judged more equitably the very evils of which he was witness
and victim. "Who is it," he said, "that, seeing the bloody havoc of these
civil wars of ours, does not cry out that the machine of the world is near
dissolution, and that the day of judgment is at hand, without considering

that many worse revolutions have been seen, and that, in the mean time,
people are being merry in a thousand other parts of the earth for all this?
For my part, considering the license and impunity that always attend such
commotions, I admire they are so moderate, and that there is not more
mischief done. To him who feels the hailstones patter about his ears, the
whole hemisphere appears to be in storm and tempest." And raising his
thoughts higher and higher, reducing his own suffering to what it was in the
immensity of nature, seeing there not only himself but whole kingdoms as
mere specks in the infinite, he added in words which foreshadowed Pascal,
in words whose outline and salient points Pascal did not disdain to borrow:
"But whoever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great image
of our mother nature, portrayed in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in
her face shall read so general and so constant a variety, whoever shall
observe himself in that figure, and not himself but a whole kingdom, no
bigger than the least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole,
that man alone is able to value things according to their true estimate and
grandeur."

Thus Montaigne gives us a lesson, a useless lesson, but I state it all the
same, because among the many unprofitable ones that have been written
down, it is perhaps of greater worth than most. I do not mean to underrate
the gravity of the circumstances in which France is just now involved, for I
believe there is pressing need to bring together all the energy, prudence, and
courage she possesses in order that the country may come out with honour
[Footnote: This essay appeared April 28, 1851]. However, let us reflect, and
remember that, leaving aside the Empire, which as regards internal affairs
was a period of calm, and before 1812 of prosperity, we who utter such loud
complaints, lived in peace from 1815 to 1830, fifteen long years; that the
three days of July only inaugurated another order of things that for eighteen
years guaranteed peace and in dustrial prosperity; in all, thirty-two years of
repose. Stormy days came; tempests burst, and will doubtless burst again.

Let us learn how to live through them, but do not let us cry out every day, as
we are disposed to do, that never under the sun were such storms known as
we are enduring. To get away from the present state of feeling, to restore
lucidity and proportion to our judgments, let us read every evening a page
of Montaigne.

A criticism of Montaigne on the men of his day struck me, and it bears
equally well on those of ours. Our philosopher says somewhere that he
knows a fair number of men possessing various good qualities—one,
intelligence; another, heart; another, address, conscience or knowledge, or
skill in languages, each has his share: "but of a great man as a whole,
having so many good qualities together, or one with such a degree of
excellence that we ought to admire him, or compare him with those we
honour in the past, my fortune has never shown me one." He afterwards
made an exception in favour of his friend Etienne de la Boetie, but he
belonged to the company of great men dead before attaining maturity, and
showing promise without having time to fulfil it. Montaigne's criticism
called up a smile. He did not see a true and wholly great man in his time,
the age of L'Hopital, Coligny, and the Guises. Well! how does ours seem to
you? We have as many great men as in Montaigne's time, one distinguished
for his intellect, another for his heart, a third for skill, some (a rare thing)
for conscience, many for knowledge and language. But we too lack the
perfect man, and he is greatly to be desired. One of the most intelligent
observers of our day recognised and proclaimed it some years ago: "Our
age," said M. de Remusat, "is wanting in great men." [Footnote: Essais de
Philosophie, vol. i, p. 22]

How did Montaigne conduct himself in his duties as first magistrate of a
great city? If we take him literally and on a hasty first glance we should
believe he discharged them slackly and languidly. Did not Horace, doing
the honours to himself, say that in war he one day let his shield fall (relicta

non bene parmula)? We must not be in too great a hurry to take too literally
the men of taste who have a horror of over-estimating themselves. Minds of
a fine quality are more given to vigilance and to action than they are apt to
confess. The man who boasts and makes a great noise, will, I am almost
sure, be less brave in the combat than Horace, and less vigilant at the
council board than Montaigne.

On entering office Montaigne was careful to warn the aldermen of
Bordeaux not to expect to find in him more than there really was; he
presented himself to them without affectation. "I represented to them
faithfully and conscientiously all that I felt myself to be,—a man without
memory, without vigilance, without experience, and without energy; but
also, without hate, without ambition, without avarice, and without
violence." He should be sorry, while taking the affairs of the town in hand,
that his feelings should be so strongly affected as those of his worthy father
had been, who in the end had lost his place and health. The eager and ardent
pledge to satisfy an impetuous desire was not his method. His opinion was
"that you must lend yourself to others, and only give yourself to yourself."
And repeating his thought, according to his custom in all kinds of
metaphors and picturesque forms, he said again that if he some times
allowed himself to be urged to the management of other men's affairs, he
promised to take them in hand, not "into my lungs and liver." We are thus
forewarned, we know what to expect. The mayor and Montaigne were two
distinct persons; under his role and office he reserved to himself a certain
freedom and secret security. He continued to judge things in his own
fashion and impartially, although acting loyally for the cause confided to
him. He was far from approving or even excusing all he saw in his party,
and he could judge his adversaries and say of them: "He did that thing
wickedly, and this virtuously." "I would have," he added, "matters go well
on our side; but if they do not, I shall not run mad. I am heartily for the
right party; but I do not affect to be taken notice of for an especial enemy to

others." And he entered into some details and applications which at that
time were piquant. Let us remark, however, in order to explain and justify
his somewhat extensive profession of impartiality, that the chiefs of the
party then in evidence, the three Henris, were famous and considerable men
on several counts: Henri, Duke of Guise, head of the League; Henri, King
of Navarre, leader of the Opposition; and the King Henri III. in whose name
Montaigne was mayor, who wavered between the two. When parties have
neither chief nor head, when they are known by the body only, that is to say,
in their hideous and brutal reality, it is more difficult and also more
hazardous to be just towards them and to assign to each its share of action.

The principle which guided him in his administration was to look only at
the fact, at the result, and to grant nothing to noise and outward show:
"How much more a good effect makes a noise, so much I abate of the
goodness of it." For it is always to be feared that it was more performed for
the sake of the noise than upon the account of goodness: "Being exposed
upon the stall, 'tis half sold." That was not Montaigne's way: he made no
show; he managed men and affairs as quietly as he could; he employed in a
manner useful to all alike the gifts of sincerity and conciliation; the personal
attraction with which nature endowed him was a quality of the highest
value in the management of men. He preferred to warn men of evil rather
than to take on himself the honour of repressing it: "Is there any one who
desires to be sick that he may see his physician's practice? And would not
that physician deserve to be whipped who should wish the plague amongst
us that he might put his art into practice?" Far from desiring that trouble and
disorder in the affairs of the city should rouse and honour his govern ment,
he had ever willingly, he said, contributed all he could to their tranquillity
and ease. He is not of those whom municipal honours intoxicate and elate,
those "dignities of office" as he called them, and of which all the noise
"goes from one cross-road to another." If he was a man desirous of fame, he
recognised that it was of a kind greater than that. I do not know, however, if

even in a vaster field he would have changed his method and manner of
proceed ing. To do good for the public imperceptibly would always seem to
him the ideal of skill and the culminating point of happiness. "He who will
not thank me," he said, "for the order and quiet calm that has accompanied
my administration, cannot, however, deprive me of the share that belongs to
me by the title of my good fortune." And he is inexhaustible in describing in
lively and graceful expressions the kinds of effective and imperceptible
services he believed he had rendered—services greatly superior to noisy
and glorious deeds: "Actions which come from the workman's hand
carelessly and noiselessly have most charm, that some honest man chooses
later and brings from their obscurity to thrust them into the light for their
own sake." Thus fortune served Montaigne to perfection, and even in his
administration of affairs, in difficult conjunctures, he never had to belie his
maxim, nor to step very far out of the way of life he had planned: "For my
part I commend a gliding, solitary, and silent life." He reached the end of
his magistracy almost satisfied with himself, having accomplished what he
had promised himself, and much more than he had promised others.

The letter lately discovered by M. Horace de Viel-Castel corroborates the
chapter in which Montaigne exhibits and criticises himself in the period of
his public life. "That letter," says M. Payen, "is entirely on affairs.
Montaigne is mayor; Bordeaux, lately disturbed, seems threatened by fresh
agitations; the king's lieutenant is away. It is Wednesday, May 22, 1585; it is
night, Montaigne is wakeful, and writes to the governor of the province."
The letter, which is of too special and local an interest to be inserted here,
may be summed up in these words:—Montaigne regretted the absence of
Marshal de Matignon, and feared the consequences of its prolongation; he
was keeping, and would continue to keep, him acquainted with all that was
going on, and begged him to return as soon as his circumstances would
permit. "We are looking after our gates and guards, and a little more
carefully in your absence. . . . If anything important and fresh occurs, I shall

send you a messenger immediately, so that if you hear no news from me,
you may consider that nothing has happened." He begs M. de Matignon to
remember, however, that he might not have time to warn him, "entreating
you to consider that such movements are usually so sudden, that if they do
occur they will take me by the throat without any warning." Besides, he will
do everything to ascertain the march of events beforehand. "I will do what I
can to hear news from all parts, and to that end shall visit and observe the
inclinations of all sorts of men." Lastly, after keeping the marshal informed
of everything, of the least rumours abroad in the city, he pressed him to
return, assuring him "that we spare neither our care, nor, if need be, our
lives to preserve everything in obedience to the king." Montaigne was never
prodigal of protestations and praises, and what with others was a mere form
of speech, was with him a real undertaking and the truth.

Things, however, became worse and worse: civil war broke out; friendly
or hostile parties (the difference was not great) infested the country.
Montaigne, who went to his country house as often as he could, whenever
the duties of his office, which was drawing near its term, did not oblige him
to be in Bordeaux, was exposed to every sort of insult and outrage. "I
underwent," he said, "the inconveniences that moderation brings along with
it in such a disease. I was pitied on all hands; to the Ghibelline I was a
Guelph, and to the Guelph a Ghibelline." In the midst of his personal
grievances he could disengage and raise his thoughts to reflections on the
public misfortunes and on the degradation of men's characters. Considering
closely the disorder of parties, and all the abject and wretched things which
developed so quickly, he was ashamed to see leaders of renown stoop and
debase themselves by cowardly complacency; for in those circumstances
we know, like him, "that in the word of command to march, draw up, wheel,
and the like, we obey him indeed; but all the rest is dissolute and free." "It
pleases me," said Montaigne ironically, "to observe how much pusillanimity
and cowardice there is in ambition; by how abject and servile ways it must

arrive at its end." Despising ambition as he did, he was not sorry to see it
unmasked by such practices and degraded in his sight. However, his
goodness of heart overcoming his pride and contempt, he adds sadly, "it
displeases me to see good and generous natures, and that are capable of
justice, every day corrupted in the management and command of this
confusion. . . . We had ill-contrived souls enough without spoiling those that
were generous and good." He rather sought in that misfortune an
opportunity and motive for fortifying and strengthening himself. Attacked
one by one by many disagreeables and evils, which he would have endured
more cheerfully in a heap—that is to say, all at once- -pursued by war,
disease, by all the plagues (July 1585), in the course things were taking, he
already asked himself to whom he and his could have recourse, of whom he
could ask shelter and subsistence for his old age; and having looked and
searched thoroughly all around, he found himself actually destitute and
RUINED. For, "to let a man's self fall plumb down, and from so great a
height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, and fortunate
friendship. They are very rare, if there be any." Speaking in such a manner,
we perceive that La Boetie had been some time dead. Then he felt that he
must after all rely on himself in his distress, and must gain strength; now or
never was the time to put into practice the lofty lessons he spent his life in
collecting from the books of the philosophers. He took heart again, and
attained all the height of his virtue: "In an ordinary and quiet time, a man
prepares himself for moderate and common accidents; but in the confusion
wherein we have been for these thirty years, every Frenchman, whether in
particular or in general, sees himself every hour upon the point of the total
ruin and overthrow of his fortune." And far from being discouraged and
cursing fate for causing him to be born in so stormy an age, he suddenly
congratulated himself: "Let us thank fortune that has not made us live in an
effeminate, idle and languishing age." Since the curiosity of wise men seeks
the past for disturbances in states in order to learn the secrets of history,

and, as we should say, the whole physiology of the body social, "so does my
curiosity," he declares, "make me in some sort please myself with seeing
with my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public death, its forms and
symptoms; and, seeing I could not hinder it, am content to be destined to
assist in it, and thereby to instruct myself." I shall not suggest a consolation
of that sort to most people; the greater part of mankind does not possess the
heroic and eager curiosity of Empedocles and the elder Pliny, the two
intrepid men who went straight to the volcanoes and the disturbances of
nature to examine them at close quarters, at the risk of destruction and
death. But to a man of Montaigne's nature, the thought of that stoical
observation gave him consolation even amid real evils. Considering the
condition of false peace and doubtful truce, the regime of dull and profound
corruption which had preceded the last disturbances, he almost
congratulated himself on seeing their cessation; for "it was," he said of the
regime of Henri III., "an universal juncture of particular members, rotten to
emulation of one another, and the most of them with inveterate ulcers, that
neither required nor admitted of any cure. This conclusion therefore did
really more animate than depress me." Note that his health, usually delicate,
is here raised to the level of his morality, although what it had suffered
through the various disturbances might have been enough to undermine it.
He had the satisfaction of feeling that he had some hold against fortune, and
that it would take a greater shock still to crush him.

Another consideration, humbler and more humane, upheld him in his
troubles, the consolation arising from a common misfortune, a misfortune
shared by all, and the sight of the courage of others. The people, especially
the real people, they who are victims and not robbers, the peasants of his
district, moved him by the manner in which they endured the same, or even
worse, troubles than his. The disease or plague which raged at that time in
the country pressed chiefly on the poor; Montaigne learned from them
resignation and the practice of philosophy. "Let us look down upon the poor

people that we see scattered upon the face of the earth, prone and intent
upon their business, that neither know Aristotle nor Cato, example nor
precept. Even from these does nature every day extract effects of constancy
and patience, more pure and manly than those we so inquisitively study in
the schools." And he goes on to describe them working to the bitter end,
even in their grief, even in disease, until their strength failed them. "He that
is now digging in my garden has this morning buried his father, or his son. .
. . They never keep their beds but to die." The whole chapter is fine,
pathetic, to the point, evincing noble, stoical elevation of mind, and also the
cheerful and affable disposition which Montaigne said, with truth, was his
by inheritance, and in which he had been nourished. There could be nothing
better as regards "consolation in public calamities," except a chapter of
some not more human, but of some truly divine book, in which the hand of
God should be everywhere visible, not perfunctorily, as with Montaigne,
but actually and lovingly present. In fact, the consolation Montaigne gives
himself and others is perhaps as lofty and beautiful as human consolation
without prayer can be.

He wrote the chapter, the twelfth of the third book, in the midst of the
evils described, and before they were ended. He concluded it in his graceful
and poetical way with a collection of examples, "a heap of foreign flowers,"
to which he furnished only the thread for fastening them together.

There is Montaigne to the life; no matter how seriously he spoke, it was
always with the utmost charm. To form an opinion on his style you have
only to open him indifferently at any page and listen to his talk on any
subject; there is none that he did not enliven and make suggestive. In the
chapter "Of Liars," for instance, after enlarging on his lack of memory and
giving a list of reasons by which he might console himself, he suddenly
added this fresh and delightful reason, that, thanks to his faculty for
forgetting, "the places I revisit, and the books I read over again, always

smile upon me with a fresh novelty." It is thus that on every subject he
touched he was continually new, and created sources of freshness.

Montesquieu, in a memorable exclamation, said: "The four great poets,
Plato, Malebranche, Shaftesbury, Montaigne!" How true it is of Montaigne!
No French writer, including the poets proper, had so lofty an idea of poetry
as he had. "From my earliest childhood," he said, "poetry had power over
me to transport and transpierce me." He considered, and therein shows
penetration, that "we have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry.
It is easier to write than to understand." In itself and its pure beauty his
poetry defies definition; whoever desired to recognise it at a glance and
discern of what it actually consisted would see no more than "the brilliance
of a flash of lightning." In the constitution and continuity of his style,
Montaigne is a writer very rich in animated, bold similes, naturally fertile in
metaphors that are never detached from the thought, but that seize it in its
very centre, in its interior, that join and bind it. In that respect, fully obeying
his own genius, he has gone beyond and some times exceeded the genius of
language. His concise, vigorous and always forcible style, by its poignancy,
emphasises and repeats the meaning. It may be said of his style that it is a
continual epigram, or an ever-renewed metaphor, a style that has only been
successfully employed by the French once, by Montaigne himself. If we
wanted to imitate him, supposing we had the power and were naturally
fitted for it—if we desired to write with his severity, exact proportion, and
diverse continuity of figures and turns—it would be necessary to force our
language to be more powerful, and poetically more complete, than is
usually our custom. Style a la Montaigne, consistent, varied in the series
and assortment of the metaphors, exacts the creation of a portion of the
tissue itself to hold them. It is absolutely necessary that in places the woof
should be enlarged and extended, in order to weave into it the metaphor; but
in defining him I come almost to write like him. The French language,
French prose, which in fact always savours more or less of conversation,

does not, naturally, possess the resources and the extent of canvas necessary
for a continued picture: by the side of an animated metaphor it will often
exhibit a sudden lacuna and some weak places. In filling this by boldness
and invention as Montaigne did, in creating, in imagining the expression
and locution that is wanting, our prose should appear equally finished. Style
a la Montaigne would, in many respects, be openly at war with that of
Voltaire. It could only come into being and flourish in the full freedom of
the sixteenth century, in a frank, ingenious, jovial, keen, brave, and refined
mind, of an unique stamp, that even for that time, seemed free and
somewhat licentious, and that was inspired and emboldened, but not
intoxicated by the pure and direct spirit of ancient sources.

Such as he is, Montaigne is the French Horace; he is Horatian in the
groundwork, often in the form and expression, although in that he
sometimes approaches Seneca. His book is a treasure-house of moral
observations and of experience; at whatever page it is opened, and in what
ever condition of mind, some wise thought expressed in a striking and
enduring fashion is certain to be found. It will at once detach itself and
engrave itself on the mind, a beautiful meaning in full and forcible words,
in one vigorous line, familiar or great. The whole of his book, said Etienne
Pasquier, is a real seminary of beautiful and remarkable sentences, and they
come in so much the better that they run and hasten on without thrusting
them selves into notice. There is something for every age, for every hour of
life: you cannot read in it for any time without having the mind filled and
lined as it were, or, to put it better, fully armed and clothed. We have just
seen how much useful counsel and actual consolation it contains for an
honourable man, born for private life, and fallen on times of disturbance
and revolution. To this I shall add the counsel he gave those who, like
myself and many men of my acquaintance, suffer from political
disturbances without in any way provoking them, or believing ourselves
capable of averting them. Montaigne, as Horace would have done, counsels

them, while apprehending everything from afar off, not to be too much
preoccupied with such matters in advance; to take advantage to the end of
pleasant moments and bright intervals. Stroke on stroke come his piquant
and wise similes, and he concludes, to my thinking, with the most delightful
one of all, and one, besides, entirely appropriate and seasonable: it is folly
and fret, he said, "to take out your furred gown at Saint John because you
will want it at Christmas."

WHAT IS A CLASSIC?

A delicate question, to which somewhat diverse solutions might be given
according to times and seasons. An intelligent man suggests it to me, and I
intend to try, if not to solve it, at least to examine and discuss it face to face
with my readers, were it only to persuade them to answer it for themselves,
and, if I can, to make their opinion and mine on the point clear. And why, in
criticism, should we not, from time to time, venture to treat some of those
subjects which are not personal, in which we no longer speak of some one
but of some thing? Our neighbours, the English, have well succeeded in
making of it a special division of literature under the modest title of
"Essays." It is true that in writing of such subjects, always slightly abstract
and moral, it is advisable to speak of them in a season of quiet, to make sure
of our own attention and of that of others, to seize one of those moments of
calm moderation and leisure seldom granted our amiable France; even
when she is desirous of being wise and is not making revolutions, her
brilliant genius can scarcely tolerate them.

A classic, according to the usual definition, is an old author canonised by
admiration, and an authority in his particular style. The word classic was
first used in this sense by the Romans. With them not all the citizens of the
different classes were properly called classici, but only those of the chief
class, those who possessed an income of a certain fixed sum. Those who
possessed a smaller income were described by the term infra classem,

below the preeminent class. The word classicus was used in a figurative
sense by Aulus Gellius, and applied to writers: a writer of worth and
distinction, classicus assiduusque scriptor, a writer who is of account, has
real property, and is not lost in the proletariate crowd. Such an expression
implies an age sufficiently advanced to have already made some sort of
valuation and classification of literature.

At first the only true classics for the moderns were the ancients. The
Greeks, by peculiar good fortune and natural enlightenment of mind, had no
classics but themselves. They were at first the only classical authors for the
Romans, who strove and contrived to imitate them. After the great periods
of Roman literature, after Cicero and Virgil, the Romans in their turn had
their classics, who became almost exclusively the classical authors of the
centuries which followed. The middle ages, which were less ignorant of
Latin antiquity than is believed, but which lacked proportion and taste,
confused the ranks and orders. Ovid was placed above Homer, and Boetius
seemed a classic equal to Plato. The revival of learning in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries helped to bring this long chaos to order, and then only
was admiration rightly proportioned. Thenceforth the true classical authors
of Greek and Latin antiquity stood out in a luminous background, and were
harmoniously grouped on their two heights.

Meanwhile modern literatures were born, and some of the more
precocious, like the Italian, already possessed the style of antiquity. Dante
appeared, and, from the very first, posterity greeted him as a classic. Italian
poetry has since shrunk into far narrower bounds; but, whenever it desired
to do so, it always found again and preserved the impulse and echo of its
lofty origin. It is no indifferent matter for a poetry to derive its point of
departure and classical source in high places; for example, to spring from
Dante rather than to issue laboriously from Malherbe.

Modern Italy had her classical authors, and Spain had every right to
believe that she also had hers at a time when France was yet seeking hers. A
few talented writers en dowed with originality and exceptional animation, a
few brilliant efforts, isolated, without following, interrupted and
recommenced, did not suffice to endow a nation with a solid and imposing
basis of literary wealth. The idea of a classic implies something that has
continuance and consistence, and which produces unity and tradition
fashions and transmits itself, and endures. It was only after the glorious
years of Louis XIV. that the nation felt with tremor and pride that such good
fortune had happened to her. Every voice in formed Louis XIV. of it with
flattery, exaggeration, and emphasis, yet with a certain sentiment of truth.
Then arose a singular and striking contradiction: those men of whom
Perrauit was the chief, the men who were most smitten with the marvels of
the age of Louis the Great, who even went the length of sacrificing the
ancients to the moderns, aimed at exalting and canonising even those whom
they regarded as inveterate opponents and adversaries. Boileau avenged and
angrily upheld the ancients against Perrault, who extolled the moderns—
that is to say, Corneille, Moliere, Pascal, and the eminent men of his age,
Boileau, one of the first, included. Kindly La Fontaine, taking part in the
dispute in behalf of the learned Huet, did not perceive that, in spite of his
defects, he was in his turn on the point of being held as a classic himself.

Example is the best definition. From the time France possessed her age of
Louis XIV. and could contemplate it at a little distance, she knew, better
than by any arguments, what to be classical meant. The eighteenth century,
even in its medley of things, strengthened this idea through some fine
works, due to its four great men. Read Voltaire's Age of Louis XIV.,
Montesquieu's Greatness and Fall of the Romans, Buffon's Epochs of
Nature, the beautiful pages of reverie and natural description of Rousseau's
Savoyard Vicar, and say if the eighteenth century, in these memorable
works, did not understand how to reconcile tradition with freedom of

development and independence. But at the be ginning of the present century
and under the Empire, in sight of the first attempts of a decidedly new and
somewhat adventurous literature, the idea of a classic in a few resist ing
minds, more sorrowful than severe, was strangely nar rowed and contracted.
The first Dictionary of the Academy (1694) merely defined a classical
author as "a much-approved ancient writer, who is an authority as regards
the subject he treats." The Dictionary of the Academy of 1835 narrows that
definition still more, and gives precision and even limit to its rather vague
form. It describes classical authors as those "who have become models in
any language whatever," and in all the articles which follow, the
expressions, models, fixed rules for composition and style, strict rules of art
to which men must conform, continually recur. That definition of classic
was evidently made by the respectable Academicians, our predecessors, in
face and sight of what was then called romantic—that is to say, in sight of
the enemy. It seems to me time to renounce those timid and restrictive
definitions and to free our mind of them. A true classic, as I should like to
hear it defined, is an author who has enriched the human mind, increased its
treasure, and caused it to advance a step; who has discovered some moral
and not equivocal truth, or revealed some eternal passion in that heart where
all seemed known and discovered; who has expressed his thought,
observation, or invention, in no matter what form, only provided it be broad
and great, refined and sensible, sane and beautiful in itself; who has spoken
to all in his own peculiar style, a style which is found to be also that of the
whole world, a style new without neologism, new and old, easily
contemporary with all time.

Such a classic may for a moment have been revolutionary; it may at least
have seemed so, but it is not; it only lashed and subverted whatever
prevented the restoration of the balance of order and beauty.

If it is desired, names may be applied to this definition which I wish to
make purposely majestic and fluctuating, or in a word, all- embracing. I
should first put there Corneille of the Polyeucte, Cinna, and Horaces. I
should put Moliere there, the fullest and most complete poetic genius we
have ever had in France. Goethe, the king of critics, said:—

"Moliere is so great that he astonishes us afresh every time we read him.
He is a man apart; his plays border on the tragic, and no one has the courage
to try and imitate him. His Avare, where vice destroys all affection between
father and son, is one of the most sublime works, and dramatic in the
highest degree. In a drama every action ought to be important in itself, and
to lead to an action greater still. In this respect Tartuffe is a model. What a
piece of exposition the first scene is! From the beginning everything has an
important meaning, and causes something much more important to be
foreseen. The exposition in a certain play of Lessing that might be
mentioned is very fine, but the world only sees that of Tartuffe once. It is
the finest of the kind we possess. Every year I read a play of Moliere, just
as from time to time I contemplate some engraving after the great Italian
masters."

I do not conceal from myself that the definition of the classic I have just
given somewhat exceeds the notion usually ascribed to the term. It should,
above all, include conditions of uniformity, wisdom, moderation, and
reason, which dominate and contain all the others. Having to praise M.
Royer-Collard, M. de Remusat said—"If he derives purity of taste,
propriety of terms, variety of expression, attentive care in suiting the diction
to the thought, from our classics, he owes to himself alone the distinctive
character he gives it all." It is here evident that the part allotted to classical
qualities seems mostly to depend on harmony and nuances of expression,
on graceful and temperate style: such is also the most general opinion. In
this sense the pre-eminent classics would be writers of a middling order,

exact, sensible, elegant, always clear, yet of noble feeling and airily veiled
strength. Marie-Joseph Chenier has described the poetics of those temperate
and accomplished writers in lines where he shows himself their happy
disciple:—

"It is good sense, reason which does all,—virtue, genius, soul, talent, and
taste.—What is virtue? reason put in practice;—talent? reason expressed
with brilliance;—soul? reason delicately put forth;—and genius is sublime
reason."

While writing those lines he was evidently thinking of Pope, Boileau, and
Horace, the master of them all. The peculiar characteristic of the theory
which subordinated imagination and feeling itself to reason, of which
Scaliger perhaps gave the first sign among the moderns, is, properly
speaking, the Latin theory, and for a long time it was also by preference the
French theory. If it is used appositely, if the term reason is not abused, that
theory possesses some truth; but it is evident that it is abused, and that if,
for instance, reason can be confounded with poetic genius and make one
with it in a moral epistle, it cannot be the same thing as the genius, so
varied and so diversely creative in its expression of the passions, of the
drama or the epic. Where will you find reason in the fourth book of the
AEneid and the transports of Dido? Be that as it may, the spirit which
prompted the theory, caused writers who ruled their inspiration, rather than
those who abandoned themselves to it, to be placed in the first rank of
classics; to put Virgil there more surely than Homer, Racine in preference to
Corneille. The masterpiece to which the theory likes to point, which in fact
brings together all conditions of prudence, strength, tempered boldness,
moral elevation, and grandeur, is Athalie. Turenne in his two last campaigns
and Racine in Athalie are the great examples of what wise and prudent men
are capable of when they reach the maturity of their genius and attain their
supremest boldness.

Buffon, in his Discourse on Style, insisting on the unity of design,
arrangement, and execution, which are the stamps of true classical works,
said:—"Every subject is one, and however vast it is, it can be comprised in
a single treatise. Interruptions, pauses, sub- divisions should only be used
when many subjects are treated, when, having to speak of great, intricate,
and dissimilar things, the march of genius is interrupted by the multiplicity
of obstacles, and contracted by the necessity of circumstances: otherwise,
far from making a work more solid, a great number of divisions destroys
the unity of its parts; the book appears clearer to the view, but the author's
design remains obscure." And he continues his criticism, having in view
Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, an excellent book at bottom, but sub-divided:
the famous author, worn out before the end, was unable to infuse inspiration
into all his ideas, and to arrange all his matter. However, I can scarcely
believe that Buffon was not also thinking, by way of contrast, of Bossuet's
Discourse on Universal History, a subject vast indeed, and yet of such an
unity that the great orator was able to comprise it in a single treatise. When
we open the first edition, that of 1681, before the division into chapters,
which was introduced later, passed from the margin into the text, very thing
is developed in a single series, almost in one breath. It might be said that the
orator has here acted like the nature of which Buffon speaks, that "he has
worked on an eternal plan from which he has nowhere departed," so deeply
does he seem to have entered into the familiar counsels and designs of
providence.

Are Athalie and the Discourse on Universal History the greatest
masterpieces that the strict classical theory can present to its friends as well
as to its enemies? In spite of the admirable simplicity and dignity in the
achievement of such unique productions, we should like, nevertheless, in
the interests of art, to expand that theory a little, and to show that it is
possible to enlarge it without relaxing the tension. Goethe, whom I like to
quote on such a subject, said:—

"I call the classical healthy, and the romantic sickly. In my opinion the
Nibelungen song is as much a classic as Homer. Both are healthy and
vigorous. The works of the day are romantic, not because they are new, but
because they are weak, ailing, or sickly. Ancient works are classical not
because they are old, but because they are powerful, fresh, and healthy. If
we regarded romantic and classical from those two points of view we
should soon all agree."

Indeed, before determining and fixing the opinions on that matter, I
should like every unbiassed mind to take a voyage round the world and
devote itself to a survey of different literatures in their primitive vigour and
infinite variety. What would be seen? Chief of all a Homer, the father of the
classical world, less a single distinct individual than the vast living
expression of a whole epoch and a semi-barbarous civilisation. In order to
make him a true classic, it was necessary to attribute to him later a design, a
plan, literary invention, qualities of atticism and urbanity of which he had
certainly never dreamed in the luxuriant development of his natural
inspirations. And who appear by his side? August, venerable ancients, the
AEschyluses and the Sophocles, mutilated, it is true, and only there to
present us with a debris of themselves, the survivors of many others as
worthy, doubtless, as they to survive, but who have succumbed to the
injuries of time. This thought alone would teach a man of impartial mind
not to look upon the whole of even classical literatures with a too narrow
and restricted view; he would learn that the exact and well-proportioned
order which has since so largely prevailed in our admiration of the past was
only the outcome of artificial circumstances.

And in reaching the modern world, how would it be? The greatest names
to be seen at the beginning of literatures are those which disturb and run
counter to certain fixed ideas of what is beautiful and appropriate in poetry.
For example, is Shakespeare a classic? Yes, now, for England and the

world; but in the time of Pope he was not considered so. Pope and his
friends were the only pre-eminent classics; directly after their death they
seemed so for ever. At the present time they are still classics, as they
deserve to be, but they are only of the second order, and are for ever
subordinated and relegated to their rightful place by him who has again
come to his own on the height of the horizon.

It is not, however, for me to speak ill of Pope or his great disciples, above
all, when they possess pathos and naturalness like Goldsmith: after the
greatest they are perhaps the most agreeable writers and the poets best fitted
to add charm to life. Once when Lord Bolingbroke was writing to Swift,
Pope added a postscript, in which he said—"I think some advantage would
result to our age, if we three spent three years together." Men who, without
boasting, have the right to say such things must never be spoken of lightly:
the fortunate ages, when men of talent could propose such things, then no
chimera, are rather to be envied. The ages called by the name of Louis XIV.
or of Queen Anne are, in the dispassionate sense of the word, the only true
classical ages, those which offer protection and a favourable climate to real
talent. We know only to well how in our untrammelled times, through the
instability and storminess of the age, talents are lost and dissipated.
Nevertheless, let us acknowledge our age's part and superiority in greatness.
True and sovereign genius triumphs over the very difficulties that cause
others to fail: Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton were able to attain their
height and produce their imperishable works in spite of obstacles, hardships
and tempests. Byron's opinion of Pope has been much discussed, and the
explanation of it sought in the kind of contradiction by which the singer of
Don Juan and Childe Harold extolled the purely classical school and
pronounced it the only good one, while himself acting so differently.
Goethe spoke the truth on that point when he remarked that Byron, great by
the flow and source of poetry, feared that Shakespeare was more powerful
than himself in the creation and realisation of his characters. "He would

have liked to deny it; the elevation so free from egoism irritated him; he felt
when near it that he could not display himself at ease. He never denied
Pope, because he did not fear him; he knew that Pope was only a low wall
by his side."

If, as Byron desired, Pope's school had kept the supremacy and a sort of
honorary empire in the past, Byron would have been the first and only poet
in his particular style; the height of Pope's wall shuts out Shakespeare's
great figure from sight, whereas when Shakespeare reigns and rules in all
his greatness, Byron is only second.

In France there was no great classic before the age of Louis XIV.; the
Dantes and Shakespeares, the early authorities to whom, in times of
emancipation, men sooner or later return, were wanting. There were mere
sketches of great poets, like Mathurin Regnier, like Rabelais, without any
ideal, without the depth of emotion and the seriousness which canonises.
Montaigne was a kind of premature classic, of the family of Horace, but for
want of worthy surroundings, like a spoiled child, he gave himself up to the
unbridled fancies of his style and humour. Hence it happened that France,
less than any other nation, found in her old authors a right to demand
vehemently at a certain time literary liberty and freedom, and that it was
more difficult for her, in enfranchising herself, to remain classical.
However, with Moliere and La Fontaine among her classics of the great
period, nothing could justly be refused to those who possessed courage and
ability.

The important point now seems to me to be to uphold, while extending,
the idea and belief. There is no receipt for making classics; this point should
be clearly recognised. To believe that an author will become a classic by
imitating certain qualities of purity, moderation, accuracy, and elegance,
independently of the style and inspiration, is to believe that after Racine the

father there is a place for Racine the son; dull and estimable role, the worst
in poetry. Further, it is hazardous to take too quickly and without opposition
the place of a classic in the sight of one's contemporaries; in that case there
is a good chance of not retaining the position with posterity. Fontanes in his
day was regarded by his friends as a pure classic; see how at twenty-five
years' distance his star has set. How many of these precocious classics are
there who do not endure, and who are so only for a while! We turn round
one morning and are surprised not to find them standing behind us.
Madame de Sevigne would wittily say they possessed but an evanescent
colour. With regard to classics, the least expected prove the best and
greatest: seek them rather in the vigorous genius born immortal and
flourishing for ever. Apparently the least classical of the four great poets of
the age of Louis XIV. was Moliere; he was then applauded far more than he
was esteemed; men took delight in him without understanding his worth.
After him, La Fontaine seemed the least classical: observe after two
centuries what is the result for both. Far above Boileau, even above Racine,
are they not now unanimously considered to possess in the highest degree
the characteristics of an all-embracing morality?

Meanwhile there is no question of sacrificing or depreciating anything. I
believe the temple of taste is to be rebuilt; but its reconstruction is merely a
matter of enlargement, so that it may become the home of all noble human
beings, of all who have permanently increased the sum of the mind's
delights and possessions. As for me, who cannot, obviously, in any degree
pretend to be the architect or designer of such a temple, I shall confine
myself to expressing a few earnest wishes, to submit, as it were, my designs
for the edifice. Above all I should desire not to exclude any one among the
worthy, each should be in his place there, from Shakespeare, the freest of
creative geniuses, and the greatest of classics without knowing it, to
Andrieux, the last of classics in little. "There is more than one chamber in
the mansions of my Father;" that should be as true of the kingdom of the

beautiful here below, as of the kingdom of Heaven. Homer, as always and
everywhere, should be first, likest a god; but behind him, like the
procession of the three wise kings of the East, would be seen the three great
poets, the three Homers, so long ignored by us, who wrote epics for the use
of the old peoples of Asia, the poets Valmiki, Vyasa of the Hindoos, and
Firdousi of the Persians: in the domain of taste it is well to know that such
men exist, and not to divide the human race. Our homage paid to what is
recognized as soon as perceived, we must not stray further; the eye should
delight in a thousand pleasing or majestic spectacles, should rejoice in a
thousand varied and surprising combinations, whose apparent confusion
would never be without concord and harmony. The oldest of the wise men
and poets, those who put human morality into maxims, and those who in
simple fashion sung it, would converse together in rare and gentle speech,
and would not be surprised at understanding each other's meaning at the
very first word. Solon, Hesiod, Theognis, Job, Solomon, and why not
Confucius, would welcome the cleverest moderns, La Rochefoucauld and
La Bruyere, who, when listening to them, would say "they knew all that we
know, and in repeating life's experiences, we have discovered nothing." On
the hill, most easily discernible, and of most accessible ascent, Virgil,
surrounded by Menander, Tibullus, Terence, Fenelon, would occupy himself
in discoursing with them with great charm and divine enchantment: his
gentle countenance would shine with an inner light, and be tinged with
modesty; as on the day when entering the theatre at Rome, just as they
finished reciting his verses, he saw the people rise with an unanimous
movement and pay to him the same homage as to Augustus. Not far from
him, regretting the separation from so dear a friend, Horace, in his turn,
would preside (as far as so accomplished and wise a poet could preside)
over the group of poets of social life who could talk although they sang,—
Pope, Boileau, the one become less irritable, the other less fault-finding.
Montaigne, a true poet, would be among them, and would give the finishing

touch that should deprive that delightful corner of the air of a literary
school. There would La Fontaine forget himself, and becoming less volatile
would wander no more. Voltaire would be attracted by it, but while finding
pleasure in it would not have patience to remain. A little lower down, on the
same hill as Virgil, Xenophon, with simple bearing, looking in no way like
a general, but rather resembling a priest of the Muses, would be seen
gathering round him the Attics of every tongue and of every nation, the
Addisons, Pellissons, Vauvenargues—all who feel the value of an easy
persuasiveness, an exquisite simplicity, and a gentle negligence mingled
with ornament. In the centre of the place, in the portico of the principal
temple (for there would be several in the enclosure), three great men would
like to meet often, and when they were together, no fourth, however great,
would dream of joining their discourse or their silence. In them would be
seen beauty, proportion in greatness, and that perfect harmony which
appears but once in the full youth of the world. Their three names have
become the ideal of art—Plato, Sophocles, and Demosthenes. Those demi-
gods honoured, we see a numerous and familiar company of choice spirits
who follow, the Cervantes and Molieres, practical painters of life, indulgent
friends who are still the first of benefactors, who laughingly embrace all
mankind, turn man's experience to gaiety, and know the powerful workings
of a sensible, hearty, and legitimate joy. I do not wish to make this
description, which if complete would fill a volume, any longer. In the
middle ages, believe me, Dante would occupy the sacred heights: at the feet
of the singer of Paradise all Italy would be spread out like a garden;
Boccaccio and Ariosto would there disport themselves, and Tasso would
find again the orange groves of Sorrento. Usually a corner would be
reserved for each of the various nations, but the authors would take delight
in leaving it, and in their travels would recognise, where we should least
expect it, brothers or masters. Lucretius, for example, would enjoy
discussing the origin of the world and the reducing of chaos to order with

Milton. But both arguing from their own point of view, they would only
agree as regards divine pictures of poetry and nature.

Such are our classics; each individual imagination may finish the sketch
and choose the group preferred. For it is necessary to make a choice, and
the first condition of taste, after obtaining knowledge of all, lies not in
continual travel, but in rest and cessation from wandering. Nothing blunts
and destroys taste so much as endless journeyings; the poetic spirit is not
the Wandering Jew. However, when I speak of resting and making choice,
my meaning is not that we are to imitate those who charm us most among
our masters in the past. Let us be content to know them, to penetrate them,
to admire them; but let us, the late-comers, endeavour to be ourselves. Let
us have the sincerity and naturalness of our own thoughts, of our own
feelings; so much is always possible. To that let us add what is more
difficult, elevation, an aim, if possible, towards an exalted goal; and while
speaking our own language, and submitting to the conditions of the times in
which we live, whence we derive our strength and our defects, let us ask
from time to time, our brows lifted towards the heights and our eyes fixed
on the group of honoured mortals: what would that say of us?

But why speak always of authors and writings? Maybe an age is coming
when there will be no more writing. Happy those who read and read again,
those who in their reading can follow their unrestrained inclination! There
comes a time in life when, all our journeys over, our experiences ended,
there is no enjoyment more delightful than to study and thoroughly examine
the things we know, to take pleasure in what we feel, and in seeing and
seeing again the people we love: the pure joys of our maturity. Then it is
that the word classic takes its true meaning, and is defined for every man of
taste by an irresistible choice. Then taste is formed, it is shaped and
definite; then good sense, if we are to possess it at all, is perfected in us. We
have neither more time for experiments, nor a desire to go forth in search of

pastures newf We cling to our friends, to those proved by long intercourse.
Old wine, old books, old friends. We say to ourselves with Voltaire in these
delightful lines:—"Let us enjoy, let us write, let us live, my dear Horace!…I
have lived longer than you: my verse will not last so long. But on the brink
of the tomb I shall make it my chief care—to follow the lessons of your
philosophy—to despise death in enjoying life—to read your writings full of
charm and good sense—as we drink an old wine which revives our senses."

In fact, be it Horace or another who is the author preferred, who reflects
our thoughts in all the wealth of their maturity, of some one of those
excellent and antique minds shall we request an interview at every moment;
of some one of them shall we ask a friendship which never deceives, which
could not fail us; to some one of them shall we appeal for that sensation of
serenity and amenity (we have often need of it) which reconciles us with
mankind and with ourselves.

THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES

BY ERNEST RENAN

TRANSLATED BY W. G. HUTCHISON

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Ernest Renan was born in 1823, at Treguier in Brittany. He was educated
for the priesthood, but never took orders, turning at first to teaching. He
continued his studies in religion and philology, and, after traveling in Syria
on a government commission, he returned to Paris and became professor of
Hebrew in the College de France, from which he was suspended for a time
on account of protests against his heretical teachings. He died in 1892.

Renan's activity divides itself into two parts. The first culminated in his
two great works on the "Origins of Christianity" and on the "History of
Israel." As to the scientific value of these books there is difference of
opinion, as was to be expected in a treatment of such subjects to the
exclusion of the miraculous. But the delicacy and vividness of his portraits
of the great personalities of Hebrew history, and the acuteness of his
analysis of national psychology, are not to be denied.

The other part of his work is more miscellaneous, but most of it is in
some sense philosophical or autobiographical. Believing profoundly in
scientific method, Renan was unable to find in science a basis for either
ethics or metaphysics, and ended in a skepticism often ironical, yet not
untinged with mysticism.

"He was an amazing writer," says M. Faguet, "and disconcerted criticism
by the impossibility of explaining his methods of procedure; he was

luminous, supple, naturally pliant and yielding; beneath his apparently
effeminate grace an extraordinary strength of character would suddenly
make itself felt; he had, more than any nineteenth-century writer, the quality
of charm; he exercised a caressing innuence which enveloped, and finally
conquered, the reader."

In no kind of writing was Renan's command of style more notable than in
the description of scenery; and in his pictures of his native Brittany in the
essay on "The Poetry of the Celtic Races," as well as in his analysis of
national qualities, two of his most characteristic powers are admirably
displayed.

THE POETRY OF THE CELTIC RACES

Every one who travels through the Armorican peninsula experiences a
change of the most abrupt description, as soon as he leaves behind the
district most closely bordering upon the continent, in which the cheerful but
commonplace type of face of Normandy and Maine is continually in
evidence, and passes into the true Brittany, that which merits its name by
language and race. A cold wind arises full of a vague sadness, and carries
the soul to other thoughts; the tree-tops are bare and twisted; the heath with
its monotony of tint stretches away into the distance; at every step the
granite protrudes from a soil too scanty to cover it; a sea that is almost
always sombre girdles the horizon with eternal moaning. The same contrast
is manifest in the people: to Norman vulgarity, to a plump and prosperous
population, happy to live, full of its own interests, egoistical as are all these
who make a habit of enjoyment, succeeds a timid and reserved race living
altogether within itself, heavy in appearance but capable of profound
feeling, and of an adorable delicacy in its religious instincts. A like change
is apparent, I am told, in passing from England into Wales, from the
Lowlands of Scotland, English by language and manners, into the Gaelic
Highlands; and too, though with a perceptible difference, when one buries
oneself in the districts of Ireland where the race has remained pure from all
admixture of alien blood. It seems like entering on the subterranean strata of
another world, and one experiences in some measure the impression given
us by Dante, when he leads us from one circle of his Inferno to another.

Sufficient attention is not given to the peculiarity of this fact of an
ancient race living, until our days and almost under our eyes, its own life in
some obscure islands and peninsulas in the West, more and more affected, it
is true, by external influences, but still faithful to its own tongue, to its own
memories, to its own customs, and to its own genius. Especially is it
forgotten that this little people, now concentrated on the very confines of
the world, in the midst of rocks and mountains whence its enemies have
been powerless to force it, is in possession of a literature which, in the
Middle Ages, exercised an immense influence, changed the current of
European civilisation, and imposed its poetical motives on nearly the whole
of Christendom. Yet it is only necessary to open the authentic monuments
of the Gaelic genius to be convinced that the race which created them has
had its own original manner of feeling and thinking, that nowhere has the
eternal illusion clad itself in more seductive hues, and that in the great
chorus of humanity no race equals this for penetrative notes that go to the
very heart. Alas! it too is doomed to disappear, this emerald set in the
Western seas. Arthur will return no more from his isle of faery, and St.
Patrick was right when he said to Ossian, "The heroes that thou weepest are
dead; can they be born again?" It is high time to note, before they shall have
passed away, the divine tones thus expiring on the horizon before the
growing tumult of uniform civilisation. Were criticism to set itself the task
of calling back these distant echoes, and of giving a voice to races that are
no more, would not that suffice to absolve it from the reproach,
unreasonably and too frequently brought against it, of being only negative?

Good works now exist which facilitate the task of him who undertakes
the study of these interesting literatures. Wales, above all, is distinguished
by scientific and literary activity, not always accompanied, it is true, by a
very rigorous critical spirit, but deserving the highest praise. There,
researches which would bring honour to the most active centres of learning
in Europe are the work of enthusiastic amateurs. A peasant called Owen

Jones published in 1801-7, under the name of the Myvyrian Archaiology of
Wales, the precious collection which is to this day the arsenal of Cymric
antiquities. A number of erudite and zealous workers, Aneurin Owen,
Thomas Price of Crickhowell, William Rees, and John Jones, following in
the footsteps of the Myvyrian peasant, set themselves to finish his work,
and to profit from the treasures which he had collected. A woman of
distinction, Lady Charlotte Guest, charged herself with the task of
acquainting Europe with the collection of the Mabinogion, [Footnote: The
Mabinogion, from the Llyfr Coch O Hergest and other ancient Welsh
Manuscripts, with an English Translation and Notes. By Lady Charlotte
Guest. London and Llandovery, 1837-49. The word Mabinogi (in the plural
Mabinogion) designates a form of romantic narrative peculiar to Wales. The
origin and primitive meaning of this word are very uncertain, and Lady
Guest's right to apply it to the whole of the narratives which she has
published is open to doubt.] the pearl of Gaelic literature, the completest
expression of the Cymric genius. This magnificent work, executed in twelve
years with the luxury that the wealthy English amateur knows how to use in
his publications, will one day attest how full of life the consciousness of the
Celtic races remained in the present century. Only indeed the sincerest
patriotism could inspire a woman to undertake and achieve so vast a literary
monument. Scotland and Ireland have in like measure been enriched by a
host of studies of their ancient history. Lastly, our own Brittany, though all
too rarely studied with the philological and critical rigour now exacted in
works of erudition, has furnished Celtic antiquities with her share of worthy
research. Does it not suffice to cite M. de la Villemarque, whose name will
be henceforth associated among us with these studies, and whose services
are so incontestable, that criticism need have no fear of depreciating him in
the eyes of a public which has accepted him with so much warmth and
sympathy?

I.

If the excellence of races is to be appreciated by the purity of their blood
and the inviolability of their national character, it must needs be admitted
that none can vie in nobility with the still surviving remains of the Celtic
race. [Footnote: To avoid all misunderstanding, I ought to point out that by
the word Celtic I designate here, not the whole of the great race which, at a
remote epoch, formed the population of nearly the whole of Western
Europe, but simply the four groups which, in our days, still merit this name,
as opposed to the Teutons and to the Neo-Latin peoples. These four groups
are: (i) The inhabitants of Wales or Cambria, and the peninsula of Cornwall,
bearing even now the ancient name of Cymry; (2) the Bretons bretonnants,
or dwellers in French Brittany speaking Bas-Breton, who represent an
emigration of the Cymry from Wales; (3) the Gaels of the North of Scotland
speaking Gaelic; (4) the Irish, although a very profound line of demarcation
separates Ireland from the rest of the Celtic family. [It is also necessary to
point out that Renan in this essay applies the name Breton both to the
Bretons proper, i. e. the inhabitants of Brittany, and to the British members
of the Celtic race.—Translator's Note.]]

Never has a human family lived more apart from the world, and been
purer from all alien admixture. Confined by conquest within forgotten
islands and peninsulas, it has reared an impassable barrier against external
influences; it has drawn all from itself; it has lived solely on its own capital.
From this ersues that powerful individuality, that hatred of the foreigner,
which even in our own days has formed the essential feature of the Celtic
peoples. Roman civilisation scarcely reached them, and left among them
but few traces. The Teutonic invasion drove them back, but did not
penetrate them. At the present hour they are still constant in resistance to an
invasion dangerous in an altogether different way,- -that of modern
civilisation, destructive as it is of local variations and national types. Ireland
in particular (and herein we perhaps have the secret of her irremediable
weakness) is the only country in Europe where the native can produce the

titles of his descent, and designate with certainty, even in the darkness of
prehistoric ages, the race from which he has sprung.

It is in this secluded life, in this defiance of all that comes from without,
that we must search for the explanation of the chief features of the Celtic
character. It has all the failings, and all the good qualities, of the solitary
man; at once proud and timid, strong in feeling and feeble in action, at
home free and unreserved, to the outside world awkward and embarrassed.
It distrusts the foreigner, because it sees in him a being more refined than
itself, who abuses its simplicity. Indifferent to the admiration of others, it
asks only one thing, that it should be left to itself. It is before all else a
domestic race, fitted for family life and fireside joys. In no other race has
the bond of blood been stronger, or has it created more duties, or attached
man to his fellow with so much breadth and depth. Every social institution
of the Celtic peoples was in the beginning only an extension of the family.
A common tradition attests, to this very day, that nowhere has the trace of
this great institution of relationship been better preserved than in Brittany.
There is a widely-spread belief in that country, that blood speaks, and that
two relatives, unknown one to the other, in any part of the world
wheresoever it may be, recognise each other by the secret and mysterious
emotion which they feel in each other's presence. Respect for the dead rests
on the same principle. Nowhere has reverence for the dead been greater
than among the Briton peoples; nowhere have so many memories and
prayers clustered about the tomb. This is because life is not for these people
a personal adventure, undertaken by each man on his own account, and at
his own risks and perils; it is a link in a long chain, a gift received and
handed on, a debt paid and a duty done.

It is easily discernible how little fitted were natures so strongly
concentrated to furnish one of those brilliant developments, which imposes
the momentary ascendency of a people on the world; and that, no doubt, is

why the part played externally by the Cymric race has always been a
secondary one. Destitute of the means of expansion, alien to all idea of
aggression and conquest, little desirous of making its thought prevail
outside itself, it has only known how to retire so far as space has permitted,
and then, at bay in its last place of retreat, to make an invincible resistance
to its enemies. Its very fidelity has been a useless devotion. Stubborn of
submission and ever behind the age, it is faithful to its conquerors when its
conquerors are no longer faithful to themselves. It was the last to defend its
religious independence against Rome—and it has become the staunchest
stronghold of Catholicism; it was the last in France to defend its political
independence against the king—and it has given to the world the last
royalists.

Thus the Celtic race has worn itself out in resistance to its time, and in
the defence of desperate causes. It does not seem as though in any epoch it
had any aptitude for political life. The spirit of family stifled within it all
attempts at more extended organisation. Moreover, it does not appear that
the peoples which form it are by themselves susceptible of progress. To
them life appears as a fixed condition, which man has no power to alter.
Endowed with little initiative, too much inclined to look upon themselves as
minors and in tutelage, they are quick to believe in destiny and resign
themselves to it. Seeing how little audacious they are against God, one
would scarcely believe this race to be the daughter of Japhet.

Thence ensues its sadness. Take the songs of its bards of the sixth
century; they weep more defeats than they sing victories. Its history is itself
only one long lament; it still recalls its exiles, its flights across the seas. If at
times it seems to be cheerful, a tear is not slow to glisten behind its smile; it
does not know that strange forgetfulness of human conditions and destinies
which is called gaiety. Its songs of joy end as elegies; there is nothing to
equal the delicious sadness of its national melodies. One might call them

emanations from on high which, falling drop by drop upon the soul, pass
through it like memories of another world. Never have men feasted so long
upon these solitary delights of the spirit, these poetic memories which
simultaneously intercross all the sensations of life, so vague, so deep, so
penetrative, that one might die from them, without being able to say
whether it was from bitterness or sweetness.

The infinite delicacy of feeling which characterises the Celtic race is
closely allied to its need of concentration. Natures that are little capable of
expansion are nearly always those that feel most deeply, for the deeper the
feeling, the less it tends to express itself. Thence we have that charming
shamefastness, that veiled and exquisite sobriety, equally far removed from
the sentimental rhetoric too familiar to the Latin races, and the reflective
simplicity of Germany, which are so admirably displayed in the ballads
published by M. de la Villemarque. The apparent reserve of the Celtic
peoples, often taken for coldness, is due to this inward timidity which
makes them believe that a feeling loses half its value if it be expressed; and
that the heart ought to have no other spectator than itself.

If it be permitted us to assign sex to nations as to individuals, we should
have to say without hesitance that the Celtic race, especially with regard to
its Cymric or Breton branch, is an essentially feminine race. No human
family, I believe, has carried so much mystery into love. No other has
conceived with more delicacy the ideal of woman, or been more fully
dominated by it. It is a sort of intoxication, a madness, a vertigo. Read the
strange Mabinogi of Peredur, or its French imitation Parceval le Gallois; its
pages are, as it were, dewy with feminine sentiment. Woman appears
therein as a kind of vague vision, an intermediary between man and the
supernatural world. I am acquainted with no literature that offers anything
analogous to this. Compare Guinevere or Iseult with those Scandinavian
furies Gudrun and Chrimhilde, and you will avow that woman such as

chivalry conceived her, an ideal of sweetness and loveliness set up as the
supreme end of life, is a creation neither classical, nor Christian, nor
Teutonic, but in reality Celtic.

Imaginative power is nearly always proportionate to concentration of
feeling, and lack of the external development of life. The limited nature of
Greek and Italian imagination is due to the easy expansiveness of the
peoples of the South, with whom the soul, wholly spread abroad, reflects
but little within itself. Compared with the classical imagination, the Celtic
imagination is indeed the infinite contrasted with the finite. In the fine
Mabinogi of the Dream of Maxem Wledig, the Emperor Maximus beholds
in a dream a young maiden so beautiful, that on waking he declares he
cannot live without her. For several years his envoys scour the world in
search of her; at last she is discovered in Brittany. So is it with the Celtic
race; it has worn itself out in taking dreams for realities, and in pursuing its
splendid visions. The essential element in the Celt's poetic life is the
adventure—that is to say, the pursuit of the unknown, an endless quest after
an object ever flying from desire. It was of this that St. Brandan dreamed,
that Peredur sought with his mystic chivalry, that Knight Owen asked of his
subterranean journeyings. This race desires the infinite, it thirsts for it, and
pursues it at all costs, beyond the tomb, beyond hell itself. The
characteristic failing of the Breton peoples, the tendency to drunkenness—a
failing which, according to the traditions of the sixth century, was the cause
of their disasters—is due to this invincible need of illusion. Do not say that
it is an appetite for gross enjoyment; never has there been a people more
sober and more alien to all sensuality. No, the Bretons sought in mead what
Owen, St. Brandan, and Peredur sought in their own way,—the vision of the
invisible world. To this day in Ireland drunkenness forms a part of all
Saint's Day festivals—that is to say, the festivals which best have retained
their national and popular aspect.

Thence arises the profound sense of the future and of the eternal destinies
of his race, which has ever borne up the Cymry, and kept him young still
beside his conquerors who have grown old. Thence that dogma of the
resurrection of the heroes, which appears to have been one of those that
Christianity found most difficulty in rooting out. Thence Celtic Messianism,
that belief in a future avenger who shall restore Cambria, and deliver her
out of the hands of her oppressors, like the mysterious Leminok promised
by Merlin, the Lez- Breiz of the Armoricans, the Arthur of the Welsh.
[Footnote: M. Augustin Thierry has finely remarked that the renown
attaching to Welsh prophecies in the Middle Ages was due to their
steadfastness in affirming the future of their race. (Histoire de la Conquete
d'Angleterre.)] The hand that arose from the mere, when the sword of
Arthur fell therein, that seized it, and brandished it thrice, is the hope of the
Celtic races. It is thus that little peoples dowered with imagination revenge
themselves on their conquerors. Feeling themselves to be strong inwardly
and weak outwardly, they protest, they exult; and such a strife unloosing
their might, renders them capable of miracles. Nearly all great appeals to
the supernatural are due to peoples hoping against all hope. Who shall say
what in our own times has fermented in the bosom of the most stubborn, the
most powerless of nationalities—Poland? Israel in humiliation dreamed of
the spiritual conquest of the world, and the dream has come to pass.

II

At a first glance the literature of Wales is divided into three perfectly
distinct distinct branches: the bardic or lyric, which shines forth in
splendour in the sixth century by the works of Taliessin, of Aneurin, and of
Liware'h Hen, and continues through an uninterrupted series of imitations
up to modern times; the Mabinogion, or literature of romance, fixed
towards the twelfth century, but linking themselves in the groundwork of
their ideas with the remotest ages of the Celtic genius; finally, an

ecclesiastical and legendary literature, impressed with a distinct stamp of its
own. These three literatures seem to have existed side by side, almost
without knowledge of one another. The bards, proud of their solemn
rhetoric, held in disdain the popular tales, the form of which they
considered careless; on the other hand, both bards and romancers appear to
have had few relations with the clergy; and one at times might be tempted
to suppose that they ignored the existence of Christianity. To our thinking it
is in the Mabinogion that the true expression of the Celtic genius is to be
sought; and it is surprising that so curious a literature, the source of nearly
all the romantic creations of Europe, should have remained unknown until
our own days. The cause is doubtless to be ascribed to the dispersed state of
the Welsh manuscripts, pursued till last century by the English, as seditious
books compromising those who possessed them. Often too they fell into
hands of ignorant owners whose caprice or ill-will sufficed to keep them
from critical research.

The Mabinogion have been preserved for us in two principal documents
—one of the thirteenth century from the library of Hengurt, belonging to the
Vaughan family; the other dating from the fourteenth century, known under
the name of the Red Book of Hergest, and now in Jesus College, Oxford.
No doubt it was some such collection that charmed the weary hours of the
hapless Leolin in the Tower of London, and was burned after his
condemnation, with the other Welsh books which had been the companions
of his captivity. Lady Charlotte Guest has based her edition on the Oxford
manuscript; it cannot be sufficiently regretted that paltry considerations
have caused her to be refused the use of the earlier manuscript, of which the
later appears to be only a copy. Regrets are redoubled when one knows that
several Welsh texts, which were seen and copied fifty years ago, have now
disappeared. It is in the presence of facts such as these that one comes to
believe that revolutions—in general so destructive of the works of the past
—are favourable to the preservation of literary monuments, by compelling

their concentration in great centres, where their existence, as well as their
publicity, is assured.

The general tone of the Mabinogion is rather romantic than epic. Life is
treated naively and not too emphatically. The hero's individuality is
limitless. We have free and noble natures acting in all their spontaneity.
Each man appears as a kind of demi-god characterised by a supernatural
gift. This gift is nearly always connected with some miraculous object,
which in some measure is the personal seal of him who possesses it. The
inferior classes, which this people of heroes necessarily supposes beneath it,
scarcely show themselves, except in the exercise of some trade, for
practising which they are held in high esteem. The somewhat complicated
products of human industry are regarded as living beings, and in their
manner endowed with magical properties. A multiplicity of celebrated
objects have proper names, such as the drinking-cup, the lance, the sword,
and the shield of Arthur; the chess-board of Gwendolen, on which the black
pieces played of their own accord against the white; the horn of Bran Galed,
where one found whatever liquor one desired; the chariot of Morgan, which
directed itself to the place to which one wished to go; the pot of Tyrnog,
which would not cook when meat for a coward was put into it; the
grindstone of Tudwal, which would only sharpen brave men's swords; the
coat of Padarn, which none save a noble could don; and the mantle of
Tegan, which no woman could put upon herself were she not above
reproach. [Footnote: Here may be recognised the origin of trial by court
mantle, one of the most interesting episodes in Lancelot of the Lake.] The
animal is conceived in a still more individual way; it has a proper name,
personal qualities, and a role which it develops at its own will and with full
consciousness. The same hero appears as at once man and animal, without it
being possible to trace the line of demarcation between the two natures.

The tale of Kilhwch and Olwen, the most extraordinary of the
Mabinogion, deals with Arthur's struggle against the wild-boar king Twrch
Trwyth, who with his seven cubs holds in check all the heroes of the Round
Table. The adventures of the three hundred ravens of Kerverhenn similarly
form the subject of the Dream of Rhonabwy. The idea of moral merit and
demerit is almost wholly absent from all these compositions. There are
wicked beings who insult ladies, who tyrannise over their neighbours, who
only find pleasure in evil because such is their nature; but it does not appear
that they incur wrath on that account. Arthur's knights pursue them, not as
criminals but as mischievous fellows. All other beings are perfectly good
and just, but more or less richly gifted. This is the dream of an amiable and
gentle race which looks upon evil as being the work of destiny, and not a
product of the human conscience. All nature is enchanted, and fruitful as
imagination itself in indefinitely varied creations. Christianity rarely
discloses itself; although at times its proximity can be felt, it alters in no
respect the purely natural surroundings in which everything takes place. A
bishop figures at table beside Arthur, but his function is strictly limited to
blessing the dishes. The Irish saints, who at one time present themselves to
give their benediction to Arthur and receive favours at his hands, are
portrayed as a race of men vaguely known and difficult to understand. No
mediaeval literature held itself further removed from all monastic influence.
We evidently must suppose that the Welsh bards and story-tellers lived in a
state of great isolation from the clergy, and had their culture and traditions
quite apart.

The charm of the Mabinogion principally resides in the amiable serenity
of the Celtic mind, neither sad nor gay, ever in suspense between a smile
and a tear. We have in them the simple recital of a child, unwitting of any
distinction between the noble and the common; there is something of that
softly animated world, of that calm and tranquil ideal to which Ariosto's
stanzas transport us. The chatter of the later mediaeval French and German

imitators can give no idea of this charming manner of narration. The skilful
Chretien de Troyes himself remains in this respect far below the Welsh
story- tellers, and as for Wolfram of Eschenbach, it must be avowed that the
joy of the first discovery has carried German critics too far in the
exaggeration of his merits. He loses himself in interminable descriptions,
and almost completely ignores the art of his recital.

What strikes one at a first glance in the imaginative compositions of the
Celtic races, above all when they are contrasted with those of the Teutonic
races, is the extreme mildness of manners pervading them. There are none
of those frightful vengeances which fill the Edda and the Niebelungen.
Compare the Teutonic with the Gaelic hero,—Beowulf with Peredur, for
example. What a difference there is! In the one all the horror of disgusting
and blood-embrued barbarism, the drunkenness of carnage, the disinterested
taste, if I may say so, for destruction and death; in the other a profound
sense of justice, a great height of personal pride it is true, but also a great
capacity for devotion, an exquisite loyalty. The tyrannical man, the monster,
the Black Man, find a place here like the Lestrigons and the Cyclops of
Homer only to inspire horror by contrast with softer manners; they are
almost what the wicked man is in the naive imagination of a child brought
up by a mother in the ideas of a gentle and pious morality. The primitive
man of Teutonism is revolting by his purposeless brutality, by a love of evil
that only gives him skill and strength in the service of hatred and injury.
The Cymric hero on the other hand, even in his wildest flights, seems
possessed by habits of kindness and a warm sympathy with the weakv.
Sympathy indeed is one of the deepest feelings among the Celtic peoples.
Even Judas is not denied a share of their pity. St. Brandan found him upon a
rock in the midst of the Polar seas; once a week he passes a day there to
refresh himself from the fires of hell. A cloak that he had given to a beggar
is hung before him, and tempers his sufferings.

If Wales has a right to be proud of her Mabinogion, she has not less to
felicitate herself in having found a translator truly worthy of interpreting
them. For the proper understanding of these original beauties there was
needed a delicate appreciation of Welsh narration, and an intelligence of the
naive order, qualities of which an erudite translator would with difficulty
have been capable. To render these gracious imaginings of a people so
eminently dowered with feminine tact, the pen of a woman was necessary.
Simple, animated, without effort and without vulgarity, Lady Guest's
translation is a faithful mirror of the original Cymric. Even supposing that,
as regards philology, the labours of this noble Welsh lady be destined to
receive improvement, that does not prevent her book from for ever
remaining a work of erudition and highly distinguished taste. [Footnote: M.
de la Villemarque published in 1843 under the title of Cantes populaires des
anciens Bretons, a French translation of the narratives that Guest had
already presented in English at that time.]

The Mabinogion, or at least the writings which Lady Guest thought she
ought to include under this common name, divide themselves into two
perfectly distinct classes—some connected exclusively with the two
peninsulas of Wales and Cornwall, and relating to the heroic personality of
Arthur; the others alien to Arthur, having for their scene not only the parts
of England that have remained Cymric, but the whole of Great Britain, and
leading us back by the persons and traditions mentioned in them to the later
years of the Roman occupation. The second class, of greater antiquity than
the first, at least on the ground of subject, is also distinguished by a much
more mythological character, a bolder use of the miraculous, an enigmatical
form, a style full of alliteration and plays upon words. Of this number are
the tales of Pwyll, of Bramwen, of Manawyddan, of Math the son of
Mathonwy, the Dream of the Emperor Maximus, the story of Llud and
Llewelys, and the legend of Taliessin. To the Arthurian cycle belong the
narratives of Owen, of Geraint, of Peredur, of Kilhwch and Olwen, and the

Dream of Rhonabwy. It is also to be remarked that the two last-named
narratives have a particularly antique character. In them Arthur dwells in
Cornwall, and not as in the others at Caerleon on the Usk. In them he
appears with an individual character, hunting and taking a personal part in
warfare, while in the more modern tales he is only an emperor all- powerful
and impassive, a truly sluggard hero, around whom a pleiad of active heroes
groups itself. The Mabinogi of Kilhwch and Olwen, by its entirely primitive
aspect, by the part played in it by the wild-boar in conformity to the spirit of
Celtic mythology, by the wholly supernatural and magical character of the
narration, by innumerable allusions the sense of which escapes us, forms a
cycle by itself. It represents for us the Cymric conception in all its purity,
before it had been modified by the introduction of any foreign element.
Without attempting here to analyse this curious poem, I should like by some
extracts to make its antique aspect and high originality apparent.

Kilhwch, the son of Kilydd, prince of Kelyddon, having heard some one
mention the name of Olwen, daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr, falls
violently in love, without having ever seen her. He goes to find Arthur, that
he may ask for his aid in the difficult undertaking which he meditates; in
point of fact, he does not know in what country the fair one of his affection
dwells. Yspaddaden is besides a frightful tyrant who suffers no man to go
from his castle alive, and whose death is linked by destiny to the marriage
of his daughter. [Footnote: The idea of making the death of the father the
condition of possession of the daughter is to be found in several romances
of the Breton cycle, in Lancelot for example.] Arthur grants Kilhwch some
of his most valiant comrades in arms to assist him in this enterprise. After
wonderful adventures the knights arrive at the castle of Yspaddaden, and
succeed in seeing the young maiden of Kilhwch's dream. Only after three
days of persistent struggle do they manage to obtain a response from
Olwen's father, who attaches his daughter's hand to conditions apparently
impossible of realisation. The performance of these trials makes a long

chain of adventures, the framework of a veritable romantic epic which has
come to us in a very fragmentary form. Of the thirty-eight adventures
imposed on Kilhwch the manuscript used by Lady Guest only relates seven
or eight. I choose at random one of these narratives, which appears to me
fitted to give an idea of the whole composition. It deals with the finding of
Mabon the son of Modron, who was carried away from his mother three
days after his birth, and whose deliverance is one of the labours exacted of
Kilhwch.

"His followers said unto Arthur, 'Lord, go thou home; thou canst not
proceed with thy host in quest of such small adventures as these.' Then said
Arthur, 'It were well for thee, Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Ieithoedd, to go upon this
quest, for thou knowest all languages, and art familiar with those of the
birds and the beasts. Thou, Eidoel, oughtest likewise to go with my men in
search of thy cousin. And as for you, Kai and Bedwyr, I have hope of
whatever adventure ye are in quest of, that ye will achieve it. Achieve ye
this adventure for me.'"

They went forward until they came to the Ousel of Cilgwri. And Gwrhyr
adjured her for the sake of Heaven, saying, "Tell me if thou knowest aught
of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken when three nights old from
between his mother and the wall." And the Ousel answered, "When I first
came here there was a smith's anvil in this place, and I was then a young
bird; and from that time no work has been done upon it, save the pecking of
my beak every evening, and now there is not so much as the size of a nut
remaining thereof; yet all the vengeance of Heaven be upon me, if during
all that time I have ever heard of the man for whom you enquire.
Nevertheless I will do that which is right, and that which it is fitting I
should do for an embassy from Arthur. There is a race of animals who were
formed before me, and I will be your guide to them."

So they proceeded to the place where was the Stag of Redynvre. "Stag of
Redynvre, behold we are come to thee, an embassy from Arthur, for we
have not heard of any animal older than thou. Say, knowest thou aught of
Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken from his mother when three
nights old?" The Stag said, "When first I came hither there was a plain all
around me, without any trees save one oak sapling, which grew up to be an
oak with an hundred branches. And that oak has since perished, so that now
nothing remains of it but the withered stump; and from that day to this I
have been here, yet have I never heard of the man for whom you enquire.
Nevertheless, being an embassy from Arthur, I will be your guide to the
place where there is an animal which was formed before I was."

So they proceeded to the place where was the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd.
"Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd, here is an embassy from Arthur; knowest thou
aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken after three nights from
his mother?" "If I knew I would tell you. When first I came hither, the wide
valley you see was a wooded glen. And a race of men came and rooted it
up. And there grew there a second wood; and this wood is the third. My
wings, are they not withered stumps? Yet all this time, even until to-day, I
have never heard of the man for whom you enquire. Nevertheless I will be
the guide of Arthur's embassy until you come to the place where is the
oldest animal in the world, and the one that has travelled most, the Eagle of
Gwern Abwy."

Gwrhyr said, "Eagle of Gwern Abwy, we have come to thee an embassy
from Arthur, to ask thee if thou knowest aught of Mabon the son of
Modron, who was taken from his mother when he was three nights old."
The Eagle said, "I have been here for a great space of time, and when I first
came hither there was a rock here, from the top of which I pecked at the
stars every evening; and now it is not so much as a span high. From that day
to this I have been here, and I have never heard of the man for whom you

enquire, except once when I went in search of food as far as Llyn Llyw.
And when I came there, I struck my talons into a salmon, thinking he would
serve me as food for a long time. But he drew me into the deep, and I was
scarcely able to escape from him. After that I went with my whole kindred
to attack him, and to try to destroy him, but he sent messengers, and made
peace with me; and came and besought me to take fifty fish spears out of
his back. Unless he know something of him whom you seek, I cannot tell
who may. However, I will guide you to the place where he is."

So they went thither; and the Eagle said, "Salmon of Llyn Llyw, I have
come to thee with an embassy from Arthur, to ask thee if thou knowest
aught concerning Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken away at three
nights old from his mother." "As much as I know I will tell thee. With every
tide I go along the river upwards, until I come near to the walls of
Gloucester, and there have I found such wrong as I never found elsewhere;
and to the end that ye may give credence thereto, let one of you go thither
upon each of my two shoulders." So Kai and Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Ieithoedd
went upon the shoulders of the salmon, and they proceeded until they came
unto the wall of the prison, and they heard a great wailing and lamenting
from the dungeon. Said Gwrhyr, "Who is it that laments in this house of
stone?" "Alas there is reason enough for whoever is here to lament. It is
Mabon the son of Modron who is here imprisoned; and no imprisonment
was ever so grievous as mine, neither that of Lludd Llaw Ereint, nor that of
Greid the son of Eri." "Hast thou hope of being released for gold or for
silver, or for any gifts of wealth, or through battle and fighting?" "By
fighting will whatever I may gain be obtained."

We shall not follow the Cymric hero through trials the result of which
can be foreseen. What, above all else, is striking in these strange legends is
the part played by animals, transformed by the Welsh imagination into
intelligent beings. No race conversed so intimately as did the Celtic race

with the lower creation, and accorded it so large a share of moral life.
[Footnote: See especially the narratives of Nennius, and of Giraldus
Cambrensis. In them animals have at least as important a part as men.] The
close association of man and animal, the fictions so dear to mediaeval
poetry of the Knight of the Lion, the Knight of the Falcon, the Knight of the
Swan, the vows consecrated by the presence of birds of noble repute, are
equally Breton imaginings. Ecclesiastical literature itself presents analogous
features; gentleness towards animals informs all the legends of the saints of
Brittany and Ireland. One day St. Kevin fell asleep, while he was praying at
his window with outstretched arms; and a swallow perceiving the open
hand of the venerable monk, considered it an excellent place wherein to
make her nest. The saint on awaking saw the mother sitting upon her eggs,
and, loth to disturb her, waited for the little ones to be hatched before he
arose from his knees.

This touching sympathy was derived from the singular vivacity with
which the Celtic races have inspired their feeling for nature. Their
mythology is nothing more than a transparent naturalism, not that
anthropomorphic naturalism of Greece and India, in which the forces of the
universe, viewed as living beings and endowed with consciousness, tend
more and more to detach themselves from physical phenomena, and to
become moral beings; but in some measure a realistic naturalism, the love
of nature for herself, the vivid impression of her magic, accompanied by the
sorrowful feeling that man knows, when, face to face with her, he believes
that he hears her commune with him concerning his origin and his destiny.
The legend of Merlin mirrors this feeling. Seduced by a fairy of the woods,
he flies with her and becomes a savage. Arthur's messengers come upon
him as he is singing by the side of a fountain; he is led back again to court;
but the charm carries him away. He returns to his forests, and this time for
ever. Under a thicket of hawthorn Vivien has built him a magical prison.
There he prophesies the future of the Celtic races; he speaks of a maiden of

the woods, now visible and now unseen, who holds him captive by her
spells. Several Arthurian legends are impressed with the same character.
Arthur himself in popular belief became, as it were, a woodland spirit. "The
foresters on their nightly round by the light of the moon," says Gervais of
Tilbury, [Footnote: An English chronicler of the twelfth century.] "often
hear a great sound as of horns, and meet bands of huntsmen; when they are
asked whence they come, these huntsmen make reply that they are of King
Arthur's following." [Footnote: This manner of explaining all the unknown
noises of the wood by Arthur's Hunting is still to be found in several
districts. To understand properly the cult of nature, and, if I may say so, of
landscape among the Celts, see Gildas and Nennius, pp. 131, 136, 137, etc.
(Edit. San Marte, Berlin. 1884);] Even the French imitators of the Breton
romances keep an impression—although a rather insipid one—of the
attraction exercised by nature on the Celtic imagination. Elaine, the heroine
of Lancelot, the ideal of Breton perfection, passes her life with her
companions in a garden, in the midst of flowers which she tends. Every
flower culled by her hands is at the instant restored to life; and the
worshippers of her memory are under an obligation, when they cut a flower,
to sow another in its place.

The worship of forest, and fountain, and stone is to be explained by this
primitive naturalism, which all the Councils of the Church held in Brittany
united to proscribe. The stone, in truth, seems the natural symbol of the
Celtic races. It is an immutable witness that has no death. The animal, the
plant, above all the human figure, only express the divine life under a
determinate form; the stone on the contrary, adapted to receive all forms,
has been the fetish of peoples in their childhood. Pausanias saw, still
standing erect, the thirty square stones of Pharse, each bearing the name of
a divinity. The men-hir to be met with over the whole surface of the ancient
world, what is it but the monument of primitive humanity, a living witness
of its faith in Heaven? [Footnote: It is, however, doubtful whether the

monuments known in France at Celtic (men-hir. dot-men, etc.) are the work
of the Celts. With M. Worsaae and the Copenhagen archaeologists, I am
inclined to think that these monuments belong to a more ancient humanity.
Never, in fact, has any branch of the Indo-European race built in this
fashion. (See two articles by M. Merimee in L'Athenaum franfais, Sept.
11th, 1852, and April 25th, 1853.)]

It has frequently been observed that the majority of popular beliefs still
extant in our different provinces are of Celtic origin. A not less remarkable
fact is the strong tinge of naturalism dominant in these beliefs. Nay more,
every time that the old Celtic spirit appears in our history, there is to be
seen, re-born with it, faith in nature and her magic influences. One of the
most characteristic of these manifestations seems to me to be that of Joan of
Arc. That indomitable hope, that tenacity in the affirmation of the future,
that belief that the salvation of the kingdom will come from a woman,—all
those features, far removed as they are from the taste of antiquity, and from
Teutonic taste, are in many respects Celtic. The memory of the ancient cult
perpetuated itself at Domremy, as in so many other places, under the form
of popular superstition. The cottage of the family of Arc was shaded by a
beech tree, famed in the country and reputed to be the abode of fairies. In
her childhood Joan used to go and hang upon its branches garlands of
leaves and flowers, which, so it was said, disappeared during the night. The
terms of her accusation speak with horror of this innocent custom, as of a
crime against the faith; and indeed they were not altogether deceived, those
unpitying theologians who judged the holy maid. Although she knew it not,
she was more Celtic than Christian. She has been foretold by Merlin; she
knows of neither Pope nor Church,— she only believes the voice that
speaks in her own heart. This voice she hears in the fields, in the sough of
the wind among the trees, when measured and distant sounds fair upon her
ears. During her trial, worn out with questions and scholastic subtleties, she
is asked whether she still hears her voices. "Take me to the woods." she

says, "and I shall hear them clearly." Her legend is tinged with the same
colours; nature loved her, the wolves never touched the sheep of her flock.
When she was a little girl, the birds used to come and eat bread from her lap
as though they were tame. [Footnote: Since the first publication of these
views, on which I should not like more emphasis to be put than what
belongs to a passing impression, similar considerations have been
developed, in terms that appear a little too positive, by M. H. Martin
(History of France, vol. vi., 1856). The objections raised to it are, for the
most part, due to the fact that very few people are capable of delicately
appreciating questions of this kind, relative to the genius of races. It
frequently happens that the resurrection of an old national genius takes
place under a very different form from that which one would have expected,
and by means of individuals who have no idea of the ethnographical part
which they play.]

III

The MABINOGION do not recommend themselves to our study, only as
a manifestation of the romantic genius of the Breton races. It was through
them that the Welsh imagination exercised its influence upon the Continent,
that it transformed, in the twelfth century, the poetic art of Europe, and
realised this miracle,—that the creations of a half-conquered race have
become the universal feast of imagination for mankind.

Few heroes owe less to reality than Arthur. Neither Gildas nor Aneurin,
his contemporaries, speak of him; Bede did not even know his name;
Taliessin and Liwarc'h Hen gave him only a secondary place. In Nennius,
on the other hand, who lived about 850, the legend has fully unfolded.
Arthur is already the exterminator of the Saxons; he has never experienced
defeat; he is the suzerain of an army of kings. Finally, in Geoffrey of
Monmouth, the epic creation culminates. Arthur reigns over the whole

earth; he conquers Ireland, Norway, Gascony, and France. At Caerleon he
holds a tournament at which all the monarchs of the world are present; there
he puts upon his head thirty crowns, and exacts recognition as the sovereign
lord of the universe. So incredible is it that a petty king of the sixth century,
scarcely remarked by his contemporaries, should have taken in posterity
such colossal proportions, that several critics have supposed that the
legendary Arthur and the obscure chieftain who bore that name have
nothing in common, the one with the other, and that the son of Uther
Pendragon is a wholly ideal hero, a survivor of the old Cymric mythology.
As a matter of fact, in the symbols of Neo-Druidism—that is to say, of that
secret doctrine, the outcome of Druidism, which prolonged its existence
even to the Middle Ages under the form of Freemasonry—we again find
Arthur transformed into a divine personage, and playing a purely
mythological part. It must at least be allowed that, if behind the fable some
reality lies hidden, history offers us no means of attaining it. It cannot be
doubted that the discovery of Arthur's tomb in the Isle of Avalon in 1189
was an invention of Norman policy, just as in 1283, the very year in which
Edward I. was engaged in crushing out the last vestiges of Welsh
independence, Arthur's crown was very conveniently found, and forthwith
united to the other crown jewels of England.

We naturally expect Arthur, now become the representative of Welsh
nationality, to sustain in the Mabinogion a character analogous to this role,
and therein, as in Nennius, to serve the hatred of the vanquished against the
Saxons. But such is not the case. Arthur, in the Mabinogion, exhibits no
characteristics of patriotic resistance; his part is limited to uniting heroes
around him, to maintaining the retainers of his palace, and to enforcing the
laws of his order of chivalry. He is too strong for any one to dream of
attacking him. He is the Charlemagne of the Carlovingian romances, the
Agamemnon of Homer,—one of those neutral personalities that serve but to
give unity to the poem. The idea of warfare against the alien, hatred towards

the Saxon, does not appear in a single instance. The heroes of the
Mabinogion have no fatherland; each fights to show his personal
excellence, and satisfy his taste for adventure, but not to defend a national
cause. Britain is the universe; no one suspects that beyond the Cymry there
may be other nations and other races.

It was by this ideal and representative character that the Arthurian legend
had such an astonishing prestige throughout the whole world. Had Arthur
been only a provincial hero, the more or less happy defender of a little
country, all peoples would not have adopted him, any more than they have
adopted the Marco of the Serbs, [Footnote: A Servian ballad-hero.] or the
Robin Hood of the Saxons. The Arthur who has charmed the world is the
head of an order of equality, in which all sit at the same table, in which a
man's worth depends upon his valour and his natural gifts. What mattered to
the world the fate of an unknown peninsula, and the strife waged on its
behalf? What enchanted it was the ideal court presided over by
Gwenhwyvar (Guinevere), where around the monarchical unity the flower
of heroes was gathered together, where ladies, as chaste as they were
beautiful, loved according to the laws of chivalry, and where the time was
passed in listening to stories, and learning civility and beautiful manners.

This is the secret of the magic of that Round Table, about which the
Middle Ages grouped all their ideas of heroism, of beauty, of modesty, and
of love. We need not stop to inquire whether the ideal of a gentle and
polished society in the midst of the barbarian world is, in all its features, a
purely Breton creation, whether the spirit of the courts of the Continent has
not in some measure furnished the model, and whether the Mabinogion
themselves have not felt the reaction of the French imitations;[Footnote:
The surviving version of the Mdbinogian has a later date than these
imitations, and the Red Book includes several tales borrowed from the
French trouveres. But it is out of the question to maintain that the really

Welsh narratives have been borrowed in a like manner, since among them
are some unknown to the trouveres, which could only possess interest for
Breton countries] it suffices for us that the new order of sentiments which
we have just indicated was, throughout the whole of the Middle Ages,
persistently attached to the groundwork of the Cymric romances. Such an
association could not be fortuitous; if the imitations are all so glaring in
colour, it is evidently because in the original this same colour is to be found
united to particularly strong character. How otherwise shall we explain why
a forgotten tribe on the very confines of the world should have imposed its
heroes upon Europe, and, in the domain of imagination, accomplished one
of the most singular revolutions known to the historian of letters?

If, in fact, one compares European literature before the introduction of
the Cymric romances, with what it became when the trouveres set
themselves to draw from Breton sources, one recognises readily that with
the Breton narratives a new element entered into the poetic conception of
the Christian peoples, and modified it profoundly. The Carlovingian poem,
both by its structure and by the means which it employs, does not depart
from classical ideas. The motives of man's action are the same as in the
Greek epic. The essentially romantic element, the life of forests and
mysterious adventure, the feeling for nature, and that impulse of
imagination which makes the Breton warrior unceasingly pursue the
unknown;— nothing of all this is as yet to be observed. Roland differs from
the heroes of Homer only by his armour; in heart he is the brother of Ajax
or Achilles. Perceval, on the contrary, belongs to another world, separated
by a great gulf from that in which the heroes of antiquity live and act.

It was above all by the creation of woman's character, by introducing into
mediaeval poetry, hitherto hard and austere, the nuances of love, that the
Breton romances brought about this curious metamorphosis. It was like an
electric spark; in a few years European taste was changed. Nearly all the

types of womankind known to the Middle Ages, Guinevere, Iseult, Enid, are
derived from Arthur's court. In the Carlovingian poems woman is a
nonentity without character or individuality; in them love is either brutal, as
in the romance of "Ferebras," or scarcely indicated, as in the "Song of
Roland." In the "Mabinogion," on the other hand, the principal part always
belongs to the women. Chivalrous gallantry, which makes the warrior's
happiness to consist in serving a woman and meriting her esteem, the belief
that the noblest use of strength is to succour and avenge weakness, results, I
know, from a turn of imagination which possessed nearly all European
peoples in the twelfth century; but it cannot be doubted that this turn of
imagination first found literary expression among the Breton peoples. One
of the most surprising features in the Mabinogion is the delicacy of the
feminine feeling breathed in them; an impropriety or a gross word is never
to be met with. It would be necessary to quote at length the two romances
of Peredur and Geraint to demonstrate an innocence such as this; but the
naive simplicity of these charming compositions forbids us to see in this
innocence any underlying meaning. The zeal of the knight in the defence of
ladies' honour became a satirical euphemism only in the French imitators,
who transformed the virginal modesty of the Breton romances into a
shameless gallantry—so far indeed that these compositions, chaste as they
are in the original, became the scandal of the Middle Ages, provoked
censures, and were the occasion of the ideas of immorality which, for
religious people, still cluster about the name of romance.

Certainly chivalry is too complex a fact for us to be permitted to assign it
to any single origin. Let us say however that in the idea of envisaging the
esteem of a woman as the highest object of human activity, and setting up
love as the supreme principle of morality, there is nothing of the antique
spirit, or indeed of the Teutonic. Is it in the "Edda" or in the "Niebelungen"
that we shall find the germ of this spirit of pure love, of exalted devotion,
which forms the very soul of chivalry? As to following the suggestion of

some critics and seeking among the Arabs for the beginnings of this
institution, surely of all literary paradoxes ever mooted, this is one of the
most singular. The idea of conquering woman in a land where she is bought
and sold, of seeking her esteem in a land where she is scarcely considered
capable of moral merit! I shall oppose the partizans of this hypothesis with
one single fact,—the surprise experienced by the Arabs of Algeria when, by
a somewhat unfortunate recollection of mediaeval tournaments, the ladies
were entrusted with the presentation of prizes at the Beiram races. What to
the knight appeared an unparalleled honour seemed to the Arabs a
humiliation and almost an insult.

The introduction of the Breton romances into the current of European
literature worked a not less profound revolution in the manner of
conceiving and employing the marvellous. In the Carlovingian poems the
marvellous is timid, and conforms to the Christian faith; the supernatural is
produced directly by God or his envoys. Among the Cymry, on the contrary,
the principle of the marvel is in nature herself, in her hidden forces, in her
inexhaustible fecundity. There is a mysterious swan, a prophetic bird, a
suddenly appearing hand, a giant, a black tyrant, a magic mist, a dragon, a
cry that causes the hearer to die of terror, an object with extraordinary
properties. There is no trace of the monotheistic conception, in which the
marvellous is only a miracle, a derogation of eternal laws. Nor are there any
of those personifications of the life of nature which form the essential part
of the Greek and Indian mythologies. Here we have perfect naturalism, an
unlimited faith in the possible, belief in the existence of independent beings
bearing within themselves the principle of their strength,—an idea quite
opposed to Christianity, which in such beings necessarily sees either angels
or fiends. And besides, these strange beings are always presented as being
outside the pale of the Church; and when the knight of the Round Table has
conquered them, he forces them to go and pay homage to Guinevere, and
have themselves baptised.

Now, if in poetry there is a marvellous element that we might accept,
surely it is this. Classical mythology, taken in its first simplicity, is too bold,
taken as a mere figure of rhetoric, too insipid, to give us satisfaction. As to
the marvellous element in Christianity, Boileau is right: no fiction is
compatible with such a dogmatism. There remains then the purely
naturalistic marvellous, nature interesting herself in action and acting
herself, the great mystery of fatality unveiling itself by the secret conspiring
of all beings, as in Shakespeare and Ariosto. It would be curious to ascertain
how much of the Celt there is in the former of these poets; as for Ariosto he
is the Breton poet par excellence. All his machinery, all his means of
interest, all his fine shades of sentiment, all his types of women, all his
adventures, are borrowed from the Breton romances.

Do we now understand the intellectual role of that little race which gave
to the world Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Perceval, Merlin, St. Brandan, St.
Patrick, and almost all the poetical cycles of the Middle Ages? What a
striking destiny some nations have, in alone possessing the right to cause
the acceptance of their heroes, as though for that were necessary a quite
peculiar degree of authority, seriousness, and faith! And it is a strange thing
that it is to the Normans, of all peoples the one least sympathetically
inclined towards the Bretons, that we owe the renown of the Breton fables.
Brilliant and imitative, the Norman everywhere became the pre- eminent
representative of the nation on which he had at first imposed himself by
force. French in France, English in England, Italian in Italy, Russian at
Novgorod, he forgot his own language to speak that of the race which he
had conquered, and to become the interpreter of its genius. The deeply
suggestive character of the Welsh romances could not fail to impress men
so prompt to seize and assimilate the ideas of the foreigner. The first
revelation of the Breton fables, the Latin Chronicle of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, appeared about the year 1137, under the auspices of Robert of
Gloucester, natural son of Henry I. Henry II. acquired a taste for the same

narratives, and at his request Robert Wace, in 1155, wrote in French the first
history of Arthur, thus opening the path in which walked after him a host of
poets or imitators of all nationalities, French, Provencal, Italian, Spanish,
English, Scandinavian, Greek, and Georgian. We need not belittle the glory
of the first trouveres who put into a language, then read and understood
from one end of Europe to the other, fictions which, but for them, would
have doubtless remained for ever unknown. It is however difficult to
attribute to them an inventive faculty, such as would permit them to merit
the title of creators. The numerous passages in which one feels that they do
not fully understand the original which they imitate, and in which they
attempt to give a natural significance to circumstances of which the
mythological bearing escaped them, suffice to prove that, as a rule, they
were satisfied to make a fairly faithful copy of the work before their eyes.

What part has Armorican Brittany played in the creation or propagation
of the legends of the Round Table? It is impossible to say with any degree
of precision; and in truth such a question becomes a matter of secondary
import once we form a just idea of the close bonds of fraternity, which did
not cease until the twelfth century to unite the two branches of the Breton
peoples. That the heroic traditions of Wales long continued to live in the
branch of the Cymric family which came and settled in Armorica cannot be
doubted when we find Geraint, Urien, and other heroes become saints in
Lower Brittany; [Footnote: I shall only cite a single proof; it is a law of
Edward the Confessor: "Britones vero Armorici quum venerint in regno
isto, suscipi debent et in regno protegi sicut probi cives de corpore regni
hujus; exierunt quondam de sanguine Britonum regni hujus."—Wilkins,
Leges Anglo-Saxonicae, p. 206.]and above all when we see one of the most
essential episodes of the Arthurian cycle, that of the Forest of Broceliande,
placed in the same country. A large number of facts collected by M. de la
Villemarrque [Footnote: "Les Romans de la Table-Ronde et les contes des
anciens Bretons" (Paris, 1859), pp. 20 et seq. In the "Contes populaires des

anciens Bretons," of which the above may be considered as a new edition,
the learned author had somewhat exaggerated the influence of French
Brittany. In the present article, when first published, I had, on the other
hand, depreciated it too much.] prove, on the other hand, that these same
traditions produced a true poetic cycle in Brittany, and even that at certain
epochs they must have recrossed the Channel, as though to give new life to
the mother country's memories. The fact that Gauthier Calenius,
Archdeacon of Oxford, brought back from Brittany to England (about 1125)
the very text of the legends which were translated into Latin ten years
afterwards by Geoffrey of Monmouth is here decisive. I know that to
readers of the Mabinogion such an opinion will appear surprising at a first
glance, All is Welsh in these fables, the places, the genealogies, the
customs; in them Armorica is only represented by Hoel, an important
personage no doubt, but one who has not achieved the fame of the other
heroes of Arthur's court. Again, if Armorica saw the birth of the Arthurian
cycle, how is it that we fail to find there any traces of that brilliant nativity?
[Footnote: M. de la Villemarque makes appeal to the popular songs still
extant in Brittany, in which Arthur's deeds are celebrated. In fact, in his
Chants populaires de la Bretagne two poems are to be found in which that
hero's name figures.]

These objections, I avow, long barred my way, but I no longer find them
insoluble. And first of all there is a class of Mabinogion, including those of
Owen, Geraint, and Peredur, stories which possess no very precise
geographical localisation. In the second place, national written literature
being less successfully defended in Brittany than in Wales against the
invasion of foreign culture, it may be conceived that the memory of the old
epics should be there more obliterated. The literary share of the two
countries thus remains sufficiently distinct. The glory of French Brittany is
in her popular songs; but it is only in Wales that the genius of the Breton

people has succeeded in establishing itself in authentic books and achieved
creations.

IV.

In comparing the Breton cycle as the French trouveres knew it, and the
same cycle as it is to be found in the text of the Mabinogion, one might be
tempted to believe that the European imagination, enthralled by these
brilliant fables, added to them some poetical themes unknown to the Welsh.
Two of the most celebrated heroes of the continental Breton romances,
Lancelot and Tristan, do not figure in the Mabinogion; on the other hand,
the characteristics of the Holy Grail are presented in a totally different way
from that which we find in the French and German poets. A more attentive
study shows that these elements, apparently added by the French poets, are
in reality of Cymric origin. And first of all, M. de la Villemarque has
demonstrated to perfection that the name of Lancelot is only a translation of
that of the Welsh hero Mael, who in point of fact exhibits the fullest analogy
with the Lancelot of the French romances. [Footnote: Ancelot is the
diminutive of Ancel, and means servant, page, or esquire. To this day in the
Cymric dialects Mael has the same signification. The surname of
Poursigant, which we find borne by some Welshmen in the French service
in the early part of the fourteenth century, is also no doubt a translation of
Mael.] The context, the proper names, all the details of the romance of
Lancelot also present the most pronounced Breton aspect. As much must be
said of the romance of Tristan. It is even to be hoped that this curious
legend will be discovered complete in some Welsh manuscript. Dr. Owen
states that he has seen one of which he was unable to obtain a copy. As to
the Holy Grail, it must be avowed that the mystic cup, the object after
which the French Parceval and the German Parsifal go in search, has not
nearly the same importance among the Welsh. In the romance of Peredur it

only figures in an episodical fashion, and without a well-defined religious
intention.

"Then Peredur and his uncle discoursed together, and he beheld two
youths enter the hall, and proceed up to the chamber, bearing a spear of
mighty size, with three streams of blood flowing from the point to the
ground. And when all the company saw this, they began wailing and
lamenting. But for all that, the man did not break off his discourse with
Peredur. And as he did not tell Peredur the meaning of what he saw, he
forbore to ask him concerning it. And when the clamour had a little
subsided, behold two maidens entered, with a large salver between them, in
which was a man's head, surrounded by a profusion of blood. And
thereupon the company of the court made so great an outcry, that it was
irksome to be in the same hall with them. But at length they were silent."
This strange and wondrous circumstance remains an enigma to the end of
the narrative. Then a mysterious young man appears to Peredur, apprises
him that the lance from which the blood was dropping is that with which his
uncle was wounded, that the vessel contains the blood and the head of one
of his cousins, slain by the witches of Kerloiou, and that it is predestined
that he, Peredur, should be their avenger. In point of fact, Peredur goes and
convokes the Round Table; Arthur and his knights come and put the witches
of Kerloiou to death.

If we now pass to the French romance of Parceval, we find that all this
phantasmagoria clothes a very different significance. The lance is that with
which Longus pierced Christ's side, the Grail or basin is that in which
Joseph of Arimathea caught the divine blood. This miraculous vase
procures all the good things of heaven and earth; it heals wounds, and is
filled at the owner's pleasure with the most exquisite food. To approach it
one must be in a state of grace; only a priest can tell of its marvels. To find
these sacred relics after the passage of a thousand trials,—such is the object

of Peredur's chivalry, at once worldly and mystical. In the end he becomes a
priest; he takes the Grail and the lance into his hermitage; on the day of his
death an angel bears them up to Heaven. Let us add that many traits prove
that in the mind of the French trouvere the Grail is confounded with the
eucharist. In the miniatures which occasionally accompany the romance of
Parceval, the Grail is in the form of a pyx, appearing at all the solemn
moments of the poem as a miraculous source of succour.

Is this strange myth, differing as it does from the simple narrative
presented in the Welsh legend of Peredur, really Cymric, or ought we rather
to see in it an original creation of the trouveres, based upon a Breton
foundation? With M. de la Villemarque we believe that this curious fable is
essentially Cymric. [Footnote: See the excellent discussion of this
interesting problem in the introduction to "Contes populaires des anciens
Bretons" (pp. 181 et seq.).] In the eighth century a Breton hermit had a
vision of Joseph of Arimathea bearing the chalice of the Last Supper, and
wrote the history called the Gradal. The whole Celtic mythology is full of
the marvels of a magic caldron under which nine fairies blow silently, a
mysterious vase which inspires poetic genius, gives wisdom, reveals the
future, and unveils the secrets of the world. One day as Bran the Blessed
was hunting in Ireland upon the shore of a lake, he saw come forth from it a
black man bearing upon his back an enormous caldron, followed by a witch
and a dwarf. This caldron was the instrument of the supernatural power of a
family of giants. It cured all ills, and gave back life to the dead, but without
restoring to them the use of speech—an allusion to the secret of the bardic
initiation. In the same way Perceval's wariness forms the whole plot of the
quest of the Holy Grail. The Grail thus appears to us in its primitive
meaning as the pass-word of a kind of free-masonry which survived in
Wales long after the preaching of the Gospel, and of which we find deep
traces in the legend of Taliessin. Christianity grafted its legend upon the
mythological data, and a like transformation was doubtless made by the

Cymric race itself. If the Welsh narrative of Peredur does not offer the same
developments as the French romance of Parceval, it is because the Red
Book of Hergest gives us an earlier version than that which served as a
model for Chretien de Troyes. It is also to be remarked that, even in
Parceval, the mystical idea is not as yet completely developed, that the
trouvere seems to treat this strange theme as a narrative which he has found
already complete, and the meaning of which he can scarcely guess. The
motive that sets Parceval a-field in the French romance, as well as in the
Welsh version, is a family motive; he seeks the Holy Grail as a talisman to
cure his uncle the Fisherman- King, in such a way that the religious idea is
still subordinated to the profane intention. In the German version, on the
other hand, full as it is of mysticism and theology, the Grail has a temple
and priests. Parsifal, who has become a purely ecclesiastical hero, reaches
the dignity of King of the Grail by his religious enthusiasm and his chastity.
[Footnote: It is indeed remarkable that all the Breton heroes in their last
transformation are at once gallant and devout. One of the most celebrated
ladies of Arthur's court, Luned, becomes a saint and a martyr for her
chastity, her festival being celebrated on August 1st. She it is who figures in
the French romances under the name of Lunette. See Lady Guest, vol. i., pp.
113, 114.] Finally, the prose versions, more modern still, sharply distinguish
the two chivalries, the one earthly, the other mystical. In them Parceval
becomes the model of the devout knight. This was the last of the
metamorphoses which that all-powerful enchantress called the human
imagination made him undergo; and it was only right that, after having gone
through so many dangers, he should don a monkish frock, wherein to take
his rest after his life of adventure.

V.

When we seek to determine the precise moment in the history of the
Celtic races at which we ought to place ourselves in order to appreciate

their genius in its entirety, we find ourselves led back to the sixth century of
our era. Races have nearly always a predestined hour at which, passing
from simplicity to reflection, they bring forth to the light of day, for the first
time, all the treasures of their nature. For the Celtic races the poetic moment
of awakening and primal activity was the sixth century. Christianity, still
young amongst them, has not completely stifled the national cult; the
religion of the Druids defends itself in its schools and holy places; warfare
against the foreigner, without which a people never achieves a full
consciousness of itself, attains its highest degree of spirit. It is the epoch of
all the heroes of enduring fame, of all the characteristic saints of the Breton
Church; finally, it is the great age of bardic literature, illustrious by the
names of Taliessin, of Aneurin, of Liwarc'h Hen.

To such as would view critically the historical use of these half- fabulous
names and would hesitate to accept as authentic, poems that have come
down to us through so long a series of ages, we reply that the objections
raised to the antiquity of the bardic literature— objections of which W.
Schlegel made himself the interpreter in opposition to M. Fauriel—have
completely disappeared under the investigations of an enlightened and
impartial criticism. [Footnote: This evidently does not apply to the language
of the poems in question. It is well known that mediaeval scribes, alien as
they were to all ideas of archaeology, modernised the texts, in measure as
they copied them; and that a manuscript in the vulgar tongue, as a rule, only
attests the language of him who transcribed it.] By a rare exception
sceptical opinion has for once been found in the wrong. The sixth century is
in fact for the Breton peoples a perfectly historical century. We touch this
epoch of their history as closely and with as much certainty as Greek or
Roman antiquity. It is indeed known that, up to a somewhat late period, the
bards continued to compose pieces under the names—which had become
popular—of Aneurin, Taliessin, and Liwarc'h Hen; but no confusion can be
made between these insipid rhetorical exercises and the really ancient

fragments which bear the names of the poets cited— fragments full of
personal traits, local circumstances, and individual passions and feelings.

Such is the literature of which M. de la Villemarque has attempted to
unite the most ancient and authentic monuments in his "Breton Bards of the
Sixth Century." Wales has recognised the service that our learned
compatriot has thus rendered to Celtic studies. We confess, however, to
much preferring to the "Bards" the "Popular Songs of Brittany." It is in the
latter that M. de la Villemarque has best served Celtic studies, by revealing
to us a delightful literature, in which, more clearly than anywhere else, are
apparent these features of gentleness, fidelity, resignation, and timid reserve
which form the character of the Breton peoples. [Footnote: This interesting
collection ought not, however, to be accepted unreservedly; and the
absolute confidence with which it has been quoted is not without its
inconveniences. We believe that when M. de la Villemarque comments on
the fragments which, to his eternal honour, he has been the first to bring to
light, his criticism is far from being proof against all reproach, and that
several of the historical allusions which he considers that he finds in them
are hypotheses more ingenious than solid. The past is too great, and has
come down to us in too fragmentary a manner, for such coincidences to be
probable. Popular celebrities are rarely those of history, and when the
rumours of distant centuries come to us by two channels, one popular, the
other historical, it is a rare thing for these two forms of tradition to be fully
in accord with one another. M. de la Villemarque is also too ready to
suppose that the people repeats for centuries songs that it only half
understands. When a song ceases to be intelligible, it is nearly always
altered by the people, with the end of approximating it to the sounds
farmliar and significant to their ears. Is it not also to be feared that in this
case the editor, in entire good faith, may lend some slight inflection to the
text, so as to find in it the sense that he desires, or has in his mind?]

The theme of the poetry of the bards of the sixth century is simple and
exclusively heroic; it ever deals with the great motives of patriotism and
glory. There is a total absence of all tender feeling, no trace of love, no
well-marked religious idea, but only a vague and naturalistic mysticism,—a
survival of Druidic teaching,— and a moral philosophy wholly expressed in
Triads, similar to that taught in the half-bardic, half-Christian schools of St.
Cadoc and St. Iltud. The singularly artificial and highly wrought form of the
style suggests the existence of a system of learned instruction possessing
long traditions. A more pronounced shade, and there would be a danger of
falling into a pedantic and mannered rhetoric. The bardic literature, by its
lengthened existence through the whole of the Middle Ages, did not escape
this danger. It ended by being no more than a somewhat insipid collection
of unoriginalities in style, and conventional metaphors. [Footnote: A Welsh
scholar, Mr. Stephens, in his History of Cymric Literature (Llandovery,
1849), has demonstrated these successive transformations very well.]

The opposition between bardism and Christianity reveals itself in the
pieces translated by M. de la Villemarque by many features of original and
pathetic interest. The strife which rent the soul of the old poets, their
antipathy to the grey men of the monastery, their sad and painful
conversion, are to be found in their songs. The sweetness and tenacity of the
Breton character can alone explain how a heterodoxy so openly avowed as
this maintained its position in face of the dominant Christianity, and how
holy men, Kolumkill for example, took upon themselves the defence of the
bards against the kings who desired to stamp them out. The strife was the
longer in its duration, in that Christianity among the Celtic peoples never
employed force against rival religions, and, at the worst, left to the
vanquished the liberty of ill humour. Belief in prophets, indestructible
among these peoples, created, in despite of faith the Anti-Christian type of
Merlin, and caused his acceptance by the whole of Europe. Gildas and the
orthodox Bretons were ceaseless in their thunderings against the prophets,

and opposed to them Elias and Samuel, two bards who only foretold good;
even in the twelfth century Giraldus Cambrensis saw a prophet in the town
of Caerleon.

Thanks to this toleration bardism lasted into the heart of the Middle Ages,
under the form of a secret doctrine, with a conventional language, and
symbols almost wholly borrowed from the solar divinity of Arthur. This
may be termed Neo-Druidism, a kind of Druidism subtilised and reformed
on the model of Christianity, which may be seen growing more and more
obscure and mysterious, until the moment of its total disappearance. A
curious fragment belonging to this school, the dialogue between Arthur and
Eliwlod, has transmitted to us the latest sighs of this latest protestation of
expiring naturalism. Under the form of an eagle Eliwlod introduces the
divinity to the sentiment of resignation, of subjection, and of humility, with
which Christianity combated pagan pride. Hero-worship recoils step by step
before the great formula, which Christianity ceases not to repeat to the
Celtic races to sever them from their memories: There is none greater than
God. Arthur allows himself to be persuaded to abdicate from his divinity,
and ends by reciting the Pater.

I know of no more curious spectacle than this revolt of the manly
sentiments of hero-worship against the feminine feeling which flowed so
largely into the new faith. What, in fact, exasperates the old representatives
of Celtic society are the exclusive triumph of the pacific spirit and the men,
clad in linen and chanting psalms, whose voice is sad, who preach
asceticism, and know the heroes no more. [Footnote: The antipathy to
Christianity attributed by the Armorican people to the dwarfs and korigans
belongs in like measure to traditions of the opposition encountered by the
Gospel in its beginnings. The korigans in fact are, for the Breton peasant,
great princesses who would not accept Christianity when the apostles came
to Brittany. They hate the clergy and the churches, the bells of which make

them take to flight. The Virgin above all is their great enemy; she it is who
has hounded them forth from their fountains, and on Saturday, the day
consecrated to her, whosoever beholds them combing their hair or counting
their treasures is sure to perish. (Villemarque, Chants populaires,
Introduction.)] We know the use that Ireland has made of this theme, in the
dialogues which she loves to imagine between the representatives of her
profane and religious life, Ossian and St. Patrick. [Footnote: See Miss
Brooke's Reliques of Irish Poetry, Dublin, 1789, pp. 37 et seq., PP. 75 et
seq.] Ossian regrets the adventures, the chase, the blast of the horn, and the
kings of old time. "If they were here," he says to St. Patrick, "thou should'st
not thus be scouring the country with the psalm-singing flock." Patrick
seeks to calm him by soft words, and sometimes carries his condescension
so far as to listen to his long histories, which appear to interest the saint but
slightly. "Thou hast heard my story," says the old bard in conclusion; "albeit
my memory groweth weak, and I am devoured with care, yet I desire to
continue still to sing the deeds of yore, and to live upon ancient glories.
Now am I stricken with years, my life is frozen within me, and all my joys
are fleeting away. No more can my hand grasp the sword, nor mine arm
hold the lance in rest. Among priests my last sad hour lengtheneth out, and
psalms take now the place of songs of victory." "Let thy songs rest," says
Patrick, "and dare not to compare thy Finn to the King of Kings, whose
might knoweth no bounds: bend thy knees before Him, and know Him for
thy Lord." It was indeed necessary to surrender, and the legend relates how
the old bard ended his days in the cloister, among the priests whom he had
so often used rudely, in the midst of these chants that he knew not. Ossian
was too good an Irishman for any one to make up his mind to damn him
utterly. Merlin himself had to cede to the new spell. He was, it is said,
converted by St. Columba; and the popular voice in the ballads repeats to
him unceasingly this sweet and touching appeal: "Merlin, Merlin, be
converted; there is no divinity save that of God."

VI.

We should form an altogether inadequate idea of the physiognomy of the
Celtic races, were we not to study them under what is perhaps the most
singular aspect of their development—that is to say, their ecclesiastical
antiquities and their saints. Leaving on one side the temporary repulsion
which Christian mildness had to conquer in the classes of society which
saw their influence diminished by the new order of things, it can be truly
said, that the gentleness of manners and the exquisite sensibility of the
Celtic races, in conjunction with the absence of a formerly existing religion
of strong organisation, predestined them to Christianity. Christianity in fact,
addressing itself by preference to the more humble feelings in human
nature, met here with admirably prepared disciples; no race has so
delicately understood the charm of littleness, none has placed the simple
creature, the innocent, nearer God. The ease with which the new religion
took possession of these peoples is also remarkable. Brittany and Ireland
between them scarce count two or three martyrs; they are reduced to
venerating as such those of their compatriots who were slain in the Anglo-
Saxon and Danish invasions. Here comes to light the profound difference
dividing the Celtic from the Teutonic race. The Teutons only received
Christianity tardily and in spite of themselves, by scheming or by force,
after a sanguinary resistance, and with terrible throes, Christianity was in
fact on several sides repugnant to their nature; and one understands the
regrets of pure Teutonists who, to this day, reproach the new faith with
having corrupted their sturdy ancestors.

Such was not the case with the Celtic peoples; that gentle little race was
naturally Christian. Far from changing them, and taking away some of their
qualities, Christianity finished and perfected them. Compare the legends
relating to the introduction of Christianity into the two countries, the Kristni
Saga for instance, and the delightful legends of Lucius and St. Patrick.

What a difference we find! In Iceland the first apostles are pirates,
converted by some chance, now saying mass, now massacring their
enemies, now resuming their former profession of sea-rovers; everything is
done in accord with expediency, and without any serious faith.

In Ireland and Brittany grace operates through women, by I know not
what charm of purity and sweetness. The revolt of the Teutons was never
effectually stifled; never did they forget the forced baptisms, and the sword-
supported Carlovingian missionaries, until the day when Teutonism took its
revenge, and Luther through seven centuries gave answer to Witikind. On
the other hand, the Celts were, even in the third century, perfect Christians.
To the Teutons Christianity was for long nothing but a Roman institution,
imposed from without. They entered the Church only to trouble it; and it
was not without very great difficulty that they succeeded in forming a
national clergy. To the Celts, on the contrary, Christianity did not come
from Rome; they had their native clergy, their own peculiar usages, their
faith at first hand. It cannot, in fact, be doubted that in apostolic times
Christianity was preached in Brittany; and several historians, not without
justification, have considered that it was borne there by Judaistic Christians,
or by disciples of the school of St. John. Everywhere else Christianity
found, as a first substratum, Greek or Roman civilisation. Here it found a
virgin soil of a nature analogous to its own, and naturally prepared to
receive it.

Few forms of Christianity have offered an ideal of Christian perfection so
pure as the Celtic Church of the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries.
Nowhere, perhaps, has God been better worshipped in spirit than in those
great monastic communities of Hy, or of Iona, of Bangor, of Clonard, or of
Lindisfarne. One of the most distinguished developments of Christianity—
doubtless too distinguished for the popular and practical mission which the
Church had to undertake—Pelagianism, arose from it. The true and refined

morality, the simplicity, and the wealth of invention which give distinction
to the legends of the Breton and Irish saints are indeed admirable. No race
adopted Christianity with so much originality, or, while subjecting itself to
the common faith, kept its national characteristics more persistently. In
religion, as in all else, the Bretons sought isolation, and did not willingly
fraternise with the rest of the world. Strong in their moral superiority,
persuaded that they possessed the veritable canon of faith and religion,
having received their Christianity from an apostolic and wholly primitive
preaching, they experienced no need of feeling themselves in communion
with Christian societies less noble than their own. Thence arose that long
struggle of the Breton churches against Roman pretensions, which is so
admirably narrated by M. Augustin Thierry, [Footnote: In his History of the
Conquest. The objections raised by M. Varin and some other scholars to M.
Thierry's narrative only affect some secondary details, which were rectified
in the edition published after the illustrious historian's death.] thence those
inflexible characters of Columba and the monks of Iona, defending their
usages and institutions against the whole Church, thence finally the false
position of the Celtic peoples in Catholicism, when that mighty force,
grown more and more aggressive, had drawn them together from all
quarters, and compelled their absorption in itself. Having no Catholic past,
they found themselves unclassed on their entrance into the great family, and
were never able to succeed in creating for themselves an Archbishopric. All
their efforts and all their innocent deceits to attribute that title to the
Churches of Dol and St. Davids were wrecked on the overwhelming
divergence of their past; their bishops had to resign themselves to being
obscure suffragans of Tours and Canterbury.

It remains to be said that, even in our own days, the powerful originality
of Celtic Christianity is far from being effaced. The Bretons of France,
although they have felt the consequences of the revolutions undergone by
Catholicism on the Continent, are, at the present hour, one of the

populations in which religious feeling has retained most independence. The
new devotions find no favour with it; the people are faithful to the old
beliefs and the old saints; the psalms of religion have for them an ineffable
harmony. In the same way, Ireland keeps, in her more remote districts, quite
unique forms of worship from those of the rest of the world, to which
nothing in other parts of Christendom can be compared. The influence of
modern Catholicism, elsewhere so destructive of national usages, has had
here a wholly contrary effect, the clergy having found it incumbent on them
to seek a vantage ground against Protestantism, in attachment to local
practices and the customs of the past.

It is the picture of these Christian institutions, quite distinct from those of
the remainder of the West, of this sometimes strange worship, of these
legends of the saints marked with so distinct a seal of nationality, that lends
an interest to the ecclesiastical antiquities of Ireland, of Wales, and of
Armorican Brittany. No hagiology has remained more exclusively natural
than that of the Celtic peoples; until the twelfth century those peoples
admitted very few alien saints into their martyrology. None, too, includes so
many naturalistic elements. Celtic Paganism offered so little resistance to
the new religion, that the Church did not hold itself constrained to put in
force against it the rigour with which elsewhere it pursued the slightest
traces of mythology. The conscientious essay by W. Rees on the "Saints of
Wales", and that by the Rev. John Williams, an extremely learned
ecclesiastic of the diocese of St. Asaph, on the "Ecclesiastical Antiquities of
the Cymry", suffice to make one understand the immense value which a
complete and intelligent history of the Celtic Churches, before their
absorption in the Roman Church, would possess. To these might be added
the learned work of Dom Lobineau on the Saints of Brittany, re-issued in
our days by the Abbe Tresvaux, had not the half- criticism of the
Benedictine, much worse than a total absence of criticism, altered those

naive legends and cut away from them, under the pretext of good sense and
religious reverence, that which to us gives them interest and charm.

Ireland above all would offer a religious physiognomy quite peculiar to
itself, which would appear singularly original, were history in a position to
reveal it in its entirety. When we consider the legions of Irish saints who in
the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries inundated the Continent and arrived
from their isle bearing with them their stubborn spirit, their attachment to
their own usages, their subtle and realistic turn of mind, and see the Scots
(such was the name given to the Irish) doing duty, until the twelfth century,
as instructors in grammar and literature to all the West, we cannot doubt
that Ireland, in the first half of the Middle Ages, was the scene of a singular
religious movement. Studious philologists and daring philosophers, the
Hibernian monks were above all indefatigable copyists; and it was in part
owing to them that the work of the pen became a holy task. Columba,
secretly warned that his last hour is at hand, finishes the page of the psalter
which he has commenced, writes at the foot that he bequeaths the
continuation to his successor, and then goes into the church to die. Nowhere
was monastic life to find such docile subjects. Credulous as a child, timid,
indolent, inclined to submit and obey, the Irishman alone was capable of
lending himself to that complete self-abdication in the hands of the abbot,
which we find so deeply marked in the historical and legendary memorials
of the Irish Church. One easily recognises the land where, in our own days,
the priest, without provoking the slightest scandal, can, on a Sunday before
quitting the altar, give the orders for his dinner in a very audible manner,
and announce the farm where he intends to go and dine, and where he will
hear his flock in confession. In the presence of a people which lived by
imagination and the senses alone, the Church did not consider itself under
the necessity of dealing severely with the caprices of religious fantasy. It
permitted the free action of the popular instinct; and from this freedom
emerged what is perhaps of all cults the most mythological and most

analogous to the mysteries of antiquity, presented in Christian annals, a cult
attached to certain places, and almost exclusively consisting in certain acts
held to be sacramental.

Without contradiction the legend of St. Brandan is the most singular
product of this combination of Celtic naturalism with Christian spiritualism.
The taste of the Hibernian monks for making maritime pilgrimages through
the archipelago of the Scottish and Irish seas, everywhere dotted with
monasteries, [Footnote: The Irish saints literally covered the Western seas.
A very considerable number of the saints of Brittany, St. Tenenan, St.
Renan, etc., were emigrants from Ireland. The Breton legends of St. Malo,
St. David, and of St. Pol of Leon are replete with similar stories of voyages
to the distant isles of the West.] and the memory of yet more distant
voyages in Polar seas, furnished the framework of this curious composition,
so rich in local impressions. From Pliny (IV. xxx. 3) we learn that, even in
his time, the Bretons loved to venture their lives upon the high seas, in
search of unknown isles. M. Letronne has proved that in 795, sixty-five
years consequently before the Danes, Irish monks landed in Iceland and
established themselves on the coast. In this island the Danes found Irish
books and bells; and the names of certain localities still bear witness to the
sojourn of those monks, who were known by the name of Papae (fathers).
In the Faroe Isles, in the Orkneys, and the Shetlands, indeed in all parts of
the Northern seas, the Scandinavians found themselves preceded by those
Papas, whose habits contrasted so strangely with their own. [Footnote: On
this point see the careful researches of Humboldt in his History of the
Geography of the New Continent, vol. ii.] Did they not have a glimpse too
of that great land, the vague memory of which seems to pursue them, and
which Columbus was to discover, following the traces of their dreams? It is
only known that the existence of an island, traversed by a great river and
situated to the west of Ireland, was, on the faith of the Irish, a dogma for
mediaeval geographers.

The story went that, towards the middle of the sixth century, a monk
called Barontus, on his return from voyaging upon the sea, came and craved
hospitality at the monastery of Clonfert. Brandan the abbot besought him to
give pleasure to the brothers by narrating the marvels of God that he had
seen on the high seas. Barontus revealed to them the existence of an island
surrounded by fogs, where he had left his disciple Mernoc; it is the Land of
Promise that God keeps for his saints. Brandan with seventeen of his monks
desired to go in quest of this mysterious land. They set forth in a leather
boat, bearing with them as their sole provision a utensil of butter, wherewith
to grease the hides of their craft. For seven years they lived thus in their
boat, abandoning to God sail and rudder, and only stopping on their course
to celebrate the feasts of Christmas and Easter on the back of the king of
fishes, Jasconius. Every step of this monastic Odyssey is a miracle, on
every isle is a monastery, where the wonders of a fantastical universe
respond to the extravagances of a wholly ideal life. Here is the Isle of
Sheep, where these animals govern themselves according to their own laws;
elsewhere the Paradise of Birds, where the winged race lives after the
fashion of monks, singing matins and lauds at the canonical hours. Brandan
and his companions celebrate mass here with the birds, and remain with
them for fifty days, nourishing themselves with nothing but the singing of
their hosts. Elsewhere there is the Isle of Delight, the ideal of monastic life
in the midst of the seas. Here no material necessity makes itself felt; the
lamps light of themselves for the offices of religion, and never burn out, for
they shine with a spiritual light. An absolute stillness reigns in the island;
every one knows precisely the hour of his death; one feels neither cold, nor
heat, nor sadness, nor sickness of body or soul. All this has endured since
the days of St. Patrick, who so ordained it. The Land of Promise is more
marvellous still; there an eternal day reigns; all the plants have flowers, all
the trees bear fruits. Some privileged men alone have visited it. On their

return a perfume is perceived to come from them, which their garments
keep for forty days.

In the midst of these dreams there appears with a surprising fidelity to
truth the feeling for the picturesque in Polar voyages,- -the transparency of
the sea, the aspect of bergs and islands of ice melting in the sun, the
volcanic phenomena of Iceland, the sporting of whales, the characteristic
appearance of the Norwegian fiords, the sudden fogs, the sea calm as milk,
the green isles crowned with grass which grows down to the very verge of
the waves. This fantastical nature created expressly for another humanity,
this strange topography at once glowing with fiction and speaking of truth,
make the poem of St. Brandan one of the most extraordinary creations of
the human mind, and perhaps the completest expression of the Celtic ideal.
All is lovely, pure, and innocent; never has a gaze so benevolent and so
gentle been cast upon the earth; there is not a single cruel idea, not a trace
of frailty or repentance. It is the world seen through the crystal of a stainless
conscience, one might almost say a human nature, as Pelagius wished it,
that has never sinned. The very animals participate in this universal
mildness. Evil appears under the form of monsters wandering on the deep,
or of Cyclops confined in volcanic islands; but God causes them to destroy
one another, and does not permit them to do hurt to the good.

We have just seen how, around the legend of a monk the Irish
imagination grouped a whole cycle of physical and maritime myths. The
Purgatory of St. Patrick became the framework of another series of fables,
embodying the Celtic ideas concerning the other life and its different
conditions. [Footnote: See Thomas Wright's excellent dissertation, Saint
Patrick's Purgatory (London, 1844), and Calderon's The Well of Saint
Patrick.] Perhaps the profoundest instinct of the Celtic peoples is their
desire to penetrate the unknown. With the sea before them, they wish to
know what lies beyond; they dream of a Promised Land. In the face of the

unknown that lies beyond the tomb, they dream of that great journey which
the pen of Dante has celebrated. The legend tells how, while St. Patrick was
preaching about Paradise and Hell to the Irish, they confessed that they
would feel more assured of the reality of these places, if he would allow one
of them to descend there, and then come back with information St. Patrick
consented. A pit was dug, by which an Irishman set out upon the
subterranean journey. Others wished to attempt the journey after him. With
the consent of the abbot of the neighbouring monastery, they descended into
the shaft, they passed through the torments of Hell and Purgatory, and then
each told of what he had seen. Some did not emerge again; those who did
laughed no more, and were henceforth unable to join in any gaiety. Knight
Owen made a descent in 1153, and gave a narrative of his travels which had
a prodigious success.

Other legends related that when St. Patrick drove the goblins out of
Ireland, he was greatly tormented in this place for forty days by legions of
black birds. The Irish betook themselves to the spot, and experienced the
same assaults which gave them an immunity from Purgatory. According to
the narrative of Giraldus Cambrensis, the isle which served as the theatre of
this strange superstition was divided into two parts. One belonged to the
monks, the other was occupied by evil spirits, who celebrated religious rites
in their own manner, with an infernal uproar. Some people, for the expiation
of their sins, voluntarily exposed themselves to the fury of those demons.
There were nine ditches in which they lay for a night, tormented in a
thousand different ways. To make the descent it was necessary to obtain the
permission of the bishop. His duty it was to dissuade the penitent from
attempting the adventure, and to point out to him how many people had
gone in who had never come out again. If the devotee persisted, he was
ceremoniously conducted to the shaft. He was lowered down by means of a
rope, with a loaf and a vessel of water to strengthen him in the combat
against the fiend which he proposed to wage. On the following morning the

sacristan offered the rope anew to the sufferer. If he mounted to the surface
again, they brought him back to the church, bearing the cross and chanting
psalms. If he were not to be found, the sacristan closed the door and
departed. In more modern times pilgrims to the sacred isles spent nine days
there. They passed over to them in a boat hollowed out of the trunk of a
tree. Once a day they drank of the water of the lake; processions and
stations were performed in the beds or cells of the saints. Upon the ninth
day the penitents entered into the shaft. Sermons were preached to them
warning them of the danger they were about to run, and they were told of
terrible examples. They forgave their enemies and took farewell of one
another, as though they were at their last agony. According to contemporary
accounts, the shaft was a low and narrow kiln, into which nine entered at a
time, and in which the penitents passed a day and a night, huddled and
tightly pressed against one another. Popular belief imagined an abyss
underneath, to swallow up the unworthy and the unbelieving. On emerging
from the pit they went and bathed in the lake, and so their Purgatory was
accomplished. It would appear from the accounts of eye-witnesses that, to
this day, things happen very nearly after the same fashion.

The immense reputation of the Purgatory of St. Patrick filled the whole
of the Middle Ages. Preachers made appeal to the public notoriety of this
great fact, to controvert those who had their doubts regarding Purgatory. In
the year 1358 Edward III. gave to a Hungarian of noble birth, who had
come from Hungary expressly to visit the sacred well, letters patent
attesting that he had undergone his Purgatory. Narratives of those travels
beyond the tomb became a very fashionable form of literature; and it is
important for us to remark the wholly mythological, and as wholly Celtic,
characteristics dominant in them. It is in fact evident that we are dealing
with a mystery or local cult, anterior to Christianity, and probably based
upon the physical appearance of the country. The idea of Purgatory, in its
final and concrete form, fared specially well amongst the Bretons and the

Irish. Bede is one of the first to speak of it in a descriptive manner, and the
learned Mr. Wright very justly observes that nearly all the descriptions of
Purgatory come from Irishmen, or from Anglo-Saxons who have resided in
Ireland, such as St. Fursey, Tundale, the Northumbrian Dryhthelm, and
Knight Owen. It is likewise a remarkable thing that only the Irish were able
to behold the marvels of their Purgatory. A canon from Hemstede in
Holland, who descended in 1494, saw nothing at all. Evidently this idea of
travels in the other world and its infernal categories, as the Middle Ages
accepted it, is Celtic. The belief in the three circles of existence is again to
be found in the Triads, [Footnote: A series of aphorisms under the form of
triplets, which give us, with numerous interpolations, the ancient teaching
of the bards, and that traditional wisdom which, according to the testimony
of the ancients, was transmitted by means of mnemonic verses in the
schools of the Druids. under an aspect which does not permit one to see any
Christian interpolation.]

The soul's peregrinations after death are also the favourite theme of the
most ancient Armorican poetry. Among the features by which the Celtic
races most impressed the Romans were the precision of their ideas upon the
future life, their inclination to suicide, and the loans and contracts which
they signed with the other world in view. The more frivolous peoples of the
South saw with awe in this assurance the fact of a mysterious race, having
an understanding of the future and the secret of death. Through the whole of
classical antiquity runs the tradition of an Isle of Shadows, situated on the
confines of Brittany, and of a folk devoted to the passage of souls, which
lives upon the neighbouring coast. In the night they hear dead men prowling
about their cabin, and knocking at the door. Then they rise up; their craft is
laden with invisible beings; on their return it is lighter. Several of these
features reproduced by Plutarch, Claudian, Procopius, [Footnote: A
Byzantine historian of the fifth and sixth centuries.] and Tzetzes [Footnote:
A Greek poet and grammarian of the twelfth century.] would incline one to

believe that the renown of the Irish myths made its way into classical
antiquity about the first or second century. Plutarch, for example, relates,
concerning the Cronian Sea, fables identical with those which fill the
legend of St. Malo. Procopius, describing the sacred Island of Brittia, which
consists of two parts separated by the sea, one delightful, the other given
over to evil spirits, seems to have read in advance the description of the
Purgatory of St. Patrick, which Giraldus Cambrensis was to give seven
centuries later. It cannot be doubted for a moment, after the able researches
of Messrs. Ozanam, Labitte, and Wright, that to the number of poetical
themes which Europe owes to the genius of the Celts, is to be added the
framework of the Divine Comedy.

One can understand how greatly this invincible attraction to fables must
have discredited the Celtic race in the eyes of nationalities that believed
themselves to be more serious. It is in truth a strange thing, that the whole
of the mediaeval epoch, whilst submitting to the influence of the Celtic
imagination, and borrowing from Brittany and Ireland at least half of its
poetical subjects, believed itself obliged, for the saving of its own honour,
to slight and satirise the people to which it owed them. Even Chretien de
Troyes, for example, who passed his life in exploiting the Breton romances
for his own purposes, originated the saying—

"Les Gallois sont tous par nature
Plus sots que betes de pature."

Some English chronicler, I know not who, imagined he was making a
charming play upon words when he described those beautiful creations, the
whole world of which deserved to live, as "the childish nonsense with
which those brutes of Bretons amuse themselves." The Bollandists
[Footnote: A group of Jesuits who issued a collection of "Lives of the
Saints". The first five volumes were edited by John Bolland.] found it

incumbent to exclude from their collection, as apocryphal extravagances,
those admirable religious legends, with which no Church has anything to
compare. The decided leaning of the Celtic race towards the ideal, its
sadness, its fidelity, its good faith, caused it to be regarded by its neighbours
as dull, foolish, and superstitious. They could not understand its delicacy
and refined manner of feeling. They mistook for awkwardness the
embarrassment experienced by sincere and open natures in the presence of
more artificial natures. The contrast between French frivolity and Breton
stubbornness above all led, after the fourteenth century, to most deplorable
conflicts, whence the Bretons ever emerged with a reputation for wrong-
headedness.

It was still worse, when the nation that most prides itself on its practical
good sense found confronting it the people that, to its own misfortune, is
least provided with that gift. Poor Ireland, with her ancient mythology, with
her Purgatory of St. Patrick, and her fantastic travels of St. Brandan, was
not destined to find grace in the eyes of English puritanism. One ought to
observe the disdain of English critics for these fables, and their superb pity
for the Church which dallies with Paganism, so far as to keep up usages
which are notoriously derived from it. Assuredly we have here a
praiseworthy zeal, arising from natural goodness; and yet, even if these
flights of imagination did no more than render a little more supportable
many sufferings which are said to have no remedy, that after all would be
something. Who shall dare to say where, here on earth, is the boundary
between reason and dreaming? Which is worth more, the imaginative
instinct of man, or the narrow orthodoxy that pretends to remain rational,
when speaking of things divine? For my own part, I prefer the frank
mythology, with all its vagaries, to a theology so paltry, so vulgar, and so
colourless, that it would be wronging God to believe that, after having made
the visible world so beautiful he should have made the invisible world so
prosaically reasonable.

In presence of the ever-encroaching progress of a civilisation which is of
no country, and can receive no name, other than that of modern or
European, it would be puerile to hope that the Celtic race is in the future to
succeed in obtaining isolated expression of its originality. And yet we are
far from believing that this race has said its last word. After having put in
practice all chivalries, devout and worldly, gone with Peredur in quest of
the Holy Grail and fair ladies, and dreamed with St. Brandan of mystical
Atlantides, who knows what it would produce in the domain of intellect, if
it hardened itself to an entrance into the world, and subjected its rich and
profound nature to the conditions of modern thought? It appears to me that
there would result from this combination, productions of high originality, a
subtle and discreet manner of taking life, a singular union of strength and
weakness, of rude simplicity and mildness. Few races have had so complete
a poetic childhood as the Celtic; mythology, lyric poetry, epic, romantic
imagination, religious enthusiasm—none of these failed them; why should
reflection fail them? Germany, which commenced with science and
criticism, has come to poetry; why should not the Celtic races, which began
with poetry, finish with criticism? There is not so great a distance from one
to the other as is supposed; the poetical races are the philosophic races, and
at bottom philosophy is only a manner of poetry. When one considers how
Germany, less than a century ago, had her genius revealed to her, how a
multitude of national individualities, to all appearance effaced, have
suddenly risen again in our own days, more instinct with life than ever, one
feels persuaded that it is a rash thing to lay down any law on the
intermittence and awakening of nations; and that modern civilisation, which
appeared to be made to absorb them, may perhaps be nothing more than
their united fruition.

THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE

BY

GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSINO

TRANSLATED BY

F. W. ROBERTSON

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Lessing's life has been sketched in the introduction to his "Minna von
Barnhelm" in the volume of Continental Dramas in The Harvard Classics.

"The Education of the Human Race" is the culmination of a bitter
theological controversy which began with the publication by Lessing, in
1774-1778, of a series of fragments of a work on natural religion by the
German deist, Reimarus. This action brought upon Lessing the wrath of the
orthodox German Protestants, led by J. M. Goeze, and in the battle that
followed Lessing did his great work for the liberalising of religious thought
in Germany. The present treatise is an extraordinarily condensed statement
of the author's attitude towards the fundamental questions of religion, and
gives his view of the signification of the previous religious history of
mankind, along with his faith And hope for the future.

As originally issued, the essay purported to be merely edited by Lessing;
but there is no longer any doubt as to his having been its author. It is an
admirable and characteristic expression of the serious and elevated spirit in
which he dealt with matters that had then, as often, been degraded by the
virulence of controversy.

THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE

1

That which Education is to the Individual, Revelation is to the
Race.

2

Education is Revelation coming to the Individual Man; and Revelation is
Education which has come, and is yet coming, to the Human Race.

3

Whether it can be of any advantage to the science of instruction to
contemplate Education in this point of view, I will not here inquire; but in
Theology it may unquestionably be of great advantage, and may remove
many difficulties, if Revelation be conceived of as the Educator of
Humanity.

4

Education gives to Man nothing which he might not educe out of
himself; it gives him that which he might educe out of himself, only quicker
and more easily. In the same way too, Revelation gives nothing to the

human species, which the human reason left to itself might not attain; only
it has given, and still gives to it, the most important of these things earlier.

5

And just as in Education, it is not a matter of indifference in what order
the powers of a man are developed, as it cannot impart to a man all at once;
so was God also necessitated to maintain a certain order, and a certain
measure in His Revelation.

6

Even if the first man were furnished at once with a conception of the One
God; yet it was not possible that this conception, imparted, and not gained
by thought, should subsist long in its clearness. As soon as the Human
Reason, left to itself, began to elaborate it, it broke up the one
Immeasurable into many Measurables, and gave a note or sign of mark to
every one of these parts.

7

Hence naturally arose polytheism and idolatry. And who can say how
many millions of years human reason would have been bewildered in these
errors, even though in all places and times there were individual men who
recognized them as errors, had it not pleased God to afford it a better
direction by means of a new Impulse?

8

But when He neither could nor would reveal Himself any more to each
individual man, He selected an individual People for His special education;
and that exactly the most rude and the most unruly, in order to begin with it
from the very commencement.

9

This was the Hebrew People, respecting whom we do not in the least
know what kind of Divine Worship they had in Egypt. For so despised a
race of slaves was not permitted to take part in the worship of the
Egyptians; and the God of their fathers was entirely unknown to them.

10

It is possible that the Egyptians had expressly prohibited the Hebrews
from having a God or Gods, perhaps they had forced upon them the belief
that their despised race had no God, no Gods, that to have a God or Gods
was the prerogative of the superior Egyptians only, and this may have been
so held in order to have the power of tyrannising over them with a greater
show of fairness. Do Christians even now do much better with their slaves?

11

To this rude people God caused Himself to be announced first, simply as
"the God of their fathers," in order to make them acquainted and familiar
with the idea of a God belonging to them also, and to begin with confidence
in Him.

12

Through the miracles with which He led them out of Egypt, and planted
them in Canaan, He testified of Himself to them as a God mightier than any
other God.

13

And as He proceeded, demonstrating Himself to be the Mightiest of all,
which only One can be, He gradually accustomed them thus to the idea of

THE ONE.

14

But how far was this conception of The One, below the true
transcendental conception of the One which Reason learnt to derive, so late
with certainty, from the conception of the Infinite One?

15

Although the best of the people were already more or less approaching
the true conception of the One only, the people as a whole could not for a
long time elevate themselves to it. And this was the sole true reason why
they so often abandoned their one God, and expected to find the One, i. e.,
as they meant, the Mightiest, in some God or other, belonging to another
people.

16

But of what kind of moral education was a people so raw, so incapable of
abstract thoughts, and so entirely in their childhood capable? Of none other
but such as is adapted to the age of children, an education by rewards and
punishments addressed to the senses.

17

Here too Education and Revelation meet together. As yet God could give
to His people no other religion, no other law than one through obedience to
which they might hope to be happy, or through disobedience to which they
must fear to be unhappy. For as yet their regards went no further than this
earth. They knew of no immortality of the soul; they yearned after no life to
come. But now to reveal these things to one whose reason had as yet so
little growth, what would it have been but the same fault in the Divine Rule

as is committed by the schoolmaster, who chooses to hurry his pupil too
rapidly, and boast of his progress, rather than thoroughly to ground him?

18

But, it will be asked, to what purpose was this education of so rude a
people, a people with whom God had to begin so entirely from the
beginning? I reply, in order that in the process of time He might employ
particular members of this nation as the Teachers of other people. He was
bringing up in them the future Teachers of the human race. It was the Jews
who became their teachers, none but Jews; only men out of a people so
brought up, could be their teachers.

19

For to proceed. When the Child by dint of blows and caresses had grown
and was now come to years of understanding, the Father sent it at once into
foreign countries: and here it recognised at once the Good which in its
Father's house it had possessed, and had not been conscious of.

20.

While God guided His chosen people through all the degrees of a child-
like education, the other nations of the earth had gone on by the light of
reason. The most part had remained far behind the chosen people. Only a
few had got before them. And this too, takes place with children, who are
allowed to grow up left to themselves: many remain quite raw, some
educate themselves even to an astonishing degree.

21

But as these more fortunate few prove nothing against the use and
necessity of Education, so the few heathen nations, who even appear to

have made a start in the knowledge of God before the chosen people, prove
nothing against a Revelation. The Child of Education begins with slow yet
sure footsteps; it is late in overtaking many a more happily organised child
of nature; but it does overtake it; and thenceforth can never be distanced by
it again.

22

Similarly—Putting aside the doctrine of the Unity of God, which in a
way is found, and in a way is not found, in the books of the Old Testament
—that the doctrine of immortality at least is not discoverable in it, is wholly
foreign to it, that all doctrine connected therewith of reward and
punishment in a future life, proves just as little against the Divine origin of
these books. Notwithstanding the absence of these doctrines, the account of
miracles and prophecies may be perfectly true. For let us suppose that these
doctrines were not only wanting therein, but even that they were not at all
true; let us suppose that for mankind all was over in this life; would the
Being of God be for this reason less demonstrated? Would God be for this
less at liberty, would it less become Him to take immediate charge of the
temporal fortunes of any people out of this perishable race? The miracles
which He performed for the Jews, the prophecies which He caused to be
recorded through them, were surely not for the few mortal Jews, in whose
time they had happened and been recorded: He had His intentions therein in
reference to the whole Jewish people, to the entire Human Race, which,
perhaps, is destined to remain on earth forever, though every individual Jew
and every individual man die forever.

23

Once more, The absence of those doctrines in the writings of the Old
Testament proves nothing against their Divinity. Moses was sent from
God even though the sanction of his law only extended to this life.

For why should it extend further? He was surely sent only to the
Israelitish people of that time, and his commission was perfectly
adapted to the knowledge, capacities, yearnings of the then existing
Israelitish people, as well as to the destination of that which
belonged to the future. And this is sufficient.

24

So far ought Warburton to have gone, and no further. But that learned
man overdrew his bow. Not content that the absence of these doctrines was
no discredit to the Divine mission of Moses, it must even be a proof to him
of the Divinity of the mission. And if he had only sought this proof in the
adaptation of such a law to such a people!

But he betook himself to the hypothesis of a miraculous system
continued in an unbroken line from Moses to Christ, according to which,
God had made every individual Jew exactly happy or unhappy, in the
proportion to his obedience or disobedience to the law deserved. He would
have it that this miraculous system had compensated for the want of those
doctrines (of eternal rewards and punishments, &c.), without which no state
can subsist; and that such a compensation even proved what that want at
first sight appeared to negative.

25

How well it was that Warburton could by no argument prove or even
make likely this continuous miracle, in which he placed the existence of
Israelitish Theocracy! For could he have done so, in truth, he could then,
and not till then, have made the difficulty really insuperable, to me at least.
For that which was meant to prove the Divine character of the Mission of
Moses, would have rendered the matter itself doubtful, which God, it is

true, did not intend then to reveal; but which on the other hand, He certainly
would not render unattainable.

26

I explain myself by that which is a picture of Revelation. A Primer for
children may fairly pass over in silence this or that important piece of
knowledge or art which it expounds, respecting which the Teacher judged,
that it is not yet fitted for the capacities of the children for whom he was
writing. But it must contain absolutely nothing which blocks up the way
towards the knowledge which is held back, or misleads the children from it.
Rather far, all the approaches towards it must be carefully left open; and to
lead them away from even one of these approaches, or to cause them to
enter it later than they need, would alone be enough to change the mere
imperfection of such a Primer into an actual fault.

27

In the same way, in the writings of the Old Testament those primers for
the rude Israelitish people, unpractised in thought, the doctrines of the
immortality of the soul, and future recompenses, might be fairly left out:
but they were bound to contain nothing which could have even
procrastinated the progress of the people, for whom they were written, in
their way to this grand truth. And to say but a small thing, what could have
more procrastinated it than the promise of such a miraculous recompense in
this life? A promise made by Him who promises nothing that He does not
perform.

28

For although unequal distribution of the goods of this life, Virtue and
Vice seem to be taken too little into consideration, although this unequal

distribution docs not exactly afford a strong proof of the immortality of the
soul and of a life to come, in which this difficulty will be reserved hereafter,
it is certain that without this difficulty the human understanding would not
for a long time, perhaps never, have arrived at better or firmer proofs. For
what was to impel it to seek for these better proofs? Mere curiosity?

29

An Israelite here and there, no doubt, might have extended to every
individual member of the entire commonwealth, those promises and
threatenings which belong to it as a whole, and be firmly persuaded that
whosoever should be pious must also be happy, and that whoever was
unhappy must be bearing the penalty of his wrong-doing, which penalty
would forthwith change itself into blessing, as soon as he abandoned his
sin. Such a one appears to have written Job, for the plan of it is entirely in
this spirit.

30

But daily experience could not possibly be permitted to confirm this
belief, or else it would have been all over, for ever, with people who had
this experience, so far as all recognition and reception was concerned of the
truth as yet unfamiliar to them. For if the pious were absolutely happy, and
it also of course was a necessary part of his happiness that his satisfaction
should be broken by no uneasy thoughts of death, and that he should die
old, and satisfied with life to the full: how could he yearn after another life?
and how could he reflect upon a thing after which he did not yearn? But if
the pious did not reflect thereupon, who then should reflect? The
transgressor? he who felt the punishments of his misdeeds, and if he cursed
this life, must have so gladly renounced that other existence?

31

Much less would it signify if an Israelite here and there directly and
expressly denied the immortality of the soul and future recompense, on
account of the law having no reference thereto. The denial of an individual,
had it even been a Solomon, did not arrest the progress of the general
reason, and was even in itself a proof that the nation had now come a great
step nearer the truth For individuals only deny what the many are bringing
into consideration; and to bring into consideration that, concerning which
no one troubled himself at all before, is half way to knowledge.

32

Let us also acknowledge that it is a heroic obedience to obey the laws of
God simply because they are God's laws, and not because He has promised
to reward the obedience to them here and there; to obey them even though
there be an entire despair of future recompense, and uncertainty respecting
a temporal one.

33

Must not a people educated in this heroic obedience towards God have
been destined, must they not have been capable beyond all others of
executing Divine purpose? of quite a special character? Let the soldier, who
pays blind obedience to his leader, become also convinced of his leader's
wisdom, and then say what that leader may not undertake to achieve with
him.

34

As yet the Jewish people had reverenced in their Jehovah rather the
mightiest than the wisest of all Gods; as yet they had rather feared Him as a
Jealous God than loved Him: a proof this too, that the conception which
they had of their eternal One God was not exactly the right conception

which we should have of God. However, now the time was come that these
conceptions of theirs were to be expanded, ennobled, rectified, to
accomplish which God availed Himself of a quite natural means, a better
and more correct measure, by which it got the opportunity of appreciating
Him.

35

Instead of, as hitherto, appreciating Him in contrast with the miserable
idols of the small neighboring peoples, with whom they lived in constant
rivalry, they began, in captivity under the wise Persians, to measure Him
against the "Being of all Beings" such as a more disciplined reason
recognized and reverenced.

36

Revelation had guided their reason, and now, all at once, reason gave
clearness to their Revelation.

37

This was the first reciprocal influence which these two (Reason and
Revelation) exercised on one another; and so far is the mutual influence
from being unbecoming to the Author of them both, that without it either of
them would have been useless.

38

The child, sent abroad, saw other children who knew more, who lived
more becomingly, and asked itself, in confusion, "Why do I not know that
too? Why do I not live so too? Ought I not to have been taught and
admonished of all this in my father's house?" Thereupon it again sought out
its Primer, which had long been thrown into a corner, in order to throw off a

blame upon the Primer. But behold, it discovers that the blame does not rest
upon the books, that the shame is solely its own, for not having long ago,
known this very thing, and lived in this very way.

39

Since the Jews, by this time, through the medium of the pure Persian
doctrine, recognized in their Jehovah, not simply the greatest of all national
deities, but GOD; and since they could, the more readily find Him and
indicate Him to others in their sacred writings, inasmuch as He was really
in them; and since they manifested as great an aversion for sensuous
representations, or at all events, were instructed in these Scriptures, to have
an aversion to them as great as the Persians had always felt; what wonder
that they found favor in the eyes of Cyrus, with a Divine Worship which he
recognized as being, no doubt, far below pure Sabeism, but yet far above
the rude idolatries which in its stead had taken possession of the forsaken
land of the Jews.

40

Thus enlightened respecting the treasures which they had possessed,
without knowing it, they returned, and became quite another people, whose
first care it was to give permanency to this illumination amongst
themselves. Soon an apostacy and idolatry among them was out of the
question. For it is possible to be faithless to a national deity, but never to
God, after He has once been recognised.

The theologians have tried to explain this complete change in the Jewish
people in a different way; and one, who has well demonstrated the
insufficiency of these explanations, at last was for giving us, as a true
account—"the visible fulfilment of the prophecies which had been spoken
and written respecting the Babylonish captivity and the restoration from it."

But even this reason can be only so far the true one, as it presupposes the,
by this time, exalted ideas of God. The Jews must by this time have
recognised that to do miracles, and to predict the future, belonged only to
God, both of which they had ascribed formerly to false idols, by which it
came to pass that even miracles and prophecies had hitherto made so weak
an impression upon them.

42

Doubtless, the Jews were made more acquainted with the doctrine of
immortality among the Chaldeans and Persians. They became more familiar
with it too in the schools of the Greek Philosophers in Egypt.

43

However, as this doctrine was not in the same condition in reference to
their Scriptures that the doctrines of God's Unity and Attributes were—
since the former were entirely overlooked by that sensual people, while the
latter would be sought for:—and since too, for the former, previous
exercising was necessary, and as yet there had been only hints and
allusions, the faith in the immortality of the soul could naturally never be
the faith of the entire people. It was and continued to be only the creed of a
certain section of them.

44

An example of what I mean by "previous exercising" for the doctrine of
immortality, is the Divine threatenings of punishing the misdeeds of the
fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. This
accustomed the fathers to live in thought with their remotest posterity, and
to feel, as it were, beforehand, the misfortune which they had brought upon
these guiltless ones.

45

By an allusion I mean that which was intended only to excite curiosity
and to occasion questions. As, for instance, the oft- recurring mode of
expression, describing death by "he was gathered to his fathers."

By a "hint" I mean that which already contains any germ, out of which
the, as yet, held back truth allows itself to be developed. Of this character
was the inference of Christ from the naming of God "the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob." This hint appears to me to be unquestionably capable of
being worked out into a strong proof.

47

In such previous exercitations, allusions, hints, consists the positive
perfection of a Primer; just as the above-mentioned peculiarity of not
throwing difficulties or hindrances in the way to the suppressed truth
constitutes the negative perfection of such a book.

48

Add to all this the clothing and style.

1. The clothing of abstract truths, which were not entirely to be passed
over, in allegories and instructive single circumstances, which were narrated
as actual occurrences. Of this character are the Creation under the image of
growing Day; the Origin of Evil in the story of the Forbidden Tree; the
source of the variety of languages in the history of the Tower of Babel, &c.

49 2. The style—sometimes plain and simple, sometimes poetical,
throughout full of tautologies, but of such a kind as practised sagacity, since
they sometimes appear to be saying something else, and yet the same thing;

sometimes the same thing over again, and yet to signify or to be capable of
signifying at the bottom, something else:—

50

And then you have all the properties of excellence which belong to a
Primer for a childlike people, as well as for children.

51

But every Primer is only for a certain age. To delay the child, that has
outgrown it, longer in it than it was intended for, is hurtful. For to be able to
do this is a way in any sort profitable, you must insert into it more than
there is really in it, and extract from it more than it can contain. You must
look for and make too much of allusions and hints; squeeze allegories too
closely; interpret examples too circumstantially; press too much upon
words. This gives the child a petty, crooked, hair splitting understanding: it
makes him full of mysteries, superstitions; full of contempt for all that is
comprehensible and easy.

52

The very way in which the Rabbins handled their sacred books! The very
character which they thereby imparted to the character of their people!

53

A Better Instructor must come and tear the exhausted Primer from the
child's hands. CHRIST came!

54

That portion of the human race which God had willed to comprehend in
one Educational plan, was ripe for the Second step of Education. He had,
however, only willed to comprehend on such a plan, one which by
language, mode of action, government, and other natural and political
relationships, was already united in itself.

55

That is, this portion of the human race was come so far in the exercise of
its reason, as to need, and to be able to make use of nobler and worthier
motives of moral action than temporal rewards and punishments, which had
hitherto been its guides. The child had become a youth. Sweetmeats and
toys have given place to the budding desire to go as free, as honored, and as
happy as its elder brother.

56

For a long time, already, the best individuals of that portion of the human
race (called above the elder brother); had been accustomed to let themselves
be ruled by the shadow of such nobler motives. The Greek and Roman did
everything to live on after this life, even if it were only in the remembrance
of their fellow-citizens.

57

It was time that another true life to be expected after this should gain an
influence over the youth's actions.

58

And so Christ was the first certain practical Teacher of the immortality of
the soul.

59

The first certain Teacher. Certain, through the prophecies which were
fulfilled in Him; certain, through the miracles which He achieved; certain,
through His own revival after a death through which He had sealed His
doctrine. Whether we can still prove this revival, these miracles, I put aside,
as I leave on one side who the Person of Christ was. All that may have been
at that time of great weight for the reception of His doctrine, but it is now
no longer of the same importance for the recognition of the truth of His
doctrine.

60

The first practical Teacher. For it is one thing to conjecture, to wish, and
to believe the immortality of the soul, as a philosophic speculation: quite
another thing to direct the inner and outer acts by it.

61

And this at least Christ was the first to teach. For although, already
before Him, the belief had been introduced among many nations, that bad
actions have yet to be punished in that life; yet they were only such actions
as were injurious to civil society, and consequently, too, had already had
their punishment in civil society. To enforce an inward purity of heart in
reference to another life, was reserved for Him alone.

62

His disciples have faithfully propagated these doctrines: and if they had
even had no other merit, than that of having effected a more general
publication, among other nations, of a Truth which Christ had appeared to
have destined only for the Jews, yet would they have even on that account

alone, to be reckoned among the Benefactors and Fosterers of the Human
Race.

63

If, however, they transplanted this one great Truth together with other
doctrines, whose truth was less enlightening, whose usefulness was of a less
exalted character, how could it be otherwise. Let us not blame them for this,
but rather seriously examine whether these very commingled doctrines have
not become a new impulse of directions for human reason.

64

At least, it is already clear that the New Testament Scriptures, in which
these doctrines after some time were found preserved, have afforded, and
still afford, the second better Primer for the race of man.

65

For seven hundred years past they have exercised human reason more
than all other books, and enlightened it more, were it even only through the
light which the human reason itself threw into them.

66

It would have been impossible for any other book to become so generally
known among different nations: and indisputably, the fact that modes of
thought so diverse from each other have been occupied on the same book,
has helped on the human reason more than if every nation had had its own
Primer specially for itself.

67

It was also highly necessary that each people for a period should hold this
Book as the ne plus ultra of their knowledge. For the youth must consider
his Primer as the first of all books, that the impatience to finish this book,
may not hurry him on to things for which he has, as yet, laid no basis.

68

And one thing is also of the greatest importance even now. Thou abler
spirit, who art fretting and restless over the last page of the Primer, beware!
Beware of letting thy weaker fellow scholars mark what thou perceivest
afar, or what thou art beginning to see!

Until these weaker fellow scholars are up with thee, rather return once
more into this Primer, and examine whether that which thou takest only for
duplicates of the method, for a blunder in the teaching, is not perhaps
something more.

70

Thou hast seen in the childhood of the human race, respecting the
doctrine of God's unity, that God makes immediate revelations of mere
truths of reason, or has permitted and caused pure truths of reason to be
taught, for some time, as truths of immediate revelation, in order to
promulgate them the more rapidly, and ground them the more firmly.

71

Thou experiencest in the boyhood of the Race the same thing in reference
to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. It is preached in the better
Primer as a Revelation, instead of taught as a result of human reason.

72

As we by this time can dispense with the Old Testament, in reference to
the doctrine of the unity of God, and as we are by degrees beginning also to
be less dependent on the New Testament, in reference to the immortality of
the soul: might there not in this Book also be other truths of the same sort
prefigured, mirrored, as it were, which we are to marvel at, as revelations,
exactly so long as until the time shall come when reason shall have learned
to educe them, out of its other demonstrated truths and bind them up with
them?

73

For instance, the doctrine of the Trinity. How if this doctrine should at
last, after endless errors, right and left, only bring men on the road to
recognise that God cannot possibly be One in the sense in which finite
things are one, that even His unity must be a transcendental unity, which
does not exclude a sort of purality? Must not God at least have the most
perfect conception of Himself, i. e., a conception in which is found
everything which is in Him? But would everything be found in it which is
in Him, if a mere conception, a mere possibility, were found even of his
necessary Reality as well as of His other qualities? This possibility exhausts
the being of His other qualities. Does it that of His necessary Reality? I
think not. Consequently God can either have no perfect conception of
himself at all, or this perfect conception is just as necessarily real, i. e.,
actually existent, as He Himself is. Certainly the image of myself in the
mirror is nothing but an empty representation of me, because it only has
that of me upon the surface of which beams of light fall. But now if this
image had everything, everything without exception, which I have myself,
would it then still be a mere empty representation, or not rather a true
reduplication of myself? When I believe that I recognise in God a familiar
reduplication, I perhaps do not so much err, as that my language is
insufficient for my ideas: and so much at least for ever incontrovertible, that

they who wish to make the idea thereof popular for comprehension, could
scarcely have expressed themselves more intelligibly and suitably than by
giving the name of a Son begotten from Eternity.

74

And the doctrine of Original Sin. How, if at last everything were to
convince us that man standing on the first and lowest step of his humanity,
is not so entirely master of his actions as to be able to obey moral laws?

75

And the doctrine of the Son's satisfaction. How, if at last, all compelled
us to assume that God, in spite of that original incapacity of man, chose
rather to give him moral laws, and forgive him all transgressions in
consideration of His Son, i. e., in consideration of the self-existent total of
all His own perfections, compared with which, and in which, all
imperfections of the individual disappear, than not to give him those laws,
and then to exclude him from all moral blessedness, which cannot be
conceived of without moral laws.

Let it not be objected that speculations of this description upon the
mysteries of religion are forbidden. The word mystery signified, in the first
ages of Christianity, something quite different from what it means now: and
the cultivation of revealed truths into truths of reason, is absolutely
necessary, if the human race is to be assisted by them. When they were
revealed they were certainly no truths of reason, but they were revealed in
order to become such. They were like the "that makes"—of the ciphering
master, which he says to the boys, beforehand, in order to direct them
thereby in their reckoning. If the scholars were to be satisfied with the "that
makes," they would never learn to calculate, and would frustrate the

intention with which their good master gave them a guiding clue in their
work.

77

And why should not we too, by the means of a religion whose historical
truth, if you will, looks dubious, be conducted in a familiar way to closer
and better conceptions of the Divine Being, our own nature, our relation to
God, truths at which the human reason would never have arrived of itself?

78

It is not true that speculations upon these things have ever done harm or
become injurious to the body politic. You must reproach, not the
speculations, but the folly and the tyranny of checking them. You must lay
the blame on those who would not permit men having their own
speculations to exercise them.

79

On the contrary, speculations of this sort, whatever the result, are
unquestionably the most fitting exercises of the human heart, generally, so
long as the human heart, generally, is at best only capable of loving virtue
for the sake of its eternal blessed consequences.

80

For in this selfishness of the human heart, to will to practice the
understanding too, only on that which concerns our corporal needs, would
be to blunt rather than to sharpen it. It absolutely will be exercised on
spiritual objects, if it is to attain its perfect illumination, and bring out that
purity of heart which makes us capable of loving virtue for its own sake
alone.

81

Or, is the human species never to arrive at this highest step of
illumination and purity?—Never?

82

Never?—Let me not think this blasphemy, All Merciful! Education has
its goal, in the Race, no less than in the Individual. That which is educated
is educated for something.

83

The flattering prospects which are open to the people, the Honor and
Well-being which are painted to him, what are they more than the
means of educating him to become a man, who, when these prospects of
Honor and Well-being have vanished, shall be able to do his Duty?

84

This is the aim of human education, and should not the Divine education
extend as far? Is that which is successful in the way of Art with the
individual, not to be successful in the way of Nature with the whole?
Blasphemy! Blasphemy!!

85

No! It will come! it will assuredly come! the time of the perfecting, when
man, the more convinced his understanding feels itself of an ever better
Future, will nevertheless not be necessitated to borrow motives of action
from this Future; for he will do the Right because it is right, not because
arbitrary rewards are annexed thereto, which formerly were intended simply

to fix and strengthen his unsteady gaze in recognising the inner, better,
rewards of well-doing.

86

It will assuredly come! the time of a new eternal Gospel, which is
promised us in the Primer of the New Testament itself!

87

Perhaps even some enthusiasts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
had caught a glimpse of a beam of this new eternal Gospel, and only erred
in that they predicted its outburst at so near to their own time.

88

Perhaps their "Three Ages of the World" were not so empty a speculation
after all, and assuredly they had no contemptible views when they taught
that the New Covenant must become as much antiquated as the old has
been. There remained by them the similarity of the economy of the same
God. Ever, to let them speak my words, ever the self-same plan of the
Education of the Race.

89

Only they were premature. Only they believed that they could make their
contemporaries, who had scarcely outgrown their childhood, without
enlightenment, without preparation, men worthy of their Third Age.

90

And it was just this which made them enthusiasts. The enthusiast often
casts true glances into the future, but for this future he cannot wait. He

wishes this future accelerated, and accelerated through him. That for which
nature takes thousands of years is to mature itself in the moment of his
existence. For what possession has he in it if that which he recognises as the
Best does not become the best in his lifetime? Does he come back? Does he
expect to come back? Marvellous only that this enthusiastic expectation
does not become more the fashion among enthusiasts. 91

Go thine inscrutable way, Eternal Providence! Only let me not despair in
Thee, because of this inscrutableness. Let me not despair in Thee, even if
Thy steps appear to me to be going back. It is not true that the shortest line
is always straight.

92

Thou hast on Thine Eternal Way so much to carry on together, so much to
do! So many aside steps to take! And what if it were as good as proved that
the vast flow wheel which brings mankind nearer to this perfection is only
put in motion by smaller, swifter wheels, each of which contributes its own
individual unit thereto?

93

It is so! The very same Way by which the Race reaches its perfection,
must every individual man—one sooner—another later— have travelled
over. Have travelled over in one and the same life? Can he have been, in
one and the self-same life, a sensual Jew and a spiritual Christian? Can he
in the self-same life have overtaken both?

94

Surely not that! But why should not every individual man have existed
more than once upon this World?

95

Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest?
Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the
Schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?

Why may not even I have already performed those steps of my perfecting
which bring to man only temporal punishments and rewards?

97

And once more, why not another time all those steps, to perform which
the views of Eternal Rewards so powerfully assist us?

Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh
knowledge, fresh expertness? Do I bring away so much from once, that
there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back?

99

Is this a reason against it? Or, because I forget that I have been here
already? Happy is it for me that I do forget. The recollection of my former
condition would permit me to make only a bad use of the present. And that
which even I must forget now, is that necessarily forgotten for ever?

100

Or is it a reason against the hypothesis that so much time would have
been lost to me? Lost?—And how much then should I miss?—Is not a
whole Eternity mine?

LETTERS UPON THE AESTHETIC
EDUCATION OF MAN

BY

J. C. FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

An outline of the life of Schiller will be found prefixed to the translation of
"Wilhelm Tell" in the volume of Continental Dramas in The Harvard
Classics.

Schiller's importance in the intellectual history of Germany is by no
means confined to his poetry and dramas. He did notable work in history
and philosophy, and in the department of esthetics especially, he made
significant contributions, modifying and developing in important respects
the doctrines of Kant. In the letters on "Esthetic Education" which are here
printed, he gives the philosophic basis for his doctrine of art, and indicates
clearly and persuasively his view of the place of beauty in human life.

LETTERS UPON THE AESTHETIC EDUCATION OF MAN

LETTER I.

By your permission I lay before you, in a series of letters, the results of my
researches upon beauty and art. I am keenly sensible of the importance as
well as of the charm and dignity of this undertaking. I shall treat a subject
which is closely connected with the better portion of our happiness and not
far removed from the moral nobility of human nature. I shall plead this
cause of the Beautiful before a heart by which her whole power is felt and

exercised, and which will take upon itself the most difficult part of my task
in an investigation where one is compelled to appeal as frequently to
feelings as to principles.

That which I would beg of you as a favour, you generously impose upon
me as a duty; and, when I solely consult my inclination, you impute to me a
service. The liberty of action you prescribe is rather a necessity for me than
a constraint little exercised in formal rules, I shall scarcely incur the risk of
sinning against good taste by any undue use of them; my ideas, drawn
rather from within than from reading or from an intimate experience with
the world, will not disown their origin; they would rather incur any
reproach than that of a sectarian bias, and would prefer to succumb by their
innate feebleness than sustain themselves by borrowed authority and
foreign support.

In truth, I will not keep back from you that the assertions which follow
rest chiefly upon Kantian principles; but if in the course of these researches
you should be reminded of any special school of philosophy, ascribe it to
my incapacity, not to those principles. No; your liberty of mind shall be
sacred to me; and the facts upon which I build will be furnished by your
own sentiments; your own unfettered thought will dictate the laws
according to which we to proceed.

With regard to the ideas which predominate in the practical part of Kant's
system, philosophers only disagree, whilst mankind, I am confident of
proving, have never done so. If stripped of their technical shape, they will
appear as the verdict of reason pronounced from time immemorial by
common consent, and as facts of the moral instinct which nature, in her
wisdom, has given to man in order to serve as guide and teacher until his
enlightened intelligence gives him maturity. But this very technical shape
which renders truth visible to the understanding conceals it from the

feelings; for, unhappily, understanding begins by destroying the object of
the inner sense before it can appropriate the object. Like the chemist, the
philosopher finds synthesis only by analysis, or the spontaneous work of
nature only through the torture of art. Thus, in order to detain the fleeting
apparition, he must enchain it in the fetters of rule, dissect its fair
proportions into abstract notions, and preserve its living spirit in a fleshless
skeleton of words. Is it surprising that natural feeling should not recognise
itself in such a copy, and if in the report of the analyst the truth appears as
paradox?

Permit me therefore to crave your indulgence if the following researches
should remove their object from the sphere of sense while endeavouring to
draw it towards the understanding. That which I before said of moral
experience can be applied with greater truth to the manifestation of "the
beautiful." It is the mystery which enchants, and its being is extinguished
with the extinction of the necessary combination of its elements.

LETTER II.

But I might perhaps make a better use of the opening you afford me if I
were to direct your mind to a loftier theme than that of art. It would appear
to be unseasonable to go in search of a code for the aesthetic world, when
the moral world offers matter of so much higher interest, and when the
spirit of philosophical inquiry is so stringently challenged by the
circumstances of our times to occupy itself with the most perfect of all
works of art—the establishment and structure of a true political freedom.

It is unsatisfactory to live out of your own age and to work for other
times. It is equally incumbent on us to be good members of our own age as
of our own state or country. If it is conceived to be unseemly and even
unlawful for a man to segregate himself from the customs and manners of
the circle in which he lives, it would be inconsistent not to see that it is

equally his duty to grant a proper share of influence to the voice of his own
epoch, to its taste and its requirements, in the operations in which he
engages.

But the voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all events
to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course of events has
given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens to remove it
continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to leave reality, it has to
raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness for art is the daughter of
freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the
necessity of spirits and not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity,
neediness, that prevails, and bends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke.
Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all
subjects are subservient. In this great balance of utility, the spiritual service
of art has no weight, and, deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from
the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The very spirit of philosophical inquiry
itself robs the imagination of one promise after another, and the frontiers of
art are narrowed, in proportion as the limits of science are enlarged.

The eyes of the philosopher as well as of the man of the world are
anxiously turned to the theatre of political events, where it is presumed the
great destiny of man is to be played out. It would almost seem to betray e
culpable indifference to the welfare of society if we did not share this
general interest. For this great commerce in social and moral principles is of
necessity a matter of the greatest concern to every human being, on the
ground both of its subject and of its results. It must accordingly be of
deepest moment to every man to think for himself. It would seem that now
at length a question that formerly was only settled by the law of the stronger
is to be determined by the calm judgment of the reason, and every man who
is capable of placing himself in a central position, and raising his
individuality into that of his species, can look upon himself as in possession

of this judicial faculty of reason; being moreover, as man and member of
the human family, a party in the case under trial and involved more or less
in its decisions. It would thus appear that this great political process is not
only engaged with his individual case, it has also to pronounce enactments,
which he as a rational spirit is capable of enunciating and entitled to
pronounce.

It is evident that it would have been most attractive to me to inquire into
an object such as this, to decide such a question in conjunction with a
thinker of powerful mind, a man of liberal sympathies, and a heart imbued
with a noble enthusiasm for the weal of humanity. Though so widely
separated by worldly position, it would have been a delightful surprise to
have found your unprejudiced mind arriving at the same result as my own
in the field of ideas, Nevertheless, I think I can not only excuse, but even
justify by solid grounds, my step in resisting this attractive purpose and in
preferring beauty to freedom. I hope that I shall succeed in convincing you
that this matter of art is less foreign to the needs than to the tastes of our
age; nay, that, to arrive at a solution even in the political problem, the road
of aesthetics must be pursued, because it is through beauty that we arrive at
freedom. But I cannot carry out this proof without my bringing to your
remembrance the principles by which the reason is guided in political
legislation.

LETTER III.

Man is not better treated by nature in his first start than her other works
are; so long as he is unable to act for himself as an independent intelligence,
she acts for him. But the very fact that constitutes him a man is, that he does
not remain stationary, where nature has placed him, that he can pass with
his reason, retracing the steps nature had made him anticipate, that he can

convert the work of necessity into one of free solution, and elevate physical
necessity into a moral law.

When man is raised from his slumber in the senses, he feels that he is a
man, he surveys his surroundings, and finds that he is in a state. He was
introduced into this state, by the power of circumstances, before he could
freely select his own position. But as a moral being he cannot possibly rest
satisfied with a political condition forced upon him by necessity, and only
calculated for that condition; and it would be unfortunate if this did satisfy
him. In many cases man shakes off this blind law of necessity, by his free
spontaneous action, of which among many others we have an instance, in
his ennobling by beauty and suppressing by moral influence the powerful
impulse implanted in him by nature in the passion of love. Thus, when
arrived at maturity, he recovers his childhood by an artificial process, he
founds a state of nature in his ideas, not given him by any experience, but
established by the necessary laws and conditions of his reason, and he
attributes to this ideal condition an object, an aim, of which he was not
cognisant in the actual reality of nature. He gives himself a choice of which
he was not capable before, and sets to work just as if he were beginning
anew, and were exchanging his original state of bondage for one of
complete independence, doing this with complete insight and of his free
decision. He is justified in regarding this work of political thraldom as non-
existing, though a wild and arbitrary caprice may have founded its work
very artfully; though it may strive to maintain it with great arrogance and
encompass it with a halo of veneration. For the work of blind powers
possesses no authority, before which freedom need bow, and all must be
made to adapt itself to the highest end which reason has set up in his
personality. It is in this wise that a people in a state of manhood is justified
in exchanging a condition of thraldom for one of moral freedom.

Now the term natural condition can be applied to every political body
which owes its establishment originally to forces and not to laws, and such
a state contradicts the moral nature of man, because lawfulness can alone
have authority over this. At the same time this natural condition is quite
sufficient for the physical man, who only gives himself laws in order to get
rid of brute force. Moreover, the physical man is a reality, and the moral
man problematical. Therefore when the reason suppresses the natural
condition, as she must if she wishes to substitute her own, she weighs the
real physical man against the problematical moral man, she weighs the
existence of society against a possible, though morally necessary, ideal of
society. She takes from man something which he really possesses, and
without which he possesses nothing, and refers him as a substitute to
something that he ought to possess and might possess; and if reason had
relied too exclusively on him, she might, in order to secure him a state of
humanity in which he is wanting and can want without injury to his life,
have robbed him even of the means of animal existence which is the first
necessary condition of his being a man. Before he had opportunity to hold
firm to the law with his will, reason would have withdrawn from his feet the
ladder of nature.

The great point is therefore to reconcile these two considerations: to
prevent physical society from ceasing for a moment in time, while the
moral society is being formed in the idea; in other words, to prevent its
existence from being placed in jeopardy, for the sake of the moral dignity of
man. When the mechanic has to mend a watch, he lets the wheels run out,
but the living watchworks of the state have to be repaired while they act,
and a wheel has to be exchanged for another during its revolutions.
Accordingly props must be sought for to support society and keep it going
while it is made independent of the natural condition from which it is
sought to emancipate it.

This prop is not found in the natural character of man, who, being selfish
and violent, directs his energies rather to the destruction than to the
preservation of society. Nor is it found in his moral character, which has to
be formed, which can never be worked upon or calculated on by the
lawgiver, because it is free and never appears. It would seem therefore that
another measure must be adopted. It would seem that the physical character
of the arbitrary must be separated from moral freedom; that it is incumbent
to make the former harmonise with the laws and the latter dependent on
impressions; it would be expedient to remove the former still farther from
matter and to bring the latter somewhat more near to it; in short to produce
a third character related to both the others—the physical and the moral—
paving the way to a transition from the sway of mere force to that of law,
without preventing the proper development of the moral character, but
serving rather as a pledge in the sensuous sphere of a morality in the
unseen.

LETTER IV.

Thus much is certain. It is only when a third character, as previously
suggested, has preponderance that a revolution in a state according to moral
principles can be free from injurious consequences; nor can anything else
secure its endurance. In proposing or setting up a moral state, the moral law
is relied upon as a real power, and free will is drawn into the realm of
causes, where all hangs together, mutually with stringent necessity and
rigidity. But we know that the condition of the human will always remains
contingent, and that only in the Absolute Being physical coexists with
moral necessity. Accordingly if it is wished to depend on the moral conduct
of man as on natural results, this conduct must become nature, and he must
be led by natural impulse to such a course of action as can only and
invariably have moral results. But the will of man is perfectly free between
inclination and duty, and no physical necessity ought to enter as a sharer in

this magisterial personality. If therefore he is to retain this power of
solution, and yet become a reliable link in the causal concatenation of
forces, this can only be effected when the operations of both these impulses
are presented quite equally in the world of appearances. It is only possible
when, with every difference of form, the matter of man's volition remains
the same, when all his impulses agreeing with his reason are sufficient to
have the value of a universal legislation.

It may be urged that every individual man carries, within himself, at least
in his adaptation and destination, a purely ideal man. The great problem of
his existence is to bring all the incessant changes of his outer life into
conformity with the unchanging unity of this ideal. This pure ideal man,
which makes itself known more or less clearly in every subject, is
represented by the state, which is the objective and, so to speak, canonical
form in which the manifold differences of the subjects strive to unite. Now
two ways present themselves to the thought, in which the man of time can
agree with the man of idea, and there are also two ways in which the state
can maintain itself in individuals. One of these ways is when the pure ideal
man subdues the empirical man, and the state suppresses the individual, or
again when the individual BECOMES the state, and the man of time is
ENNOBLED to the man of idea.

I admit that in a one-sided estimate from the point of view of morality
this difference vanishes, for the reason is satisfied if her law prevails
unconditionally. But when the survey taken is complete and embraces the
whole man (anthropology), where the form is considered together with the
substance, and a living feeling has a voice, the difference will become far
more evident. No doubt the reason demands unity, and nature variety, and
both legislations take man in hand. The law of the former is stamped upon
him by an incorruptible consciousness, that of the latter by an ineradicable
feeling. Consequently education will always appear deficient when the

moral feeling can only be maintained with the sacrifice of what is natural;
and a political administration will always be very imperfect when it is only
able to bring about unity by suppressing variety. The state ought not only to
respect the objective and generic but also the subjective and specific in
individuals; and while diffusing the unseen world of morals, it must not
depopulate the kingdom of appearance, the external world of matter.

When the mechanical artist places his hand on the formless block, to give
it a form according to his intention, he has not any scruples in doing
violence to it. For the nature on which he works does not deserve any
respect in itself, and he does not value the whole for its parts, but the parts
on account of the whole. When the child of the fine arts sets his hand to the
same block, he has no scruples either in doing violence to it, he only avoids
showing this violence. He does not respect the matter in which he works,
any more than the mechanical artist; but he seeks by an apparent
consideration for it to deceive the eye which takes this matter under its
protection. The political and educating artist follows a very different course,
while making man at once his material and his end. In this case the aim or
end meets in the material, and it is only because the whole serves the parts
that the parts adapt themselves to the end. The political artist has to treat his
material—man—with a very different kind of respect from that shown by
the artist of fine art to his work. He must spare man's peculiarity and
personality, not to produce a deceptive effect on the senses, but objectively
and out of consideration for his inner being.

But the state is an organisation which fashions itself through itself and for
itself, and for this reason it can only be realised when the parts have been
accorded to the idea of the whole. The state serves the purpose of a
representative, both to pure ideal and to objective humanity, in the breast of
its citizens, accordingly it will have to observe the same relation to its
citizens in which they are placed to it, and it will only respect their

subjective humanity in the same degree that it is ennobled to an objective
existence. If the internal man is one with himself, he will be able to rescue
his peculiarity, even in the greatest generalisation of his conduct, and the
state will only become the exponent of his fine instinct, the clearer formula
of his internal legislation. But if the subjective man is in conflict with the
objective and contradicts him in the character of the people, so that only the
oppression of the former can give the victory to the latter, then the state will
take up the severe aspect of the law against the citizen, and in order not to
fall a sacrifice, it will have to crush under foot such a hostile individuality,
without any compromise.

Now man can be opposed to himself in a twofold manner: either as a
savage, when his feelings rule over his principles; or as a barbarian, when
his principles destroy his feelings. The savage despises art, and
acknowledges nature as his despotic ruler; the barbarian laughs at nature,
and dishonours it, but he often proceeds in a more contemptible way than
the savage, to be the slave of his senses. The cultivated man makes of
nature his friend, and honours its friendship, while only bridling its caprice.

Consequently, when reason brings her moral unity into physical society,
she must not injure the manifold in nature. When nature strives to maintain
her manifold character in the moral structure of society, this must not create
any breach in moral unity; the victorious form is equally remote from
uniformity and confusion. Therefore, TOTALITY of character must be
found in the people which is capable and worthy to exchange the state of
necessity for that of freedom.

LETTER V.

Does the present age, do passing events, present this character? I direct
my attention at once to the most prominent object in this vast structure.

It is true that the consideration of opinion is fallen, caprice is unnerved,
and, although still armed with power, receives no longer any respect. Man
has awaked from his long lethargy and self- deception, and he demands
with impressive unanimity to be restored to his imperishable rights. But he
does not only demand them; he rises on all sides to seize by force what, in
his opinion, has been unjustly wrested from him. The edifice of the natural
state is tottering, its foundations shake, and a physical possibility seems at
length granted to place law on the throne, to honour man at length as an
end, and to make true freedom the basis of political union. Vain hope! The
moral possibility is wanting, and the generous occasion finds an
unsusceptible rule.

Man paints himself in his actions, and what is the form depicted in the
drama of the present time? On the one hand, he is seen running wild, on the
other in a state of lethargy; the two extremest stages of human degeneracy,
and both seen in one and the same period.

In the lower larger masses, coarse, lawless impulses come to view,
breaking loose when the bonds of civil order are burst asunder, and
hastening with unbridled fury to satisfy their savage instinct. Objective
humanity may have had cause to complain of the state; yet subjective man
must honour its institutions. Ought he to be blamed because he lost sight of
the dignity of human nature, so long as he was concerned in preserving his
existence? Can we blame him that he proceeded to separate by the force of
gravity, to fasten by the force of cohesion, at a time when there could be no
thought of building or raising up? The extinction of the state contains its
justification. Society set free, instead of hastening upward into organic life,
collapses into its elements.

On the other hand, the civilized classes give us the still more repulsive
sight of lethargy, and of a depravity of character which is the more revolting

because it roots in culture. I forget who of the older or more recent
philosophers makes the remark, that what is more noble is the more
revolting in its destruction. The remark applies with truth to the world of
morals. The child of nature, when he breaks loose, becomes a madman; but
the art scholar, when he breaks loose, becomes a debased character. The
enlightenment of the understanding, on which the more refined classes
pride themselves with some ground, shows on the whole so little of an
ennobling influence on the mind that it seems rather to confirm corruption
by its maxims. We deny nature in her legitimate field and feel her tyranny in
the moral sphere, and while resisting her impressions, we receive our
principles from her. While the affected decency of our manners does not
even grant to nature a pardonable influence in the initial stage, our
materialistic system of morals allows her the casting vote in the last and
essential stage. Egotism has founded its system in the very bosom of a
refined society, and without developing even a sociable character, we feel
all the contagions and miseries of society. We subject our free judgment to
its despotic opinions, our feelings to its bizarre customs, and our will to its
seductions. We only maintain our caprice against her holy rights. The man
of the world has his heart contracted by a proud self- complacency, while
that of the man of nature often beats in sympathy; and every man seeks for
nothing more than to save his wretched property from the general
destruction, as it were from some great conflagration. It is conceived that
the only way to find a shelter against the aberrations of sentiment is by
completely foregoing its indulgence, and mockery, which is often a useful
chastener of mysticism, slanders in the same breath the noblest aspirations.
Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as it advances, new
necessities; the fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that
the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse toward improvement, and
the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life.
Thus the spirit of the time is seen to waver between perversions and

savagism, between what is unnatural and mere nature, between superstition
and moral unbelief, and it is often nothing but the equilibrium of evils that
sets bounds to it.

LETTER VI.

Have I gone too far in this portraiture of our times? I do not anticipate
this stricture, but rather another—that I have proved too much by it. You
will tell me that the picture I have presented resembles the humanity of our
day, but it also bodies forth all nations engaged in the same degree of
culture, because all, without exception, have fallen off from nature by the
abuse of reason, before they can return to it through reason.

But if we bestow some serious attention to the character of our times, we
shall be astonished at the contrast between the present and the previous
form of humanity, especially that of Greece. We are justified in claiming the
reputation of culture and refinement, when contrasted with a purely natural
state of society, but not so comparing ourselves with the Grecian nature. For
the latter was combined with all the charms of art and with all the dignity of
wisdom, without, however, as with us, becoming a victim to these
influences. The Greeks put us to shame not only by their simplicity, which
is foreign to our age; they are at the same time our rivals, nay, frequently
our models, in those very points of superiority from which we seek comfort
when regretting the unnatural character of our manners. We see that
remarkable people uniting at once fulness of form and fulness of substance,
both philosophising and creating, both tender and energetic, uniting a
youthful fancy; to the virility of reason in a glorious humanity.

At the period of Greek culture, which was an awakening of the powers of
the mind, the senses and the spirit had no distinctly separated property; no
division had yet torn them asunder, leading them to partition in a hostile
attitude, and to mark off their limits with precision. Poetry had not yet

become the adversary of wit, nor had speculation abused itself by passing
into quibbling. In cases of necessity both poetry and wit could exchange
parts, because they both honoured truth only in their special way. However
high might be the flight of reason, it drew matter in a loving spirit after it,
and, while sharply and stiffly defining it, never mutilated what it touched. It
is true the Greek mind displaced humanity, and recast it on a magnified
scale in the glorious circle of its gods; but it did this not by dissecting
human nature, but by giving it fresh combinations, for the whole of human
nature was represented in each of the gods. How different is the course
followed by us moderns! We also displace and magnify individuals to form
the image of the specks, but we do this in a fragmentary way, not by altered
combinations, so that it is necessary to gather up from different individuals
the elements that form the species in its totality. It would almost appear is if
the powers of mind express themselves with us in real life or empirically as
separately as the psychologist distinguishes them in the representation. For
we see not only individual subjects, but whole classes of men, uphold their
capacities only in part, while the rest of their faculties scarcely show a germ
of activity, as in the case of the stunted growth of plants.

I do not overlook the advantages to which the present race, regarded as a
unity and in the balance of the understanding, may lay claim over what is
best in the ancient world; but it is obliged to engage in the contest as a
compact mass, and measure itself as a whole against a whole. Who among
the moderns could step forth, man against man, and strive with an Athenian
for the prize of higher humanity?

Whence comes this disadvantageous relation of individuals coupled with
great advantages of the race? Why could the individual Greek be qualified
as the type of his time? and why can no modern dare to offer himself as
such? Because all-uniting nature imparted its forms to the Greek, and an all-
dividing understanding gives our forms to us.

It was culture itself that gave these wounds to modern humanity. The
inner union of human nature was broken, and a destructive contest divided
its harmonious forces directly; on the one hand, an enlarged experience and
a more distinct thinking necessitated a sharper separation of the sciences,
while on the other hand, the more complicated machinery of states
necessitated a stricter sundering of ranks and occupations. Intuitive and
speculative understanding took up a hostile attitude in opposite fields,
whose borders were guarded with jealousy and distrust; and by limiting its
operation to a narrow sphere, men have made unto themselves a master who
is wont not unfrequently to end by subduing and oppressing all the other
faculties. Whilst on the one hand a luxuriant imagination creates ravages in
the plantations that have cost the intelligence so much labour, on the other
hand a spirit of abstraction suffocates the fire that might have warmed the
heart and inflamed the imagination.

This subversion, commenced by art and learning in the inner man, was
carried out to fulness and finished by the spirit of innovation in government.
It was, no doubt, reasonable to expect that the simple organisation of the
primitive republics should survive the quaintness of primitive manners and
of the relations of antiquity. But, instead of rising to a higher and nobler
degree of animal life, this organisation degenerated into a common and
coarse mechanism. The zoophyte condition of the Grecian states, where
each individual enjoyed an independent life, and could, in cases of
necessity, become a separate whole and unit in himself, gave way to an
ingenious mechanism, when, from the splitting up into numberless parts,
there results a mechanical life in the combination. Then there was a rupture
between the state and the church, between laws and customs; enjoyment
was separated from labour, the means from the end, the effort from the
reward. Man himself eternally chained down to a little fragment of the
whole, only forms a kind of fragment; having nothing in his ears but the
monotonous sound of the perpetually revolving wheel, he never develops