No writer would seem to be less in need of the labors of the biographer than the illustrious philosopher whose name stands at the head of this paper. His works present not only a complete autobiography, but the conscientious result of a most rigorous and strict self-analysis. He obeyed the golden precept almost to excess. He would seem to have entertained no other serious object in life, but to weigh, ponder, and record the most secret as well as the most obvious phenomena of his mental and physical self. If an accident befell him, his first care was to observe and note how it affected his person and his mind. If illness came upon him, he would watch its beginning and its progress, keep a record of the minutest change, and speculate as to the probable result, not like the hypochondriac overmuch sensitive to personal ailment and darkly brooding over a gloomy futurity, but like a fervent worshipper of induction, patiently gathering facts whereon to found a theory. When, after much curious revolving of that constant and inexhaustible theme of thought, he had at last ascertained the existence of some fact in his moral or bodily organization, which he deemed it worth while to communicate to others, he forthwith proceeded to hunt among his memoranda for other facts in point, or remarkable sayings of other writers, illustrative of his position. These he pounded together, or faggotted, to use his expression, into an essay. Thus it happens that nearly every chapter in his work is pointed with allusions to his own present or past history, or speculations as to his future destiny. He was his own theme, and everlasting topic; his own historiographer, and not unfrequently his own eulogizer. The result of his mode of proceeding is the most

| complete, detailed, and particular view of a man that has ever been given to the world. Montaigne did what Rousseau boasted that he would do in his confessions. Both had the same object in view; but our author had this advantage over the Genevan rhetorician, that he saw through his subject with the calm eye of reason. For, despite some vanity and over minuteness of research, Montaigne was seldom blinded by conceit, never by prejudice, whilst his imitator would even sacrifice truth to an antithesis.

With materials so numerous from so authentic a source, it would seem that the judgment of posterity ought to be unanimous as to the merits or demerits of Montaigne. Yet this is far from being the case. The task of reconciling apparent inconsistencies, is so difficult, the tendency to generalize and systematize, is so captivating, that the detractors, as well as the apologists, of Montaigne, have confined their efforts to the gathering of such isolated parts of our author's confessions as propped their preconceived opinions. Erring (as millions of "judges of human nature" have done and will do,) in this, that having to present at one view a many faced object, of which no one eye can embrace the whole at once, they strive to mould it into such a shape as will offer the largest possible surface at one glance. They flatten the diamond into a medal and conceal the inconvenient reverse.

Our author himself furnishes a passage in point. "Those," says he, "who make it their business to observe human actions, never find themselves so much puzzled in any thing as how to reconcile and set them before the world in a self-consistent light and reputation; for they are generally such

strange contradictions in themselves that it seems almost impossible they should proceed from one and the same person.' What the shrewd Montaigne considered so difficult has proved an insuperable stumbling block to his critics, whether friendly or not. Nor can we blame them, except for having attempted what, but for their boundless fatuity, they must have known to be impossible. One of these amusing blunders of criticisms it may be worth our while to notice, because it is extremely sentimental, extremely erroneous, and because it comes from the pen of one of the most accomplished sentence-mongers of the day-Alphonse de Lamartine.

The illustrious historian of the Girondins, is pleased to say, anent Montaigne, what follows:-"This doubt, which takes a pleasure in doubting, appeared to me absolutely infernal. Man is born to believe or die. Montaigne can produce nothing but sterility in the mind of any one who enjoys his writings. To believe nothing is to do nothing. The coarseness, too, of Montaigne's expressions wounded and irritated the delicacy of my sensibility. Filthiness of words is a stain upon the soul. An obscene word produces the same impression on my mind as a putrid odor does on my olfactory system. I admired in Montaigne only that charming simplicity of style, which unveils the graceful form of the mind, and displays the very palpitations of the heart under the epidermis of the man. But his philosophy appeared to me pitiful. It is not the philosophy of the pig, for he" (query, pig or Montaigne?) "thinks. It is not the philosophy of man, for he comes to no conclusion. But it is the philosophy of the child, for he sports with every thing. Now this world is not a childish toy. The work of God is well worth the trouble of being viewed seriously, and human nature is noble and unfortunate enough to be treated, if not with respect, at least with pity. Pleasantry on such a subject is not only cruel but impious.'

Bravo! Heraclitus! well whined, and in pretty, antithetical French. We know that you prefer (in print) tears to smiles, sorrow to cheerfulness. We have not forgotten the famous-Je fus des la mamelle un homme de douleurs-1 -nor the playful stanzas in which the witty Barthelemy con

trasts your Herculean form and athletic proportions with the dolorous tendency of your song-your keen relish of the substantial goods of this world with the sad vibrations of your melancholy lyre, tuned to we know not what dispirited echoes of the muse of captive Israel. We know that you love to sing in a minor key-success to you, since fashion applauds-but, nevertheless, O Heraclitus! your proposition concerning our philosopher must be, minor and major, demolished ere we have done with you.

In the first place, let us dispose of the charge of obscenity, which might prejudice some unsophisticated readers. Granted that Montaigne occasionally (though rarely for the times in which he lived) lets slip a word or two not to be mentioned to ears polite of this century. We by no means insist that Montaigne's works shall be forced upon the leisure of all classes, and all ages. But if his occasional indulgence of a freedom of expression, which shocked not even the moral sense of the most fastidious beauty of the sixteenth century, is sufficient to "wound the delicacy" of M. de Lamartine's "sensibility," why, surely, he had better close the book unread. Now watch the sequence; see if the argument does not prove too much. Not only must he deprive himself of the pleasure of reading the entertaining Montaigne, but the glorious Rabelais, the pleasing Marat, the god-like Molière, the chaste Racine himself. (Vide Plaideurs). In fact the whole literature of his country-age, and of every other country-up to a very recent period of questionable improvement, must re

main forever a sealed book to his "delicate sensibility." Nay, we will further

go

the whole array of the immortal classics of either language is disfigured with "stain upon the soul." The fathers of the church must not be consulted by persons so delicately framed as M. de Lamartine. The pious and eloquent Saint Augustine would shock his nerves. The holy Scriptures themselves contain passages not sufficiently gauged over for his immaculate eye. While he must be forever debarred from studying, in the originals, the merits or demerits of the reformers, for nothing can be more obscene than the vituperation of Martin Luther, except it be the vituperation of some of his adversaries.

of his mind in matters of pure abstract faith, and see whether he advocates that inquiry should be carried beyond the limits of human ken. The sincerity of his religious professions has been questioned. His characteristic "Que sais-je ?" has been appealed to as expressing a great deal more than a candid avowal of ignorance, and some passages there are in his writings which would bear rather hard against him in an Inquisitorial Court.* Yet it seems scarcely fair to single out isolated passages of a work composed at intervals during a period of many years, any more than it would be to write out M. de Lamartine's political catechism from his earlier "Meditations." For our own part, after a careful inquiry, we have arrived at the conclusion that Montaigne was a pure minded, sincere christrian, however much he might deprecate religious war, and doubt the policy of both the contending parties. Out of hundreds of passages which we could adduce from his writings, we select the following, which serves as a fair specimen of his desultory manner, at the same time that it affords indications of his proneness to inquire and discriminate.

"Things unknown† are the principal and true field of imposture, forasmuch as, in the first place, their very strangeness lends them credit; and moreover, by not being subjected to our ordinary reason, they deprive us of the means to question and dispute them. On which account, says Plato, it is much more easy to satisfy the hearers when speaking of the nature of the gods than of the nature of men, because the ignorance of the auditory affords a fair and large career, and all manner of liberty in the handling of recondite things; and thence comes to pass that nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know; nor any people so confident as those who entertain us with fables, such as your alchymists, judicial astrologers, fortune tellers, physicians, and id genus omne. To whom I could willingly if I durst, join a set of people who

take upon them to interpret and control the designs of God himself, making a business of finding out the cause of every accident, and of prying into the secrets of the divine will, there to discover the incomprehensible motives of his work. And although the variety and the continual discordance of events throw them from corner to corner, and toss them from east to west, yet do they still persist in their vain inquisition, and with the same pencil paint black and white. In a nation of the Indies, there is a commendable custom that when anything befalls them amiss in any encounter or battle, they publicly ask pardon of the Sun, who is their God, as having committed an unjust action, always imputing their good or evil fortune to the divine justice, and to that submitting their own judgment and

reason.

'Tis enough for a christian to believe that all things come from God, to receive them with acknowledgement of his divine and inscrutable wisdom, and thankfully to accept and receive them with what face they may soever present themselves."

We submit that the above extract scarcely shows any disposition to doubt for doubt's sake. The purest minded christian might endorse it as it stands. The truth seems to be that the judicious Montaigne, whose calm reasoning could dissect the secret motives of men, whose penetrating mind saw through all the hypocrisies of the world, and estimated their real worth; the sensible Montaigne who avowed that "Distinguo was the universal part of his Logic," was a thorough going conservative by principle, in politics, religion, and legislation. On these subjects he deprecated abrupt reform and useless agitation. He wished to see evils corrected by a slow and gradual process. To his sovereign he professed an affection without enthusiasm, "purely legitimate and political, neither attached nor repelled by private interests.' He sought no place at court, although always welcome there, and enjoying in high quarters an influence which few could boast. Though a firm Catholic, and an eye-witness of one of the fiercest wars ever waged in the name of religion, he abstained from taking any share in the struggle. Nevertheless he enjoyed the esteem of both parties to such an extent that they united in requesting him to write the chronicle of that distracted age; "I am solicited," he says, "to write the affairs of my own time by some who fancy I look upon them with an eye less blinded

with prejudice or partiality than another, and have a clearer insight into them, by reason of the free access fortune has given me to the heads of both factions; but they do not consider that to purchase the glory of Sallust, I would not give myself the trouble, sworn enemy as I am to all obligation, assiduity, and perseverance; besides that there is nothing so contrary to my style as a continued and extended narrative, I so often interrupt and cut myself short in my writing solely for want of

breath."

We cannot refrain from transcribing the following passage at length; it is in point, and truly Montaigne-like.

"A man may say, with some color of truth, that there is an abecedarian ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes after it; an ignorance which knowledge creates and begets, as she despatches and destroys the first. Of simple understandings, little inquisitive, and little instructed, are made good christians, who by reverence and obedience implicitly believe, and are constant in their belief. In the moderate understandings, and the middle sort of capacities, error of opinions is begot. They follow the appearance of the first sense, and have some color of reason on their side, to impute our walking in the old beaten path to simplicity and stupidity. I mean in us who have not informed ourselves by study. The higher and nobler souls, more solid and clear-sighted, make up another sort of true believers, who by a long and religious investigation, have obtained a clearer and more penetrating light into the scriptures, and have discovered the mysterious and divine secret of our ecclesiastical polity. The simple peasants are good people, and so are the philosophers. **** The mongrels, who have disdained the first form of the ignorance of letters, and have not been able to attain the latter, (sitting betwixt two stools, as I and a great many more of us do,) are dangerous, foolish, and troublesome; these are they that disturb the world. And

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With such feelings, and in such a spirit, Montaigne lived and died a strict Catholic, punctual in the observance of the forms of his religion, gently chiding the inconsiderate zeal which, in the name of a God of Peace, covered with blood the fair fields of France, but declining to take part in the contest, either by drawing the sword or by arguing the abstraction which arrayed Huguenot against Catholic. Many a time did the fierce tide of war sweep past the walls of the old chateau where Montaigne rehearsed for posterity," the good lessons which our mother nature teaches us," without harming the philosopher, or disturbing the serenity of his leisure. For, as he says, there is nothing in this world he was so much afraid of as fear. His speculations on the comparative traquillity in which he was permitted to live are characteristic.

"Peradventure the facility of entering my house has been a means to preserve it from the violence of our civil wars; defence allures an enemy, and mistrust provokes him. I enervated the soldiers' design by depriving the exploit of danger and all matter of military glory, which is wont to serve them for pretence and excuse. Whatever is bravely done is honorably done, at a time when justice is. dead. I render then the conquest of my house cowardly and base; it is never shut to any one that knocks. My gate has no other guard. than a porter, and that of ancient custom and ceremony who does not so much serve to defend it as to offer it with more decency and the better grace. I have no other guard or sentinel than the stars. A gentleman would play the fool to make a show of defence if he be not really in a condition to defend him-. self. He that lies open on one side is everywhere so. Our ancestors did not think of building frontier garrisons. * That so many garrisoned houses have been lost, whereas this of mine remains, makes me apt to suspect that they were only lost by being guarded; this gives an enemy both an invitation and color of reason; all defence shows a face of war. Let who will, come to me in God's name; but I shall not invite them. 'Tis retirement I have chosen for my repose from

war.

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I endeavor to withdraw this corner from the public tempest, as I also do another corner of my soul. Our war may put on what forms it will, multiply and diversify it