Henri III proceeded to make the wrong decision three times over. First he did nothing when he should have done something. Then, to compensate, he overreacted. On the night of May 11, he posted royal troops all over the city as if getting ready for all-out battle, possibly even a ma.s.sacre of Guise"s supporters. In alarm and fury, crowds of Leaguists poured out and blocked off streets, ready to defend themselves. What followed became known as the "Day of the Barricades."
Henri III now made his third mistake. He retreated in a panic, showing the very combination of weakness and excess that Montaigne considered disastrous, especially when dealing with a mob. The king pleaded with Guise to calm his supporters; Guise rode through the streets, supposedly to comply with the request but actually stirring up the crowds further. Riots ensued. "I have never seen such a furious debauch of the people," Montaigne"s friend etienne Pasquier wrote in a letter afterwards. It looked like another St. Bartholomew, but there was less killing and, this time, there was a specific goal, which was achieved quickly. By the end of the next day, Pasquier said, "everything had become so quiet again that you would have said it had been a dream." It was not a dream: Paris awoke to a changed reality. The king had fled his city. Slipping out so quietly that hardly anyone noticed, he had gone to Chartres and left Paris to Guise.
Having abandoned his city without a fight, Henri III was now a king in exile. He had virtually abdicated, though his supporters still recognized him as their monarch. Guise ordered him to accept the cardinal de Bourbon as his successor; Henri had no choice but to agree. There was no shortage of people ready to point out to him how this disaster had occurred. He had missed his one chance to take Guise out of the picture, either by arresting him or, more conclusively, by having him killed. Montaigne, still a loyal monarchist, joined the king in Charters. When Henri later moved on to Rouen, Montaigne went too. It is not surprising; the alternative would have been to remain with the Leaguists in Paris, or to back out entirely and go home. He did neither, but eventually he did part company with the king and returned to Paris in July 1588. He was ill at the time, being stricken by gout or rheumatism: an attack so bad that he was bedridden during part of his stay.
He would have expected to be left unmolested there, having probably gone for nothing more seditious than a meeting with his publishers-he had recently finished work on his final volume. But Paris was not the right place for anyone a.s.sociated with the king. While Montaigne was resting in bed one afternoon, still very unwell, armed men burst in and seized him on League orders. The motive may have been revenge for a recent incident in Rouen, when Henri III had ordered the arrest of a Leaguist in similar circ.u.mstances: that at least was Montaigne"s theory, as he recorded it in his Beuther diary. They took him, mounted on his own horse, to the Bastille, and locked him up.
In the Essays Essays, Montaigne had written of his horror of captivity: No prison has received me, not even for a visit. Imagination makes the sight of one, even from the outside, unpleasant to me. I am so sick for freedom, that if anyone should forbid me access to some corner of the Indies, I should live distinctly less comfortably.
To be thrown into the Bastille, especially while ill, was a shock. Yet Montaigne had reason to hope that he would not be there for too long-and he wasn"t. After five hours, Catherine de" Medici came to the rescue. She too was now in Paris, hoping as usual to sort out the crisis by getting everyone talking, beginning with Guise, with whom she was in conversation when the news of Montaigne"s arrest arrived. She immediately asked Guise to arrange for Montaigne"s release. With evident reluctance, he complied.
Guise"s orders went off to the commander of the Bastille, but even this did not suffice at first. The commander insisted on having confirmation from the prevot des marchands prevot des marchands, Michel Marteau, sieur de La Chapelle, who in turn sent his message of consent via another powerful man, Nicolas de Neufville, seigneur de Villeroy. Thus, in the end, it took four powerful people to get Montaigne freed. His own understanding of it was that he was "released by an unheard-of favor" and only after "much insistence" from Catherine de" Medici. She must have liked him; the duc de Guise probably didn"t, but even he could see that Montaigne deserved special consideration.
Montaigne stayed in Paris for just a short while after this. The pain in his joints receded, but another illness struck him soon after. It was probably an attack of kidney stones, a condition from which he still suffered with little respite, and which he had so often feared might kill him. On this occasion, it nearly did. His friend Pierre de Brach described the episode some years later, in a highly Stoic-flavored letter to Justus Lipsius: When we were together in Paris a few years ago, and the doctors despairing of his life and he hoping only for death, I saw him, when death stared him in the face from close up, push her well away by his disdain for the fear she brings. What fine arguments to content the ear, what fine teachings to make the soul wise, what resolute firmness of courage to make the most fearful secure, did that man then display! I never heard a man speak better, or better resolved to do what the philosophers have said on this point, without the weakness of his body having beaten down any of the vigor of his soul.
Brach"s account is conventional, but it does suggest that Montaigne had, to some extent, come to terms with his mortality since the days of his riding accident. He had been through a great deal since then, and his kidney-stone attacks had forced him into close encounters with death on a regular basis. These, too, were confrontations on a battlefield. Death was bound to prove the stronger party in the end, but Montaigne stood up to it for the moment.
While recuperating, Montaigne went to see a new friend he had met in Paris the previous year: Marie de Gournay, an enthusiastic reader of his work who invited him to stay with her family at her chateau in Picardy. This provided a welcome resting place. In the meantime, the new edition of the Essays Essays had come out, and already he was thinking of new additions he would like to make to it, perhaps in the light of his recent experiences. He began adding notes to the freshly printed copy, sometimes alone, sometimes with secretarial help from Gournay and others. had come out, and already he was thinking of new additions he would like to make to it, perhaps in the light of his recent experiences. He began adding notes to the freshly printed copy, sometimes alone, sometimes with secretarial help from Gournay and others.
Once he was fully recovered, around November of that year, Montaigne moved on to Blois, where the king was attending a meeting of the national legislative a.s.sembly known as the Estates-General, together with Guise. The aim was supposed to be further negotiation, but Henri III had gone beyond that. A king without a kingdom, he was feeling desperate. And he had spent six months listening to advisers remind him that it could all have been different had he wiped Guise out when he had the chance.
Now, with Guise in the Blois castle with him, the opportunity arose again and Henri decided to correct his mistake. On December 23, he invited Guise to his private chamber for a talk. Guise agreed, although his advisers warned him that it was dangerous. As he entered the private room beside Henri III"s bedchamber, several royal guardsmen leaped out from hiding places, slammed the door behind him, and stabbed him to death. Once again, to the shock even of his own supporters this time, the king had gone from one extreme to another, bypa.s.sing Montaigne"s zone of judicious moderation in the middle.
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Although Montaigne had come to Blois to join the king"s entourage, there is no suggestion that he knew anything about the murder plot. In the days before the incident, he had been rather enjoying himself, catching up with old friends such as Jacques-Auguste de Thou and etienne Pasquier-although the latter had the irritating habit of dragging Montaigne off to his room to point out all the stylistic errors in the latest edition of the Essays Essays. Montaigne listened politely, and ignored everything Pasquier said, just as he had done with the officials of the Inquisition.
Pasquier, more emotionally volatile than Montaigne, fell into a black depression when he heard about the killing of Guise. "Oh, miserable spectacle!" he wrote to a friend. "I have long been nurturing a melancholic humor within me, which I must now vomit into your lap. I fear, I believe, that I am witnessing the end of our republic...the king will lose his crown, or will see his kingdom turned completely upside down." Montaigne was not given to such dramatic talk, but he too must have felt shocked. The worst of it, for a politique politique, was that this cold-blooded and mistimed killing threw serious doubt on the moral status of the king, whom the politiques politiques considered the focus for all hopes of stability. considered the focus for all hopes of stability.
Henri III had apparently thought a surgical strike would end his troubles, rather like Charles IX in the run-up to the St. Bartholomew"s ma.s.sacres. Instead, the death of Guise radicalized Leaguists further, and a new revolutionary body in Paris, the Council of Forty, p.r.o.nounced Henri III tyrannical. The Sorbonne inquired of the Pope whether it were theologically permissible to kill a king who had sacrificed his legitimacy. The Pope said not, but Leaguist preachers and lawyers argued that any private person who felt suffused with zeal and called to the task by G.o.d could do the deed anyway. "Tyrant" was the word always in the air, but, unlike La Boetie in On Voluntary Servitude On Voluntary Servitude, the preachers did not call for pa.s.sive resistance and peaceful withdrawal of consent. They unleashed a fatwa. If Henri was the Devil"s agent on earth, as a flood of propaganda publications now proclaimed, killing him was a holy duty.
The agitation in Paris in 1589 overflowed into every aspect of life. Protestant chronicler Pierre L"Estoile wrote of a city gone mad: For today, to mug one"s neighbor, ma.s.sacre one"s nearest relatives, rob the altars, profane the churches, rape women and young girls, ransack everybody, is the ordinary practice of a Leaguer and the infallible mark of a zealous Catholic; always to have religion and the ma.s.s on one"s lips, but atheism and robbery in one"s heart, and murder and blood on one"s hands.
Signs and portents sprang forth everywhere; even Montaigne"s usually levelheaded friend Jacques Auguste de Thou saw a snake with two heads emerge from a woodpile, and read omens into it. Just when the situation looked as if it could get no worse, Catherine de" Medici died, on January 5, 1589. With his mother gone, Henri III was alone, protected from the hatred around him only by his underpaid troops and those politiques politiques who felt obliged to stay on his side as a matter of principle. who felt obliged to stay on his side as a matter of principle.
As always, it was the politiques politiques who attracted everyone else"s distrust. It did not help matters for someone like Montaigne to point out, in cool and measured tones, that the League and the radical Huguenots had now become virtually indistinguishable from each other: who attracted everyone else"s distrust. It did not help matters for someone like Montaigne to point out, in cool and measured tones, that the League and the radical Huguenots had now become virtually indistinguishable from each other: This proposition, so solemn, whether it is lawful for a subject to rebel and take arms against his prince in defense of religion-remember in whose mouths, this year just past, the affirmative was the b.u.t.tress of one party, the negative was the b.u.t.tress of what other party; and hear now from what quarter comes the voice and the instruction of both sides, and whether the weapons make less din for this cause than for that.
As for the idea of holy a.s.sa.s.sination, how could anyone think that killing a king would get one to heaven? How could salvation come from "the most express ways that we have of very certain d.a.m.nation"? At some point during this period, Montaigne lost what remained of his taste for politics. He left Blois around the beginning of 1589. By the end of January, he was back in his estate and his library. There, he remained active, liaising with Matignon-still lieutenant-general of the area as well as the new mayor of Bordeaux-but he appears to have sworn off diplomatic traveling from now on. Ironically, just after he gave up, Henri III and Navarre did at last come to the long-awaited rapprochement rapprochement. They joined forces and prepared to besiege the capital in the summer of 1589.
But this was yet another of the king"s mistakes. The Leaguists in the city realized that, with the armies a.s.sembling in camps outside their gates, Henri III was within their reach. A young Dominican friar named Jacques Clement received G.o.d"s command to act. Pretending to carry a message from secret supporters in the city, he came to the camp on August 1 and was admitted to see the king, who was sitting on the toilet at the time-a common way for royals to receive visitors. Clement pulled out a dagger and just had time to stab the seated king in the abdomen before he himself was killed by the guards. Slowly, over several hours, Henri bled to death. One of his last acts was to confirm Navarre as his heir, though he repeated the condition that Navarre return to the Catholic Church.
News of the king"s death was greeted with jubilation in Paris. In Rome, even Pope Sixtus V praised Clement"s action. Navarre agreed, at last, to revert to Catholicism. At first, some Catholics still refused to recognize him, especially members of the Paris parlement parlement, who insisted that Bourbon was their king. For a while, there were two different realities, depending on which side you were on. But slowly, patiently, Navarre won out. He became the undisputed king of France as Henri IV: the monarch who would eventually find a way of ending the civil wars and imposing unity, mostly through sheer power of personality. He was the king the politiques politiques had always hoped for. had always hoped for.
Having always had a friendly relationship with Navarre, Montaigne would now find himself drawn again into a semi-official role as adviser to Henri IV-an astonishingly outspoken adviser, as it turned out. Montaigne wrote to Henri to offer his services, as etiquette demanded; Henri responded on November 30, 1589, by summoning Montaigne to Tours, the temporary location of his court. The letter either traveled very slowly, or Montaigne let it sit on the mantelpiece for a long while, for his answer is dated January 18, 1590-too late to obey the command. Allegiance was all right in theory, but Montaigne was determined not to travel, especially as his health was now worse than ever. He explained to the king that, alas, the letter had been delayed; he repeated his congratulations, and said that he looked forward to seeing the king win further support.
This part of the letter was conventional enough, but then Montaigne added some tougher advice. Still speaking with formal deference, he told the new king that he should have been less indulgent recently to the soldiers in his army. He should impose his authority but, at the same time, make conquests through "clemency and magnanimity," since these are better lures for winning people over than threats. The king must be strong, but he must also show trust in people, and be loved rather than feared.
He wrote another letter on September 2, after Henri had again asked Montaigne to travel, this time to go to see Matignon. He offered to pay Montaigne"s expenses. But, again, Montaigne waited for a leisurely six weeks before replying, then claimed to have only just received the letter. He had in fact written to Matignon three times already, proposing to visit him, he said, but Matignon had not sent an answer. Perhaps, suggested Montaigne, Matignon wished to spare him the dangers and length of the journey, considering "the length and hazard of the roads." The hint is clear: Henri IV ought to show the same consideration. Montaigne also took umbrage at the offer of money.
I have never received any gift whatsoever from the liberality of kings, any more than I have asked it or deserved it; and I have received no payment for the steps I have taken in their service, of which Your Majesty has had partial knowledge. What I have done for your predecessors I will do still more willingly for you. I am, Sire, as rich as I wish to be. When I have exhausted my purse with Your Majesty in Paris, I will make bold to tell you so.
This seems an astonishingly a.s.sertive way to talk to a king-but Montaigne was aging and ill (he had a fever at the time), and he had been close to the king for long enough to speak openly. In the Essays Essays, he wrote: "I look upon our kings simply with a loyal and civic affection, which is neither moved nor removed by private interest...This is what makes me walk everywhere head high, face and heart open." His letter to Henri IV shows that he was as good as his word. Indeed, he comes across in both letters exactly as he does in the Essays: Essays: blunt, unimpressed by power, and determined to preserve his freedom. blunt, unimpressed by power, and determined to preserve his freedom.
Montaigne may have detected the first signs of what was to become a feature of Henri IV"s reign: the king"s tendency to make a cult of himself. He was strong, which was what the country needed after its series of feeble and self-indulgent kings, but he was not subtle. Short speeches and quick, decisive action were his style. Instead of washing regularly and using forks to eat with, like Henri III, he was filthy, the way a real man should be, and reportedly stank like rotting meat. He had charisma. Montaigne liked the idea of a strong king, but he had no love for mystique. In the Essays Essays, he wrote of Henri IV with judicious approval rather than mindless devotion; similar reservations come across in his letters. And he won this particular battle, for he never did travel to join Henri IV.
In early 1595, too late for Montaigne to know about it, Henri IV successfully managed to start a war against an external enemy, Spain, and thus begin to drain off the energies of the civil wars, which ended at last in 1598. France started to build up a real collective ident.i.ty, though still a fragile one, mostly centered on the person of Henri himself. Many were pa.s.sionately loyal to him, but others hated him just as pa.s.sionately. He too was eventually a.s.sa.s.sinated, stabbed to death by the fanatical Catholic Francois Ravaillac in 1610.
Among his contributions to history was the Edict of Nantes, proclaimed on April 13, 1598, which guaranteed freedom of conscience and some freedom of worship to both sides of the religious divide. Unlike earlier conciliatory treaties, this one succeeded, for a while. From being the land worst afflicted by religious differences, France became the first Western European country formally to recognize two different forms of Christianity. In a speech to parlement parlement on February 7, 1599, Henri made it clear that the edict was not based on a weak desire to please, as previous ones had been, and should not be taken as a license to cause trouble. "I shall nip in the bud all factions and all seditious preaching; and I shall behead all those who encourage it." on February 7, 1599, Henri made it clear that the edict was not based on a weak desire to please, as previous ones had been, and should not be taken as a license to cause trouble. "I shall nip in the bud all factions and all seditious preaching; and I shall behead all those who encourage it."
Imposed so forcefully, with the kind of forthright confidence Montaigne would have appreciated, the Edict of Nantes endured for almost a century, until 1685, when its revocation sent a wave of Huguenot refugees to England and other places. Among these were many Montaigne readers, including Pierre Coste, the man whose samizdat edition of the Essays Essays would eventually sneak back home across the Channel and promote a revolutionary new Montaigne to his troubled countrymen. would eventually sneak back home across the Channel and promote a revolutionary new Montaigne to his troubled countrymen.
16. Q. How to live? A. Philosophize only by accident
FIFTEEN ENGLISHMEN AND AN IRISHMAN.
STRANGELY, THROUGHOUT THE century leading up to Montaigne"s rebranding by Coste in 1724-a period in which the century leading up to Montaigne"s rebranding by Coste in 1724-a period in which the Essays Essays had a hard time in France-the English never ceased to admire him. They were the first outside France to adopt Montaigne, and they came to consider him almost one of their own. Something in the English mentality put them instantly on the same wavelength; forever more they continued to chime harmoniously on that wavelength in apparent indifference to intellectual changes going on elsewhere. had a hard time in France-the English never ceased to admire him. They were the first outside France to adopt Montaigne, and they came to consider him almost one of their own. Something in the English mentality put them instantly on the same wavelength; forever more they continued to chime harmoniously on that wavelength in apparent indifference to intellectual changes going on elsewhere.
It seems worth pausing the story of Montaigne"s "afterlife" for a moment (running alongside the main life story, and currently suspended in the mid-nineteenth century, a chapter ago) to take a quick tour through several hundred years of his fortunes on the other side of the Channel-a place to which he seems never to have thought of traveling, and where he would have been most surprised to find himself taken in as a refugee, especially since it was a Protestant country.
Religion was one of the reasons why many English readers, from the late seventeenth century on, felt so free to enjoy Montaigne. It was of no concern to English Protestants when the Church put his book on the Index Index. It even allowed them to enjoy the pleasant feeling of getting one up on Catholics and, more gratifyingly still, on the French. The latter could be portrayed as a people unable to recognize their own best writers, especially after the French Academie began imposing rigorous standards of cla.s.sical elegance on all its literature. A "free and unruly" writer (as Montaigne described himself) had no place in the new French aesthetics, but the English language welcomed him like a prodigal son. As the exuberant and anarchic home of Chaucer and Shakespeare, English seemed the right language for such an author. Lord Halifax, a dedicatee of one seventeenth-century edition, observed that to translate Montaigne "is not only a valuable acquisition to us, but a just censure of the critical impertinence of those French scribblers who have taken pains to make little cavils and exceptions to lessen the reputation of this great man, whom nature hath made too big to confine himself to the exactness of a studied style." And the essayist William Hazlitt managed to squeeze Montaigne, as well as Rabelais, into a piece called "On Old English Writers and Speakers." He justified their inclusion thus: "But these we consider as in a great measure English, or as what the old French character inclined to, before it was corrupted by courts and academies of criticism."
If they liked the Essays" Essays" style, English readers were even more charmed by its content. Montaigne"s preference for details over abstractions appealed to them; so did his distrust of scholars, his preference for moderation and comfort, and his desire for privacy-the "room behind the shop." On the other hand, the English also had a taste for travel and exoticism, as did Montaigne. He could show unexpected bursts of radicalism in the very midst of quiet conservatism: so could they. Much of the time he was happier watching his cat play by the fireside-and so were the English. style, English readers were even more charmed by its content. Montaigne"s preference for details over abstractions appealed to them; so did his distrust of scholars, his preference for moderation and comfort, and his desire for privacy-the "room behind the shop." On the other hand, the English also had a taste for travel and exoticism, as did Montaigne. He could show unexpected bursts of radicalism in the very midst of quiet conservatism: so could they. Much of the time he was happier watching his cat play by the fireside-and so were the English.
Then there was his philosophy, if you could call it that. The English were not born philosophers; they did not like to speculate about being, truth, and the cosmos. When they picked up a book they wanted anecdotes, odd characters, witty sallies, and a touch of fantasy. As Virginia Woolf said a propos a propos Sir Thomas Browne, one of many English authors who wrote in a Montaignean vein, "The English mind is naturally p.r.o.ne to take its ease and pleasure in the loosest whimsies and humors." This is why William Hazlitt praised Montaigne in terms guaranteed to appeal to an unphilosophical nation: Sir Thomas Browne, one of many English authors who wrote in a Montaignean vein, "The English mind is naturally p.r.o.ne to take its ease and pleasure in the loosest whimsies and humors." This is why William Hazlitt praised Montaigne in terms guaranteed to appeal to an unphilosophical nation: In taking up his pen he did not set up for a philosopher, wit, orator, or moralist, but he became all these by merely daring to tell us whatever pa.s.sed through his mind, in its naked simplicity and force.
On one of the rare occasions when Montaigne referred to himself as a philosopher at all, it was to say that it happened only by chance: he was an "unpremeditated and accidental philosopher." He spent so many pages rambling through his thoughts that he was bound to blunder into some great cla.s.sical theory here and there. The practical philosophy of how to live interested him, but that was different. All this, on the whole, applied equally to the English.
Much of his success there, however, may have been a matter of happy chance rather than deep affinity, as befits an accidental man. The Essays Essays happened to find an excellent English translator from the beginning, in a man named John Florio. This made all the difference. happened to find an excellent English translator from the beginning, in a man named John Florio. This made all the difference.
The fact that Florio should have been the first to bring out the hidden Englishman in Montaigne is all the more remarkable because he himself was a multicultural wanderer of a most un-English sensibility. He is usually described as an Italian, although his mother was English and he was born in London in 1553, so he was English more than anything else. But he had an Italian father, Michele Agnolo Florio, a language tutor and author who had come to England as a Protestant refugee many years earlier. When the Catholic Mary Tudor came to the throne, the Florio family found themselves in exile again, and drifted around Europe, which is how the young John picked up so many languages. Once more in England as an adult, he made his name by teaching French and Italian, and by publishing a series of conversational primers as well as a successful Englis.h.i.talian dictionary.
He translated the Essays Essays on the urging of a rich patron, the Countess of Bedford, who also supplied him with a horde of friends and collaborators to help with tracing quotations and promoting the book. Florio repaid the help with ornate dedications, in some cases so elaborate that the dedicatees could hardly have made head or tail of them. A sentence from his epistle to the Countess of Bedford reads: on the urging of a rich patron, the Countess of Bedford, who also supplied him with a horde of friends and collaborators to help with tracing quotations and promoting the book. Florio repaid the help with ornate dedications, in some cases so elaborate that the dedicatees could hardly have made head or tail of them. A sentence from his epistle to the Countess of Bedford reads: So do hir attributes accord to your demerites; whereof to runne a long-breathed careere, both so faire and large a field might envite mee, and my in-burning spirits would encite mee, if I were not held-in by your sweete reining hand (who have ever helde this desire, sooner to exceede what you are thought, then be thought what you are not) have ever helde this desire, sooner to exceede what you are thought, then be thought what you are not) or should I not prejudice by premonstration your a.s.sured advantage, or should I not prejudice by premonstration your a.s.sured advantage, When your value shall come to the weighing When your value shall come to the weighing.
This was typical of what happened when Florio was left to run on unchecked. Like Montaigne, he wrote by exuding ever more complex thoughts as a spider exudes silk. But while Montaigne always moves forward, Florio winds back on himself and scrunches his sentences into ever tighter baroque spirals until their meaning disappears in a puff of syntax. The real magic happens when the two writers meet. Montaigne"s earthiness holds Florio"s convolutions in check, while Florio gives Montaigne an Elizabethan English quality, as well as a lot of sheer fun. Where Montaigne writes, "Our Germans, drowned in wine" (nos Allemans, noyez dan le vin), Florio has "our carowsing tospot German souldiers, when they are most plunged in their cups, and as drunke as Rats." A phrase which the modern translator Donald Frame renders calmly as "werewolves, goblins, and chimeras" emerges from Floriation as "Larves, Hobgoblins, Robbin-good-fellowes, and other such Bug-beares and Chimeraes"-a piece of pure Midsummer Night"s Dream Midsummer Night"s Dream.
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Shakespeare and Florio did know one another, and Shakespeare was among the first readers of the Essays Essays translation. He may even have read parts in ma.n.u.script before it went to press; signs of Montaigne seem faintly discernible in translation. He may even have read parts in ma.n.u.script before it went to press; signs of Montaigne seem faintly discernible in Hamlet Hamlet, which predates Florio"s edition. A much later play, The Tempest The Tempest, contains one pa.s.sage so close to Florio that there can be no doubt of his having read it. Eulogizing his vision of a perfect society in the state of nature, Shakespeare"s Gonzalo says: I"th" commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things, for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; No occupation, all men idle, all.
Which is remarkably like what Montaigne says about the Tupinamba, in Florio"s translation: It is a nation...that hath no kind of traffike, no knowledge of Letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politike superioritie; no use of service, of riches, or of povertie; no contracts, no successions, no part.i.tions, no occupation but idle; no respect of kindred, but common, no apparell but naturall, no manuring of lands, no use of wine, corn, or mettle.
Ever since this obvious parallel was spotted by Edward Capell in the late eighteenth century, it has become a popular sport to hunt out signs of influence in other Shakespeare plays. The most promising is certainly Hamlet Hamlet, for its hero often sounds like a Montaigne given a dramatic dilemma to solve and set upon a stage. When Montaigne writes, "We are, I know not how, double within ourselves," or describes himself with the incoherent torrent of adjectives "bashful, insolent; chaste, lascivious; talkative, taciturn; tough, delicate; clever, stupid; surly, affable; lying, truthful; learned, ignorant, liberal, miserly, and prodigal," he could be voicing a monologue from the play. He also observes that anyone who thinks too much about all the circ.u.mstances and consequences of an action makes it impossible to do anything at all-a neat summary of Hamlet"s main problem in life.
The similarities may just be because both writers were attuned to the atmosphere of their shared late-Renaissance world, with all its confusion and irresolution. Montaigne and Shakespeare have each been held up as the first truly modern modern writers, capturing that distinctive modern sense of being unsure where you belong, who you are, and what you are expected to do. The Shakespearean scholar J. M. Robertson believed that all literature since these two authors could be interpreted as an elaboration of their joint theme: the discovery of self-divided consciousness. writers, capturing that distinctive modern sense of being unsure where you belong, who you are, and what you are expected to do. The Shakespearean scholar J. M. Robertson believed that all literature since these two authors could be interpreted as an elaboration of their joint theme: the discovery of self-divided consciousness.
The parallels cannot be taken too far. For one thing, Shakespeare was a dramatist rather than an essayist. He can divide his contradictions between characters and put them into conflict on stage; Montaigne must contain all contradictions within himself. Another difference is that Montaigne does not sit all alone on top of the canon in his native land as Shakespeare does in England. He has therefore attracted less jealousy, and no iconoclasts have come to push him off his pedestal by claiming that he did not write his own Essays Essays, as has so often happened with Shakespeare.
Or almost no one. Among the few exceptions is one of the major nineteenth-century "anti-Stratfordians," or Shakespeare-doubters: Ignatius Donnelly. At the end of a large opus arguing that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare"s plays, Donnelly adds extra chapters proving that Bacon also wrote Montaigne"s Essays Essays, as well as Robert Burton"s Anatomy of Melancholy Anatomy of Melancholy and all of Christopher Marlowe"s work. He finds clues planted throughout the and all of Christopher Marlowe"s work. He finds clues planted throughout the Essays Essays, such as a pa.s.sage in which Montaigne writes, "Whoever shall cure a child of an obstinate aversion to bread, bacon bacon, or garlic, will cure him of all kind of delicacy." The name Francis occurs several times in the text, admittedly always in the French form Francois and generally denoting the French king Francois I. No matter; this too is a clue. To clinch matters, Donnelly cites a discovery made by a Mrs. Pott, who alerted him to the frequent mention, in Shakespeare"s plays, of mountains, or Mountaines Mountaines. Since Bacon wrote Shakespeare, any reference to Montaigne in the plays must suggest that he wrote the Essays Essays too. "Can anyone believe that all this is the result of accident?" asks Donnelly. too. "Can anyone believe that all this is the result of accident?" asks Donnelly.
He confesses himself baffled by some sections of the Essays Essays that seem pregnant with clues, but which are harder to interpret, notably the story of a young woman who beat her white b.r.e.a.s.t.s after her brother was slain. Donnelly gives up: that seem pregnant with clues, but which are harder to interpret, notably the story of a young woman who beat her white b.r.e.a.s.t.s after her brother was slain. Donnelly gives up: Who is the young lady? There is nothing more about her in the text. And is it the white b.r.e.a.s.t.s that have slain her brother?...And where did the bullet come from? Was it from the white b.r.e.a.s.t.s? It is all nonsense...And there are hundreds of such pa.s.sages.
The Essays" Essays" being in French might seem to pose a problem-but not for Donnelly. His explanation is that Bacon wanted to publish a book of skeptical, religiously unorthodox opinions, yet dared not do so in England, so he arranged for it to appear in the guise of a translation. As luck would have it, Francis Bacon"s brother Anthony was in France at the time and knew Montaigne. He persuaded Montaigne to lend his name to the ruse, while someone else persuaded Florio to play the part of translator. Thus, Bacon wrote it; Montaigne signed it; Florio, presumably, actually translated it-but from English to French. "Montaigne" was indeed an Englishman, in a more literal way than Lord Halifax or William Hazlitt ever dreamed of. being in French might seem to pose a problem-but not for Donnelly. His explanation is that Bacon wanted to publish a book of skeptical, religiously unorthodox opinions, yet dared not do so in England, so he arranged for it to appear in the guise of a translation. As luck would have it, Francis Bacon"s brother Anthony was in France at the time and knew Montaigne. He persuaded Montaigne to lend his name to the ruse, while someone else persuaded Florio to play the part of translator. Thus, Bacon wrote it; Montaigne signed it; Florio, presumably, actually translated it-but from English to French. "Montaigne" was indeed an Englishman, in a more literal way than Lord Halifax or William Hazlitt ever dreamed of.
One aspect of the story has some basis in fact: Anthony Bacon did know Montaigne, and visited him twice, once in the early 1580s and again in 1590. He could easily have brought a copy of the Essays Essays back for his brother, which means that Francis could have read it (in French) before publishing his own collection of back for his brother, which means that Francis could have read it (in French) before publishing his own collection of Essays Essays in 1597. That would explain something that has often puzzled people: how did Bacon and Montaigne come up with the same book t.i.tle within a few years of each other? in 1597. That would explain something that has often puzzled people: how did Bacon and Montaigne come up with the same book t.i.tle within a few years of each other?
It must be said, however, that the t.i.tle is almost the only point of similarity. All the qualities that suggest "Englishness" in Montaigne are resoundingly absent from his English counterpart. Bacon wrote with more intellectual rigor than Montaigne. He was more incisive, more philosophical, and a lot more boring. When he tackled subjects like reading or traveling, he issued orders. This This is what you should read, and is what you should read, and that that is what you must visit on a journey. If ever a subject allowed of division into subtopics, he would so divide it, and he would announce each subdivision in advance before marching through them till he got to the end. One thing you can be sure of with Montaigne is that he will never do this to you. is what you must visit on a journey. If ever a subject allowed of division into subtopics, he would so divide it, and he would announce each subdivision in advance before marching through them till he got to the end. One thing you can be sure of with Montaigne is that he will never do this to you.
Once the ice had been broken by Florio and Bacon, innumerable English books appeared with the word Essays Essays in their t.i.tle. Some were overtly inspired by Florio"s Montaigne, others by Bacon, but in almost every case it was from Montaigne that they took their style of writing and thinking. Very few English essays after the early seventeenth century were philosophically rigorous stabs of thought on important topics; almost all were delightful rambles about nothing in particular. Typical were the works of William Cornwallis, who read Florio in an early ma.n.u.script draft and published sequences of in their t.i.tle. Some were overtly inspired by Florio"s Montaigne, others by Bacon, but in almost every case it was from Montaigne that they took their style of writing and thinking. Very few English essays after the early seventeenth century were philosophically rigorous stabs of thought on important topics; almost all were delightful rambles about nothing in particular. Typical were the works of William Cornwallis, who read Florio in an early ma.n.u.script draft and published sequences of Essayes Essayes in 1600, 1601, 1616 and 1617, exploring such topics as "Of Sleepe," "Of Discontentments," "Of Fantasticknesse," "Of Alehouses," and "Of the Observation, and Use of Things." in 1600, 1601, 1616 and 1617, exploring such topics as "Of Sleepe," "Of Discontentments," "Of Fantasticknesse," "Of Alehouses," and "Of the Observation, and Use of Things."
Even those who did not use the t.i.tle often wrote in a recognizably digressive, personal way. While French literature became ever more poised and formal, England produced a series of oddb.a.l.l.s such as Robert Burton, who described his way of writing, in his vast treatise The Anatomy of Melancholy The Anatomy of Melancholy, as coursing "like a ranging spaniel, that barks at every bird he sees." Even stranger was Sir Thomas Browne, who produced essayistic investigations into medicine, gardens, burial methods, imaginary libraries, and much more in a convoluted baroque style so unlike anyone else"s (even Florio"s) that any Browne sentence is instantly recognizable as his.
At the height of this high-quirkiness phase of Montaigne"s English reception, a new translator came along to straighten things out a little: Charles Cotton, whose new version appeared in 1685 and 1686, not long after the Essays Essays went on the went on the Index Index in France. Cotton was more accurate than Florio, and he brought a new generation of English readers to the in France. Cotton was more accurate than Florio, and he brought a new generation of English readers to the Essays Essays. Surprisingly, the author of this more restrained translation was personally a more wayward and dilettantish character than Florio. Cotton"s main claim to fame in his own day was his scatological burlesque poems. He once described himself as a "Northern clod" whose favorite occupation was drinking ale in the pub all evening before retiring to his library to Write lewd epistles, and sometimes translate Old Tales of Tubs, of Guyen[n]e, and Provence, And keep a clutter with th"old Blades of France.
After his death, Charles Cotton"s posthumous reputation went through transformations as strange as those of Montaigne or Shakespeare, though on a smaller scale. The nineteenth century considered his comic verse obnoxious, and admired him instead for lyrical nature poetry which his own contemporaries had ignored. Later, this too slipped into obscurity. People celebrated him rather for a chapter on trout-tickling which he had contributed to Isaac Walton"s The Compleat Angler The Compleat Angler-a highly Montaignean work in itself. Today this relic of Cotton is forgotten in most quarters-though not among trout-ticklers-and he is remembered as much for his Montaigne work as anything.
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