The Complete Essays (199 page)

26
. In his studies of Plato, e.g.
Timaeus
, 37D–38B;
Theaetetus
, 152DE, etc.

27
. Cf.
Montaigne and Melancholy
, p. 125; 101 f.

28
. Ibid., p. 104.

29
. There is a striking parallel between Plutarch’s conception of God and the Christian scholastic doctrines based upon God as revealed to Moses in the burning bush. (Where in English God says
I AM THAT I AM
, in the Greek and in scholastic theology he says
I AM EXISTENCE
or
I AM THE EXISTING ONE.
) Montaigne does not emphasize this: he lets it sink in.

30
. ‘Apology’, p. 683. The full implications of this are not revealed until the last pages of the final chapter of the
Essays
: Book III, Chapter 13, ‘On experience’.

31
. Edward Stillingfleet,
Nature and Grounds of the Certainty of Faith
, 1688, p. 35.

32
. Montaigne,
Journal de voyage en Italie
, ed. Pierre Michel, 1974, pp. 287–8, 310.

33
. Daniel Huët,
Traité philosophique
, 1723, III, 16. Cf. II, 6: ‘What is the End Proposed by the Art of Doubting?’ There are two ends. ‘The proximate end is to avoid error, stubbornness and arrogance. The eventual end is to prepare one’s spirit to receive Faith.’ These are the professed aims of Montaigne.

34
. W. R. Inge, Dean of St Paul’s, in
Faith and Knowledge
, 1905, p. 245;
The Church and the World
, 1927, p. 191;
More Lay Thoughts of. Dean
, 1931, p. 160, aphorism no. 37: ‘Know Thyself is really the sum of wisdom; for he who knows himself knows God.’

35
.
Journal
, pp. 325–6, 330. Newman similarly puzzled and irritated many by this respect for the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham and for Loretto.

36
. Ibid, (note by Pierre Michel, p. 310 n. 184); and his Introduction.

37
. Cited from
Biblia Maxima
, Vol. XV. This exegesis was accepted by scholars of many schools and Churches: cf. for example Matthew Henry,
Exposition of the New Testament
, 1738, vol. 5, commentary on this verse.

38
. Cf. Nicolas of Lyra on Romans 3:10 (
Biblia Maxima
, vol. XV: index, s.v. natura): a man can perform moral acts without grace: he cannot be justified.

39
. In Italian,
Discorsi morali, politici et militari
(Ferrara, 1590). John Florio’s title was:
The Essayes, or Morali, Politike and Millitarie Discourses… of Lo. Michaeli de Montaigne…
(London, 1603).

40
. The balance has been restored for more peaceful generations by an excellent book, happily in English, James Supple’s learned and very readable study,
Arms versus Letters. The Military and Literary Ideals in the ‘Essais’ of Montaigne
, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984.

41
. For example, the expression ‘Life is short but art is long’ is the first of the
Aphorisms
of Hippocrates and means that life is all too brief for anyone who would study
the
Art – medicine.

42
. Montaigne’s illness, ‘the stone’, came suddenly upon him in 1578. It, not unnaturally, changed his attitude to life and put his philosophy to the test. He frequently calls it simply ‘the stone’ or
‘cholique’
. Both these terms (especially the second) risk misleading modern readers, who may fail to grasp their implications of dreadful internal pain and the retention of urine accompanied by paroxysms. I often render his (for us) at best neutral terms not by ‘the stone’ but by ‘colic paroxysms’ to drive home the ghastly pain from which he suffered and which (despite the promptings of Classical Stoicism which would have held suicide to be justified) he bore with resignation and fortitude. In his
Collection of Offices
, 1658, Jeremy Taylor included in his prayer for ‘all them that roar and groane with intolerable paines and noisome diseases’ those who are afflicted ‘with the stone and with the gout, with violent colics and grievous ulcers’. Like Montaigne Jeremy Taylor saw such afflictions as ‘the rod of God’, a cause, indeed, for pity, but to be borne with patience by the sufferer.

1
. ’80: myself out,
with borrowed beauties, or would have tensed and braced myself in my best posture
. Here I want…

2
. ’80: Without
study
or artifice…

3
. Date as in [A] and [C]. In [B]: 12 June 1588.

1
. ’80: means, bravery, steadfastness
and resolution
, have…

2
. The Black Prince (Limoges, 1370). Sources include Froissart, Paolo Giovio,
Vita di Scanderbeg
; Jean Bodin,
Methodus
(Preface); Plutarch (tr. Amyot),
Comment on peut se louer soy mesme
;
Dicts notables des Roys
…;
Instruction pour ceux qui manient les affaires d’estat
; Diodorus Siculus (tr. Amyot),
Histoires
; and Quintus Curtius,
Life of Alexander the Great
.

3
. ’80: disdaining
prayers
and…

4
. Not Zeno, Stheno.

5
. ’80: pierced,
a rope threaded through them
, and,…

6
. ’80: because
strength of courage was so natural and usual to
him…

1
.
Tristesse
in French means sadness.

2
. Erasmus,
Apophthegmata; varie mixta: Diversum Graecorum
, IX (
Opera
, 1703–6, Vol. IV, col. 304EF).

3
. Charles de Guise, Cardinal de Lorraine (at the Council of Trent).

4
. Timanthes (Cicero,
De Oratore
, XXII; Quintillian, II, xiii, 12).

5
. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
, VI, 304.

6
. Virgil,
Aeneid
, XI, 151.

7
. Paolo Giovio,
Historia sui temporis
, 1550, XXXIX.
’95: John of Hungary,
a soldier was particularly remarked by everyone for showing outstanding personal bravery in a certain mêlée in which he fell, unidentified, but highly praised and pitied not least by a German lord called Raïsciac who was impressed by such great valour; when the body was brought back, that Lord, out of common curiosity, drew near to see who the man was. When the armour was stripped off the dead body he realized that it was his son. That increased the compassion of those present. He, without uttering a word or closing his eyes, remained standing, staring fixedly at his son until the vehement force of his sadness overwhelmed his vital spirits
, and toppled him dead to the ground.

8
. Petrarch, Sonnet 137.

9
. Catullus, LI, 5.

10
. ’88: ardour –
an event with which I am not unacquainted
. For pleasures… Seneca (the dramatist),
Hippolitus
, II, iii, 607.

11
. Virgil,
Aeneid
, III, 306.

12
. ’80: to
natural
weakness – (Pliny,
Hist. nat.
, 54, for both anecdotes.)

1
. Seneca,
Epist. moral.
, XCVIII, 5–6.

2
. Plato,
Timaeus
, 72a. Cf. Erasmus,
Adages, Nosce teipsum
(I.VII.XCV).

3
. Cicero,
Tusc. disput.
, V, xviii, 54 (replaced by a French translation in ’95).

4
. Cicero,
Tusc. disput.
, III, xv–xvi, 33–5.

5
. A vague memory of Livy, not a direct allusion.

6
. Tacitus,
Annals
, XV, lxvii.

7
. Herodotus, VI, lxviii.

8
. Aristotle,
Nicomachaean Ethics
, I, 10.

9
. Cf. the last pages of ‘On experience’ (III, 13). Anyone whose soul is transported in ecstasy ‘outside the body’ ceases to exist as Man, since Man is body-plus-soul. His ecstatic soul may have commerce with Being; he, as Man, cannot.

10
. Lucretius, III, 890–5 (adapted).

11
. Jean Bouchet,
Annales d’Acquitaine
(Poitiers, 1557) and Francesco Guicciardini,
L’Histoire d’Italie
(tr. Chomedey, Paris, 1568) XII.

12
. Plutarch,
Lives
of Nicias and of Agesilaus.

13
. Cf. Francisco Lopez de Gomara (tr. Fumée),
L’Histoire générale des Indes
(Paris, 1578), III, xxii. (The example of Vischa was a commonplace).

14
. Martin Du Bellay,
Mémoires
, Paris, 1569, II, p. 59.

15
. ’80: as a
girl
about… (Source of anecdote unknown.)

16
. That is, unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman.

17
. Xenophon,
Cyropaedia
, VIII, vii.

18
. Livy,
Hist.
, Epitome, XLVIII.

19
. Diogenes Laertius,
Life of Lycon
.

20
. ’88: I shall leave it
rather
to custom to order this ceremony,
and, saving such things as are required in the service of my religion, if it be in a place where it be necessary to impose them
, I shall
willingly
entrust myself to the discretion of the first people this
burden
shall fall to… (The sense of the words struck out is supported by the three quotations added in [C], from Cicero,
Tusc. disput.
, I, XIV, 108; St Augustine,
City of God
, I, xii (Vives cites Socrates and other philosophers in his notes); and Cicero, ibid., I, xliii, 103.)

21
. Diodorus Siculus, XIII, xxxi–xxxii; XV, ix.

22
. Seneca (the dramatist),
The Trojan Women
, II, 30.

23
. Ennius, cited by Cicero,
Tusc. Disput.
, I, xliv, 107.
’95 has this addition:
‘Nature thus shows us that several dead things still have some occult
relationships with life: the wine in the cellar varies according to some of the changing
seasons of the vine. And the meat of venison changes its character and flavour according to
the laws governing the flesh of the living deer – so we are told’
. (Renaissance science attributed such changes to the forces of ‘sympathy’ or ‘antipathy’ inherent in all things.)

1
. Lucan,
Pharsalia
, III, 362–3. (This poem is now frequently known by the better title of
The Civil War
.)

2
. Plutarch,
Life of Pericles
.

3
. Lucan,
Pharsalia
, VI, 220–4.

4
. Livy, XXV, xxxvii; of the brothers Publius and Cnaeus Scipio.

5
. Cicero,
Tusc. disput.
, III, xxvi, 63 (not listed by Erasmus in the
Apophthegmata
).

6
. Plutarch,
Comment il faut refrener la cholere
, 57 F-G; Herodotus, VII, xxxv.

7
. Doubtless a King of Castille. Robert Burton cites this in the
Anatomy of Melancholy
after ‘Montanus’, but does not identify the king or country.

8
. Suetonius,
Life of Caesar
, Herodotus, IV, xciv.
’80: address
insults
thus…

9
. Plutarch,
De la tranquillité de l’ame
, 69G.

1
. ’80: Nevertheless
the Roman
Senate,
for whom only superior virtue was deemed a just means of gaining victory, found this trick ugly and dishonourable, not yet having tingling in their ears
that fine saying… (The ‘fine saying’ is from Virgil,
Aeneid
, II, 390, cited by Justus Lipsius,
Politici
, V, as are Polybius and Florus.)