ual ability,
and a keen interest in war and business.

[Sidenote: Montaigne.]

Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne[213], was born, 'between eleven and
twelve o'clock of the day' (the detail is characteristic), on the 28th
of February, 1533, at the _chateau_ from which he derived his name, and
which he has made illustrious. Montaigne is situated in the old province
of Perigord, or, according to modern nomenclature, in the department of
Dordogne and the arrondissement of Bergerac. It is at no great distance
from Bordeaux. The family was long believed from a phrase of Montaigne's
own to have been of English extraction, introduced during the long
tenure of Aquitaine by our sovereigns. But recent and industrious
researches have shown that it may with greater probability have been of
local origin and yeoman _status_. Pierre Eyquem, the father, had filled
many important municipal offices at Bordeaux. Michel was his third son
among nine children, but by the death of his elder brothers he inherited
the family estate. He was educated early, and after the manner of a time
when education was a subject on which almost all men of independent
thought rode hobbies. Latin he learnt by conversation at a very early
age, Greek as a kind of amusement. At the mature age of six he was
placed at the College de Guyenne in Bordeaux, not the least famous of
the famous schools of the time, for there it was that Buchanan, Muretus,
and Guerente, by the Latin plays which they wrote for their scholars to
act, introduced the Senecan drama into France and showed the way to the
French tragedy of the Pleiade. Seven years of study completed
Montaigne's school education at the age of thirteen, when nowadays boys
quit their preparatory cradles. He was set to work at law, but little
positive is known of him for many years. In 1554, being then twenty-one,
he was made counsellor in the Bordeaux _Parlement_, and in 1566 he
married Francoise de la Chassaigne, daughter of one of his colleagues.
Except casual references in the _Essays_, which are seldom precise, all
we know of him during these years is his friendship with Etienne de la
Boetie. He almost certainly served one or more campaigns; but the most
positive thing that can be said of his middle life is that, according to
an existing inscription of his own, he finally retired, in 1571, on his
thirty-eighth birthday, to the _chateau_ which had become his by his
father's death two years previously. He had already