listering scorn--humour in
all its shapes, carelessly exercised on himself and his readers--with
all this variety, complexity, riot, and contradiction almost of
intellectual forces within, Montaigne wrote his bewildering
Essays--with the exception of Rabelais, the greatest Modern
Frenchman--the creator of a distinct literary form, and to whom, down
even to our own day, even in point of subject-matter, every essayist
has been more or less indebted.

Bacon is the greatest of the serious and stately essayists,--Montaigne
the greatest of the garrulous and communicative. The one gives you his
thoughts on Death, Travel, Government, and the like, and lets you make
the best of them; the other gives you his on the same subjects, but he
wraps them up in personal gossip and reminiscence. With the last it is
never Death or Travel alone: it is always Death one-fourth, and
Montaigne three-fourths; or Travel one-fourth, and Montaigne
three-fourths. He pours his thought into the water of gossip, and
gives you to drink. He gilds his pill always, and he always gilds it
with himself. The general characteristics of his Essays have been
indicated, and it is worth while inquiring what they teach, what
positive good they have done, and why for three centuries they have
charmed, and still continue to charm.

The Essays contain a philosophy of life, which is not specially high,
yet which is certain to find acceptance more or less with men who have
passed out beyond the glow of youth, and who have made trial of the
actual world. The essence of his philosophy is a kind of cynical
common-sense. He will risk nothing in life; he will keep to the beaten
track; he will not let passion blind or enslave him; he will gather
round him what good he can, and will therewith endeavour to be content.
He will be, as far as possible, self-sustained; he will not risk his
happiness in the hands of man, or of woman either. He is shy of
friendship, he fears love, for he knows that both are dangerous. He
knows that life is full of bitters, and he holds it wisdom that a man
should console himself, as far as possible, with its sweets, the
principal of which are peace, travel, leisure, and the writing of
essays. He values obtainable Gascon bread and cheese more than the
unobtainable stars. He thinks crying for the moon the foolishest thing
in the world. He will remain where he is. He will not deny that a new
world may exist beyond the sunset, but he knows