cial life.
In reality, it is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you
say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some single
irradiating word. "But Shadwell never _deviates_ into sense," for
instance. Young Roscius, in his provincial barn, will repeat you the
great soliloquy of Hamlet, and although every word may be given with
tolerable correctness, you find it just as commonplace as himself; the
great actor speaks it, and you "read Shakspeare as by a flash of
lightning." And it is in Montaigne's style, in the strange freaks and
turnings of his thought, his constant surprises, his curious
alternations of humour and melancholy, his careless, familiar form of
address, and the grace with which everything is done, that his charm
lies, and which makes the hundredth perusal of him as pleasant as the
first.

And on style depends the success of the essayist. Montaigne said the
most familiar things in the finest way. Goldsmith could not be termed
a thinker; but everything he touched he brightened, as after a month of
dry weather, the shower brightens the dusty shrubbery of a suburban
villa. The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when
thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be
called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new. Love
is an old story enough, but in every generation it is re-born, in the
downcast eyes and blushes of young maidens. And so, although he
fluttered in Eden, Cupid is young to-day. If Montaigne had lived in
Dreamthorp, as I am now living, had he written essays as I am now
writing them, his English Essays would have been as good as his Gascon
ones. Looking on, the country cart would not for nothing have passed
him on the road to market, the setting sun would be arrested in its
splendid colours, the idle chimes of the church would be translated
into a thoughtful music. As it is, the village life goes on, and there
is no result. My sentences are not much more brilliant than the
speeches of the clowns; in my book there is little more life than there
is in the market-place on the days when there is no market.

OF DEATH AND THE FEAR OF DYING

Let me curiously analyse eternal farewells, and the last pressures of
loving hands. Let me smile at faces bewept, and the nodding plumes and
slow paces of funerals. Let me write down brave heroical
sentences--sentences that defy death, as brazen Goliath the hosts of
I