lity of Sterne? The great authors of
the Port-Royal Logic have raised severe objections to prove that MONTAIGNE
was not quite so open in respect to those simple details which he imagined
might diminish his personal importance with his readers. He pretends that
he reveals all his infirmities and weaknesses, while he is perpetually
passing himself off for something more than he is. He carefully informs us
that he has "a page," the usual attendant of an independent gentleman, and
lives in an old family chateau; when the fact was, that his whole revenue
did not exceed six thousand livres, a state beneath mediocrity. He is also
equally careful not to drop any mention of his having a _clerk with a
bag_; for he was a counsellor of Bordeaux, but affected the gentleman and
the soldier. He trumpets himself forth for having been _mayor_ of
Bordeaux, as this offered an opportunity of telling us that he succeeded
_Marshal_ Biron, and resigned it to _Marshal_ Matignon. Could he have
discovered that any _marshal_ had been a _lawyer_ he would not have sunk
that part of his life. Montaigne himself has said, "that in forming a
judgment of a man's life, particular regard should be paid to his
behaviour at the end of it;" and he more than once tells us that the chief
study of his life is to die calm and silent; and that he will plunge
himself headlong and stupidly into death, as into an obscure abyss, which
swallows one up in an instant; that to die was the affair of a moment's
suffering, and required no precepts. He talked of reposing on the "pillow
of doubt." But how did this great philosopher die? He called for the more
powerful opiates of the infallible church! The mass was performed in his
chamber, and, in rising to embrace it, his hands dropped and failed him;
thus, as Professor Dugald Stewart observes on this philosopher--"He
expired in performing what his old preceptor, Buchanan, would not have
scrupled to describe as an act of idolatry."

We must not then consider that he who paints vice with energy is therefore
vicious, lest we injure an honourable man; nor must we imagine that he who
celebrates virtue is therefore virtuous, for we may then repose on a heart
which knowing the right pursues the wrong.

These paradoxical appearances in the history of genius present a curious
moral phenomenon. Much must be attributed to the plastic nature of the
versatile faculty itself. Unquestionably many men of genius have often
resisted the indu