TWO
GENTLEMEN OF VERONA[38] we actually have the line, "How use doth breed a
habit in a man;" but here again there seems reason to regard Montaigne
as having suggested Shakspere's vivid and many-coloured wording of the
idea in the tragedy. Indeed, even the line cited from the early comedy
may have been one of the poet's many later additions to his text.

VIII. A less close but still a noteworthy resemblance is that between
the passage in which Hamlet expresses to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
the veering of his mood from joy in things to disgust with them, and the
paragraph in the APOLOGY OF RAYMOND SEBONDE in which Montaigne sets
against each other the splendour of the universe and the littleness of
man. Here the thought diverges, Shakspere making it his own as he always
does, and altering its aim; but the language is curiously similar.
Hamlet says:

"It goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly
frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory: this
most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with
golden fire, why it appears no other thing to me than a foul
and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work
is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in
form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how
like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God! the beauty
of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is
this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me."

Montaigne, as translated by Florio, has:

"Let us see what hold-fast or free-hold he (man) hath in
this gorgeous and goodly equipage.... Who hath persuaded
him, that this admirable moving of heaven's vaults, that the
eternal light of these lamps so fiercely rolling over his
head ... were established ... for his commodity and service?
Is it possible to imagine anything so ridiculous as this
miserable and wretched creature, which is not so much as
master of himself, exposed and subject to offences of all
things, and yet dareth call himself Master and Emperor of
this universe?... [To consider ... the power and domination
these (celestial) bodies have, not only upon our lives and
conditions of our fortune ... but also over our dispositions
and inclinations, our discourses and wills, which they rule,
provoke, and move at the pleasure of their influences.] ...
Of all creatures man is the most misera