ngs in the regions above the moon, always
clear and serene." But the genius of Montaigne does not often soar,
though even one little flight like that shows that it has wings.
Montaigne's garnishes of quotation from foreign tongues are often a
cold-blooded device of afterthought with him. His first edition was
without them, in many places where subsequently they appear. Readers
familiar with Emerson will be reminded of him in perusing Montaigne.
Emerson himself said, "It seemed to me [in reading the "Essays" of
Montaigne] as if I had myself written the book in some former life, so
sincerely it spoke to my thoughts and experience." The rich old English
of Cotton's translation had evidently a strong influence on Emerson, to
mould his own style of expression. Emerson's trick of writing "'tis,"
was apparently caught from Cotton. The following sentence, from the
present essay of Montaigne, might very well have served Mr. Emerson for
his own rule of writing: "Let it go before, or come after, a good
sentence, or a thing well said, is always in season; if it neither suit
well with what went before, nor has much coherence with what follows
after, it is good in itself." Montaigne, at any rate, wrote his "Essays"
on that easy principle. The logic of them is the logic of mere chance
association in thought. But, with Montaigne,--whatever is true of
Emerson,--the association at least is not occult; and it is such as
pleases the reader, not less than it pleased the writer. So this Gascon
gentleman of the olden time never tires us, and never loses us out of
his hand. We go with him cheerfully where he so blithely leads.

Montaigne tells us how he was himself trained under his father. The
elder Montaigne, too, had his ideas on education,--the subject which his
son, in this essay, so instructively treats. The essayist leads up to
his autobiographical episode by an allusion to the value of the
classical languages, and to the question of method in studying them. He
says:--

In my infancy, and before I began to speak, he [my father]
committed me to the care of a German,... totally ignorant of our
language, but very fluent, and a great critic, in Latin. This man,
whom he had fetched out of his own country, and whom he entertained
with a very great salary, for this only end, had me continually
with him: to him there were also joined two others, of inferior
learning, to attend me, and to relieve him, who all