A BOOK OF THE MOMENT

THE FIRST OF THE MODERNS

[Corearearr IN THE U.S.A. BY THE New York Times.] " I study myself more than any other subject ; this is my metaphysic, this is my physic."—MONTAIGNE.

THERE is no easier book to write about superficially and light-heartedly than Montaigne's Essays. The reason is plain. You cannot open his book anywhere without finding something that arrests your mind and quickens it for further adventure, that engages your emotions and your imagination, that tickles to response that desire for ratiocination, for drawing conclusions from premises which is inherent, and presumably necessarily inherent, in every human being— perhaps in every living thing. It is from the impulse to observe by means of our senses that progress comes. To go one step further, the Life Urge makes us gain knowledge, and our senses are its instruments. But such knowledge would be useless for action if we had not also the power and the imperative desire to draw conclusions. Therefore the record of ratiocination in a human being is always an exciting thing. We like to hear how others do what we are under bond to do day and night.

Montaigne was always observing, and the moment he had got his observations made, he began to spin his conclusions, and to spin them not only, all things considered, with great preciseness, but with tremendous gusto. These facts would alone justify the extraordinarily high repute which Montaigne has received at all times, in all places and from all peoples. But they by no means exhaust his qualities. He was the first Modern—the first man who understood and properly valued the introspective habit. No doubt plenty of people had been introspective before. For example, Marcus Aurelius, and all the Stoics. Again, the earlier Greek poets .were incidentally full of introspection. " Know thyself," the precept of introspection, was also the motto of the Philosophers. But the ancient examiner of his own soul was much vaguer and less personally and humanly interested than the Modern. Montaigne was the first man who was visibly and humorously delighted in opening the strong-room of his mind and the cold storage cupboard of his emotions and letting us see the contents. The saints and pseudo- saints of early Christian times had set an example in this respect, but it was half-hearted. They told us only about themselves and the inner working of their minds in order to enforce or illustrate some ethical or religious purpose. Montaigne delights in recording his feelings for their own sake and without a thought of edification. He writes about himself without offering any reason or excuse, and assumes quite rightly, that we shall be as pleased to read as he was to write. And all the time the man was intensely likeable. No one can fairly call him a hard-shell egotist. Though no hero, and not prepared to sacrifice himself either in body or soul for great causes or for his fellow-men, he was nevertheless in essence a good man as well as a wise man. He wanted not only pastime and good company, but- freedom of the soul, freedom to live. He desired above all things to enjoy un- restrained his own intellectual life, and thereby to get benefit for himself and for others -in the great drama of existence.

Typical is what he says in the thirteenth chapter of the Third Book, the last, if not the greatest, of his essays. The chapter on Experience is the chapter which ends his book.

No judge has yet, thanks be to God ! spoken as a judge to me in any cause whatsoever, whether my own or another's, criminal or civil ; nor has any prison received me, even as a visitor. My imagination makes the sight of one disagreeable to me, even from outside. I am so infatuated with liberty that, were I forbidden access to some corner of the Indies, I should. in consequence live less at my ease ; and so long as I can find open land and air else- where, I will never cower in a place where I must be hidden. Good God ! How ill could I endure the condition in which I see so many of the-people—fettered to one part of this realm, deprived of the right to enter the chief cities and of access to the courts, and of the use of the public roads, for having quarrelled with our laws ! If those under which I live should even shake their finger at me by way of menace, I should instantly go elsewhere, no matter where; to seek others. All my small prudence in these civil ware in which we are engaged is employed to the end that they shall not interface with my liberty to go and come. Now the laws maintain their credit, not because they are just, but because they are laws : this is the mystical basis of their authority ; they have no other, sat this serves them well. They are often made by feels ; more often by men who, from hatred for equality, lack a sense of equity ; but always by men, fruitless and vacillating fabricators."

Miss Norton, the lady who has endowed this translation with • a series of small introductions of great sensibility, charm, and insight, begins by being somewhat critical of the essay on Experience, but her subsequent comments take back her initial depreciations :—

" It has little solidity, but it is like a lusty vino beautifying the dead wall of life ; and none of its grapes is sour. Tho sweetness, the serenity, the sadness of our dear, gay, and vehement and irritable friend, touch these pages with softer lights than gleam almost anywhere else. The course of life—experience—made Montaigne more sensitive physically and mentally than in youth, but more wise ; and his wisdom resolved itself into a love of life such as it has pleased God to grant His ' experience ' leads to no com- plaints about the order of things in heaven or on earth, and as little to raptures of memory or of hope. He is simply and calmly content."

That is finely and justly said. In a word, Montaigne. was 4!1. typical Frenchman of the best kind. We may think that he was cast in too unheroic a mould, that he had too little imagination, too little passion, too little desire to navigate deep waters. He never gave his sails to the tempest or strove to push beyond the verge of the horizon. Yet no man ever understood the Art of Life better than he, or on the whole faced the terrible scrape of being born a man more bravely and sensibly.

We English speakers desire, rightly as I hold, to be what Walt Whitman called " spiritual and heroic." We are inclined to despise ourselves for being content, and make, indeed, discontent our divinity. But Montaigne took no such violent view of life. He was shocked a t the people who attack existence with a kind of Berserk fury. He did not cultivate a sad serenity of soul, but a glad one. He did not want to look too deeply into things, or to scale. forbidden heights. If ever there was a votary of the cool, sequestered vale, it was he. He felt it natural and honourable to enjoy the pleasures of life. As Miss Norton puts it with admirable tact, he was proud of " studiously delighting in prosperity." To quote once more from her, " All these pages [i.e., those of the chapter on Experience] are eminently characteristic, most admirable in their serene and self; possessed wisdom : and any abstract of them would be idle : they are to be read and re-read." The essay on Experience ends with a passage which is a perfect example in literature of the man who was honest with himself and refused to take the grand or tragic view of life when he did not feel it.

He would have nothing to do with the idea of those people who, as he says, " desire to put themselves outside themselves and escape from being men." That seemed to him mere foolishness. " Instead of transforming themselves into angels, they transform themselves into beasts ; instead of uplifting themselves, they degrade themselves." Very characteristic is his next comment. " Those transcendent humours terrify me like lofty and inaccessible places ; and nothing is so difficult for me to swallow in the life of Socrates as his trances and his daemon, and nothing so human in Plato as that because of which they say that he was called divine." That is what I should call delightfully honest, though, on the other hand, if I heard it described as " horribly bourgeois,''. I should not only understand, but agree.

Montaigne will have no peroration, but ends, as he began, on a low -note, one which will never allow anyone to say of him that " he cracked a weak voice to too lofty a tune."

" (b) The admirable inscription with which the Athenians corn. memorated the visit of Pompeius to their city is conformable with my thoughts :—

D'autant es to dieu comma Tu to recognois homme.

(Thou art a god inasmuch as thou does recognise thyself to be man.j

It is an absolute and, as it were, divine perfection V be able to enjoy obediently one's existence. We seek other conditilns because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we know not what is taking place. (c) Much food does it do us to mount on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk with our legs ; and on the loftiest throne in the world we sit only on our buttocks. (6) The finest lives are, to my thinking, those which are conformed. to the common human model, with regularity, with nothing wonder.

ful or extravagant. Old age, indeed, needs to be treated a little more gently. Let us commend it to that God who is the protector of health and wisdom, but cheerful and companionable."

Before I quit this memorable chapter let me say that I cannot agree with Miss Norton in censuring the pages which deal with his own health as " undesirably garrulous." To my mind, they are in some ways exceedingly interesting and will touch the normal if slightly egotistic invalid to the quick. Admittedly, they are not of any great value either morally or physically, but they present a wonderful mental picture, and the author's artistry makes ample atonement for certain touches of physical squalor. But once more, the essay is, as Miss Norton admits, wonderfully characteristic of that mosaic work which runs throughout Montaigne's writing.

He never entirely sticks to his subject, but his mosaic irrelevancies are never in bad taste. The bits seem to have no connexion with each other, yet they form a relevant and also delightful whole.

. A word or two remains to be said about the presentment of this memorable edition of a memorable book. In the first place, it is fully worthy of that admirable institution, the Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Mr. Ives' translation, over which he took a dozen years, has been criticized as a poor substitute for Florio. Florio, of course, had the great advantage of an Elizabethan vocabulary, and so the power of imparting an Elizabethan atmosphere ; but, as Mr. Ives points out in his preface, Florio was often a very inaccurate and confused translator.

I make no pretence at being an expert, and therefore only give my opinion with some diffidence ; but it seems to me that Mr. Ives' translation was probably justified by Florio's inaccuracy and that, judged on its own merits, it is an excellent piece of work. It is a good example of interpretation and conveys the real sense ; and, at the same time, it is grace- ful, keeps an even flow, and does not worry one with a false modernism, though, equally, it makes no attempt at what Sir Walter Scott would have called " Wardour Street " English. The best thing about it is that it makes one forget that it is translation.

J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.