28 OCTOBER 1905, Page 24

A Day-book of Montaigne. Compiled by C. F. Pond. (Methuen

and Co. 2e. 6d.) —That we have wit and wisdom when we have Montaigne no one can doubt; yet he is hardly an author out of whom we should compile a "Day-book." For this purpose he does not rank with Emerson, Wordsworth, Dante, or Milton. Perhaps the most curious contrast in the list of "Day-books" is St. Francis of Assisi. In any case, we think that Mr. Pond would have done better not to select the passages in which Montaigne is spiteful against women. Imagine a man going forth to the day's work, or refreshing himself after it—such, surely, is the use of a "Day-book "—with such a sentence as this : "0 late testimony and out of season whereby they rather show they never love their husbands but when they are dead"