Shakespeare's Montaigne Read online

  In confederacies which hold but by one end, [50] men have nothing to provide for but for the imperfections which particularly do interest and concern that end and respect. It is no great matter what religion my physician or lawyer is of; this consideration hath nothing in common with the offices of that friendship they owe me. So do I in the familiar acquaintances that those who serve me contract with me. I am nothing inquisitive whether a lackey be chaste or no but whether he be diligent. I fear not a gaming muleteer, [51] so much as if he be weak, nor a hot-swearing cook as one that is ignorant and unskillful. I never meddle with saying what a man should do in the world—there are over many others that do it—but what myself do in the world:

  Mihi sic usus est: Tibi, ut opus est facto, face.

  So is it requisite for me;

  Do thou as needful is for thee. [52]

  Concerning familiar table-talk, I rather acquaint myself with and follow a merry conceited humour than a wise man; and in bed, I rather prefer beauty than goodness; and in society or conversation of familiar discourse, I respect rather sufficiency though without Preud’hommie, [53] and so of all things else.

  Even as he that was found riding on an hobby-horse, playing with his children, besought him who thus surprised him not to speak of it until he were a father himself, supposing the tender fondness and fatherly passion which then would possess his mind should make him an impartial judge of such an action; so would I wish to speak to such as had tried what I speak of. But knowing how far such an amity is from the common use and how seld [54] seen and rarely found, I look not to find a competent judge. For even the discourses which stern antiquity hath left us concerning this subject seem to me but faint and forceless in respect of the feeling I have of it. And in that point the effects exceed the very precepts of philosophy.

  Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico.

  For me, be I well in my wit.

  Nought, as a merry friend, so fit. [55]

  Ancient Menander accounted him happy that had but met the shadow of a true friend. Verily, he had reason to say so, especially if he had tasted of any. For truly, if I compare all the rest of my fore-passed life—which, although I have by the mere mercy of God passed at rest and ease and, except the loss of so dear a friend, free from all grievous affliction with an ever-quietness of mind, as one that have taken my natural and original commodities in good payment without searching any others—if, as I say, I compare it all unto the four years I so happily enjoyed the dear society of that worthy man, it is nought but a vapour, nought but a dark and irksome light. Since the time I lost him,

  quem semper acerbum,

  Semper honoratum (sic Dii voluistis) habebo.

  Which I shall ever hold a bitter day,

  Yet ever honour’d (so my God t’obey).

  I do but languish, I do but sorrow. And even those pleasures all things present me with, instead of yielding me comfort, do but redouble the grief of his loss. We were co-partners in all things. All things were with us at half; methinks I have stolen his part from him.

  ——Nec fas esse ulla me voluptate hic frui

  Decrevi, tantisper dumille abest meus particeps.

  I have set down, no joy enjoy I may.

  As long as he my partner is away. [56]

  I was so accustomed to be ever two, and so inured to be never single, that methinks I am but half my self.

  Illam mea si partem animæ tulit,

  Maturior vis, quid moror altera,

  Nec charus æque nec superestes,

  Integer? Ille dies utramque

  Duxit ruinam.

  Since that part of my soul riper fate reft me,

  Why stay I here the other part he left me?

  Not so dear, nor entire, while here I rest:

  That day hath in one ruin both opprest. [57]

  There is no action can betide me or imagination possess me but I hear him saying, [58] as indeed he would have done to me. For even as he did excel me by an infinite distance in all other sufficiencies and virtues, so did he in all offices and duties of friendship.

  Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus,

  Tam chari capitis?

  What modesty or measure may I bear,

  In want and wish of him that was so dear? [59]

  O misero frater adempte mihi!

  Omnia tecum una perierunt gaudia nostra.

  Quæ tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor.

  Tu mea, tu moriens fregisti commoda frater.

  Tecum una tota est nostra sepulta anima,

  Cuius ego interitu tota demente fugavi

  Hæc studia, atque omnes delicias animi.

  Alloquar? audiero nunquam tua verba loquentem

  Numquam eqo te vita frater amabilior,

  Aspiciam posthac? at certe semper amabo.

  O brother rest from miserable me,

  All our delights are perished with thee,

  Which thy sweet love did nourish in my breath;

  With thee my soul is all and whole enshrined,

  At whose death I have cast out of my mind

  All my mind’s sweet-meats, studies of this kind.

  Never shall I hear thee speak, speak with thee?

  Thee brother, than life dearer, never see?

  Yet shalt thou ever be belov’d of me. [60]

  But let us a little hear this young man speak, being but sixteen years of age.

  Because I have found this work to have since been published (and to an ill end) by such as seek to trouble and subvert the state of our commonwealth, nor caring whether they shall reform it or no, which they have fondly inserted among other writings of their invention, I have revoked my intent, which was to place it here. [61] And lest the author’s memory should any way be interessed [62] with those that could not thoroughly know his opinions and actions, they shall understand that this subject was by him treated of in his infancy, only by way of exercise, as a subject, common, bare-worn, and wire-drawn [63] in a thousand books. I will never doubt but he believed what he writ and writ as be thought, for he was so conscientious that no lie did ever pass his lips, yea, were it but in matters of sport or play. And I know that had it been in his choice, he would rather have been born at Venice than at Sarlac, [64] and good reason why. But he had another maxim deeply imprinted in his mind, which was carefully to obey and religiously to submit himself to the laws under which he was born. There was never a better citizen, nor more affected to the welfare and quietness of his country, nor a sharper enemy of the changes, innovations, new-fangles, and hurly-burlies of his time. He would more willingly have employed the utmost of his endeavours to extinguish and suppress than to favour or further them. His mind was modeled to the pattern of other best ages.

  But yet in exchange of his serious treatise, I will here set you down another, more pithy material, and of more consequence, by him likewise produced at that tender age. [65]

  Of the Cannibals

  1.31, 1.30

  AT WHAT time King Pyrrhus came into Italy, after he had surveyed the marshalling of the Army, which the Romans sent against him: I wot not, said he, what barbarous men these are (for so were the Græcians wont to call all strange nations) but the disposition of this Army, which I see, is nothing barbarous. So said the Græcians of that which Flaminius sent into their country. And Philip viewing from a tower the order and distribution of the Roman camp, in his kingdom under Publius Sulpitius Galba. Lo, how a man ought to take heed, lest he over-weeningly follow vulgar opinions, which should be measured by the rule of reason and not by the common report.

  I have had long time dwelling with me a man, who for the space of ten or twelve years had dwelt in that other world which in our age was lately discovered in those parts where Villegaignon first landed and surnamed Antartike France. [1] This discovery of so infinite and vast a country seemeth worthy great consideration. I wot not whether I can warrant myself that some other be not discovered hereafter, sithence [2] so many worthy men, and better learned than we are, have so many ages been deceived in
this. I fear me our eyes be greater than our bellies, and that we have more curiosity than capacity. We embrace all, but we fasten nothing but wind.

  Plato maketh Solon to report that he had learn’t of the priests of the city of Says in Egypt, that whilom, and before the general deluge, there was a great island called Atlantis, situated at the mouth of the strait of Gibraltar, which contained more firm land than Africa and Asia together. And that the kings of that country—who did not only possess that island but had so far entered into the mainland that of the breadth of Africa they held as far as Egypt; and of Europe’s length, as far as Tuscany—and that they undertook to invade Asia and to subdue all the nations that compass the Mediterranean Sea, to the gulf of Mare-Maggiore [3] and to that end they traversed all Spain, France, and Italy, so far as Greece, where the Athenians made head against them. But that awhile after both the Athenians themselves and that great island were swallowed up by the Deluge. [4]

  It is very likely this extreme ruin of waters wrought strange alterations in the habitations of the earth, as some hold that the sea hath divided Sicily from Italy,

  Hæc loca vi quandam, et vasta convulsa ruina

  Dissiluisse ferunt, cum protinus utraque tellus

  Una foret.

  Men say, sometimes this land by that forsaken,

  And that by this, were split and ruin-shaken,

  Whereas till then both lands as one were taken. [5]

  Cyprus from Soria, the island of Negroponte from the mainland of Beotia, and in other places joined lands that were sundered by the sea, filling with mud and sand the channels between them. [6]

  ——sterilisque diu palus aptaque remis

  Vicinas urbes alit, et grave sentit aratrum.

  The fen long barren, to be row’d in, now

  Both feeds the neighbour towns, and feels the plow. [7]

  But there is no great appearance the said island should be the new world we have lately discovered. For it well-nigh touched Spain, and it were an incredible effect of inundation, to have removed the same more than twelve hundred leagues, as we see it is. Besides, our modern navigations have now almost discovered that it is not an island, but rather firm land, and a continent, with the East Indies on one side, and the countries lying under the two poles on the other; from which if it be divided, it is with so narrow a strait and interval that it no way deserveth to be named an island.

  For it seemeth there are certain motions in these vast bodies, some natural and other-some febricitant, [8] as well as in ours. When I consider the impression my river of Dordogne worketh in my time toward the right shore of her descent, and how much it hath gained in twenty years, and how many foundations of diverse houses it hath overwhelmed and violently carried away, I confess it to be an extraordinary agitation. For should it always keep one course, or had it ever kept the same, the figure of the world had ere this been overthrown. But they are subject to changes and alterations. Sometimes they overflow and spread themselves on one side, sometimes on another; and other times they contain themselves in their natural beds or channels. I speak not of sudden inundations, whereof we now treat the causes. In Medoc along the seacoast, my brother the Lord of Arsac may see a town of his buried under the sands, which the sea casteth up before it. The tops of some buildings are yet to be discerned. His rents and domains [9] have been changed into barren pastures. The inhabitants thereabouts affirm that some years since the sea encroacheth so much upon them that they have lost four leagues of firm land. These sands are her forerunners. And we see great hillocks of gravel moving, which march half a league before it and usurp on the firm land.

  The other testimony of antiquity to which some will refer this discovery is in Aristotle (if at least that little book of unheard of wonders be his) [10] where he reporteth that certain Carthaginians, having sailed athwart the Atlantic Sea without the strait of Gibraltar, after long time they at last discovered a great fertile island—all replenished with goodly woods and watered with great and deep rivers, far-distant from all land; and that both they and others, allured by the goodness and fertility of the soil, went thither with their wives, children, and household, and there began to habituate and settle themselves. The lords of Carthage seeing their country by little and little to be dispeopled, made a law and express inhibition that upon pain of death no more men should go thither and banished all that were gone thither to dwell, fearing (as they said) that in success of time, they would so multiply as they might one day supplant them and overthrow their own estate. This narration of Aristotle hath no reference unto our new-found countries.

  This servant I had was a simple and rough-hewn fellow: [11] a condition fit to yield a true testimony. For subtle people may indeed mark more curiously and observe things more exactly, but they amplify and gloss them. And the better to persuade and make their interpretations of more validity, they cannot choose but somewhat alter the story. They never represent things truly but fashion and mask them according to the visage they saw them in. And to purchase credit to their judgement and draw you on to believe them, they commonly adorn, enlarge, yea, and hyperbolise the matter. Wherein is required either a most sincere reporter or a man so simple that he may have no invention to build upon and to give a true likelihood unto false devices and be not wedded to his own will. Such a one was my man who, besides his own report, hath many times showed me diverse mariners and merchants whom he had known in that voyage. So am I pleased with his information that I never inquire what cosmographers say of it.

  We had need of topographers to make us particular narrations of the places they have been in. For some of them, if they have the advantage of us, that they have seen Palestine, will challenge a privilege to tell us news of all the world besides. I would have every man write what he knows and no more: not only in that but in all other subjects. For one may have particular knowledge of the nature of one river and experience of the quality of one fountain that in other things knows no more than another man: who, nevertheless, to publish this little scantling [12] will undertake to write of all the physics. From which vice proceed diverse great inconveniences.

  Now (to return to my purpose) I find (as far as I have been informed) there is nothing in that nation that is either barbarous or savage, unless men call that barbarism which is not common to them. As indeed, we have no other aim of truth and reason than the example and Idea of the opinions and customs of the country we live in. Where [13] is ever perfect religion, perfect policy, perfect and complete use of all things. They are even savage, as we call those fruits wild, which nature of herself and of her ordinary progress hath produced. Whereas indeed they are those [14] which ourselves have altered by our artificial devices and diverted from their common order we should rather term savage. In those are the true and most profitable virtues and natural proprieties most lively and vigorous, which in these we have bastardized, applying them to the pleasure of our corrupted taste. [15] And if notwithstanding, in diverse fruits of those countries that were never tilled, we shall find that in respect of ours they are most excellent and as delicate unto our taste, there is no reason art should gain the point of honour of our great and puissant mother Nature. We have so much, by our inventions, surcharged the beauties and riches of her works that we have altogether over-choked her. Yet wherever her purity shineth, she makes our vain and frivolous enterprises wonderfully ashamed. [16]

  Et veniunt haderæ sponte sua melius,

  Surgit et in solis formosior arbutus antris,

  Et volucres nulla dulcius arte canunt.

  Ivies spring better of their own accord,

  Un-hanted [17] plots much fairer trees afford.

  Birds by no art much sweeter notes record. [18]

  All our endeavours or wit cannot so much as reach to represent the nest of the least birdlet, [19] its contexture, beauty, profit, and use, no nor the web of a seely [20] spider. All things (sayeth Plato) are produced either by nature, by fortune, or by art. The greatest and fairest by one or other of the two first, the least and
imperfect by the last. [21]

  Those nations seem therefore so barbarous unto me because they have received very little fashion from human wit, and are yet near their original naturality. The laws of nature do yet command them, which are but little bastardized by ours. And that with such purity, as I am sometimes grieved the knowledge of it came no sooner to light, at what time there were men that better than we could have judged of it. I am sorry Lycurgus and Plato had it not. For me seemeth that what in those nations we see by experience doth not only exceed all the pictures wherewith licentious Poesy hath proudly embellished the golden age and all her quaint inventions to feign a happy condition of man but also the conception and desire of philosophy. They could not imagine a genuitie [22] so pure and simple as we see it by experience; nor ever believe our society might be maintained with so little art and human combination. It is a nation, would I answer Plato, that hath no kind of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no intelligence of numbers, no name of magistrate, nor of politic superiority; no use of service, of riches, or of poverty; no contracts, no successions, no dividences, [23] no occupation but idle; no respect of kindred, but common; no apparel, but natural; no manuring [24] of lands, no use of wine, corn, or metal. The very words that import lying, falsehood, treason, dissimulation, covetousness, envy, detraction, and pardon were never heard of amongst them. [25] How dissonant would he find his imaginary common-wealth from this perfection?

  Hos natura modos primum dedit.

  Nature at first uprise,

  These manners did devise. [26]

  Furthermore, they live in a country of so exceeding pleasant and temperate situation that, as my testimonies have told me, it is very rare to see a sick body amongst them. And they have further assured me they never saw any man there either shaking with the palsy, toothless, with eyes dropping, or crooked and stooping through age. They are seated alongst the sea coast, encompassed toward the land with huge and steepie [27] mountains, having between both, a hundred leagues or thereabouts of open and champaine [28] ground. They have great abundance of fish and flesh that have no resemblance at all with ours, and eat them without any sauces or skill of cookery, but plain boiled or broiled. The first man that brought a horse thither, although he had in many other voyages conversed with them, bred so great a horror in the land that, before they could take notice of him, they slew him with arrows.