How pu

mished.

seeching the gods to convert this sentence to their own good; and praying, that, for neglecting to pay those vows that he and his companions had made (which he also acquainted them with) in acknowledgment for so glorious a success, they might not pull down the indignation of the gods upon them; after which he went courageously to his execution.

Fortune, not many years after, dealt them the same bread: for Chabrias, captain-general of their naval forces, having got the better of Pollis, admiral of Sparta, about the isle of Naxos, totally lost the fruits of his victory (of very great importance to their affairs), and lest he should incur the misfortune of the Athenian captains, he chose to save a few bodies of his dead friends that were floating on the sea, which gave opportunity to a great number of his living enemies to sail away in safety, who afterwards made them pay dear for this unseasonable superstition.

Quæris quo jaceas post obitum loco?

Quo non nata jacent.†

Dost ask where thou shalt lie when dead?
With those that ne'er yet being had.

This other passage restores the sense of repose to a body without a soul:

Neque sepulcrum, quò recipiat, habeat portum corporis: ubi, remissa humana vitâ, corpus requiescat à malis.‡

Nor with a tomb as with a haven blest,

Where, after life, the corpse in peace may rest.

Just so nature demonstrates to us, that several dead things still retain an occult relation to life. Wine changes in cellars, according to the changes of the seasons of the vine from whence it came; and the flesh of venison is said to alter its condition in the powdering-tub, and to vary its taste, according to the seasons of the living flesh of its kind.

* Diodorus of Sicily. lib. xv. cap. 9.
+ Seneca Tr. Chor. ii. ver. 30.

Cicero Tuscul. lib. i. cap. 44.

CHAPTER IV.

How the Soul discharges its Passions upon false Objects, when the true are wanting.

some ob

attention,

A GENTLEMAN of my country, who was frequent-
ly tormented with the gout, being often importuned by
his physicians to abstain from salt meats, used to re-
ply merrily, That there was a necessity for his having The soul
something to quarrel with in the extremity of his must have
pain, and that he fancied, that sometimes railing at, jects for its
and cursing the Bologna sausages, at other times whether
the dried tongues, and the gammon, was some mi- true or
tigation of it. And in truth, as we are chagrined if false,
the arm which is advanced to strike misses the mark,
and spends itself in vain; and as also, that to make
a prospect pleasant, the sight should not be lost and
dilated in the æther, but have some bounds to limit
it at a reasonable distance;

Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robare densæ
Occurrant sylvæ, spatio diffusus inani.*

As winds exhaust their strength, unless withstood
By some thick grove of strong opposing wood.

In like manner it appears, that the soul, being agi-
tated and discomposed, is lost in itself, if it has not
something to encounter with, and therefore always
requires an object to aim at, and keep it employed.
Plutarch says very well of those who are fond of lap
dogs and monkeys, that the amorous part which is
in us, for want of a right object, rather than lie idle,
does, in a manner, forge in the fancy one that is
false and frivolous. And we see that the soul, in
the exercise of its passions, rather deceives itself by
creating a false and fantastical subject, even contrary
to its own belief, than not to have something to
work upon. After this manner brute beasts spend

* Lucan, lib, iii. ver. 362, 363,

Mankind's

recourse to

amusement

of their

their fury upon the stone or weapon that has hurt
them, and are ready to tear themselves to pieces for
the injury they have received from another:

Pannonis haud aliter post ictum sævior ursa
Cui jaculum parva Lybis amentavit habena,
Se rotat in vulnus, telumque irata receptum
Impetit, et secum fugientem circuit hastam.*

So fierce the bear, made fiercer by the smart
Of the bold Lybian's mortal-wounding dart,
Turns round upon the wound, and the tough spear
Contorted o'er her breast does flying bear.

What causes of the misfortunes that befall us do things in we not ourselves invent? What is it that we do not nimate for blame, right or wrong, that we may have something to quarrel with? Those beautiful tresses, young la passions. dy, which you tear off by handfuls, are no way guilty; nor is it the whiteness of that bosom, which you smite with so much indignation and cruelty, that with an unlucky bullet has killed your dear brother: quarrel with something else. Livy, speaking of the Roman army in Spain, says, that for the loss of two brothers, their great captains, Flere omnes repente, et offensare capita; † all wept, and beat their foreheads but this is a common practice. And the philosopher Bion said pleasantly of the king who plucked off the hair of his head for sorrow," Does this "man think that baldness is a remedy for grief?”‡ Who has not seen gamesters bite and gnaw the cards, and swallow the dice in revenge for the loss of their money? Xerxes lashed the sea, and wrote a challenge to Mount Athos!§ Cyrus set a whole army several days || at work, to revenge himself on the ri

* Lucan, lib. vi. ver. 220, &c.
+ Livy, Dec. III. lib. v.
Luc. lib. xxv. cap. 37.
Cic. Tusc. Quæst. lib. iii. cap. 26.

Herodot. lib. vii. p. 452.

Ibid. lib. i. p. 86, 87, and Seneca de Ira, lib. iii. cap. 21. Herodotus says expressly, that Cyrus spent the whole summer about this fine expedition. And Paul Orosius, who is as incorrect as Montaigne, though in a contrary sense, says, that Cyrus employed all his troops on this work a whole year, perpeti anno, lib. ii. cap. 6.

ver Gnidus,* for the fright it had put him in when he was passing over it; and Caligula demolished a very beautiful palace,t for the confinement his mother had there.

I remember there was a story when I was a boy, Impertithat one of our neighbouring kings, having been of a king. neut vanity smitten by the hand of GoD, swore he would be revenged; and he ordered a proclamation, that, for ten years to come, no person in his dominions should pray to him, or so much as mention him, or even believe in him: by which we are not so much to take measure of the folly, as of the vain-glory peculiar to the nation of which this story was told. They are vices, indeed, that always go together, but such actions as these have more of temerity in them than of stupidity. Augustus Cæsar, having been tossed with a tempest at sea,‡ fell to defying the god Neptune, and, in the pomp of the Circensian games, to be revenged, deposed his statue from the place it had amongst the other deities. In this he was less excusable than in the former, and less too than he was afterwards, when, having lost a battle under Quintilius Varus in Germany, he raved like a madman, and sometimes ran his head against the wall, crying out, "O Varus, give me my legions again!" S

* Or Gyndas, rúd, as Herodotus calls it. Seneca and Tibullus, lib. iv. carm. i. ver. 141.-rapidus, Cyri dementia, Gyndes.

+ Seneca de Ira, lib. iii. c. 22. Cæsar villam in Herculanensi pulcherrimam, quia sua mater aliquando in illa custodita erat, diruit ; 1. e. Cæsar demolished the most beautiful city in the Herculaneum, because his mother was once imprisoned in it. I question whether Montaigne rightly understood Seneca's meaning; or, I imagine, that instead of plaisir, he would have used the word deplaisir, because it agrees perfectly well with what Seneca says, "of her hav "ing been confined there as in a prison." In one of the first editions of the Essays in French, plaisir was, by inadvertency, printed instead of deplaisir, which mistake was from thence continued in all the succeeding editions; at least, it is the same in all that I have been able to consult; and from thence Mr. Cotton used the word pleasure.

Suetonius, in the life of Augustus, sect. 16,
Suetonius, ibid. sect. 23..

For theirs exceeded all folly, because it was attended with impiety, by carping at Gop himself, or at least at fortune, as if she had ears to be dinned with our complaints; like the Thracians,* who, when it thunders or lightens, fall to shooting against Heaven with Titanian vengeance, as if by flights of arrows they thought to reduce the Deity to reason. Now as the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us, in his treatise of contentment, or the peace of the mind, chap. 4. of Amyot's translation,

Point ne se faut courroucer aux affaires:

Il ne leur chaut de toutes nos choleres.

We must not rave at Heaven in our affairs,
Which for our indignation nothing cares.

But we can never enough condemn our unruly pas-
sions.

CHAPTER V.

Whether the Governor of a Place besieged ought himself to go out to parley.

LUCIUS Marcius,t the Roman Legate, in the war against Perseus, king of Macedon, in order to gain time for putting his army into a good condition, set on foot some overtures of accommodation, with which the king, being lulled asleep, concluded a cessation for a certain number of days, thereby giving his enemy opportunity and leisure to strengthen their army, which proved his own final ruin; yet the elder sort of senators, mindful of their forefathers' customs, condemned this proceeding, as injurious to their ancient practice, which, they said, was to The prac- fight by mere valour, and not by stratagem, surstratagems prizes, and night-encounters, neither by pretended against an flights, nor unexpected rallies; never making war sured. till having first proclaimed it, and very often ap

tice of

enemy cen

Herodot. lib. iv. cap. 289.

Titus Livy calls him Quintus Marcius, lib. xiii. cap. 37, &c.