Of what

it is to

of a writer.

notice, or affecting to appear intelligent on the subject:

Optat ephippia los piger, optat arare caballus.* i. e.

The lazy ox would saddle have and bit,

The steed a yoke, neither for either fit.

This is the way for a man never to do any thing considerable; so that he must always endeavour to leave the architect, the painter, the shoemaker, and every other mechanic to his own trade.

To this purpose, in reading history, which is a importance subject equally well adapted to every person, I have know the been used to consider what kind of men are the profession writers. If they make no other profession than that of literature, their style and language is what I chiefly attend to; if they are physicians, I am the more ready to credit them in what they tell us of the air, the health and constitution of princes, of wounds and diseases; if lawyers, we are by them to be guided in the controversies of Meum and Tuum, the nature of the laws, and civil government, and the like; if divines, in church affairs, ecclesiastical censures, dispensations, and marriages; if courtiers, in manners and ceremonies; if soldiers, the things that belong to their duty, and especially in the narratives they give of actions wherein they have been personally present; and if ambassadors, we are to observe their negotiations, intelligences and practices, and the manner of conducting them. This is the reason why (though perhaps I should have lightly passed it over in another, without insisting on it) I paused, and maturely considered a passage in the history writ by M. de Langey, a man of very great understanding in things of that nature, which was his account of the remonstrances that were made by the emperor Charles V. at the consistory of Rome, in the presence of the bishop of Maçon and Monsieur de Velley, our ambassadors, wherein he mixed several invectives against our nation; and amongst others, said, "That

Horace, ep. xiv. lib. i. ver. 43

ambassa

to conceal

any thing

of his own

*if his officers and soldiers were not better to be "trusted, and had not more skill in the art of war, "than those of the king, he would go that moment "to the king with a rope about his neck, and sue to him for mercy." It really seems as if the emperor had no better opinion of our soldiery, because he happened afterwards, twice or thrice in his life, to say the very same thing; and he also challenged the king to fight him in his shirt with sword and dagger, in a boat. Monsieur de Langey, proceeding in his history, adds, that the said ambassadors in their des. Whether a patches to the king, concealed the greatest part from Prince's him, and particularly the two last passages. Now I dors ought wonder how any ambassador can excuse himself for not giving his master the due information of things from him of such consequence, coming from such a person, and affairs. spoke in so great an assembly. I should rather conceive it had been the servant's duty faithfully to have represented things in their true light, as they happened, to the end that the sovereign might be at liberty to order, judge, and dispose of matters as he pleased: for the disguising or concealing the truth from him, lest he should take it in a wrong sense, and be incited to imprudent measures, should seem, methinks, rather to belong to him who gives law, than to him who receives it; to him who is the guardian and master of the school, and not to him who ought to look upon himself as inferior, not only in authority, but in prudence and good counsel. Be this as it will, I should not like to be served so in my little sphere.

more dear

Mankind are so much disposed to reject the con- Nothing trol of authority, that no advantage which a supe- to a supe rior derives from those who serve him, ought to be rior, than so dear to him as their sincere and cordial obedience. obedience To obey him from discretion, and not from subjec- of his intion,* is to injure the office of command. P. Crassus,

* I find in Barbeyrac's notes upon Puffendorf, that this thought" is taken from Aulus Gellius, lib. i. cap. 13.

the hearty

feriors

whom the Romans reckoned happy in five respects," having, while he was consul in Asia, ordered an engineer of Greece to bring him the biggest of two masts of ships that he had seen at Athens, for a certain battering engine which he proposed to make with it, the engineer, presuming upon his own discretion, thought fit to make a different choice, and carried him the least of the two masts, which, according to the rules of art, was also the most convenient; Crassus, having patiently heard his reasons, caused him to be very heartily scourged, thereby preferring correction to the profit he might have received from the work. Such strict obedience, however, is, perhaps, due only to commands that are precise and peremptory. The function of an ambassador is not so limited, but, in many particulars, he is left to the direction of his own judgment. Those who are invested with such a character are not barely the executioners of their sovereign's will and pleasure, but by their advice they form and model it; and I have, in my time, known persons in authority reproved, for having rather obeyed the express words of the king's letters, than conformed to the exigency of affairs. Men of understanding do, even to this day, condemn the practice of the kings of Persia, in giving their lieutenants and agents such precise instructions, that, upon every minute difficulty, they are obliged to have recourse to their orders; this delay, in so vast an extent of dominion, being often attended with great inconvenience. And Crassus, in writing to a man who professed and understood mechanics, and informing him of the purpose for which he intended this mast, did he not seem to consult his opinion, and invite him to interpose his judgment?

That he was very rich, most noble, most eloquent, most skilful in the law, and the highest in the priesthood, or pontifex maximus. Auli Gellii Noctes Atticæ, lib. i. cap. 13.

CHAPTER XVII.

Of Fear.

Obstupui, steteruntque comæ, et vox faucibus hæsit.*

I was amaz'd, struck speechless, and my hair
On end upon my head did wildly stare.

I AM not a good naturalist (as they call it) and The strange
scarce know by what springs fear operates in us; butts of
this I know, that it is a strange passion, and the
physicians say, that there is not one of all the pas
sions that sooner dethrones our judgment from its
natural seat. I have actually seen a great many per-
sons whom fear has rendered frantic, and it is certain,
that in persons the most composed, it creates terrible
confusion while the fit is upon them. To say nothing
of the vulgar, to whom it one while represents their
great grandsires, risen out of their graves in their
shrouds, another while hobgoblins, spectres, and
chimeras; but even amongst the soldiers, who ought
to be possessed with the least share of it, how often
have they mistaken a flock of harmless sheep for
armed squadrons, reeds and bulrushes for pikes and
lances, friends for enemies, and the white cross of
France for the red one of Spain? In 1527, when
the duke of Bourbon took Rome, an ensign, who
was upon guard at the Bourg St. Pierre, was sq
frightened at the very first alarm, that he threw him-
self out of the breach with the colours in his hand,
and ran directly from the town upon the enemy,
thinking all the while that he was proceeding towards
the interior fortifications of the city, till at last,
seeing the duke of Bourbon's men draw up to face,
the besieged, who they thought were making a sally,

* Virg. Æneid. lib. ii. ver. 774.

Montaigne shews, by this parenthesis, that the term naturalist was but just adopted into the French language.

The opposite effects

by fear.

he found his mistake, and turning about retreated through the same breach by which he had issued, but not before he had advanced above a quarter of a mile into the field against the besiegers. It did not fall out quite so happily for captain Julius's ensign, when St. Pol was taken from us by the count de Bures and M. de Reu, for he being so very much scared as to throw himself out of the town, colours and all, through a port-hole, he was cut to pieces by the besiegers. At the same siege, a gentleman was seized with such a fright, that he sunk down dead in the breach without any wound.

The like passion sometimes operates upon a whole produced multitude. In one of Germanicus's encounters with the Germans, two great parties were so intimidated, that they fled different ways, each running to the place from which the other set out. Sometimes it adds wings to the heels, as it did to the two first, and sometimes nails the feet to the ground, and fetters them; as we read of the emperor Theophilus, who, in a battle wherein he was defeated by the Agaranes, was so astonished and stupified, that he had no power to fly, till Manuel, one of the chief generals of his army, having jogged and shook him so as to rouse him out of his trance, said to him, "Sir, if you will not follow me, I will kill you; for "it is better that you should lose your life, than by being taken prisoner to lose your empire."

Fear is sometimes

When fear is so violent as to deprive men of all An incen- sense, both of duty and honour, it makes them act tive to feats like desperadoes. In the first fair battle which the of valour. Romans lost against Hannibal, in the consulship of

Sempronius, a body of at least 10,000 foot, which had taken fright, seeing no other escape for their cowardice, forced their way through the bulk of the enemy's army, which they penetrated with prodigious fury, and made a great slaughter of the Carthagi. nians, by that means purchasing an ignominious

Quintus Curtius, lib. iii. sect. 11. +Tit. Liv. lib. xxi. cap. 56.