tite ought to appertain
only to the flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding that
indefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardour you think in you, for
it will certainly leave you in a pretty corner; but rather transfer it to
some tender, bashful, and ignorant boy, who yet trembles at the rod, and
blushes:

"Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro
Si quis ebur, vel mista rubent ubi lilia multa
Alba rosa."

["As Indian ivory streaked with crimson, or white lilies mixed
with the damask rose."--AEneid, xii. 67.]

Who can stay till the morning without dying for shame to behold the
disdain of the fair eyes of her who knows so well his fumbling
impertinence,

"Et taciti fecere tamen convicia vultus,"

["Though she nothing say, her looks betray her anger."
--Ovid, Amor., i. 7, 21.]

has never had the satisfaction and the glory of having cudgelled them
till they were weary, with the vigorous performance of one heroic night.
When I have observed any one to be vexed with me, I have not presently
accused her levity, but have been in doubt, if I had not reason rather to
complain of nature; she has doubtless used me very uncivilly and
unkindly:

"Si non longa satis, si non bene mentula crassa
Nimirum sapiunt, videntque parvam
Matronae quoque mentulam illibenter:"

[The first of these verses is the commencement of an epigram of the
Veterum Poetayurra Catalecta, and the two others are from an epigram
in the same collection (Ad Matrones). They describe untranslatably
Montaigne's charge against nature, indicated in the previous
passage.]

and done me a most enormous injury. Every member I have, as much one as
another, is equally my own, and no other more properly makes me a man
than this.

I universally owe my entire picture to the public. The wisdom of my
instruction consists in liberty, in truth, in essence: disdaining to
introduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into the
catalogue of its real duties; all natural, general, and constant,
of which civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but illegitimate.
We are sure to have the vices of appearance, when we shall have had those
of essence: when we have done with these, we run full drive upon the
others, if we find it must be so; for there is danger that we shall fancy
new offices, to excuse