xpression,
practically incapable of improvement, of the spirit and wisdom of the
world. This characterization, we think, fairly and sufficiently sums up
the good and the bad of Montaigne. We might seem to describe no very
mischievous thing. But to have the spirit and wisdom of this world
expressed, to have it expressed as in a last authoritative form, a form
to commend it, to flatter it, to justify it, to make it seem sufficient,
to erect it into a kind of gospel,--that means much. It means hardly
less than to provide the world with a new Bible,--a Bible of the world's
own, a Bible that shall approve itself as better than the Bible of the
Old and New Testaments. Montaigne's "Essays" constitute, in effect, such
a book. The man of the world may,--and, to say truth, does,--in this
volume, find all his needed texts. Here is _viaticum_--daily manna--for
him, to last the year round, and to last year after year; an
inexhaustible breviary for the church of this world! It is of the
gravest historical significance that Rabelais and Montaigne, but
especially Montaigne, should, to such an extent, for now three full
centuries, have been furnishing the daily intellectual food of
Frenchmen.

Pascal, in an interview with M. de Saci (carefully reported by the
latter), in which the conversation was on the subject of Montaigne and
Epictetus contrasted,--these two authors Pascal acknowledged to be the
ones most constantly in his hand,--said gently of Montaigne, "Montaigne
is absolutely pernicious to those who have any inclination toward
irreligion, or toward vicious indulgences." We, for our part, are
prepared, speaking more broadly than Pascal, to say that, to a somewhat
numerous class of naturally dominant minds, Montaigne's "Essays," in
spite of all that there is good in them,--nay, greatly because of so
much good in them,--are, by their subtly insidious persuasion to evil,
upon the whole quite the most powerfully pernicious book known to us in
literature, either ancient or modern.

V.

LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: 1613-1680 (La Bruyere: 1646 (?)-1696; Vauvenargues:
1715-1747).

In La Rochefoucauld we meet another eminent example of the author of one
book. "Letters," "Memoirs," and "Maxims" indeed name productions in
three kinds, productions all of them notable, and all still extant, from
La Rochefoucauld's pen. But the "Maxims" are so much more famous than
either the "Letters" or the "Memoirs," that their author may be said to
be kn