formity at last.

We ought to give some idea of the odd instances, classic and other, with
which Montaigne plentifully bestrews his pages. He is writing of the
"Force of Imagination." He says:--

A woman, fancying she had swallowed a pin in a piece of bread,
cried and lamented as though she had an intolerable pain in her
throat, where she thought she felt it stick; but an ingenious
fellow that was brought to her, seeing no outward tumor nor
alteration, supposing it to be only a conceit taken at some crust
of bread that had hurt her as it went down, caused her to vomit,
and, unseen, threw a crooked pin into the basin, which the woman no
sooner saw, but, believing she had cast it up, she presently found
herself eased of her pain....

Such as are addicted to the pleasures of the field, have, I make
no question, heard the story of the falconer, who, having earnestly
fixed his eyes upon a kite in the air, laid a wager that he would
bring her down with the sole power of his sight, and did so, as it
was said; for _the tales I borrow, I charge upon the consciences of
those from whom I have them_.

We italicize the last foregoing words, to make readers see that
Montaigne is not to be read for the truth of his instances. He uses what
comes to hand. He takes no trouble to verify. "The discourses are my
own," he says; but even this, as we have hinted, must not be pressed too
hard in interpretation. Whether a given reflection of Montaigne's is
strictly his own, in the sense of not having been first another's, who
gave it to him, is not to be determined except upon very wide reading,
very well remembered, in all the books that Montaigne could have got
under his eye. That was full fairly his own, he thought, which he had
made his own by intelligent appropriation. And this, perhaps, expresses
in general the sound law of property in the realm of mind. At any rate,
Montaigne will wear no yoke of fast obligation. He will write as pleases
him. Above all things else, he likes his freedom.

Here is one of those sagacious historical scepticisms, in which
Montaigne was so fond of poising his mind between opposite views. It
occurs in his essay entitled, "Of the Uncertainty of our Judgments."

Amongst other oversights Pompey is charged withal at the battle of
Pharsalia, he is condemned for making his army stand still to
receive the enemy's charge, "by