Montaigne names another glory: presumption, the inconsiderate affection that represents us to ourselves other than we truly are, the way love lends beauties and graces to its object. Judgement must still keep its rights. If it be Caesar, let him boldly think himself the greatest captain in the world. What carries people away is ceremony. They hold by the branches and quit the trunk. Ladies blush at names they are not afraid to do; ceremony forbids lawful words and everyone obeys, while reason forbids unlawful deeds and nobody obeys. He is fettered here, for ceremony permits a man neither to speak well of himself nor ill. Public men may show what they are by public actions. Those whom fortune has employed only in the crowd are excused if they speak of themselves, by the example of Lucilius, who committed his thoughts to paper as to tried friends, so that the old man's life lies there as on a votive tablet. From infancy others saw in him a carriage that seemed to relish of pride; Constantius would not even turn to those who saluted him. One may be humble out of pride. Presumption has two parts: overrating ourselves and underrating others. He lessens the just value of things he possesses and overvalues things because they are foreign, absent, and none of his. The neighbour's house and horse, though no better, he prizes above his own. Betwixt two equal merits he is swayed against his own. He is struck by everyone else's assurance, whereas there is scarcely anything he is sure he knows. Philosophy never has so fair a game as when it falls upon vanity. His own poetry he cannot endure. Dionysius the father valued himself upon nothing so much as his verses; at the Olympic games the people, after first attending to the delivery, ran to pull down his gilt pavilions. Montaigne knows a poet against whom heaven and earth exclaim, who has never a whit the worse opinion of himself.
His own works disgust him as often as he reviews them. He has always a disturbed image of a better form that he cannot catch. His language is rough, free, and irregular; endeavouring to be brief, he becomes obscure. He speaks better than he writes. He loves a blunt Gascon from the mountains; Latin, once his mother tongue, is lost. They who separate soul and body are to blame; Christians know that divine justice embraces that juncture even to making the body capable of eternal rewards. Beauty is the first means of acquiring favour. Poor Philopoemen, arriving first at an inn, unsightly, is set by a hostess who does not know him to draw water and make a fire against Philopoemen's coming; he pays the penalty of ugliness. Montaigne is already past forty. What shall be from this time forward will be but a half-being, and no more him. He every day escapes and steals away from himself. Agility he never had, though he is the son of a very active father. He cannot write so as to read it himself, saddle a horse, or fly a hawk. He sought no more fortune than sufficient to content him. Not being able to govern events, he governs himself. Deliberation breaks his sleep; he puts himself into the beaten track and loves misfortunes that at the first push plunge him into the worst that can be expected. The fear of the fall more fevers him than the fall itself. If a man have sufficient to maintain him in the condition wherein he was born, it is a great folly to hazard that upon the uncertainty of augmenting it. He found a shorter way to sit still. Chancellor Olivier said the French were like monkeys that swarm up a tree from branch to branch, never stop till they come to the highest, and there show their breech. He judges his own strength not capable of any great matters. The first prince who shall get himself into favour by humanity, truth, loyalty, and justice, marks now rare and exiled, will outstrip his competitors.
By the standard of some past ages, when it was ordinary to see a man religious of his word, he finds himself pigmy and vulgar. He would rather see all affairs go to wreck and ruin than falsify his faith to secure them. The new virtue of dissimulation he mortally hates. It is a cowardly humour to hide under a visor. Whoever has resolved to be always another thing without than he is within, as Tiberius did, produces nothing that is received as true. Soliman, when his army landed at Otranto, ordered the inhabitants of Castro set at liberty after they had been detained contrary to capitulation, saying that one useful breach of faith would bring on him a distrust of infinite prejudice. Montaigne had rather be troublesome and indiscreet than a flatterer. Memory is a faculty of wonderful use, and he has none at all. He could not receive a commission by word of mouth without a notebook; he must have three hours to learn three verses. He flies command. A forced pledge at table once closed his throat, though liberty was allowed. An excellent archer, offered a pardon if he would hit a mark, refused lest tension make him miss. He forgets servants' names, the watchword, his purse, and his own writings when quoted back to him. He was born and bred up in the country, and amongst husbandmen. He has had husbandry in his own hands ever since his predecessors left him to succeed them, and yet he can neither cast accounts nor reckon his counters. He does not know most current money, nor the difference betwixt one grain and another, and can scarcely distinguish cabbage from lettuce in his garden. If he is given a kitchen, he should starve. Whatever he delivers himself to be, provided it be such as he really is, he has his end. At Barleduc, King Francis II was presented with a portrait Rene, king of Sicily, had drawn of himself. Why is it not lawful for every one to draw himself with a pen, as he did with a crayon? When occasion presses, Montaigne throws the feather into the wind; his judgement is so equally balanced he could refer it to a die. Machiavelli's writings were solid enough, yet easy enough to be controverted. Manners infinitely corrupt, yet by reason of the danger of stirring things he would stop the wheel and keep it where it is. It is easy to beget a contempt of ancient observances; to establish a better regimen in the stead of what a man has overthrown, many have foundered. There never was porter or the silliest girl that did not think they had sense enough. For the simple products of the understanding, every one thinks he could have found out the like in himself, so essay-writing wins little praise. The learned allow of no other proceeding of wit but erudition; those two sorts of men take up the world.
The third sort, souls regular and strong of themselves, is so rare that it justly has neither name nor place amongst us. The world looks always opposite; Montaigne turns his sight inwards. He has no other business but himself. Of overrating himself he can partly confess; of not having a sufficient esteem for others he knows not whether he can so well excuse himself, but he is resolved to speak the truth. Continual frequentation with the great souls of past ages puts him out of taste, or else the age produces but very indifferent things. Where a foot is due he will give a foot and a half, even to enemies; but to attribute qualities they have not, he cannot do it. The greatest he ever knew, for the natural parts of the soul, was Etienne de la Boetie: a full soul of the old stamp, that had produced great effects had fortune been so pleased. There is as much vanity in those who profess learned callings as in any other sort of men; they make themselves ridiculous by honouring Cicero, Galen, Ulpian, and St. Jerome alike. Education has not taught us to follow virtue, but has imprinted in us its derivation and etymology. We know how to decline Virtue, if we know not how to love it. The rude manners of country people are commonly better suited to true philosophy than those of the philosophers themselves. The most remarkable men, as he has judged by outward appearance, for soldiers were the Duc de Guise who died at Orleans and Marshal Strozzi; for great ability, Olivier and De l'Hospital. In the parts wherein Ronsard and Du Bellay excel, he finds them little inferior to the ancient perfection. The beauty of Constable de Montmorency's death, in the sight of Paris and of his king, against his nearest relations, at the head of a victorious army, in so extreme old age, merits to be recorded, as does the constant goodness of Monsieur de la Noue in the true school of treason and robbery. Montaigne publishes the hopes he has of Marie de Gournay le Jars, his adopted daughter. The judgement she made of his first Essays, being a woman, so young, alone in her own country, and the vehemence wherewith she desired his acquaintance solely from the esteem she had of him, before she ever saw his face, is an incident very worthy of consideration. Other virtues have had little or no credit in this age, but valour is become popular by the civil wars, and in this they have souls brave even to perfection, and in so great number that the choice is impossible to make. This is all of extraordinary and uncommon grandeur that has hitherto arrived at his knowledge.
