Montaigne opens on Virgil by contrasting profitable thoughts with gaiety: vice, death, and poverty are grave subjects, yet constant meditation besots ordinary souls, and age now preaches temperance where youth needed reminders to duty.
From excess of sprightliness he has fallen into severity; he purposely runs into wanton youthful thoughts to divert a body that now guides his mind toward reformation and preaches death, patience, and repentance at every hour. He now defends himself from temperance as once from pleasure, lest prudence wither him; wisdom, like folly, needs moderation.
He turns from the stormy sky to amuse himself in better years, lives twice by enjoying a former life in memory, and finds cloudy days ordinary while clear weather startles him like a favour. Janus should make age look backward; Plato would have old men watch young games and reward the most diverting youth. Yet Montaigne's tickle is in conceit more than flesh, a weak contest of art against nature.
It is great folly to lengthen and anticipate human incommodities; he seizes the least occasions of pleasure and knows prudent pleasures only by hearsay. Real deformities suffice without forging imaginary ones; parish laws bind him more than God's while his life overflows with examples.
Marriage is society's best when well formed, yet we decry it; birds outside cages despair to enter while those within despair to leave, and Socrates said a man will repent whether he marries or not. Extravagant humours like his hate obligation; he prefers loosened living and would not have married Wisdom herself had it cost chastity. Simple souls suit marriage better than his; he asks which misfortune would afflict him more, wife or mistress, in a sound marriage.
Boys and old men may be handsome, but active love belongs to another season; reason and friendship flourish among men while beauty is women's peculiar prerogative. He ranks understanding below exceptionable persons in love, yet without bodily grace nothing proceeds.
Virgil and Ovid treat wantonness discreetly yet disclose it more by reserve; Martial turned up Venus cannot show her so naked. Half-open modesty treacherously invites imagination; respectful Spanish and Italian delay please him more than French impetuosity that spends all at first onset.
Ladies should amuse and fool us by spinning favours out; conquest and entire possession are what they should dread, for once ours we are no more theirs. Thrasonides loved his passion more than his person; steps and degrees honour the uppermost seat.
Chastity rules invented for women are ridiculous: midwives destroy virginity while testing it, games and interdicts cannot be precise, and ideals like Fatua or Hiero's wife require women to become insensible and invisible to satisfy us.
He repeats that profitable thoughts must be taken by intervals; ordinary souls grow besotted if continually intent on death and duty. Gaiety and health once quarreled with grave meditations, but now age urges wisdom without relief unless he steals truces from infirmity.
Petronius says the mind throws itself wholly into memories; Montaigne would rather be a less while old than old before he is really so. He knows several prudent pleasures by hearsay yet applies none; invention anticipates losses that nature has not yet sent.
Discreet poets reserve wantonness yet reveal it by covering; ladies' necks and priests' sacred things are shadowed to give greater lustre, as sun and wind strike harder by reflection. Egyptian wisdom hid meaning under cloak to provoke inquiry; half-spoken love draws guesswork farther than open speech.
Crane-throat fantasies aside, precipitous pleasure suits ill with prompt natures; glances, bows, and signs should stand for favour between lovers. Who wins only at sweepstakes should not enter this school; windings and porticoes honour the upper seat and prolong love without hope or desire.
French impetuosity spends the charge at first onset; miserable old age itself may find reward if favours are exposed in small parcels. He who has no fruition but fruition, like hunters caring only for quarry, misses the chase that makes surrender meaningful rather than mere conquest.
Age reads daily lectures of coldness; his body avoids disorder and governs mind more rudely than mind once governed body. Ovid's line bids intent not cling eternally to ills; in truces allowed by infirmity he turns eyes from storm clouds he regards without fear yet not without study.
Martial's live-twice line names the pleasure of a former life; backward-looking joy is his deliberate amusement when tickling conceit replaces tickling flesh. Wretched men whose pleasures are crimes already carry enough inevitable pain without manufacturing new offices nature never imposed. Even reserved poets, by treating vice discreetly, teach how covering can display; the essay turns from aging flesh to the marriage cage without pretending appetite ends.
