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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70610	Essays of Michael, seigneur de Montaigne in three books : with marginal notes and quotations and an account of the author's life : with a short character of the author and translator, by a person of honour / made English by Charles Cotton ...; Essais. English	Montaigne, Michel de, 1533-1592.; Halifax, George Savile, Marquis of, 1633-1695.; Cotton, Charles, 1630-1687.	1700 (1700)	Wing M2481; ESTC R17025	313,571	634

Breath 531 Switzer Woman 417 Swords the best Weapons 492 T TAble talk 301 Tables distinguished by the Names of the Guests 468 Teachers how should be paid 201 Temerity in the understanding 282 Terence ' s Comedies 393 Terror Panick 87 Testimony of Adrianus Turnebus 203 Things present don't satiate Men. 524 Thirst immoderate after Knowledge Brutifies 25 Thracian King how distinguished from his People 444 Threatnings of an approaching Death 332 Timoleon ' s Tears 371 Timon Man-hater 515 Title of Books 401 Travailing very instructive to Youth 227 Troubles of this Life 374 Trees buried in Winter 358 Turks make themselves scars in honour of their Mistresses 420 Tutor 222 Tyrant 452 V VAlour of three French Gentlemen 2 Valour and its Bounds 72 Value of a Man consists in the Heart 333 Vertue aims at Pleasure 93 Vertue inabled by difficulties Ibid. Vertue 's great Benefit 94 Vertue taught by the Persians as Letters by other Nations 207 Vertue seated in a Plain 245 Vertue Enemy to Anxiety and Sorrow 246 Vertue 's Value 247 Vertue the nursing Mother of all Human Pleasures Ibid. Vertue satisfied with her self 378 Vertue her proper and peculiar office 248 Vertue embraced with two violent desire becomes Vicious 308 Vertue greedy of Danger 413 Vertue of the Loadstone 364 Vices derive their Propensity from Infancy 146 Victory ought not to be Stolen 38 Victory obtained by the Lacedaemonians Flying 66 Victory chief aim of a General and of every private Soldier 465 Victory puts an End to the War 477 Victory not allowed to him that did ask for a Dead Body 19 Victory in what consists 332 Victories fairly gotten 333 Virgins forc'd to their Husbands Bed 368 Vncertainty and Immutability of Humane Things 88 Vncertainty of this Life 426 Vnderstanding rules and Reigns 226 Vnderstandings of severel Sorts 529 Vrine of Horse drunk 497 Vse of the understanding 410 W WArs of Sylla and Marius 478 Wars amongst the Barbarians 32 Wars proclaimed by the Tolling of a Bell. 33 Warlike Women 156 Water-mens Faro 509 Way of speaking of the Athenians Lacedaemonians and retians 267 Weapons formerly used in War 493 Will our the effects thereof not always in our Power 40 Will Irregular and disobedient 134 Will judges of Actions 361 Wine cut with Hatchets in Winter time 357 Wine dash'd 510 Writings of the Counts of Foix. 221 Wise mans Country 237 Wise man may live every where content 373 Wise men ought to do every thing for themselves 516 Wisdom's Acquiescency 15 Wisdom and Brutality 528 Wits ought not to be idle 41 Wits of several degrees 440 Wool perfumed made use of 506 Woman turned into a Man 124 Woman that goes to Bed to a Man must put off her Modesty with her Petticoat 131 Woman fancying she had Swallowed a Pin. 136 Woman causes her Face to be flead 419 Women bitten by Lice 154 Women uncapable of a perfect Love 290 Women buried alive with the Corps of their Husbands 405 Women Succeeding to Peerages 438 Women mask'd and Painted 517 Women and Children excluded from inquiring into the Laws 543 Words the only Tye of Men. 49 Words obliging 398 Words finely Spoken 264 Words affected 266 World a Looking-Glass and a Book 238 X XEnophon a great Captain and a Philosopher 37 Xerxes considering his Forces was siezed with joy and Sorrow 370 Y YOuth must be accustom'd to labour 229 Youth's debauchery and Excess 256 Z ZEal of the Jews to their Belief 408 Zeal immoderate 308 Zeal govern'd with Moderation and Prudence 543 Ze eu●us's Laws against Women's Sumptuousness 459 Zeno's Disciples 267

in favour of these Essays to know what we should believe of 'em and this is the more necessary because one meets with frequent opportunities to talk of this Author his Book being almost in the hands of all people The enemies of Montagne tell us that his Book is so far from inspiring his Readers with the love of Virtue that on the contrary some of his discourses being stuff'd with free and licentious words they teach them some Vices of which they were ignorant or else are the occasion that they take a pleasure in speaking thereof and at last induce them to fall into the same That his Discourses upon several effects of Nature are rather fit to divert their thoughts from true Religion than to convince them of the truth of it and are altogether unbecoming a Christian Philosopher That notwithstanding his Propositions and Assertions are for the most part weak and false yet they are very dangerous for several persons who either want Learning or have too great a byass for Libertinism That besides an indifferent knowledge of practical Morals and History which Montagne had acquir'd in reading Seneca and Plutarch having conversed with few other Books as he owns himself he had hardly a tincture of other Sciences and Arts even not of the Theory of Moral Philosophy That he was as ignorant in other Parts of Philosophy as Physick Metaphysick and Logick which does sufficiently appear by his wrong inferences on several things That he understood very little what we call Humanity or Belles Lettres as one may see by his unpolite stile and the confusion of his discourses which shew him a very ill Grammarian and a bad Rhetorician and as he talks as positively and boldly as the most learned men Scaliger was used to stile him a bold Ignorant These angry Gentlemen do likewise pretend that what is most admir'd in Montagne is stole from some ancient Authors and that if those quotations and the little stories he tells us about his Temper and Inclinations were taken out of his Book the rest would be very little or nothing at all This is the substance of the most material objections made against Montagne not to mention here several Authors who have purposely written against his opinions as Mr de Silhon in his Book of the Immortality of the Soul wherein he confutes what Montagne has alledg'd to prove that Brutes are capable of thinking Chanet in his Treatise of the operations of the Understanding quotes Montagne's Essays as a work wherein Judgment had no share Because says he every judicious man loves order and there is nothing but confusion in that whole Book Having thus impartially related what is urged against Montagne we proceed now to mention what is said in his vindication And we might here in the first place make use of the long Preface Mademoiselle de Gournay has prefixed to the French Folio Edition of his Essays 1652 wherein she does not only give a full answer to all the objections made or that can be made against Montagne but also talks of him as of a man whose works have revived Truth in his Age and which therefore she calls the quintessence of Philosophy the Hellebore of Mans Folly the Setter at Liberty of Understanding and the Iudicial Throne of Reason But we do not think fit to insist upon her Evidence for notwithstanding the solid arguments her opinion is grounded upon she may be suspected to be blindfolded with the passionate Love she had for her excellent Father and besides we have so many great men to produce in favour of Montagne that we may without any prejudice to his Cause wave the evidence of Mademoiselle de Gournay These will tell you that if he has handled any matters with an uncommon freedom this is an effect of his generous Temper which was free from any base or servile compliance and as to his Love for Virtue and his Religion they appeal to his very Book itself whereby that truth will appear if the passages alledged to prove the contrary are examined without partiality and not by themselves but according to the connexion they have with what precedes or follows Stephen Pasquier that sincere Writer deals more fairly with Montagne than Silhon Balzac or any other of his opposers for he does not conceal his faults nor pass by what may be said to attenuate or excuse them Montagne says he in one of his Letters has several Chapters whereof the Body is no ways answerable to the Head witness these following The History of Spurina of the Resemblance of Children to their Parents of the Verses of Virgil of Coaches of Lame people of Vanity and Physiognomy These are incoherent things wherein the Author runs from one subject to another without any order or connexion But after all we must take of Montagne what is good and not look upon his Titles but into his Discourses for possibly he designed to laugh at himself others and humane capacity slighting thus the Rules and servile Laws of Authors I shall add on this point that notwithstanding several of his discourses do contain quite different things from what is promised in the Titles as Pasquier has observed it yet it does not always happen so and when he has done it methinks it is rather through affectation than inadvertency to shew that he did not intend to make a regular Work This does likewise appear by the odd or rather fantastical connexion of his discourses wherein from one matter he makes long digressions upon several others No doubt but he thought that one might take the same Liberty in his Meditations as is assumed in common Conversations in which tho there be but two or three Interlocutors 't is observed that there is such a variety in their discourses that if they were set down in writing it would appear that by digressions they are run away from their first subject and that the last part of their conversation is very little answerable to the first This I verily believe was his true intention that he might present the World with a free and original Work for Chanct nor any other of his Adversaries will not be able to convince the World that this proceeded from want of Judgment in a man of such parts as they are oblig'd to own in Montagne He designed also sometimes to conceal his design in his Titles as for instance in his third Book when having spent almost a whole Chapter against Physicians it is most likely that his intention was to conceal it by intitling the same of the Resemblance of Children to their Parents For this gives him an opportunity to tell us that he was afflicted with the Gravel as his Father was and to discourse of the Cure of several distempers and at the same time of the uncertainty of Physick or rather of the ignorance of Physicians from whence I conclude that in this whole Chapter and several others there is rather a resin'd Art than Ignorance It has been also

Study I confess to those who make it so by doing it after a negligent manner but to those who do it with care and Observation 't is a study of inestimable Fruit and value and the only one as Plato reports the Lacedaemonians reserv'd to themselves What profit shall he not reap as to the Business of Men by reading the Lives of Plutarch But withall let my Governour remember to what end his Instructions are principally directed and that he do not so much imprint in his Pupils Memory the date of the Ruine of Carthage as the manners of Hannibal and Scipio nor so much where Marcellus dy'd as why it was unworthy of his Duty that he di'd there That he do not teach him so much the Narrative part as the Business of History The reading of which in my Opinion is a thing that of all others we apply our selves unto with the most differing and uncertain Measures I have read an hundred things in Livy that another has not or not taken notice of at least and Plutarch has read an hundred more there than ever I could find or than peradventure that Author ever Writ To some it is meerly a Grammar Study to others the very Anatomy of Philosophy by which the most secret and abstruse parts of our humane Nature are penetrated into There are in Plutarch many long Elegy of Plutarch Discourses very worthy to be carefully read and observ'd for he is in my Opinion of all other the greatest Master in that kind of Writing but withall there are a thousand others which he has only touch'd and glanc'd upon where he only points with his Finger to direct us which way we may go if we will and contents himself sometimes with giving only one brisk hit in the nicest Article of the Question from whence we are to grope out the rest as for Example where he says That the Inhabitants of Asia came to be Vassals to one only for not having been able to pronounce one Syllable which is No. Which Saying of his gave perhaps matter and occasion to Boetius to write his Voluntary Servitude Even this but to see him pick out a light Action in a man's Life or a Word that does not seem to be of any such Importance is it self a whole Discourse 'T is to our Prejudice that men of Understanding should so immoderately affect Brevity no doubt but their Reputation is the better by its but in the mean time we are the worse Plutarch had rather we should applaud his Judgment than commend his Knowledge and had rather leave us with an Appetite to read more than glutted with that we have already read He knew very well that a Man may say too much even upon the best Subjects and that Alexandrides did justly reproach him who made very elegant but two long Speeches to the Ephori when he said O Stranger that speakest the things thou oughtest to speak but not after the manner that thou● should'st speak them Such as have lean and spare Bodies stuff themselves out with Cloaths so they who are defective in Matter endeavour to make amends with Words Humane understanding is marvellously enlightned by daily Conversation with men for we are otherwise of our selves so stupid as to have our Sight limited to the length of our own Noses One asking Socrates of what Country he was he did not make Answer of Athens but of the World he whose Imagination is better levell'd could carry further embrac'd the whole World for his Country and extended his society and Friendship to all Mankind not as we do who look no further ' than our Feet When the Vines of our Village are nip'd with the Frost the Parish Priest presently concludes that the indignation of God is gone out against all Humane Race and that the Cannihals have already got the Pip. Who is it that seeing the bloudy Havock of these Civil Wars of ours does not cry out That the machine of the World is near Dissolution and that the Day of Judgment is at hand without considering that many worse Revolutions have been seen and that in the mean time People are very merry in a thousand other Parts of the Earth for all this For my Part considering the License and Impunity that always attend such Commotions I admire they are so moderate and that there is more Mischief done To him that feels the Hail-stones p●●ter about his Ears the whole Hermisphear o●pears to be in Storm and Tempest like the ridiculous Saveyard who said very gravely That if that simple King of France could have marrag'd his Fortune as he should have done he might in time have come to have been Steward of the Houshold to the Duke his Master the Follow could not in his shallow Imagination conceive that there could be any thing greater than a Duke of Savoy And in truth we are all of us insensibly in this Error an Error of a very great Train and very pernicion● Consequence But whoever shall represent to his Fancy as in a Picture that great Image of our Mother Nature pourtrayed in her full Majesty and Lustre whoever in her Face shall read so general and so constant a Variety whoever shall observe himself in that Figure and not himself but a whole Kingdom no bigger than the least Touch or Prick of a Pendl in comparison of the whole that man alone is able to value things according to their true Estimate and Grandeur This great World which some do yet multiply as several Species under one Genus is the Mirror wherein we are to behold our selves to be able to know our selves as we ought to do In short I would have this to be the Book my young Gentleman should study with the most Attention for so many Humours so many Sects so many Judgments Opinions Laws and Customs teach us to judge a right of our own and inform our Understandings to discover their Imperfection and natural Infirnity which is no trivial Speculation So many Mutations of States and Kingdoms and so many Turns and Revolutions of publick Fortune will make us wise enough to make no great wonder of our own So many great Names so many famous Victories and Conquests drown'd and swallow'd in Oblivion render our Hopes ridiculous of eternizing our Names by the taking of half a score light Horse or a paltry Turret which only derives its Memory from its Ruine The Pride and Arrogancy of so many foreign Pomps and Ceremonies the tumorous Majesty of so many Courts and Grandeurs accustom and fortifie our Sight without Astonishment to behold and endure the lustre of our own So many millions of men buried before us encourage us not to fear to go seek so good Company in the other World and so of all the rest Pythagoras was wont to say That our Life retires to the great and Populous Assembly of the Olympick Games wherein some exercise the Body that they may carry away the Glory of the Prize in those Contentions and

Bank of its descent and that in Twenty Years it has gain'd so much and undermin'd the Foundations of so many Houses I perceive it to be an extraordinary Agitation for had it always follow'd this Course or were hereafter to do it the prospect of the World would be totally chang'd But Rivers alter their Course sometimes beating against the one side and sometimes the other and sometimes quietly keeping the Channel I do not speak of sudden Inundations the causes of which every Body understands In Medoc by the Sea-shore the Sieur d' Arsac my Brother sees an Estate he had there Buried under the Sands which the Sea Vomits before it where the tops of some Houses are yet to be seen and where his Rents and Revenues are converted into pitiful Barren Pasturage The Inhabitants of which place affirm That of late Years the Sea has driven so vehemently upon them that they have lost above Four Leagues of Land These Sands are her Harbingers And we now see great heaps of moving Sand that march half a League before her The other Testimony from Antiquity to which some would apply this discovery of the new World is in Aristotle at least if that little Book of unheard of Miracles be his He there tells us That certain Carthaginians having crost the Atlantick Sea without the Streight of Gibralter and Sailed a very long time discover'd at last a great and fruitful Island all cover'd over with Wood and Water'd with several broad and deep Rivers far remote from all firm Land and that they and others after them allur'd by the pleasantness and fertility of the Soil went thither with their Wives and Children and began to Plant a Colony But the Senate of Carthage visibly perceiving their People by little and little to grow thin Issu'd out an express Prohibition That no one upon pain of Death should Transport themselves thither and also drove out these new Inhabitants fearing 't is said least in process of time they should so multiply as to supplant them themselves and Ruine their State But this Relation of Aristotle's does no more agree with our new found Lands than the other This Man that I have is a plain ignorant Fellow and therefore the more likely to tell Truth For your better bred sort of Men are much more Curious in their Observation 't is true and discover a great deal more but then they gloss upon it and to give the greater weight to what they deliver and allure your Belief they cannot forbear a little to alter the Story they never represent things to you simply as they are but rather as they appear'd to them or as they would have them appear to you and to gain the reputation of Men of Judgment and the better to induce your Faith are willing to help out the Business with something more than is really true of their own Invention Now in this Case we should either have a Man of Irreproachable Veracity or so Simple that he has not wherewithal to Contrive and to give a Colour of Truth to False Relations and that can have no Ends in Forging an Untruth Such a one is mine and besides the little suspicion the Man lies under he has divers times shew'd me several Sea men and Merchants that at the same time went the same Voyage I shall therefore content my self with his Information without enquiring what the Cosmographers say to the Buiness We should have Maps to trace out to us the particular places where they have been but for having had this advantage over us to have seen the Holy Land they would have the privilege forsooth to tell us Stories of all the other parts of the World besides I would have every one Write what he knows and as much as he knows but no more and that not in this only but in all other Subjects For such a Person may have some particular Knowledge and Experience of the nature of such a River or such a Fountain that as to other things knows no more than what every Body ders and yet to keep a clutter with this Little Pittance of his will undertake to Write the whole Body of Physicks a Vice from whence great Inconveniences derive their Original Now to return to my Subject I find that there is nothing Barbarous and Savage in this Nation by any thing that I can gather excepting That every one gives the Title of Barbarity to every thing that is not in use in his own Country As indeed we have no other level of Truth and Reason than the Example and Idea of the Opinions and Customs of the place wherein we Live There is always the true Religion there the perfect Government and the most exact and accomplish'd Usance of all things They are Savages at the same rate that we say Fruits are wild which Nature produces of her self and by her own ordinary progress whereas in truth we ought rather to call those wild whose Natures we have chang'd by our Artifice and diverted from the common Order In those the Genuine most useful and natural Vertues and Properties are Vigorous and Spritely which we have help'd to Degenerate in these by accommodating them to the pleasure of our own Corrupted Palate And yet for all this our Taste confesses a flavour and delicacy excellent even to Emulation of the best of ours in several Fruits those Countries abound with without Art or Culture neither is it reasonable that Art should gain the Prehemence of our great and powerful Mother Nature We have so oppress'd her with the additional Ornaments and Graces we have added to the Beauty and Riches of her own Works by our Inventions that we have almost Smother'd and Choak'd her and yet in other places where she shines in her own purity and proper lustre she strangely baffles disgraces all our vain and frivolous Attempts Propert. l. 1. Ele. 2. Et veniunt hederae sponte suae melius Surgit in solis formosion arbutus antris Et volucres nulla dulcius arte canunt The Ivy best spontaneously does thrive Th' Arbutus best in shady Caves does live And Birds in their wild Notes their Throats do stretch With greater Art than Art it self can teach Our utmost endeavours cannot arrive at so much as to imitate the Nest of the least of Birds its Contexture Queintness and Convenience Not so much as the Web of a Contemptible Spider All things says Plato are produc'd either by Nature by Fortune or by Art the greatest and most beautiful by the one or the other of the former the least and the most imperfect by the last These Nations then seem to me to be so far Barbarous as having receiv'd but very little form and fashion from Art and Humane Invention and consequently not much remote from their Original Simplicity The Laws of Nature however govern them still not as yet much vitiated with any mixture of ours But in such Purity that I am sometimes troubled we were no sooner