Essays of Michel de Montaigne Page #2

								


My warmest thanks are due to my father, Mr Registrar Hazlitt, the author of the well-known and excellent edition of Montaigne published in 1842, for the important assistance which he has rendered to me in verifying and retranslating the quotations, which were in a most corrupt state, and of which Cotton’s English versions were singularly loose and inexact, and for the zeal with which he has co-operated with me in collating the English text, line for line and word for word, with the best French edition.

By the favour of Mr F. W. Cosens, I have had by me, while at work on this subject, the copy of Cotgrave’s Dictionary, folio, 1650, which belonged to Cotton.  It has his autograph and copious MSS.  notes, nor is it too much to presume that it is the very book employed by him in his translation. W.  C.  H. KENSINGTON, November 1877.

BOOK THE FIRST.

CHAP.

I.      That men by various ways arrive at the same end.

II.     Of Sorrow.

III.    That our affections carry themselves beyond us.

IV.     That the soul discharges her passions upon false objects, where
        the true are wanting.

V.      Whether the governor of a place besieged ought himself to go out
        to parley.

VI.     That the hour of parley is dangerous.

VII.    That the intention is judge of our actions

VIII.   Of idleness.

IX.     Of liars.

X.      Of quick or slow speech.

XI.     Of prognostications.

XII.    Of constancy.

XIII.   The ceremony of the interview of princes.

XIV.    That men are justly punished for being obstinate in the defence
        of a fort that is not in reason to be defended.

XV.     Of the punishment of cowardice.

XVI.    A proceeding of some ambassadors.

XVII.   Of fear.

XVIII.  That men are not to judge of our happiness till after death.

XIX.    That to study philosophy is to learn to die.

XX.     Of the force of imagination.

XXI.    That the profit of one man is the damage of another.

XXII.   Of custom, and that we should not easily change a law received.

XXIII.  Various events from the same counsel.

XXIV.   Of pedantry.

XXV.    Of the education of children.

XXVI.   That it is folly to measure truth and error by our own capacity.

XXVII.  Of friendship.

XXVIII. Nine-and-twenty sonnets of Estienne de la Boetie.

XXIX.   Of moderation.

XXX.    Of cannibals.

XXXI.   That a man is soberly to judge of the divine ordinances.

XXXII.  That we are to avoid pleasures, even at the expense of
        life.

XXXIII. That fortune is oftentimes observed to act by the rule of reason.

XXXIV.  Of one defect in our government.

XXXV.   Of the custom of wearing clothes.

XXXVI.  Of Cato the Younger.

XXXVII. That we laugh and cry for the same thing.

XXXVIII. Of solitude.

XXXIX.  A consideration upon Cicero.

XL.     That the relish of good and evil depends in a great measure upon
        the opinion we have of them.

XLI.    Not to communicate a man’s honour.
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