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harm.” In connection with the letter to his father should also be read Montaigne’s four letters to L’Hôpital, M. de Foix, and two other gentlemen, about the writings and character of La Boëtie. These are to be found in several of the French editions of the Essays.

That Montaigne’s estimate of La Boëtie was not due merely to his profound friendship is proved by the judgements of other contemporaries. De Thou mentions “three great men” whom France lost in 1563, and counts La Boëtie as one of them, though he was but thirty-three years old. It is also a proof of the strength of his character and abilities, that his writings may still be read with interest. He is the noblest representative of those men of his time who derived strength from the teachings of antiquity. His love of mankind, his faith in human nature, his lofty and ardent passion for public welfare, and the high simplicity and sincerity of his course of life, made him, in Montaigne’s phrase, un grand homme de bien. In his writings may be discovered a vehement and somewhat utopian nature, but also excellent good sense, with peculiar sweetness and delicacy of feeling. Montaigne speaks of “la tendre amour qu'il portoit à sa miserable patrie,”^[1] and there is expression of it in a Latin poem addressed to Montaigne and another friend, and probably written about 1560. Americans may take a special interest in these verses, because, confiding to his friends his wish to fly from “these cruel days,” to “bid a long and last farewell to my native land,” his thoughts turn to "those unknown tracts of earth extending to the West” where are found vacuas sedes et inania regna. “Here must we go, thither must we bend our oars and turn our sails.” Imagine Montaigne and La Boëtie coming here a hundred years before the Pilgrim Fathers!

How warmly La Boëtie returned Montaigne’s affection is testified in his will, where, leaving him his books, he speaks of “M. de Montaigne ... mon intime frère et immutable amy.”

This Essay is not merely narrative. In the first pages Montaigne treats of friendship in general, and argues that the highest friendship has no other “cause and end and fruit”’ but itself.

He then considers the friendship of children to their fathers, which he thinks is rather to be called respect; and that of brothers, which must be somewhat uncertain. And to compare the affection we bear women to friendship — ah, that cannot be! it is quite too inferior a passion!

As we read Montaigne’s account of his “first meeting” with La Boëtie, there is something that recalls Hamlet’s words to Horatio:

and throughout the Essay we are reminded, naturally, of what other men have said in love and praise of their dead friends. Montaigne speaks of “the four years when it was given me to enjoy the sweet com-