Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/279
(a) There is no act or thought of mine in which I do not miss him, even as it would have been with him for me; for even as he surpassed me infinitely in every other ability and power, so did he in the virtue of friendship.
Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
Tam chari capitis.[1]
O misero frater adempte mihi!
Omnia tecum una perierunt gaudia nostra,
Quæ tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor.
Tu mea, tu moriens fregisti commoda, frater;
Tecum una tota est nostra sepulta anima,
Cujus ego interitu tota de mente fugavi
Hæc studia atque omnes delicias animi.
Alloquar? audiero nunquam tua verba loquentem?
Nunquam ego te, vita frater amabilior,
Aspiciam posthac? At certe semper amabo.[2]
But let us listen a while to this youth of sixteen.[3]
Because I have learned that this work has since been brought to light, and to an evil end, by those who seek to disturb and change the form of our government, heedless whether they will improve it, and that they have mixed it with other writings of their own make, I have given up placing it here. And that the author’s memory may not by this [publication] be wronged in the minds of those who have not had the opportunity to know his opinions and his actions at close quarters, I inform them that this subject was treated
- ↑ What shame, what bounds can there be in grief for so dear a head? — Horace, Odes, I, 24.1.
- ↑ O brother, snatched from me to my grief! With thee have departed all the joys which in life thy sweet love nourished. Thou, O brother, thou hast destroyed by thy death all my comforts; with thee my whole soul is entombed. Since thy death I have wholly shunned the study of books and all delights of the mind. — Shall I speak with thee hereafter? Am I never again to hear thee talk? Shall I never again behold thee, O brother dearer than life? But surely I shall forever love thee.— Catullus, LXVIII, 20; LXV, 9. Montaigne made considerable changes in the text.
- ↑ Dixhuict in 1580-1588. Montaigne originally intended to add La Boëtie’s tract, La Servitude Volontaire, at the end of this chapter, but abandoned that purpose for the reason given in the next paragraph.