Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/290
270 ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE
the remarks Montaigne makes on the value of his testimony, and that of the “‘seamen and merchants” he brought to Montaigne, have not the firmest foundation; but the interest of the Essay lies not in the facts Montaigne believed, but in the inferences he draws from them. As M. Levaux has said: “It must be acknowledged that Montaigne has sin- arly amplified what a man whom he describes as a ‘simple, plain ‘ellow’ could have related to him. It is an interpreted narrative; what Montaigne reproved others for doing, he here himself does.”
What more natural! And how Montaigne would have liked to hold up to the light this bit of human nature in himself, if he had chanced to perceive it! Again we feel that he writes as a poet, not as an historian, and not quite as a philosopher. And this Essay has a link with poetry that gives it the greatest possible extraneous interest that it could pos- sess. Shakespeare read it, and with such warmth of interest and appre- ciation that he quoted it. Nothing could be more delightful to the lover of Montaigne than that in “The Tempest,” — one of the most beautiful of the plays, one most closely connected with Shakespeare personally, and written in the noblest maturity of his mind, — nothing could be more delightful, I say, than to find imbedded in it a long quotation from Montaigne (Act II, scene 1). Shakespeare took it quite certainly from the translation of Florio.!
M. Villey remarks: “Much was written in the sixteenth century about the cannibals. It is interesting to examine carefully the asser- tions of Montaigne in relation to those of his contemporaries. Besides the great cosmographs of Thevet, of Belleforest, and of Munster (we know that this last was in Montaigne’s library), and the great histories of the Indies, like that of Lopez de Gomara, it is particularly instructive to read the narratives of the companions of Villegaignon: that of André Thevet, ‘Les Singularetez de la France antartique’ (1563); and the re- lation of Jean de Léry, ‘Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre de Brésil, autrement dit Amérique’ (1578).”
EN King Pyrrhus invaded Italy, after he had surveyed the army that the Romans had sent out against him, drawn up in battle array, “I know not,” he said, “what barbarians these
are” (for the Greeks so called all foreign nations), “but the disposition of this army that I see is in no wise barbarian.” * The Greeks said the same of the army that Flaminius led into
1 It is to be observed that Shakespeare read the word “‘idle” as re- ferring to men; in Montaigne “oisives” refers to occupations. It may be mentioned, by the way, that Florio’s volume is the only book which we certainly know to have belonged to Shakespeare. The British Mu- seum has a copy with his autograph on the fly-leaf. That was published in 1603, and “The Tempest” was written in 1610.
2 See Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus.