MONTAGUE
516
MONTAIGNE
Poets" '.—Miscellanea Spiritunlia, published in two parts (1618-54), a series of religious essays or tracts :— a Letttr from Paris to his father, in wliicli he justilies the Church of Komc, and states his personal reasons for changing his belief. This letter was printed with lord Falk- land's Discourse on J»fullH/iUty (1651). He also made an English translation of Bossuet's Exposition of the Doctrines of the Catholic Church (1672). (H. W. T.)
Montague, Richard, D.D, Sec Moustagit.
Montaigne, Michel, Seigneur de, a distinguished French moralist, remarkable for his deep insight into the principles of our common nature, was born Feb. 28, 15y3, and was a younger son of a nobleman, whose estate, from -which the familj' name arose, was situated in the province of Perigord, near the river Dordogne. His father, an eccentric, blunt, feudal baron, placed him under the care of a German tutor who did not speak French, and the intercourse between tutor and pupil was carried on entirely in Latin ; and even his parents made it a rule to address him in that language, of which they knew a sutlicicnt number of words for common purposes. The attendants were enjoined to follow the same ])ractice. " They all became Latin- ized," says Montaigne himself; ''and even the villa- gers in the neighborhood learned words in that lan- guage, some of which took root in the countiy, and be- came of common use among the people." Thus, with- out the aid of scholastic teaching, Montaigne spoke Latin long before he could speak French, which he was afterwards obliged to learn like a foreign language. He studied Greek in the same manner, by waj- of pas- time more than as a task. He was sent to the college of Guienne, at Bordeaux ; and at the age of thirteen he com])lcted his college education. He then studied law, and in 1554 he was made "consciller," or judge, in the Parliament of Bordeaux. He repaired several times to court, and enjoyed the favor of Henri II, by whom, or, as some say, by (Jharles IX, he was made a gentle- man of the king's chamber and a knight of the Order of St. Michael. AVben he was thirty-three years of age Montaigne married, to please his friends rather, as he says, than himself, for he was not inclined to a married life. He, however, always lived on good terms with his wife, by whom lie had a daughter. He man- aged his own estate, on which he generally resided, and from which he derived an income of about 6000 livros. In 15GS) Montaigne translated into French a Latin work of Kaymond de Sebonde or Sebon, a Span- ish divine, on Natural Theology, at the request of his then recently deceased father, who had feared for his son's apostasy to Protestantism (comp. Fisher, Hist. Bef. p. 6, note 2). France was at that time desolated by civil and religious war, and Montaigne, disapprov- ing of the conduct of the court towards the Protes- tants, and 3-et being bj' education a Poman Catholic, and by principle and disposition loyal to the king, was glad to live in retirement, and take no part in public affairs except by exhorting both parties to moderation and mutual charity. B}' this conduct he liecame, as might be expected, obnoxious to l)oth sides. The massacre of St. Bartholomew jilunged him into a deep melancholy, for he detested cruelty and the shedding of blood. It was about this dismal eimch of 1572 that he began to write his J-Jssai.i, which were published in March, 1580, and met with groat success. (See below.) "With a view to restitring his health, which was not good, Montaigne undertook a journej' to Germany, Switzerland, and lastly to Italy. At Komc he was well received by several cardinals and other persons of dis- tinction, and was introduced to pope Gregory XIII. and received the freedom of the city of Pome by a bull of the i)ope, an honor of which he appears to have been very proud. Montaigne was delighted with Pome ; he there found himself at home among those scenes and monuments which were connected with his earliest Studies and the first impressions of his boyish years.