The Essays, vol 6 | Page 4

to sample the author's ideas before making
an entire meal of them. D.W.]

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Translated by Charles Cotton
Edited by William Carew Hazilitt
1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 6.
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.

CHAPTER XXVII
OF FRIENDSHIP
Having considered the proceedings of a painter that serves me, I had a
mind to imitate his way. He chooses the fairest place and middle of any
wall, or panel, wherein to draw a picture, which he finishes with his
utmost care and art, and the vacuity about it he fills with grotesques,
which are odd fantastic figures without any grace but what they derive
from their variety, and the extravagance of their shapes. And in truth,
what are these things I scribble, other than grotesques and monstrous
bodies, made of various parts, without any certain figure, or any other
than accidental order, coherence, or proportion?
"Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne."
["A fair woman in her upper form terminates in a fish." --Horace, De
Arte Poetica, v. 4.]
In this second part I go hand in hand with my painter; but fall very
short of him in the first and the better, my power of handling not being

such, that I dare to offer at a rich piece, finely polished, and set off
according to art. I have therefore thought fit to borrow one of Estienne
de la Boetie, and such a one as shall honour and adorn all the rest of my
work--namely, a discourse that he called 'Voluntary Servitude'; but,
since, those who did not know him have properly enough called it "Le
contr Un." He wrote in his youth,--["Not being as yet eighteen years
old."--Edition of 1588.] by way of essay, in honour of liberty against
tyrants; and it has since run through the hands of men of great learning
and judgment, not without singular and merited commendation; for it is
finely written, and as full as anything can possibly be. And yet one may
confidently say it is far short of what he was able to do; and if in that
more mature age, wherein I had the happiness to know him, he had
taken a design like this of mine, to commit his thoughts to writing, we
should have seen a great many rare things, and such as would have
gone very near to have rivalled the best writings of antiquity: for in
natural parts especially, I know no man comparable to him. But he has
left nothing behind him, save this treatise only (and that too by chance,
for I believe he never saw it after it first went out of his hands), and
some observations upon that edict of January--[1562, which granted to
the Huguenots the public exercise of their religion.]--made famous by
our civil-wars, which also shall elsewhere, peradventure, find a place.
These were all I could recover of his remains, I to whom with so
affectionate a remembrance, upon his death-bed, he by his last will
bequeathed his library and papers, the little book of his works only
excepted, which I committed to the press. And this particular obligation
I have to this treatise of his, that it was the occasion of my first coming
acquainted with him; for it was showed to me long before I had the
good fortune to know him; and the first knowledge of his name,
proving the first cause and foundation of a friendship, which we
afterwards improved and maintained, so long as God was pleased to
continue us together, so perfect, inviolate, and entire, that certainly the
like is hardly to be found in story, and amongst the men of this age,
there is no sign nor trace of any such thing in use; so much concurrence
is required to the building of such a one, that 'tis much, if fortune bring
it but once to pass in three ages.
There is nothing to which nature seems so much to have inclined us, as

to society; and Aristotle , says that the good legislators had more
respect to friendship than to justice. Now the most supreme point of its
perfection is this: for, generally, all those that pleasure, profit, public or
private interest create and nourish, are so much the less beautiful and
generous, and so much the less friendships, by