The Essays, vol 1 | Page 6

Of age.

THE LIFE OF MONTAIGNE
[This is translated freely from that prefixed to the 'variorum' Paris
edition, 1854, 4 vols. 8vo. This biography is the more desirable that it
contains all really interesting and important matter in the journal of the
Tour in Germany and Italy, which, as it was merely written under
Montaigne's dictation, is in the third person, is scarcely worth
publication, as a whole, in an English dress.]
The author of the Essays was born, as he informs us himself, between

eleven and twelve o'clock in the day, the last of February 1533, at the
chateau of St. Michel de Montaigne. His father, Pierre Eyquem, esquire,
was successively first Jurat of the town of Bordeaux (1530),
Under-Mayor 1536, Jurat for the second time in 1540, Procureur in
1546, and at length Mayor from 1553 to 1556. He was a man of austere
probity, who had "a particular regard for honour and for propriety in his
person and attire . . . a mighty good faith in his speech, and a
conscience and a religious feeling inclining to superstition, rather than
to the other extreme."[Essays, ii. 2.] Pierre Eyquem bestowed great care
on the education of his children, especially on the practical side of it.
To associate closely his son Michel with the people, and attach him to
those who stand in need of assistance, he caused him to be held at the
font by persons of meanest position; subsequently he put him out to
nurse with a poor villager, and then, at a later period, made him
accustom himself to the most common sort of living, taking care,
nevertheless, to cultivate his mind, and superintend its development
without the exercise of undue rigour or constraint. Michel, who gives
us the minutest account of his earliest years, charmingly narrates how
they used to awake him by the sound of some agreeable music, and
how he learned Latin, without suffering the rod or shedding a tear,
before beginning French, thanks to the German teacher whom his father
had placed near him, and who never addressed him except in the
language of Virgil and Cicero. The study of Greek took precedence. At
six years of age young Montaigne went to the College of Guienne at
Bordeaux, where he had as preceptors the most eminent scholars of the
sixteenth century, Nicolas Grouchy, Guerente, Muret, and Buchanan.
At thirteen he had passed through all the classes, and as he was
destined for the law he left school to study that science. He was then
about fourteen, but these early years of his life are involved in obscurity.
The next information that we have is that in 1554 he received the
appointment of councillor in the Parliament of Bordeaux; in 1559 he
was at Bar-le-Duc with the court of Francis II, and in the year
following he was present at Rouen to witness the declaration of the
majority of Charles IX. We do not know in what manner he was
engaged on these occasions.
Between 1556 and 1563 an important incident occurred in the life of
Montaigne, in the commencement of his romantic friendship with

Etienne de la Boetie, whom he had met, as he tells us, by pure chance
at some festive celebration in the town. From their very first interview
the two found themselves drawn irresistibly close to one another, and
during six years this alliance was foremost in the heart of Montaigne,
as it was afterwards in his memory, when death had severed it.
Although he blames severely in his own book [Essays, i. 27.] those
who, contrary to the opinion of Aristotle, marry before five-and-thirty,
Montaigne did not wait for the period fixed by the philosopher of
Stagyra, but in 1566, in his thirty-third year, he espoused Francoise de
Chassaigne, daughter of a councillor in the Parliament of Bordeaux.
The history of his early married life vies in obscurity with that of his
youth. His biographers are not agreed among themselves; and in the
same degree that he lays open to our view all that concerns his secret
thoughts, the innermost mechanism of his mind, he observes too much
reticence in respect to his public functions and conduct, and his social
relations. The title of Gentleman in Ordinary to the King, which he
assumes, in a preface, and which Henry II. gives him in a letter, which
we print a little farther on; what he says as to the commotions of courts,
where he passed a portion of his life; the Instructions which he wrote
under the dictation of Catherine de Medici for King Charles IX., and
his noble correspondence with Henry IV., leave no doubt, however, as
to the part which he played in the transactions of those times, and we
find an unanswerable proof of the esteem