The Essays, vol 1 | Page 7

in which he was held by the
most exalted personages, in a letter which was addressed to him by
Charles at the time he was admitted to the Order of St. Michael, which
was, as he informs us himself, the highest honour of the French
noblesse.
According to Lacroix du Maine, Montaigne, upon the death of his
eldest brother, resigned his post of Councillor, in order to adopt the
military profession, while, if we might credit the President Bouhier, he
never discharged any functions connected with arms. However, several
passages in the Essays seem to indicate that he not only took service,
but that he was actually in numerous campaigns with the Catholic
armies. Let us add, that on his monument he is represented in a coat of
mail, with his casque and gauntlets on his right side, and a lion at his
feet, all which signifies, in the language of funeral emblems, that the
departed has been engaged in some important military transactions.

However it may be as to these conjectures, our author, having arrived at
his thirty-eighth year, resolved to dedicate to study and contemplation
the remaining term of his life; and on his birthday, the last of February
1571, he caused a philosophical inscription, in Latin, to be placed upon
one of the walls of his chateau, where it is still to be seen, and of which
the translation is to this effect:--"In the year of Christ . . . in his
thirty-eighth year, on the eve of the Calends of March, his birthday,
Michel Montaigne, already weary of court employments and public
honours, withdrew himself entirely into the converse of the learned
virgins where he intends to spend the remaining moiety of the to
allotted to him in tranquil seclusion."
At the time to which we have come, Montaigne was unknown to the
world of letters, except as a translator and editor. In 1569 he had
published a translation of the "Natural Theology" of Raymond de
Sebonde, which he had solely undertaken to please his father. In 1571
he had caused to be printed at Paris certain 'opuscucla' of Etienne de la
Boetie; and these two efforts, inspired in one case by filial duty, and in
the other by friendship, prove that affectionate motives overruled with
him mere personal ambition as a literary man. We may suppose that he
began to compose the Essays at the very outset of his retirement from
public engagements; for as, according to his own account, observes the
President Bouhier, he cared neither for the chase, nor building, nor
gardening, nor agricultural pursuits, and was exclusively occupied with
reading and reflection, he devoted himself with satisfaction to the task
of setting down his thoughts just as they occurred to him. Those
thoughts became a book, and the first part of that book, which was to
confer immortality on the writer, appeared at Bordeaux in 1580.
Montaigne was then fifty- seven; he had suffered for some years past
from renal colic and gravel; and it was with the necessity of distraction
from his pain, and the hope of deriving relief from the waters, that he
undertook at this time a great journey. As the account which he has left
of his travels in Germany and Italy comprises some highly interesting
particulars of his life and personal history, it seems worth while to
furnish a sketch or analysis of it.
"The Journey, of which we proceed to describe the course simply," says
the editor of the Itinerary, "had, from Beaumont-sur-Oise to Plombieres,
in Lorraine, nothing sufficiently interesting to detain us . . . we must go

as far, as Basle, of which we have a description, acquainting us with its
physical and political condition at that period, as well as with the
character of its baths. The passage of Montaigne through Switzerland is
not without interest, as we see there how our philosophical traveller
accommodated himself everywhere to the ways of the country. The
hotels, the provisions, the Swiss cookery, everything, was agreeable to
him; it appears, indeed, as if he preferred to the French manners and
tastes those of the places he was visiting, and of which the simplicity
and freedom (or frankness) accorded more with his own mode of life
and thinking. In the towns where he stayed, Montaigne took care to see
the Protestant divines, to make himself conversant with all their
dogmas. He even had disputations with them occasionally.
"Having left Switzerland he went to Isne, an imperial then on to
Augsburg and Munich. He afterwards proceeded to the Tyrol, where he
was agreeably surprised, after the warnings which he had received, at
the very slight inconveniences which he suffered, which gave him
occasion to remark that he had all his life distrusted the statements of
others respecting foreign countries, each