The Essays, vol 16 | Page 9

forth blossoms of
enamelled flowers. Nor yet of sylvan marvels alone had we sight: I saw
sea-calves fight with bears, and a deformed sort of cattle, we might call
sea-horses."--Calpurnius, Eclog., vii. 64.]
Sometimes they made a high mountain advance itself, covered with
fruit- trees and other leafy trees, sending down rivulets of water from
the top, as from the mouth of a fountain: otherwhiles, a great ship was
seen to come rolling in, which opened and divided of itself, and after
having disgorged from the hold four or five hundred beasts for fight,
closed again, and vanished without help. At other times, from the floor
of this place, they made spouts of perfumed water dart their streams
upward, and so high as to sprinkle all that infinite multitude. To defend
themselves from the injuries of the weather, they had that vast place
one while covered over with purple curtains of needlework, and
by-and-by with silk of one or another colour, which they drew off or on
in a moment, as they had a mind:
"Quamvis non modico caleant spectacula sole, Vela reducuntur, cum
venit Hermogenes."
["The curtains, though the sun should scorch the spectators, are drawn
in, when Hermogenes appears."-Martial, xii. 29, 15. M. Tigellius
Hermogenes, whom Horace and others have satirised. One editor calls
him "a noted thief," another: "He was a literary amateur of no ability,
who expressed his critical opinions with too great a freedom to please
the poets of his day." D.W.]
The network also that was set before the people to defend them from

the violence of these turned-out beasts was woven of gold:
"Auro quoque torts refulgent Retia."
["The woven nets are refulgent with gold." --Calpurnius, ubi supra.]
If there be anything excusable in such excesses as these, it is where the
novelty and invention create more wonder than the expense; even in
these vanities we discover how fertile those ages were in other kind of
wits than these of ours. It is with this sort of fertility, as with all other
products of nature: not that she there and then employed her utmost
force: we do not go; we rather run up and down, and whirl this way and
that; we turn back the way we came. I am afraid our knowledge is weak
in all senses; we neither see far forward nor far backward; our
understanding comprehends little, and lives but a little while; 'tis short
both in extent of time and extent of matter:
"Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Mufti, sed omnes illacrymabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longs Nocte."
[ Many brave men lived before Agamemnon, but all are pressed by the
long night unmourned and unknown."--Horace, Od., iv. 9, 25.]
"Et supra bellum Thebanum et funera Trojae Non alias alii quoque res
cecinere poetae?"
["Why before the Theban war and the destruction of Troy, have not
other poets sung other events?"--Lucretius, v. 327. Montaigne here
diverts himself m giving Lucretius' words a construction directly
contrary to what they bear in the poem. Lucretius puts the question,
Why if the earth had existed from all eternity, there had not been poets,
before the Theban war, to sing men's exploits. --Coste.]
And the narrative of Solon, of what he had learned from the Egyptian
priests, touching the long life of their state, and their manner of
learning and preserving foreign histories, is not, methinks, a testimony
to be refused in this consideration:

"Si interminatam in omnes partes magnitudinem regionum videremus
et temporum, in quam se injiciens animus et intendens, ita late
longeque peregrinatur, ut nullam oram ultimi videat, in qua possit
insistere: in haec immensitate . . . infinita vis innumerabilium appareret
fomorum."
["Could we see on all parts the unlimited magnitude of regions and of
times, upon which the mind being intent, could wander so far and wide,
that no limit is to be seen, in which it can bound its eye, we should, in
that infinite immensity, discover an infinite force of innumerable
atoms." Here also Montaigne puts a sense quite different from what the
words bear in the original; but the application he makes of them is so
happy that one would declare they were actually put together only to
express his own sentiments. "Et temporum" is an addition by
Montaigne.--Coste.]
Though all that has arrived, by report, of our knowledge of times past
should be true, and known by some one person, it would be less than
nothing in comparison of what is unknown. And of this same image of
the world, which glides away whilst we live upon it, how wretched and
limited is the knowledge of the most curious; not only of particular
events, which fortune often renders exemplary and of great concern,
but of the state of great governments and nations, a hundred more
escape us than ever come