The Essays, vol 17 | Page 5

themselves,
when they were just upon the point of running headlong into some
extreme danger of their life.
For my part, I have that worse custom, that if my slipper go awry, I let
my shirt and my cloak do so too; I scorn to mend myself by halves.
When I am in a bad plight, I fasten upon the mischief; I abandon
myself through despair; I let myself go towards the precipice, and, as
they say, "throw the helve after the hatchet"; I am obstinate in growing
worse, and think myself no longer worth my own care; I am either well
or ill throughout. 'T is a favour to me, that the desolation of this
kingdom falls out in the desolation of my age: I better suffer that my ill
be multiplied, than if my well had been disturbed.--[That, being ill, I
should grow worse, than that, being well, I should grow ill.]--The
words I utter in mishap are words of anger: my courage sets up its
bristles, instead of letting them down; and, contrary to others, I am
more devout in good than in evil fortune, according to the precept of
Xenophon, if not according to his reason; and am more ready to turn up
my eyes to heaven to return thanks, than to crave. I am more solicitous
to improve my health, when I am well, than to restore it when I am sick;
prosperities are the same discipline and instruction to me that
adversities and rods are to others. As if good fortune were a thing
inconsistent with good conscience, men never grow good but in evil
fortune. Good fortune is to me a singular spur to modesty and
moderation: an entreaty wins, a threat checks me; favour makes me
bend, fear stiffens me.
Amongst human conditions this is common enough: to be better
pleased with foreign things than with our own, and to love innovation
and change:
"Ipsa dies ideo nos grato perluit haustu, Quod permutatis hora recurrit

equis:"
["The light of day itself shines more pleasantly upon us because it
changes its horses every hour." Spoke of a water hour-glass, adds
Cotton.]
I have my share. Those who follow the other extreme, of being quite
satisfied and pleased with and in themselves, of valuing what they have
above all the rest, and of concluding no beauty can be greater than what
they see, if they are not wiser than we, are really more happy; I do not
envy their wisdom, but their good fortune.
This greedy humour of new and unknown things helps to nourish in me
the desire of travel; but a great many more circumstances contribute to
it; I am very willing to quit the government of my house. There is, I
confess, a kind of convenience in commanding, though it were but in a
barn, and in being obeyed by one's people; but 'tis too uniform and
languid a pleasure, and is, moreover, of necessity mixed with a
thousand vexatious thoughts: one while the poverty and the oppression
of your tenants: another, quarrels amongst neighbours: another, the
trespasses they make upon you afflict you;
"Aut verberatae grandine vineae, Fundusque mendax, arbore nunc
aquas Culpante, nunc torrentia agros Sidera, nunc hyemes iniquas."
["Or hail-smitten vines and the deceptive farm; now trees damaged by
the rains, or years of dearth, now summer's heat burning up the petals,
now destructive winters."--Horatius, Od., iii. I, 29.]
and that God scarce in six months sends a season wherein your bailiff
can do his business as he should; but that if it serves the vines, it spoils
the meadows:
"Aut nimiis torret fervoribus aetherius sol, Aut subiti perimunt imbres,
gelidoeque pruinae, Flabraque ventorum violento turbine vexant;"
["Either the scorching sun burns up your fields, or sudden rains or
frosts destroy your harvests, or a violent wind carries away all before

it."--Lucretius, V. 216.]
to which may be added the new and neat-made shoe of the man of old,
that hurts your foot,
[Leclerc maliciously suggests that this is a sly hit at Montaigne's wife,
the man of old being the person mentioned in Plutarch's Life of Paulus
Emilius, c. 3, who, when his friends reproached him for repudiating his
wife, whose various merits they extolled, pointed to his shoe, and said,
"That looks a nice well-made shoe to you; but I alone know where it
pinches."]
and that a stranger does not understand how much it costs you, and
what you contribute to maintain that show of order that is seen in your
family, and that peradventure you buy too dear.
I came late to the government of a house: they whom nature sent into
the world before me long eased me of that trouble; so that I had already
taken another bent more suitable to my humour. Yet,