world--a time of mirth, and a time of expectation; when the earth was
teeming with a miraculous richness, and the gods walked among men.


In the Essays of MONTAIGNE, written about a generation later, the spirit
of the Renaissance, which had filled the pages of Rabelais with such a
superabundant energy, appears in a quieter and more cultivated form. The
first fine rapture was over; and the impulsive ardours of creative
thought were replaced by the calm serenity of criticism and reflection.
Montaigne has none of the coarseness, none of the rollicking fun, none
of the exuberant optimism, of Rabelais; he is a refined gentleman, who
wishes to charm rather than to electrify, who writes in the quiet, easy
tone of familiar conversation, who smiles, who broods, and who doubts.
The form of the detached essay, which he was the first to use, precisely
suited his habit of thought. In that loose shape--admitting of the most
indefinite structure, and of any variety of length, from three pages to
three hundred--he could say all that he wished to say, in his own
desultory, inconsecutive, and unelaborate manner. His book flows on like
a prattling brook, winding through pleasant meadows. Everywhere the
fruits of wide reading are manifest, and numberless Latin quotations
strew his pages. He touches on every side of life--from the slightest
and most superficial topics of literature or manners to the profoundest
questions that beset humanity; and always with the same tact and
happiness, the same wealth of learned illustration, the same engaging
grace.

The Essays are concerned fundamentally with two subjects only. First,
they illustrate in every variety of way Montaigne's general philosophy
of life. That philosophy was an absolutely sceptical one. Amid the mass
of conflicting opinions, amid the furious oppositions of creeds, amid