Butler, in his _Hudibras_, observes, in an oft-quoted passage, that

'Montaigne, playing with his cat,
Complains she thought him but an ass.'

And the annotator on this passage, in explanation, adds, that
'Montaigne in his Essays supposes his cat thought him a fool for
losing his time in playing with her;' but, under favour, this is a
misinterpretation of the essayist's sentiment, and something like a
libel on the capacity of both himself and cat. Montaigne's words
are: 'When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her
more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert each other with our
play. If I have my hour to begin or refuse, so also has she hers.'
Nobody who has read the striking essay in which these words appear
could for a moment misconceive their author's meaning. He is
vindicating natural theology from the objections of some of its
opponents, and in the course of his argument he takes occasion to
dwell on the wonderful instincts, and almost rational sagacity of
the inferior animals. We must, however, lament that, although he
does full justice to the 'half-reasoning elephant,' to the aptitude
and fidelity of the dog, to the marvellous economical arrangements
of the bees, and even to the imitative capacity of the magpie, he
pays no higher tribute to the merits of the cat than that she is as
capable of being amused as himself, and like himself, too, has her
periods of gravity when recreative sports are distasteful. Her
social qualities he does not allude to, though he, so eminently
social himself, could scarcely have failed to appreciate them.

In this country, at this time, cats have superseded parlour
favourites decidedly less agreeable in their appearance, and