beautiful editions of the sixteenth century--the age of great scholars
and of printers, like the Estiennes, who were at once men of learning and
of taste. It is almost certain that they must be enriched with marginal
notes of Montaigne's, and the marginal notes of a great man add even more
to the value of a book than the scribblings of circulating library
readers detract from its beauty. There is always something
characteristic in a man's treatment of his books. Coleridge's marginalia
on borrowed works, according to Lamb, were an ornament of value to his
friends, if they were lucky enough to get the books back again. Poe's
marginalia were of exquisite neatness, though in their printed form they
were not very interesting. Thackeray's seem mostly to have taken the
shape of slight sketches in illustration of the matter. Scaliger's notes
converted a classic into a new and precious edition of one example.
Casaubon's, on the other hand, were mere scratches and mnemonic lines and
blurs, with which he marked his passage through a book, as roughly as the
American woodsman "blazes" his way through a forest. "None could read
the comment save himself," and the text was disfigured. We may be sure
that Montaigne's marginalia are of a very different value. As he walked
up and down in his orchard, or in his library, beneath the rafters
engraved with epicurean maxims, he jotted his thoughts hastily on the
volume in his hand--on the Pliny, or Suetonius, or Livy. His library was
probably not a large one, for he had but a few favourite authors, the
Latin historians, moralists, and anecdotists, and for mere amusement
Terence and Catullus, Boccaccio and Rabelais. His thoughts fell asleep,
he says, if he was not walking about, and his utter want of memory made
notes and note-books necessary to him. He who could not remember the
names of the most ordinary tools used in agriculture, nor the difference
between oats and barley, could never keep in his head his enormous stock
of classical anecdotes and modern instances. His thoughts got innocently
confused with his recollections, and his note-books will probably show