him as that a priest or king should send him there for an opinion. He
thought the persecuted and the persecutors fools about equally matched.
He was easy-tempered and humane--in the hunting-field he could not bear
the cry of a dying hare with composure--martyr-burning had consequently
no attraction for such a man. His scepticism came into play, his
melancholy humour, his sense of the illimitable which surrounds man's
life, and which mocks, defeats, flings back his thought upon himself.
Man is here, he said, with bounded powers, with limited knowledge, with
an unknown behind, an unknown in front, assured of nothing but that he
was born, and that he must die; why, then, in Heaven's name should he
burn his fellow for a difference of opinion in the matter of surplices,
or as to the proper fashion of conducting devotion? Out of his
scepticism and his merciful disposition grew, in that fiercely
intolerant age, the idea of toleration, of which he was the apostle.
Widely read, charming every one by his wit and wisdom, his influence
spread from mind to mind, and assisted in bringing about the change
which has taken place in European thought. His ideas, perhaps, did not
spring from the highest sources. He was no ascetic, he loved pleasure,
he was tolerant of everything except cruelty; but on that account we
should not grudge him his meed. It is in this indirect way that great
writers take their place among the forces of the world. In the long
run, genius and wit side with the right cause. And the man fighting
against wrong to-day is assisted, in a greater degree than perhaps he
is himself aware, by the sarcasm of this writer, the metaphor of that,
the song of the other, although the writers themselves professed
indifference, or were even counted as belonging to the enemy.

Montaigne's hold on his readers arises from many causes. There is his
frank and curious self-delineation; _that_ interests, because it is the
revelation of a very peculiar nature. Then there is the positive value