invalid,--["I am reading Montaigne's Travels, which have lately been
found; there is little in them but the baths and medicines he took, and
what he had everywhere for dinner."--H. Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, June
8, 1774.]--attentive to the minutest details of the cure which he was
endeavouring to accomplish: a sort of memorandum book, in which he was
noting down everything that he felt and did, for the benefit of his
medical man at home, who would have the care of his health on his return,
and the attendance on his subsequent infirmities. Montaigne gives it as
his reason and justification for enlarging to this extent here, that he
had omitted, to his regret, to do so in his visits to other baths, which
might have saved him the trouble of writing at such great length now; but
it is perhaps a better reason in our eyes, that what he wrote he wrote
for his own use.

We find in these accounts, however, many touches which are valuable as
illustrating the manners of the place. The greater part of the entries
in the Journal, giving the account of these waters, and of the travels,
down to Montaigne's arrival at the first French town on his homeward
route, are in Italian, because he wished to exercise himself in that
language.

The minute and constant watchfulness of Montaigne over his health and
over himself might lead one to suspect that excessive fear of death which
degenerates into cowardice. But was it not rather the fear of the
operation for the stone, at that time really formidable? Or perhaps he
was of the same way of thinking with the Greek poet, of whom Cicero
reports this saying: "I do not desire to die; but the thought of being
dead is indifferent to me." Let us hear, however, what he says himself
on this point very frankly: "It would be too weak and unmanly on my part
if, certain as I am of always finding myself in the position of having to