traveller (Mr. St. John).'--["Montaigne the Essayist," by Bayle St.
John, 1858, 2 vols. 8vo, is one of most delightful books of the kind.]--
and was then in good preservation.

In 1595 Mademoiselle de Gournay published a new edition of Montaigne's
Essays, and the first with the latest emendations of the author, from a
copy presented to her by his widow, and which has not been recovered,
although it is known to have been in existence some years after the date
of the impression, made on its authority.

Coldly as Montaigne's literary productions appear to have been received
by the generation immediately succeeding his own age, his genius grew
into just appreciation in the seventeenth century, when such great
spirits arose as La Bruyere, Moliere, La Fontaine, Madame de Sevigne.
"O," exclaimed the Chatelaine des Rochers, "what capital company he is,
the dear man! he is my old friend; and just for the reason that he is
so, he always seems new. My God! how full is that book of sense!"
Balzac said that he had carried human reason as far and as high as it
could go, both in politics and in morals. On the other hand, Malebranche
and the writers of Port Royal were against him; some reprehended the
licentiousness of his writings; others their impiety, materialism,
epicureanism. Even Pascal, who had carefully read the Essays, and gained
no small profit by them, did not spare his reproaches. But Montaigne has
outlived detraction. As time has gone on, his admirers and borrowers
have increased in number, and his Jansenism, which recommended him to the
eighteenth century, may not be his least recommendation in the
nineteenth. Here we have certainly, on the whole, a first-class man, and
one proof of his masterly genius seems to be, that his merits and his
beauties are sufficient to induce us to leave out of consideration
blemishes and faults which would have been fatal to an inferior writer.