The Essays of Montaigne — Volume 11 by Michel de Montaigne
page 49 of 86 (56%)
page 49 of 86 (56%)
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conceived at the success.
[Diodorus Siculus, xv. 7.--The play, however, was called the "Ransom of Hector." It was the games at which it was acted that were called Leneian; they were one of the four Dionysiac festivals.] What I find tolerable of mine, is not so really and in itself, but in comparison of other worse things, that I see well enough received. I envy the happiness of those who can please and hug themselves in what they do; for 'tis an easy thing to be so pleased, because a man extracts that pleasure from himself, especially if he be constant in his self-conceit. I know a poet, against whom the intelligent and the ignorant, abroad and at home, both heaven and earth exclaim that he has but very little notion of it; and yet, for all that, he has never a whit the worse opinion of himself; but is always falling upon some new piece, always contriving some new invention, and still persists in his opinion, by so much the more obstinately, as it only concerns him to maintain it. My works are so far from pleasing me, that as often as I review them, they disgust me: "Cum relego, scripsisse pudet; quia plurima cerno, Me quoque, qui feci, judice, digna lini." ["When I reperuse, I blush at what I have written; I ever see one passage after another that I, the author, being the judge, consider should be erased."--Ovid, De Ponto, i. 5, 15.] I have always an idea in my soul, and a sort of disturbed image which presents me as in a dream with a better form than that I have made use |
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