The Essays of Montaigne — Volume 18 by Michel de Montaigne
page 62 of 91 (68%)
page 62 of 91 (68%)
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Usque adeo turbatur agris,"
["Such great disorders overtake our fields on every side." --Virgil, Eclog., i. II.] but future too; the living were to suffer, and so were they who were yet unborn; they stript them, and consequently myself, even of hope, taking from them all they had laid up in store to live on for many years: "Quae nequeunt secum ferre aut abducere, perdunt; Et cremat insontes turba scelesta casas . . . Muris nulla fides, squalent populatibus agri." ["What they cannot bear away, they spoil; and the wicked mob burn harmless houses; walls cannot secure their masters, and the fields are squalid with devastation." --Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 35; Claudianus, In Eutyop., i. 244.] Besides this shock, I suffered others: I underwent the inconveniences that moderation brings along with it in such a disease: I was robbed on all hands; to the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, and to the Guelph a Ghibelline; one of my poets expresses this very well, but I know not where it is. ["So Tories called me Whig, and Whigs a Tory."--Pope, after Horace.] The situation of my house, and my friendliness with my neighbours, presented me with one face; my life and my actions with another. They did not lay formal accusations to my charge, for they had no foundation for so doing; I never hide my head from the laws, and whoever would have |
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