is his own. If the world find fault that I speak too much of myself,
I find fault that they do not so much as think of themselves." How
it had been "lodged in its author":--that, surely, was the essential
question, concerning every opinion that comes to one man from
another.

Yet, again, even on this ultimate ground of judgment, what undulancy,
complexity, surprises!--"I have no other end in writing but to
discover myself, who also shall peradventure be another thing to-
morrow." The great work of his life, the Essays, he placed "now
high, now low, with great doubt and inconstancy." "What are we but
sedition? like this poor France, faction against faction, within
ourselves, every piece playing every moment its own game, with as
much difference between us and ourselves as between ourselves and
others. Whoever will look narrowly into his own bosom will hardly
find himself twice in the same condition. [107] I give to myself
sometimes one face and sometimes another, according to the side I
turn to. I have nothing to say of myself, entirely and without
qualification. One grows familiar with all strange things by time.
But the more I frequent myself and the better I know myself, the less
do I understand myself. If others would consider themselves as I do,
they would find themselves full of caprice. Rid myself of it I
cannot without making myself away. They who are not aware of it have
the better bargain. And yet I know not whether they have or no!"

One's own experience!--that, at least, was one's own: low and earthy,
it might be; still, the earth was, emphatically, good, good-natured;
and he loved, emphatically, to recommend the wisdom, amid all doubts,
of keeping close to it. Gaston soon knew well a certain threadbare
garment worn by Montaigne in all their rides together, sitting