Montaigne." Some years later, I became acquainted with an accomplished
English poet, John Sterling; and, in prosecuting my correspondence,
I found that, from a love of Montaigne, he had made a pilgrimage to
his chateau, still standing near Castellan, in Perigord, and, after
two hundred and fifty years, had copied from the walls of his library
the inscriptions which Montaigne had written there. That Journal of
Mr. Sterling's, published in the Westminster Review, Mr. Hazlitt has
reprinted in the Prolegomenae to his edition of the Essays. I heard
with pleasure that one of the newly-discovered autographs of William
Shakspeare was in a copy of Florio's translation of Montaigne. It is
the only book which we certainly know to have been in the poet's
library. And, oddly enough, the duplicate copy of Florio, which the
British Museum purchased, with a view of protecting the Shakspeare
autograph (as I was informed in the Museum), turned out to have the
autograph of Ben Jonson in the fly-leaf. Leigh Hunt relates of Lord
Byron, that Montaigne was the only great writer of past times whom he
read with avowed satisfaction. Other coincidences, not needful to be
mentioned here, concurred to make this old Gascon still new and immortal
for me.

In 1571, on the death of his father, Montaigne, then thirty-eight years
old, retired from the practice of law, at Bordeaux, and settled himself
on his estate. Though he had been a man of pleasure, and sometimes a
courtier, his studious habits now grew on him, and he loved the compass,
staidness, and independence of the country gentleman's life. He took
up his economy in good earnest, and made his farms yield the most.
Downright and plain-dealing, and abhorring to be deceived or to
deceive, he was esteemed in the country for his sense and probity. In
the civil wars of the League, which converted every house into a fort,
Montaigne kept his gates open, and his house without defense. All