In nothing does Montaigne arrive at any clear conclusion within himself.
Though he knows how to speak much and well about everything, it is all
mere _bel esprit_, a display of glittering words, hollow verbiage,
which only lands us in a labyrinth of contradictions, from which we
seek an issue as vainly as the author himself. Striving, through all his
life, to arrive at a knowledge of himself, he at last lays down his arms,
considering the attempt a fruitless and impossible task, and, in his last
Essay, [33] he makes this avowal:--

'That which in Perseus, the King of Macedon, was remarked as a rare
thing--viz. that his mind, not settling down into any kind of condition,
went wandering through every manner of life, thus showing such flighty
and erratic conduct that neither he nor others knew what sort of man he
was: this seems to me to apply nearly to the whole world, and more
especially to one of that ilk whom this description would eminently fit.
This, indeed, is what I believe of him (he speaks of himself):--"No
average attitude; being always driven from one extreme to the other by
indivinable chances; no manner of course without cross-runnings and
marvellous controversies; no clear and plain faculty, so that the
likeliest idea that could one day be put forth about him will be this:
that he affected and laboured to make himself known by the
impossibility of really knowing him" ('qu'il affectoit et estudioit
de se rendre cogneu par estre mecognoissable').' This is Montaigne
all over.

In the British Museum there is a copy of the Essays of Montaigne, in
Florio's translation, with Shakspere's name, it is alleged, written
in it by his own hand, and with notes which possibly may in part have
been jotted down by him. Sir Frederick Madden, one of the greatest