IV. THE NEW MAGAZINE ESSAY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

1. Texts. The serious student of the nineteenth-century essay will find it indispensable to go directly to the magazines in which the work of most of the essayists of this period originally appeared. The greater number of these are accessible in any large library. For ordinary purposes, however, the more recent collected editions are sufficient and possibly preferable. Such are E. V. Lucas's edition of The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (7 vols., Methuen & Co., London, 1903–1905), Alfred Ainger's edition of the Essays of Elia (Macmillan & Co., London, 1883), The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, edited by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (13 vols., J. M. Dent, London, 1902–1906), The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, edited by David Masson (14 vols., London, 1889), the Biographical edition of Thackeray (13 vols., Harper & Brothers, New York, 1898–1899), and the Thistle edition of Stevenson (27 vols., Charles Scribner's Sons, New York). No complete edition of Leigh Hunt has yet appeared; a helpful guide to his widely scattered writings is Alexander Ireland's List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, etc. (John Russell Smith, London, 1868); and a fairly representative selection of his essays, with a good introduction, is obtainable in the World's Classics (Oxford Press). Other selections from his work are contained in The Indicator and The Companion (2 vols., Henry Colburn, London, 1834), and in Men, Women, and Books and Table-Talk (both published by Smith, Elder & Co., London).

Inexpensive reprints of the principal essay collections of the nineteenth century may be had in the old Bohn Library (George Bell & Sons), Everyman's Library (E. P. Dutton & Company), the World's Classics (Oxford Press), and the Temple Classics (E. P. Dutton & Company).

2. Studies. In addition to the chapters on the essayists of the nineteenth century in Walker's English Essay and Essayists, the reader may be referred to Oliver Elton's A Survey of English Literature, 1780–1830 (London, 1912), and to C. T. Winchester's A Group of English Essayists of the Early Nineteenth Century (The Macmillan Company, 1910). Both of these works deal with the period during which the new essay was taking form, and present more or less satisfactory studies of Lamb, Hazlitt, Hunt, De Quincey, and "Christopher North." So far there has been no serious extended treatment of the essay in the middle and later years of the century. A full list of the critical articles which the essayists of this period have inspired would greatly exceed the limits of this note. The following are perhaps the most helpful and suggestive: Hazlitt's papers on Lamb

and Hunt in The Spirit of the Age, Walter Pater's essay on Lamb in Appreciations, W. E. Henley's study of Hazlitt (printed as an introduction to the Waller-Glover edition), Sir Walter Raleigh's Robert Louis Stevenson (1895), and Leslie Stephen's article on the same writer in his Studies of a Biographer (Vol. IV, 1902). The lives of Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey, and Thackeray in the English Men of Letters series should also be consulted, as should Cosmo Monkhouse's Leigh Hunt (Great Writers, 1893) and Graham Balfour's Life of Robert Louis Stevenson (2 vols., 1901). In the Letters of Lamb and Stevenson and in Hunt's Autobiography may be found excellent commentary on the work of those writers as essayists.

NOTES

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

With the exception of "The Author to the Reader," which is given in Florio's version, the texts of Montaigne in the present collection are based upon Charles Cotton's translation of 1685 as revised successively by William Hazlitt and William Carew Hazlitt (Reeves and Turner, London, 1902). Whatever advantages there might have been from a historical point of view in reproducing either Florio's rendering or the original text of Cotton are more than offset by the superior accuracy and intelligibility of the Hazlitt revision.

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER

Montaigne's preface to the first edition of his Essais (1580).

PAGE I.

1. those nations: the savages of the New World, who were thought by many of Montaigne's contemporaries to possess virtues sadly lacking in civilized Europeans. Montaigne himself seems to have shared this view, at least in part, and in general manifested a keen interest in the newly discovered barbarians. See his essays entitled "Of Custom," "Of Cannibals," and "Of Coaches," and, on the whole subject of the attitude of sixteenthcentury Frenchmen to the American natives, the very interesting recent work of Gilbert Chinard, L'Exotisme américain dans la littérature française au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1911).

OF SORROW

The essay "De la tristesse" first appeared as Chapter II of Book I in the edition of 1580. The date of its composition is fixed by Villey (Les Sources et l'évolution des Essais de Montaigne, I, 337) at about 1572; it belongs, therefore, to the earliest period of Montaigne's literary career, of which it is thoroughly typical.

PAGE 2.

1. the Stoics: a school of ancient philosophers, founded by Zeno about 308 B.C. In general, they taught that the highest virtue consists in firmness,

resolution, and an insensibility to joy and sorrow. At the time of the composition of this essay Montaigne's own thinking was largely colored by Stoic doctrines.

2. Psammitichus: or Psammenitus; the story is told by Herodotus (iii, 14), but Montaigne may have read it in one of the numerous contemporary collections of moral " examples."

PAGE 3.

3. the ancient painter: this "example," like the last, Montaigne probably borrowed from some sixteenth-century compilation. Ancient authorities for the story were Cicero (Orator xxii) and Pliny (Historia Naturalis XXXV, 10).

4. the sacrifice of Iphigenia: an allusion to the famous Greek legend in which Agamemnon, at the suggestion of the Delphic oracle, prepared to offer his daughter as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of Artemis.

5. Diriguisse malis: Ovid, Metamorphoses vi, 303: "petrified by her misfortunes."

6. Et via vix tandem voci laxata dolore est: Virgil, Æneid xi, 151: " and at length and with difficulty a way is opened by grief for speech."

PAGE 4.

7. Chi puo dir com' egli arde, è in picciol fuoco: Petrarch, Sonetti I, cxviii :

He that can say how he doth fry,

In petty-gentle flames doth lie. - Florio's translation.

"And this steals all my

8. Innamoratos: Florio translates simply "lovers." 9. Misero quod omneis, etc.: Catullus 51, 5-12: senses from me. For as soon as I see thee, Lesbia, I have not a word that I can say, for very frenzy. My tongue is numbed; a fine flame flows in and through my limbs; my ears, too, are filled with ringing, and my eyes are mantled in double darkness."

10. Curæ leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent: Seneca, Hippolytus, 1. 607: Light griefs speak; heavy sorrows remain silent.”

PAGE 5.

11. Ut me conspexit venientem, etc.: Virgil, Æneid iii, 306: “As she saw me approaching and beheld with surprise the Trojan arms about me, frightened with so great a marvel, she fainted at the very sight: the warmth of life forsook her limbs, she sank down, and after a long time with difficulty she spoke."

12. the examples of the Roman lady, etc. it is unnecessary to indicate for these anecdotes their sources in ancient literature, for Montaigne

probably took them already collected from one of the most popular compilations of the sixteenth century, the Officina of Ravisius Textor.

13. Pope Leo X: the pontificate of Leo X extended from 1513 to 1521. The source of the example was probably Guicciardini's (1483–1540) Storia d'Italia, a history much admired and quoted by Montaigne.

OF REPENTANCE

This essay was first published, under the title of " Du repentir,” in the Essais of 1588, where it formed Chapter II of Book III. In composition it must have been later than 1580, though its exact date is impossible to determine. It has all the distinguishing qualities of the essays of Montaigne's last period. See the Introduction to the present volume, pp. xv-xvi. PAGE 6.

1. Demades quoted in Plutarch's Life of Demosthenes.

PAGE 8.

2. Malice sucks up, etc.: a translation of Seneca, Epistolæ 81.

PAGE 9.

3. Quæ fuerant vitia, mores sunt: Seneca, Epistolæ 39: formerly vices are now fashions."

"What were

4. Tuo tibi judicio est utendum, etc.: see Cicero, De Natura Deorum iii, 35: "You must use your own judgment . . . The weight of the very conscience of vice and virtues is heavy: take that away, and all is down” (Florio's translation).

PAGE 10.

5. Quæ mens est hodie, etc.: Horace, Odes iv, 10, 7: 'Why had I not the same inclination, when I was young, that I have to-day, or why, when I am so disposed, does not my bloom return to me?"

6. Bias: an early Greek philosopher (fl. sixth century B.C.), one of the "Seven Sages." The apothegm quoted by Montaigne is recorded by Plutarch in his Banquet of the Seven Sages.

7. Julius Drusus: a Roman politician (d. cir. 109 B.C.); his real name was Marcus Livius Drusus.

8. Agesilaus: King of Sparta from 399 to 361 B.C. For this anecdote see Plutarch, Life of Agesilaus.

PAGE II.

9. Gascony... Guienne: Gascony and Guienne formed in the sixteenth century a single "government."

10. private men, says Aristotle: in his Nicomachean Ethics x, 7.