Why we should read--

PART III
BOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

I
A HISTORY OF MODERN COLLOQUIAL ENGLISH—BY H. C. WYLD

I purposely refrained from saying "Philology" because it has a frightening sound. There is a feeling that the study of literature is directly hostile to a study of Philology, whereas the truth is that, as Professor Wyld says, "Rightly interpreted, language is a mirror of the minds and manners of those who speak it," a point of view which cannot be sufficiently emphasised.

In the old days the study of language meant the chasing of umlaut and the tracking down of ablaut; to-day we find ourselves enticed into the study of modern colloquial English in these words:

The study of language in H. C. Wyld's History of Modern Colloquial English becomes "one line of approach to the Knowledge of Man," and is vastly intriguing.

We find ourselves, for instance, trying to account for the great shifting in pronunciation between the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century in words of the "er" and "ar" type. Why did "sarvice," "vartue," "sarmon" die out, and "Derby," "Berkshire," "clerk" remain? Of course the great factor which nowadays destroys the value of vocabulary as a specific characteristic of a given regional dialect is the migratory habits of the population, and the war will have done more to ruin it than any amount of Elementary Education.

But we are concerned for the moment with curiosities. Why is "napkin" to be preferred to "serviette"? Why do not people who speak of "the influenza" say "the appendicitis"? Even so great an authority on social propriety as Lord Chesterfield talks of "the head-ach." Where do shop-walkers get their "half-hose," "vest" (for waistcoat), "neckwear," "footwear" and similar words? What has happened to the word "genteel"?

"O damn anything that's low"—"The genteel thing is the genteel thing"; but the fun lies in finding out what each age and each individual means or has meant by "genteel" and "low."

It is with a certain sense of surprise that those who have never studied the English Language find that in mediæval times our ancestors gave the alphabet Continental values; those who have a smattering of literary history are equally surprised to find that Chaucer, "the Father of English Literature," did not create the English of Literature; he found it ready to his hand and used it with a gaiety, a freshness, a tenderness and a humanity which has never been surpassed.

Those interested in Literature have ever looked upon the fifteenth century as an arid waste: in language, on the other hand, it is a period of intense importance. For one thing, there is a big increase in the number of people who can write, and therefore in the number of private documents that have come down to us. Freed from the shackles of the professional scribe, writing becomes a listening to actual people speaking, and so we find a great variety of spelling ... we find that modern English is beginning ... and there is of course the introduction of printing. It is to these old printers and to these old printers alone that we owe our persistence in clinging to an outworn system of spelling.

For four hundred and fifty years they have dictated to us how we are to spell, and a defence of our existing system which is completely unphonetic is defensible chiefly on the ground of custom, not at all for any pretended historical merit. If only Caxton had been a trifle more enterprising our spelling would have been less widely divorced from the facts of pronunciation.

In the sixteenth century we find that regional dialect disappears completely from the written language of the South and Midlands—almost every private letter contains a certain number of spellings which throw light upon pronunciation: "the tongue which Shakespeare spake" was the tongue which he wrote: and there is a definite unity between the colloquial language and the language of literature which is after all natural when we think how closely approximated to the action done was every word written by the Elizabethans who one and all seem to have been writers as well as soldiers, statesmen, politicians, sailors, merchant venturers and ambassadors.

"It is not for nothing," says Professor Wyld, "that matters stood thus between the men of letters and the courtiers and the explorers in the age when Literary English was being made, or rather, let us say, when English speech was being put to new uses, and made to express in all its fullness the amazing life of a wonderful age, with all its fresh experiences, thoughts and dreams.

"If anyone doubts whether the language of Elizabethan literature was actually identical with that of everyday life, or whether it was not rather an artful concoction, divorced from the real life of the age, let him, after reading something of the lives and opinions of a few of the great men we have briefly referred to, ask himself whether the picture of Ascham, Wilson, Sidney, or Raleigh posturing and mourning like the Della Cruscans of a later age, is a conceivable one ... if the speech of the great men we have been considering was unaffected and natural, it certainly was not vulgar. If it be vulgar to say whot for hot, stap for stop, offen for often, sarvice for service, venter for venture: if it be slipshod to say Wensday for Wednesday, beseechin for beseeching, stricly for strictly, sounded for swooned, attemps for attempts, and so on; then it is certain that the Queen herself, and the greater part of her Court, must plead guilty to these imputations."

The individualism in spelling which still to a certain extent prevailed in the sixteenth century enables us to collect from written works, to a far higher degree than at present, the individual habits of speech which the writer possessed. The result of an examination of the writings of this age, from this point of view, is that we see that there existed a greater degree of variety in speech—both in pronunciation and in grammatical forms—than exists now.

One particularly valuable document which Professor Wyld makes use of is the diary of Henry Machyn, a sixteenth-century tradesman who gossips at random in the vernacular of the middle-class Londoner with no particular education or refinement. Like the Wellers, he confuses his v's and w's: wacabondes, wergers, walues, welvet, woyce, voman, Vestmynster are examples. He misplaces his initial aspirates, alff, Amton Courte, ard, Allallows, elmet, alpeny, hanswered, haskyd, harme: his is the largest list of "dropped aspirates" in words of English, not Norman-French, origin which Professor Wyld has found in any document as early as this. As as a relative pronoun, good ons for good ones, syngyne for singing, wyche for which and watt for what are valuable signs. Machyn lets us into more secrets of contemporary speech than does any other writer of his period: he is marvellously emancipated from traditional spelling, which makes him a wonderful guide to the lower type of London English of his time.

When he gets to the seventeenth century the ordinary reader of to-day feels that the writers of that period begin for the first time to speak like men and women of his own age; both in spirit and in substance we have reached our own English; by the time we reach Sir John Suckling and Cowley we scent a colloquial modernity which is altogether foreign to the soaring periods of Milton, the eccentricity of Sir Thomas Browne or the didactic aloofness of Bacon. Dryden was conscious of great differences between the speech of his own time as reflected in writing, especially in the drama, and that of the Elizabethans. He attributes the change and "improvement" to the polish and refinement of Charles II.'s Court. He congratulates himself that "the stiff forms of conversation" had passed away; his charges against the older age are merely charges against the archaic and unfamiliar. To be obsolete in his eyes was to be inferior. Hence his attempt to modernise Chaucer and improve on Shakespeare. These strictures of Dryden about English refer primarily to literature, but they are applicable to the colloquial language. If literary prose style changes it is because the colloquial language has changed first.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century we have Swift's instructive treatises on the English of his day and of the age before, which is diametrically opposed to Dryden's theories. But it is important to notice that among the hosts of solecisms to which he objects he does not quote what we should expect him to quote. Why does he not mention Lunnon, Wensday, Chrismas, greatis (greatest), respeck, hounes (hounds)? The reason is that they were so widespread among the best speakers that he himself didn't notice anything wrong with them. His strictures are those of the academic pedant, Dryden's are those of the man of the world.

But for a study of seventeenth-century colloquial English we are directed to the letters in the Verney Memoirs. Just as in the sixteenth century Henry Machyn's diary was more to our purpose than the work of any great man, so are the Verney Papers in the seventeenth century the eternal joy of the philologist. A large proportion of the letters are written by ladies, and it is from these that we get the greater number of departures from the conventional spelling which shed so much light upon pronunciation. If they spell phonetically it is not because their talk was more careless, but because they read less and were therefore unfamiliar with the orthodox spelling of printed books. To spell badly, it must be remembered, was no fault in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. From them we get this common form of pronouncing ar for er—sartinly, desarve, sarvant, sarve, presarve, divartion, larne, marcy; from them we get gine for join, byled for boiled, oblege for oblige, seein, missin, comin, disablegin, lemonds, night gownd; they shorten have to a; they say between you and I and he is reasonable well agane.

This free and easy pronunciation and grammar which are characteristic of fashionable English down to the middle of the eighteenth century is partly due to the intimate relation that existed between the ruling classes who visited their estates in the country and came directly into contact with regional speech. "It is just this constant touch with country pursuits and rustic dialect which distinguished, and still distinguishes, the upper classes from the middle-class dwellers in the town."

We owe a good deal to a phonetician called Cooper, whose Grammatica Anglicana was published in 1685. From him we see that line and loin had the same pronunciation. Ant and aunt, Rome and room, Noah's and nose, Walter and water, doer and door, pulls and pulse, shire and shear—these show us at once how closely the real rustic of to-day gets to the fashionable speech of two hundred years ago. He then gives us pronunciations which he would have his readers avoid as barbarous: ommost for almost, wuts for oats, fut for foot; but it is pleasant to find that Mr Cooper is pleasantly free from that gross and besetting sin of the schoolmaster to describe an ideally "correct" English.

This omission of the "l" (in Walter) is extended by another "phonographer" in 1701 to St Albans, Talbot, falcon, almanac, almost, Falmouth, falter: apparently too, in his time, the au sound which most of us have kept in sausage and because extended then to auburn, auction, audience, august, aunt, austere, daunt, fault, fraud, jaundice, Paul and vault.

William Baker in 1724 gave us in his Rules for True Spelling and Writing English, an instructive list of what he called "words that are commonly pronounced very different from what they are written"! Stomick, spannel, Dannel, venison, medson are noteworthy.

From the middle of the eighteenth century there are signs of a reaction against a laxity in pronunciation, influenced perhaps by Lord Chesterfield and Doctor Johnson.

Johnson, we know, favoured the "regular and solemn" rather than the "cursory and colloquial."

It is to be noticed in passing that all the "reforms" in pronunciation and grammar which have passed into general currency in colloquial English during the last hundred and fifty years have come from below and not from above, in the first instance. This accounts for what some of us look on as the offensive vulgarity of the modern pronunciations of waistcoat, often, forehead, landscape, handkerchief, due to a wish to speak correctly. So our pronunciation of gold, servant, oblige, nature, London, Edward, etc., would in their turn have struck our grandfathers as offensive vulgarisms.

The later eighteenth century and the early nineteenth seem to have favoured a very serious turn of mind. It is really extraordinary to think of the hold which Jane Austen exerts over us when we come to analyse the total absence of brilliance, humour, pointedness or charm of any kind that marks the conversation of her characters. The charm and the genius lie in the author's handling of these second-rate people, but she represents them as they actually were. These are actually the conversations of living people. All the little pomposities and reticences, the polite formulas, the unconscious vulgarisms, the well-bred insincerities of the age are here perfectly displayed. The Bennets, D'Arcy's, Wodehouses, etc., pronounced their words kyard, gyearl, ojus, Injun, comin', goin', and so on. Lady Catherine de Burgh probably said Eddard, tay, chaney, ooman, neigb'rood, lanskip, Lunnon, cheer (chair) and perhaps goold, obleege and sarvant.

Professor Wyld quite rightly waxes indignant over the rise of bogus pronunciations, based purely on the spelling, among persons who were ignorant of the best traditional usage until they obtained currency among the better classes. "It would be desirable," he says, "to run these monstrosities to earth, when it would probably appear that many had their origin among ignorant teachers of pronunciation." "It would be an interesting inquiry," he says in another place, "how far the falling off in the quality of prose style among the generality of writers after the third quarter of the eighteenth century is related to social developments. An East Indian director is said to have told Charles Lamb (of all men!) that the style the Company most appreciated was the humdrum, thus doubtlessly voicing the literary ideals of the rising class of bankers, brokers, and nabobs whose point of view was largely to dominate English taste for several generations."

It is worth remembering that the change in pronunciation of a host of words like heat, meat, eat, ease, sea, speak, cheat, dream, deceit from hate, mate, ate, ase, say and so on is not in the nature of a sound change, but is merely the abandonment of one type of pronunciation, and the adoption of another, a very common phenomenon.

It was a visit to The Beggar's Opera that made me think the following sentence worthy of comment. The present-day vulgarism of dropping the initial aspirate was not widespread much before the end of the eighteenth century, and it made one wince to hear an otherwise good actor so far go out of his part as to drop "h's" where the original would never have done so. The restoration of an aspirate in humour is a trick of yesterday. The gap in the evidence between Machyn and two hundred years later is remarkable. The practice which did exist in Machyn's day in London must have been confined to a limited class. The wrong addition of h is far more noticeable.

In a most diverting final chapter Professor Wyld dilates on colloquial idiom, and reminds us how impossible it would be for us, if we were transported into the sixteenth century, to know how to greet or take leave of those we met, how to express our thanks suitably, how to ask a favour, pay a compliment or send a polite message to a gentleman's wife. We should be at a loss how to begin and end the simplest note, whether to a friend, relative or stranger. We should hesitate every moment how to address the person we were talking to.

Readers of Ford Madox Hueffer's Ladies whose Bright Eyes, and those who saw When Knights were Bold, will realise what infinite amusement can be called up by imagining oneself driven to talk on level terms with our ancestors.

Professor Wyld opens up the subject by giving characteristic specimens of modes of greeting, farewells, compliments, endearments, angry speeches, oaths, affectations and so on, all of which are entertaining and enlightening. We find, for instance, most of our modern formulas in letter-writing in use before the end of the first half of the seventeenth century.

For anyone in the least interested in the sources and development of his own language there is no book which will whet his appetite to pursue the subject still more deeply than Professor Wyld's History. It has the added advantage that scholars will find in it plenty of material for further research; but everyone should read it for the flood of light it sheds on what we fondly imagined to be good taste, on what is falsely thought to be "the correct thing," and most of all because it shows us still another way of "catching the manners" of other ages "living as they rise."

II
THE ROMANCE OF WORDS—BY ERNEST WEEKLEY

Professor Weekley interests us in philology no less than Professor Wyld, but he treads an entirely different path. His aim is to select the unexpected in etymology, to show us the close connection between jilt and Juliet, to trace assegai back to Chaucer, to explain the true meaning of phrases like curry favour, which really means the combing down of a horse of a particular colour.

The result of this system is that we begin for ourselves to eye every word with suspicion, and work out by ourselves reasons why trivial means commonplace (it can be picked up anywhere, at the meet of "three ways," trivium), and so on.

Why are the series of monosyllables by which notes are indicated, do, re, mi, fa, so, la? They are supposed to be taken from a Latin hymn:

Professor Weekley invites us to watch words as they travel, an amusing game.

Apricot starts in mediæval Greek, through vulgar Latin as præcox (early ripe), through Arabia. It first crossed the Adriatic, passed on to Asia Minor or the north coast of Africa, and then travelling along the Mediterranean re-entered Southern Europe. Carat does much the same, being a corruption through French, Italian and Arabic of the Greek κερατιον (fruit of the locust-tree, little horn). Hussar is a doublet of corsair, and has travelled a long way since the separation first took place. The cocoa of cocoanut is a Spanish baby word for a bogey-man.

Then there are words of popular manufacture like ortolan, guinea-pig (which is not a pig and does not come from Guinea), parrot ("little Peter"), pinchbeck and nicotine (from the names of men), and so on.

Phonetic accidents account for many vagaries, as we see only too commonly with the letter "h." It is noteworthy that in Imperial Rome educated people sounded the aspirate, while it completely disappeared from the everyday language of the lower classes, the vulgar Latin from which the Romance languages are descended, so far as their working vocabulary is concerned.

That is why the Romance languages have no aspirate. Our "educated" h in modern English is mainly artificial, as we saw before: cf. Armitage with hermitage.

Then there are sound changes by assimilation, dissimilation and metathesis: the lime and linden is an example of the first; tankard for cantar, wattle and wallet examples of the third. Some words shrink, like Spittlegate near Grantham for hospital gate, gin for Geneva, grog from the admiral who wore grogram breeches, navvy for navigator. Words have a habit too of completely changing their meaning. Treacle used for balm in Coverdale's Bible from theriaca, a remedy against snake-bite, a lumber-room, is really a Lombard room, where the pawnbrokers stored pledged property.

Adjectives are especially subject to change. Quaint used to mean acquaint; restive used to mean standing stock still; smug used to mean trim, elegant, beautiful; homely used to mean ugly, disagreeable, coarse.

Miniature ought to mean something painted in minium (red lead).

The original scavenger was an important official.

There is too the study of semantics—the science of meanings as distinguished from phonetics, the science of sound.

The exchequer is really a chess-board; chancel a cross-bar, so cancel.

The study of metaphors is a little startling, when we find that to "take the cake" is paralleled by the Greek λαβειν τον πυραμουντα, and that "to lose the ship for a ha'porth of tar" is merely dialect for sheep. Tar is used as a medicine for sheep.

Folk etymology is worth spending time over, if only to discover such things as the derivation of humble-pie, a pie made from the umbles of a stag; umpire (non per), not equal; ramper, causeway, a doublet of rampart; purley, a strip of disforested woodland from pour-allée; taffrail from tafel, picture; posthumous, from postumus, latest-born. Witch-elm has nothing to do with witches; it is for weech-elm, the bent elm.

Ignorance of the true meaning of a word leads to vain repetitions: greyhound means hound-hound; Buckhurst Holt Wood means beech wood wood wood; a cheerful face means a face full of face.

And before taking leave of us and sending us off on a thousand different scents of our own in chase of words Professor Weekley warns us to preserve the rules of the hunt. A sound etymology must not violate the recognised laws of sound change (these may be found in Professor Wyld's book); the development of meaning must be clearly traced, and it must start from the earliest or fundamental sense of the word.

With the few delicious examples that I have quoted before you, multiplied by a thousand in The Romance of Words, this is a game to send you into ecstasies, and one of which you can never tire.

III
THE ROMANCE OF NAMES—BY ERNEST WEEKLEY

This companion volume to The Romance of Words is no less diverting. It is just one branch of the hunt, and perhaps the most interesting one to start with. We find mythical etymologies like that of the Napiers of Merchiston who took the motto n'a pier ("has no equal"), whereas their ancestors were the servants who looked after the napery. Not all the Seymours are St Maurs. Some of them were once Seamers—i.e. tailors.

The ff in ffrench and ffoulkes is sheer affectation, as the ff is merely the method of indicating the capital letter in early documents. The telescoping of long names leads to trouble among the ignorant. Auchinleck, Affleck; Postlethwaite, Posnett; Wolstenholme, Woosnam are good examples of this.

It is well to be reminded, for the sake of those who bear "hideous names," of the following facts. Matthew Arnold in his essay on the Function of Criticism at the Present Time is moved by the case of Wragg to this:

"What a touch of grossness in our race, what an original shortcoming in the more delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the natural growth amongst us of such hideous names—Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg."

As a matter of fact, Wragg is the first element in the heroic Ragnar; Bugg is the Anglo-Saxon Bucga; Stiggins is the illustrious Stigand, and Higginbottom is purely geographical.

We owe a great many of our names in disguise to the paladins and of course to the Bible. Pankhurst is Pentecost, Chubb and Jupp are derived from Job, Cradock from Caradoc (Caractacus), Maddox from Madoc, Izzard from Isolt, Rome from Roland.

Metronymics, as Professor Weekley hastens to assure us, are not always a sign of moral depravity: in mediæval times the children of a widow often assumed the mother's name.

From Matilda we get Tillotson, from Beatrice Betts, from Isabel Ibbotson, from Avice Haweis.

With regard to local surnames we have to accustom ourselves to the idea that the name of a county, town or village was acquired when the locality was left. Scott is an English name, English or Inglis is Scottish; Cornish and Cornwallis first became common in Devonshire, French and Francis are English ... for the same reason Cutler is a rare name in Sheffield. The great exception Curnow in Cornwall may stand for those who could only speak the old Cornish language.

Morris (Moorish) is probably a nickname due to complexion.

It is true that we owe many names to "spots." It is curious how Field, Lake, Pool, Spring, Street and Marsh persist in the singular, while Meadows, Rivers, Mears, Wells, Rhodes and Myers hang on to the plural. So we get Nokes, but Nash: monosyllables tend to the plural. There are certain Celtic words connected with scenery—Lynn, Carrick, Craig are common examples.

Beerbohm Tree is pleonastic, meaning pear-tree tree. Thackeray means the corner where the thatch was stored. Kellogg is derived from kill hog. Cazenove and Newbolt have the same meaning. Rothschild means red shield, Hawtrey comes from Hauterive, but Norman ancestry is not always to be assumed because we find French spot-names so common in England (Neville, Villiers, etc.). Boyes and Boyce may spring from a man of pure English descent who happened to be described del bois instead of atte wood, but this is rare. Roach is not a fish-name, but corresponds to Delaroche. Pew, if not Ap Hugh, was a Dupuy.

Occupative names become a natural surname, but Knight is not always knightly, for Anglo-Saxon cuiht means servant; Labouchère was the lady butcher, Cordner the worker in Cordovan leather; Muir was le muur, who had charge of the mews in which the hawks were kept while moulting. Reader and Booker have nothing to do with literature: the former thatched, the latter was a butcher.

Professor Weekley devotes one whole chapter to show the difficulties that beset the etymologist in his search to derive one single word accurately. The specimen name he takes is Rutter, which he eventually traces to fiddler.

From the lower orders of the church we get Lister, a reader; Bennet, an exorcist; and Collet, an acolyte.

In trades we get Fuller in the south, Tucker (toucher) in the west, and Walker in the north. Secker means sackmaker, Parmenter a parchmenter, Pargater a dauber, Straker a maker of tires. Grieve, Graves and Greaves was a land agent, Coster dealt in costards—i.e. apples; Jagger worked draught-horses for hire; Stewart was the sty-ward; Todhunter hunted the fox; Toller collected the tolls.

Among nicknames Earnes means uncle, and Neave nephew. Who would recognise Halfpenny in MacAlpine? Coffin means bald, Lloyd grey, and Russell red; Oliphant elephant; Hinks, from Hengst, a stallion; Stott, a bullock; Luttrell, an otter; Talbot, a hound; Colfox, a black fox; Fitch, a polecat.

Fish-names are usually not genuine.

IV
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE—BY LOGAN PEARSALL SMITH

There are few of us so learned that we can afford to dispense with the aid given by the small volumes in the Home University Library in any subject, and Mr Pearsall Smith's philological book is one of the most informative and interesting of the series.

Here we learn of the tendency in English to put the accent on borrowed French words on the first syllable when we decide to pronounce them in our own way: later borrowings are accented according to what we imagine the native pronunciation to be: so we get gentle, dragon, gállant, baron, button and mutton of old time against the newer words genteel, dragoon, gallânt, buffoon, cartoon, balloon. In like manner words like message and cabbage show their antiquity when compared with massage, mirage and prestige. Police has kept its English accent only in Ireland and Scotland.

Mr Pearsall Smith, like Professor Wyld, has much to say against the pedants, and shows us how letters like the b in debt, the l in fault, the p in receipt, the d in advance and advantage, the c in scent and scissors have been inserted incorrectly by English scholars who ought to have known better.

In the course of an enthusiastic defence of a mixed language as against a pure national home-bred speech he makes the valuable point that we are richer than most nations in that we can express subtle shades of difference of meaning, of emotional significance between such pairs of words as paternal and fatherly, fortune and luck, celestial and heavenly, royal and kingly by reason of this intermixture of foreign elements.

One of the most interesting chapters in the book is on "Makers of English Words," which gives us yet another avenue of approach to the study of the language.

Not only interesting, but surprising, are some of the results gleaned from this: that Sir Isaac Newton was the first to use centrifugal and centripetal; that Jeremy Bentham coined international; Huxley was responsible for Agnostic; cyclone was created in 1848 by a meteorologist, but anti-cyclone had to wait for Sir Francis Galton. Whewell invented scientist and Macaulay was responsible for constituency. Other words created in the nineteenth century are Eurasian, esogamy, folklore, hypnotism, telegraph, telephone, photograph and a host of other scientific terms. To go back to the classics: we owe the formation of many new words to Sir Thomas Browne, among them hallucination, insecurity, retrogression, precarious, antediluvian. Milton coined infinitude, liturgical, gloom, pandemonium, echoing, rumoured, moonstruck, Satanic. Shakespeare coined more than all the rest of the poets put together. To Coverdale and Tindale we owe a great number of new compounds, like loving-kindness, long-suffering, broken-hearted. It is delightful to think that we owe irascibility to Doctor Johnson, persiflage and etiquette to Lord Chesterfield, bored and blasé to Byron, colonial and diplomacy to Burke, and pessimism to Coleridge. After Keats (whose creations are miniature poems in themselves) there is a remarkable decline in word-creation.

Two valuable chapters are devoted to "Language and History," in which we find how far the evolution of our race and civilisation is embodied in our vocabulary—"A contradiction between history and language rarely or never occurs"—and a further chapter on "Language and Thought" is of extraordinary interest in showing us what words we must delete from our vocabulary if we wish to enter into the spirit and popular consciousness of the Middle Ages, that world of supernatural purposes and interventions. All sense of past and future would drop from us. Our thoughts would be absorbed entirely by immediate practical considerations. We should feel imprisoned, though we might feel more dignified. With the Renaissance we should expand enough to observe our fellows: a century later we should turn to the study of ourselves.

"The change of thought from one generation to another does not depend so much on new discoveries as on the gradual shifting, into the centre of vision, of ideas and feelings that had been but dimly realised before. And it is just this shifting—this change, so important and yet so elusive—which is marked and dated in the history of language."

There was once an American writer who said: "You commend or condemn yourself by your regular choice of words ... don't use such commonplace words as grab, bet, awful, says, worst, boss, monkeying, job, ain't, tackled, floored, bicker, rumpus, shindy, hunk, fellow, drub, henpecked, blubber, spout, pickings, croak, swipe, swap, handy, fluster, nasty, hankering, flabbergasted, highfalutin.... Are you familiar with such desirable words as lassitude, flamboyant, nascent, legendary, perennial, Nemesis, cryptic, brooding, imperturbable, disenchanted, belated, cleavage, august, clarity, demarcation, indigenous, cloistered, malevolent?"

Well, if you agree with him (and there are people who do) it's quite time you started to read some books on the English Language, and if you don't it means that you already understand the delights of philology and you will need no further encouragement to read the four books I have mentioned, if you have not already done so.

PART IV
CERTAIN FOREIGNERS

I
MONTAIGNE

I begin with the third book of Essays because I happened, for the purposes of writing about him, to re-read that first. And on the first page we find our reason for reading him: "I speake unto Paper as to the first man I meete." "These are but my fantasies," he says in another place, "by which I endevour not to make things known, but myselfe" ... and truly that is the whole matter. We do not read Montaigne to learn anything, but to make a friend. No man was ever so completely unashamed or so completely honest in his depiction of himself:

"All contrarieties are found in me, according to some turne or removing, and in some fashion or other; shamefast, bashfull, insolent, chaste, luxurious, peevish, pratling, silent, fond, doting, labourious, nice, delicate, ingenious, slow, dull, froward, humorous, debonaire, wise, ignorant, false in words, true-speaking, both liberall, covetous and prodigall."

Though this list is pretty long, it omits the most delightful quality of all. Ingenuous is the first word we apply to Montaigne. His pages sparkle with naïve statements. "I will follow the best side to the fire, but not into it, if I can choose. If neede require, let Montaigne my Mannorhouse be swallowed up in publike ruine: but if there be no such necessity, I will acknowledge my selfe beholding unto fortune if she please to save it.... Verily I could easily for a neede bring a candle to St Michaell, and another to his Dragon," from which we may safely assume that Montaigne owes much of his happy-go-lucky, care-free nature to his wisdom in not embroiling himself in public affairs. "I speake truth, not my belly-full, but as much as I dare," he says, and what follows may account for the greater pleasure we derive from his later essays ... "and I dare the more the more I grow into yeares.... I teach not: I report." Of the effect of his work we read: "In my climate of Gascoigne they deeme it a jest to see mee in print.... In Guienne I pay Printers, in other places they pay mee."

One of the most delectable essays in this third book is on Repentance, where we read: "Were I to live againe it should be as I have already lived: I neither deplore what is past, nor dread what is to come" ... the philosophy of a sane man in whom cheerfulness keeps on breaking forth: "It is one of the chiefest points wherein I am beholden to fortune, that in the course of my bodies estate, each thing hath been carried in season.... I therefore renounce these casuall and dolourous reformations.... A man cannot boast of contemning or combating sensuality if hee see her not, or know not her grace, her force, and most attractive beauties ... in truth we abandon not vices so much as we change them."

In the next chapter he pleads (it is one of his favourite subjects) for mutability. "We must not cleave so fast unto our humours and dispositions.... The goodliest mindes are those that have most variety and pliablenesse in them.... Life is a motion unequall, irregular, and multiforme." Books, he would have us believe, seduce us from study, but "Meditation is a large and powerfull study to such as vigorously can taste and employ themselves therein. I had rather forge than furnish my minde." So he reads to busy his judgment, not his memory. Of the three commerces or Societies which he would indulge in, discourse with friends, intercourse with fair women ("a sweet commerce for me"), and recourse unto books, he writes: "The first is troublesome and tedious for its raritie, the second withers with old age, the third is much more solid-sure and much more ours ... it comforts me in age and solaceth me in solitarinesse; it easeth mee of the burthen of a weary-some sloth; and at all times rids me of tedious companies: it abateth the edge of fretting sorrow.... I never travel without bookes, nor in peace nor in warre: yet doe I passe many dayes and moneths without using them. It shall be anon, say I, or to-morrow, or when I please; in the meanewhile the time runnes away, and passeth without hurting me." He gives us exact details of the dimensions of his library, where he turns over "by peece-meales," "now one booke and now another." This is his private sanctuary. "Miserable in my minde is he who in his owne home hath nowhere to be to him selfe." But he urges as the great objection to reading that "the minde is therein exercised, but the body remaineth there whilst without action, and is wasted and ensorrowed. I know no excesse more hurtfull for me, nor more to be avoided by me, in this declining age."

Of his attitude to women, which is exactly that of Donne in his early days, we hear much. In his amours he likes to set an edge on his pleasures "by difficultie, by desire, and for some glory ... surely glittering pearles and silken cloathes adde some-thing unto it, and so doe titles, nobilitie and a worthie traine.... Something may be done without the graces of the minde, but little or nothing without the corporall ... but it is a society wherein it behooveth a man somewhat to stand upon his guard." In chapter four, on Diverting and Diversions, he dwells on the importance of little things in life: "The remembrance of a farewell, of an action, of a particular grace, or of a last commendation afflict us," when we miss not at all the big thing. "Cæsar's gowne disquieted all Rome, which his death had not done." ... "The teares of a Lacquey, the distributing of my cast sutes, the touch of a knowne hand, an ordinary consolation, doth disconsolate and intender me." Which draws him to the brave and totally unexpected conclusion: "It is the right way to prize one's life at the right worth of it to forgo it for a dreame." In chapter five, Upon Some Verses of Virgil, he amplifies at enormous length what he said in an earlier chapter about the fascination of fair women.

It is a trick of his to give headings to his chapters which are wholly misleading, but it would be hard anywhere to find a parallel for so innocent a title for so deliciously frank a discussion.

"From the excesse of jollity," he begins, "I am falne into the extreame of severity ... therefore, I do now of purpose somewhat give way unto licentious allurements." This is an understatement ... "As I have heretofore defended my selfe from pleasure, so I now ward my selfe from temperance ... wisdom hath her excesses, and no lesse need of moderation than follie." So he attempts to amuse himself with the remembrance of past "youth-tricks," and to judge from the length of the chapter he found that the amusement did not quickly pall. It certainly does not pall on us.

"I take hold of even of the least occasions of delight I can meet with all ... I am ready to leape for joy, as at the receaving of some unexspected favour, when nothing grieveth me": and he discredits those who will attack his licence before he starts: "Few I know will snarle at the liberty of my writings, that have not more cause to snarle at their thoughts-looseness." ... "For my part I am resolved to dare speake whatsoever I dare do ... the worst of my actions ... seeme not so ugly unto me as I finde it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch them.... A ly is in mine opinion worse than leachery." "I greedily long to make my selfe knowne, nor care I at what rate, so it be truly ... in farewels we heate above ordinary our affections to the things we forgo. I here take my last leave of this world's pleasures: loe here our last embraces. And now to our theame."

He objects to the conspiracy of silence which rules on this subject and proceeds to lay down rules for happy marriages. "A good marriage (if any there be) refuseth the company and conditions of love; it endevoureth to present those of amity. It is a sweete society of life, full of constancy, of trust ..." but "few men have wedded their sweet hearts, their paramours or mistresses, but have come home by weeping Crosse, and ere long repented their bargaine ... we then love without disturbance to our selves; two divers and in themselves contrary things ... it is no longer love, be it once without Arrowes or without fire. The liberality of Ladies is to profuse in marriage, and blunts the edge of affection and desire." With regard to the innocence of the other sex on these matters he is completely sceptical. "Heare them relate how we sue, how we wooe, how we sollicitie, and how we entertaine them, they will soone give you to understand that we can say, that we can doe, and that we can bring them nothing but what they already knew, and had long before digested without us." ... "It is folly to go about to bridle women of a desire so fervent and so naturall in them."

It is in this chapter (Montaigne is world-famous for irrelevancies) that he gives us his finest panegyric on Plutarch, his favourite author, and then goes on as usual to reveal more of himself ... "for all matters are linked one to another." We learn, for instance, of his fondness for riding and for travelling alone: he quickly veers round again to the subject, however.... "Leaving bookes aside ... when all is done I find that love is nothing else but an insatiate thirst of enjoying a greedily desired subject." He returns with redoubled vigour to the delight of describing this desire: "The more steps and degrees there are, the more delight and honour is there on the top ... it is the deare price makes viands savour the better.... I love gradation and prolonging in the distribution of their favours."

"Philosophie contends not against naturall delights, so that due measure bee joyned therewith; and alloweth the moderation, not the shunning of them."

There is wisdom in this: "May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison, simply corporall, or purely spirituall?" So he would not have the body follow its appetites to the mind's prejudice or damage and vice versa. He then pronounces a noble pæan in praise of love: "I have no other passion that keeps mee in breath ... it restores me the vigilancy, sobriety, grace and care of my person ... assures my countenance against the wrinckled frowns of age ... reduces me to serious, sound and wise studies, whereby I might procure more love, purges my minde from despaire, diverts me from thousands of irksome tedious thoughts...."

But he realises that age has to give place to youth: "They have both strength and reason on their side.... If women can do us no good but in pittie, I had much rather not to live at all than to live by almes ..." and so concludes a noble essay of some eighty pages: it is as unexpectedly frank as Mrs Asquith's Autobiography, and just as delightful: of both it might with equal truth be said: "It is only hurtfull unto fooles." In chapter six, Of Coaches, he shows us his own natural courage. "There is nothing doth sooner cast us into dangers than an inconsiderate greediness to avoide them."

"Nature having disarmed me of strength, hath armed me with insensibility, and a regular or soft apprehension. I cannot long endure to ride either in coach or litter, or to go in a boat—an interrupted and broken motion offends me" and then (typically) goes on to describe with immense relish the wonders of Mexico and Peru. In the essay on The Incommoditie of Greatnesse he confesses to a lack of personal ambition: "I should love my selfe better to be the second or third man in Perigot than the first in Paris ... mediocrity best fitteth me." That on The Art of Conferring contains more personal confessions. "The horror of cruelty draws me nearer unto clemency then any patterne of clemency can ever win me ... being but little instructed by good examples, I make use of bad" before he comes to his subject: "The most fruitfull and naturall exercise of our spirit is, in my selfe—pleasing conceit, conference ... no propositions amaze me, no conceit woundeth me, what contrariety soever they have to mine. There is no fantazie so frivolous or humor so extravagant, that in mine opinion is not sortable to the production of humane wit." He immediately dashes off at a tangent to discuss fond conceits: "Meseemeth I may well be excused if I rather except an odde number than an even: Thursday in respect of Friday ... if when I am travelling I would rather see a Hare coasting than crossing my way; and rather reach my left than my right foote to be shod."

The matter in debate affects him not at all, the manner is all: "It is not force nor subtilty that I so much require, as forme and order." As usual he has scant respect for the pedants: "I had rather my child should learne to speake in a Taverne than in the schooles of well-speaking Art." ... "I dayly ammuse my selfe to read in authors, without care of their learning; therein seeking their manner, not their subject." ... "Let but a man looke who are the mightiest in Cities and who thrive best in their businesse: he shall commonly find they are the siliest and poorest in wit." It is in this essay that he compares Tacitus so excellently with Seneca.

In the chapter Of Vanitie we hear much more of himself: "My chiefest profession in this life was to live delicately and quietly and rather negligently then seriously.... I am no Philosopher ... life is a tender thing, and easie to be distempered...."

"Neither the pleasure of building ... nor hunting, nor hawking, nor gardens ... can much embusie me or greatly ammuse me. It is a thing for which I hate my selfe.... Those who hearing mee relate mine own insufficiencie in matters pertaining to husbandry or thrift, are still whispering in mine eares that it is but a kinde of disdaine, and that I neglect to know the implements or tooles belonging to husbandry or tillage, their seasons and orders; how my wines are made, how they graft, and understand or know the names and formes of hearbes ... and what belongs to the dressing of meats wherewith I live and whereon I feede; the names and prices of such stuffes I cloath my selfe withall, onely because I doe more seriously take to heart some higher knowledge; bring me in a manner to death's doore ... I would rather be a cunning horseman than a good Logician."

I like his attitude to his servants: "I never presume vices but after I have seene them ... it is not amisse if you allow your servant some small scope for his disloyalty and indiscretion."

I like his attitude to money: "I had rather heare at two months end that I have spent foure hundred crownes, then every night when I should goe to my quiet bed have mine eares tired and my minde vexed with three, five, or seven."

"What would I not rather doe then reade a contract?"

"In mine owne house I exactly looke unto necessitie, little unto state, and lesse unto ornament...."

"Over-many parts are required in hoarding and gathering of goods: I have no skill in it."

He has a good deal to say against the Government, as all men in all ages have: "Our Common-wealth is much crazed and out of tune ... the gods play at hand-ball with us, and tosse us up and downe on all hands," but "all that shaketh doth not fall"; but he comes back very soon to what interests him far more than nationalities, princedoms, potentates or powers—himself: he doubts whether the passage of years had added one inch of wisdom to him ... he tells us that he has a thousand times gone to bed imagining that he would be killed in the night: he pats himself on the back for his nice scrupulousness in the keeping of promises, he shows us a side of his nature which was wholly foreign to any other man of his time when he expresses his humour "to esteeme all men as my countrymen," he extols travel as a profitable exercise and tells us that in spite of his cholic he can sit ten hours on horseback "without wearinesse or tyring." "I love rainy and durty weather as duckes doe" ... "these Umbrels ... doe more weary the armes then ease the head." ... "It is a hard matter to make me resolve of any journey; but if I be once on the way, I hold out as long and as farre as another. I strive as much in small as I labour in great enterprises...."

He seems to excuse himself for leaving home so often, being married: "They doe me wrong. The best time for a man to leave his house is when he hath so ordered and settled the same that it may continue without him.... I require in a maried woman the Occonomicall vertue above all others." Besides, "Jovisance and possession appertaine chiefly unto imagination. It embraceth more earnestly and uncessantly what she goeth to fetch, then what wee touch. Summon and count all your daily ammusements and you shall finde you are then furthest and most absent from your friend when he is present with you ... verely that woman who can prescribe unto her husband how many steps end that which is neere, and which steps in number begins the distance she counts farre, I am of opinion that she stay him betweene both." It reads very much as if Montaigne had had to use that argument with his own wife. "We did not condition when we were maried, continually to keepe ourselves close hugging one another." He rises to a sublimer thought shortly after this:

"I undertake (my journey) not either to returne or to perfect the same. I onely undertake it to be in motion. So long as the motion pleaseth me, and I walke that I may walke. Those runne not that runne after a Benefice or after a Hare," and this leads him to scorn the fear of dying away from home. "If I were to chuse, I thinke it should rather be on horsebacke than in a bed, from my home and farre from my friends.... Let us live, laugh and be merry amongst our friends, but die and yeeld up the ghost amongst strangers and such as we know not."

"I dayly endeavour ... to shake off this childish humour ... which causeth ... that we desire to moove our friends to compassion and sorrow for us."

"A man should, as much as he can, set foorth and extend his joy, but to the utmost of his power suppresse and abridge his sorrow...." Again he turns off at a tangent: "A pleasant fantazie is this of mine, many things I would be loath to tell a particular man, I utter to the whole world. And concerning my most secret thoughts and inward knowledge, I send my dearest friends to a Stationers shop.... I would willingly come from the other world to give him the lie that should frame me other than I had beene; were it he meant to honour mee."

So he goes on to explain himself: "I trace no certaine line, neither right nor crooked ... bee my meate boyled, rosted, or baked; butter or oyle, and that of Olives or of wall-nuts, hot or colde, I make no difference, all is one to me.... One string alone can never sufficiently hold me.... I must walke with my penne as I goe with my feete. The common high way must have conference with other wayes.... Libertie and idlenesse are my chiefest qualities." He realises that he frequently straggles out of the path in his discourse, but contends that "some word or other shall ever be found in a corner that hath relation to it, though closely couched." He explains also why his later essays are much longer than his earlier ones: "The often breaking of my chapters ... seemed to interrupt attention before it be conceived," and he ends the essay on a magnificent note:

"You distract yourselves," said the God of Delphos, "call yourselves home again ... except thy selfe, O man, everything doth first seeke and study it selfe ... there's not one so shallow, so empty, and so needy as thou art who embracest the whole world. Thou art the Scrutator without knowledg, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and when all is done, the vice of the play."

In chapter ten, How One Ought to Governe his Will, he pleads for moderation and irrelevantly curses the Pope for "eclipsing or abridging tenne days" in the calendar.

Again and again he returns to this love of his for moderation in all things. "We need not much learning for to live at ease ... all our sufficiency that is beyond the naturall is well nigh vaine and superfluous.... I have no care at all to acquire or get ... apprehension doth not greatly presse me ... I ever carry my preservatives above me, which are resolution and sufferance ... we finde nothing so sweete in life as a quiet rest and gentle sleepe and without dreames."

So long as he can keep his accustomed hours, eat his accustomed meals at the usual time, he is satisfied. Little things put him out. "If my minde be busie alone, the least stirring, yea, the buzzing of a flie doth trouble and distemper the same." On the other hand: "With small adoe and without compulsion, I can easily leave mine inclinations and embrace the contrary ... there is no course of life so weake and sottish as that which is mannaged by Order, Methode, and Discipline." "To be tied to one certaine particular fashion," he calls a "most contrary quality." ... "Let such men keep their kitchin."

He immediately returns to himself: "Without long practise I can neither sleepe by day, nor eate betweene meales ... nor get children but before I fall asleepe ... nor leave mine owne sweate, nor quench my thirst either with cleere water or wine alone, nor continue long bare-headed, nor have mine hair cut after dinner. I could as hardly spare my gloves as my shirt ... or lye in a bed without curtaines about it. I could dine without a tablecloth, but hardly without a cleane napkin ... when others goe to breakefast, I goe to sleepe, and within a while after I shall be as fresh and jolly as before ... both in sicknesse and in health I have willingly given my selfe over to those appetites that pressed me ... I never received harme by any action that was very pleasing unto me.... A man must give sicknesses their passage ... let Nature worke: let hir have hir will ... pleasure is one of the chiefest kinds of profit.... Do but endure, you neede no other rule or regiment.... Sleeping hath possessed a great part of my life: and as old as I am, I can sleepe eight or nine houres together.... I love to take my rest with my legs as high or higher then my seate.... I seldome dreame, and when I doe, it is of extravagant things and chymeras, commonly produced of pleasant conceits, rather ridiculous than sorrowfull. And thinke it true that dreames are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but great skill is required to sort and understand them.... I feed much upon salt cakes, and love to have my bread somewhat fresh.... Never take unto your selfe, and much lesse never give your wives the charge of your childrens breeding or education.... Let custome enure them to frugality and breed them to hardnesse: that they may rather descend from a sharpenesse than ascend unto it.... My father chose no other gossips to hold me at the font than men of abject and base fortune, that so I might the more be bound and tied unto them ... long sitting at meales doth much weary and distemper me ... in mine owne house, though my board be but short and that wee use not to sit long, I doe not commonly sit downe with the first, but a pretty while after others ... such as have care of me may easily steale from me what soever they imagine may be hurtfull for me, inasmuch as about my feeding I never desire or find fault with that I see not.... But if a dish or any thing else be once set before me, they lose their labour that goe about to tell me of abstinence.... I love all manner of flesh or fowle but greene rosted ... and in divers of them the very alteration of their smell." He keeps his teeth in condition by rubbing them with his napkin before and after meals. "I am not over-much or greedily desirous of sallets or of fruits, except melons ... am gluttonous of fish ... for a man of an ordinary stature I drinke indifferent much ... I like little glasses best ... I feare a foggy and thicke ayre, and shunne smoke more than death ... to allay the whiteness of paper, when I was most given to reading, I was wont to lay a piece of greene glass upon my booke, and was thereby much eased. Hitherto I never used spectacles ... and can yet see as farre as ever I could ... I must like that preacher well that can tie mine attention to a whole sermon ... I hate that we should be commanded to have our minds in the clouds whilst our bodies are sitting at the table.... When I dance, I dance; and when I sleepe, I sleepe."

The fundamental principle of life he finds is to live. "The glorious masterpiece of man is to live to the repulse.... All other things—as to reigne, to governe, to hoard up treasure, to thrive, and to build—are for the most part but appendixes and supports thereunto ... it is for base and petty minds, dulled and overwhelmed with the weight of affaires, to be ignorant how to leave them, and not to know how to free themselves from them, nor how to leave and take them againe.... There is nothing so goodly, so faire, and so lawfull, as to play the man well and duely: nor science so hard and difficult as to know how to live this life well.... There is a kinde of husbandry in knowing how to enjoy it. I enjoy it double to others." And he concludes the book by praising this our mortal life, "corporall voluptuousness" as well as that of the mind....

To anyone coming to Montaigne for the first time I would recommend this last essay, Of Experience, to be read first. He reveals himself more there than anywhere, and it is the details of his life, his likes and dislikes, that attract us most of all in this "well-meaning booke."

It is time to turn back to volume one. The essays here are shorter—fifty-seven in number, as against thirteen in the third volume. They are as full of quaint conceits, quotations and anecdotes from the classics, but not quite so full of himself. "There is no man living," he says in an essay Of Liars, "whom it may lesse beseeme to speake of memorie, than my selfe, for to say truth, I have none at all." Ten chapters later on he muses on the imminence of death: "A man should ever, as much as in him lieth, be ready booted to take his journey, and above all things, looke he have then nothing to doe but with himselfe." Consequently he finds himself thinking of sudden death even in the transport of love: he writes things down at once lest he should die before he comes again to his writing-tables. "The deadest deaths are the best." ... "I would have a man to be doing, and to prolong his lives offices as much as lieth in him, and let death seize upon me whilest I am setting my cabiges, carelesse of her dart, but more of my unperfect garden." There are few things that so constantly occupy Montaigne's mind more than death. "Life in itselfe is neither good nor evill: it is the place of good or evill, according as you prepare it for them. And if you have lived one day, you have seene all: one day is equal to all other daies.... The profit of life consists not in the space, but rather in the use.... I imagine truly how much an ever-during life would be lesse tolerable and more painfull to a man, than is the life which I have given him.... Neither to fly from life nor to run to death I have tempered both the one and other betweene sweetnes and sourenes."

Some of his wisest remarks are to be found in his essay, Of Pedantisme: "We should rather enquire who is better wise than who is more wise ... even as birds flutter and skip from field to field to pecke up corne ... and without tasting the same, carrie it in their bils, therewith to feed their little ones; so doe our pedants gleane and pick learning from bookes, and never lodge it farther than their lips ... we take the opinions and knowledge of others into our protection.... I tell you they must be enfeoffed in us, and made our owne ... what avails it to have our bellies full of meat, if it be not digested?... Except our mind be the better, unless our judgement be the sounder, I had rather my scholler had imployed his time in playing at tennis; I am sure his bodie would be the nimbler. See but one of these our universitie men returne from schole ... who is so inapt for any matter? who so unfit for any companie? who so to seeke if he come into the world? all the advantage you discover in him is that his Latine and Greeke have made him more sottish, more stupid, and more presumptuous, than before he went from home. Whereas he should return with a mind full-fraught, he returnes with a wind-puft conceit; instead of plum-feeding the same, he has only spunged it up with varietie." Montaigne has very little use for such "flim-flam tales" as the succession of kings and "the first preter perfect tense of τúπτω": "I find Rome to have beene most valiant when it was least learned."

He acknowledges that he himself has "a smacke of everything in generall, but nothing to the purpose in particular." "The good that comes of studie is to prove better, wiser and honester ... a mere bookish sufficiencie is unpleasant—among the liberall sciences, let us begin with that which makes us free ... remove these thornie quiddities of logike, whereby our life can no whit be amended, and betake ourselves to the simple discourses of Philosophy ... all sports and exercises shall be a part of study; running, wrestling, musicke, dancing, hunting, and managing of armes and horses ... it is not a mind, it is not a body that we erect, but it is a man, and we must not make two parts of him." He hates severity of discipline in education, and would see "pictures of Gladness and Joy, of Flora and of the Graces to be set up round about the school-house." He derides the waste of time spent on grammar and logic: "It is a naturall, simple, and unaffected speech that I love, so written as it is spoken, and such upon the paper, as it is in the mouth, a pithie, sinnowie, full, strong, compendious and materiall speech, not so delicate and affected as vehement and piercing.... I must needs acknowledge that the Greeke and Latine tongues are great ornaments in a gentleman, but they are purchased at over-high a rate," yet he himself has nothing but praise for Ovid, Virgil and the rest, and calls the Arthurian romances "wit-besotting trash."

His essay Of Friendship contains much that is self-revelatory: "I am nothing inquisitive whether a Lackey be chaste or no, but whether he be diligent ... I feare not a hot swearing Cooke, as one that is ignorant and unskilfull ... in bed I prefer beauty than goodnesse." He returns to the subject of moderation in this volume and, as we might expect, limits his discussion to moderation in the passion of love: "The love we beare to women is very lawful: yet doth Divinitie bridle and restraine the same." ... "A man that is able may have wives, children, goods, and chiefly health, but not so tie himselfe unto them that his felicitie depend on them. We should reserve a storehouse for our selves ... altogether ours, and wholly free ... the greatest thing of the world is for a man to know how to be his owne." In A Consideration upon Cicero he returns to himself: "I deadly hate to heare a flatterer ... I ever write my letters in past-hast ... I commonly begin without project: the first word begets the second ... there is no accident woundeth men deeper, or goeth so neere the heart as the losse of children ... there is nothing I hate more than driving of bargaines ... to have more meanes of expences is ever to have increase of sorrow ... in the third stage of my life I measure my garment according to my cloth, and let my expenses goe together with my comming in ... I live from hand to mouth ... a straight oare, being under water seemeth to be crooked. It is no matter to see a thing, but the matter is how a man doth see the same ... it is the enjoying, and not the possessing that makes us happy. He that cannot stay till he be thirsty, can take no pleasure in drinking."

One of his most delicious confessions occurs in his essay Of Smels and Odors: "As for me in particular, my mostachoes, which are verie thick, serve me for that purpose. Let me but approach my gloves or my hand-kercher to them, their smell will sticke upon them a whole day. They manifest the place I came from. The close-smacking, sweetnesse-moving, love-alluring, and greedie-smirking kisses of youth, were heretofore wont to sticke on them many houres after.... The principall care I take is to avoid and be far from all manner of filthy, foggy, ill-savouring and unwholesome aires." So much for the first volume.

We now come finally to the second, the longest, containing thirty-seven essays of varying length. He begins with a delightful essay on Inconstancy. "There is nothing I so hardly beleeve to be in man as constancie, and nothing so easy to be found in him as inconstancy"—and in woman he expects never to find faithfulness. Of himself he writes as I quoted before: "All contrarities are found in me, according to some turne or removing, and in some fashion or other."

In his second essay he denounces drunkenness: "Other vices but alter and distract the understanding, whereas this utterly subverteth the same, and astonieth the body ... my taste, my rellish, and my complexion are sharper enemies unto this vice than my discourse, for besides that I captivate more easily my conceits under the auctoritie of ancient opinions, indeede I finde it to be a fond, a stupid, and a base kinde of vice, but lesse malicious and hurtfull than others; all which shocke and with a sharper edge wound publike societie. And if we cannot give ourselves any pleasure except it cost us something; I finde this vice to be lesse chargeable unto our conscience than others: besides it is not hard to be prepared, difficult to be found ... sobrietie serveth to make us more jolly-quaint, lusty, and wanton for the exercise of love matters." He diverges from the point to talk about his father (a favourite topic with him), who at the age of sixty seldom ascended "any staires without skipping three or four steps at once." "But come we to our drinking againe ... let none bestow the day in drinking, as the time that is due unto more serious negotiations, nor the nights wherein a man intendeth to get children."

In the essay, To-morrow is a New Day (most fascinating of all his titles), he tells us: "Never was man lesse inquisitive, or pryed lesse into other mens affaires than I." In Of Exercise or Practice he returns to the subject of death. "Let me be under a roofe, in a good chamber, warme-clad, and well at ease, in some tempestuous and stormy night. I am exceedingly perplexed and much grieved for such as are abroad and have no shelter. But let me be in the storme myselfe I doe not so much as desire to be else-where.... I am in good hope the like will happen to me of death: and that it is not worth the labour I take for so many preparations as I prepare against her ... for a man to acquaint himselfe with death, I finde no better way than to approach unto it."