The works of Michael de Montaigne ; comprising his essays, letters, and journey through Germany and Italy. With notes from all the commentators, biographical and bibliographical notices

Front matter

Google to make the world's books discoverable online.

Il has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject

to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books

II. Lectures On The Literature Of The Ace Of Elizabeth

THIRD EDITION.

A volume of nervous and eloquent criticism of the old English dramatic and other writers. The acute discrimination of lh* critic, and the flowing fervour of his style, carry the reader along with him. — Spectator.

Hit intense admiration of intellectual beauty seem always to sharpen his critical faculties."— Edinburg A Review.

III. Characters Of Shakspeare's Plays

THIRD EDITION.

This is a very pleasing book, and we do not hesitate to say a book of considerable originality and genius. What we chiefly look for in such a work is a flne sense of the beauties of the Author, and an eloquent exposition of them— and all this and more may be found in the volume before us. — Edinburgh Review.

Wa rejoice to see this cheap reprint of a most valuable work, brimful of originality, meaning, and sentiment ; the best commentarv that baa ever been written on the greatest of our poets. — Metropolitan Magazine.

IV. Sketches And Essays

NOW FIRST COLLECTED.

We have no hesitation in saying that no one of his preview volumes parpatse* it in the varied excellence of Its contents —whether we regard the philosophical subtlety of their spirit of observation, the fearless force of their satire, the onri vailed critical acumen of their literary discussions, the felicitous truth of their pic:ures of society, or the power, the parity, and the brilliancy of their style.— Cewrr Journal.

V. Essays On The Principles Of Human Action

ON THK

THEORIES OF HARTLEY AND OTHERS;

and now first published, on

ABSTRACT IDEAS.

A work full of original remarks, and worthy a diligent perusal.— Sir E. L. Butwer. It is a work of great ability. — Sir /antes Macintosh.

VI. Characteristics

IN THE MANNER OF ROCHEFOUCAULT'S MAXIMS.

Second Edition, with a* Introduction by K. H. Horne, Author of" Cosmo de Medici." price 3j.

Here we have "in the rough" all the author's well-known theories of haman character and action, as well as his happier! principles of criticism and poetry ;— truly admirable, profoundly reasoned, and well expressed. We commend ihcnr * general perusal. — Examiner.

OCTAVO EDITIONS.

HAZLITT'S LITERARY REMAINS,

WITH LIFE by iiis Son, &c, 2 vol*, {pub. 28*.) price Vot.

The work before as Is a collection of Essays, literary, political, and philosophical. Valuing, as we do, the stern fiaenty with which Haslltt adheres to his subject, we are rejoiced to see there searching papers rescued from the ob*cnrit> ut saagaiines and review*. There are some interesting letters from Haxliu ; we only grieve that these letters are so few in aarober, as they breathe the true feeling of the enthusiastic critic — AtMenmum.

HAZLITT'S POLITICAL ESSAYS, with Sketches of Public Characters, Ac. (pub. 14m.) price 6s. 6U

„ SPIRIT OF THE AGE, or Contemporary Portraits, 2d Edition (pub. 10#. 64.) price 5*. 6rf

PUBLISHED BY J. TEMPLEMAN, 248, REGENT STREET.

Lately published, royal Svo. bound in cloth, price Ss.Gd., RELIQUES OF ANCIENT ENGLISH POETRY:

Consisting of Old Ballads, Songs, ind other Pieces, illustrative of the Usage, Manners, and Customs of the English People.

BY THOMAS PERCY, Bishop or Daoiioax, &c. This excellent and highly interesting reprint of Percy forms a handsome volume, containing an amount of type that is usually distributed through half- a dosen. The celebrated " Hermit of Wark worth" is appended, for the first time, to this collection, and the whole forms a volume whose raica and poetical character should command for it a place in every library. —New Monthly Mag.

But, above all, I then first became acquainted with Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry. The first time I could scrape together a few shillings, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved volumes : nor do I believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or with half the enthusiasm.— -Sir Waller Scott's Autobiography.

Also, uniform with the above, price 13*., PLAYS OF PHILIP MASSINCER;

With Notes, Critical and Explanatory, and an Introduction by William Givpoxd. Third Edition, with a new Preface.

This elegant and correct reprint of Massinger, from the text of Gilford, with his notes, and the remarks of Dr. Ireland^ this new edition of one of the noblest of our old dramatists — merits our highest recommendation. It is elegantly printed, and, in all other respects, fitted to adorn the first libraries of the land.— New Monthly Mag.

This re-publication of Massinger, in a convenient form, good type, and at the exceeding low price of 13s., is a most timely

present to the public. But he was a poet — the last of that glorious band, the pride of England — called ' old dramatists ;*

and this Edition gives us Gilford's Notes and Introduction, and Dr. Ireland's Criticisms, and Dr. Ferriar's Eatay on his writings, — these make this edition more valuable than Mr. Moxon's. — Westminster Review.

Second Edition, Two Volumes, Foolscap Svo. cloth, 12*.,

SCHLECEL'S LECTURES ON DRAMATIC ART AND LITERATURE;

Translated from the original German by Johh Black, Editor of the Morning Chronicle.

This is a work of extraordinary merit.— Quarterly Review.

The present work contains a critical and historical account of the ancient and modern drama — the Greek, Latin, Italian, French, German, Spanish, and English. The view which the author has taken of the standard productions, whether tragic or comic, is ingenious and just, and bis reasonings on the principles of taste are as satisfactory as they are profound. The acute and sensible remarks — the high tone of morality — are very admirable and exemplary; and we refer those who desire to elevate their understandings to a guide so learned and philosophical as the author of these volumes. — Edinburgh Review.

Second Edition, with Portrait, Svo. cloth {published at 10s.) reduced to 5s. 6d., THE SPEECHES OF CHARLES PHILLIPS, ESQ.,

Delivered at the Bar, and on various public occasions, in Ireland and England, edited bv himself.

N. B. More than 100,000 of these speeches have been sold, separately ; and, when collected, a very large edition was sold in a few months ; and of the present edition only a few copies remain unsold.

Second Edition, with Portrait, Svo. cloth (published at 10s. 6d.) reduced to 4s. 6d.,

RECOLLECTIONS OF CURRAN AND SOME OF HIS

CONTEMPORARIES.

BY CHARLES PHILLIPS, BARRISTER- AT- LAW.

This is certainly one of the most extraordinary pieces of biography ever produced. Nothing can be more lively and picturesque than its representation of the famous originals. No library should be without it.— Lord Brougham's Statesman, Vol. ii., page 1»1-S.

Two Vols. fcap. Svo. cloth (published at 12*.) reduced to As. 6d., THE WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB,

The first volume contains the poetry, the tragedy, the tale of Rosamund Gray, and a very interesting paper upon Christ's Hospital. In the second volume are the essays, the letters, under assumed signatures, and the farce. The essays upon Shakspeare and the contemporary dramatists evince a fine taste and a deep reading in the dramatic literature ol England ; they altogether justify the previous eulogium of his admirers. — Literary Gazette.

Foolscap Svo., cloth, (published at 6s.) reduced to 2*., CRITICISMS ON THE BAR:

Including Strictures on the Principal Counsel practising in the Court of King's Bench, Coumon Pleas, Chancery, and Exchequer, with an Essay on the Decline of Eloquence at the English Bar,

BY J. PAYNE COLLIER, BARRISTER- AT- LAW.

Two vols, post Svo. (published at 18s.) reduced to 9s., cloth, THE INDICATOR AND THE COMPANION:

OR MISCELLANIES FOR THE FIELD AND THE FIRE SIDE.

BY LEIGH HUNT.

Very few copies remain unsold of these delightful volumes. A most agreeable Miscellany, which, from its fancy, whim, liveliness, and humour, will remind the reader of the beet Essays of Steele, Addison, and Bonnel Thornton.— Times.

Post Svo. (published at 8s. 6d.) reduced to 2s. 6d.,

ESSAYS AND SKETCHES OF CHARACTER.

BY THE LATE RICHARD AYTON, ESQ.

Interesting and delightful Essays, which, by their force of truth and vivid illustration, forcibly remind us of Hazlitt ; and by their quiet, ticklish, and temeritous, humour of Lamb.— Monthly Review.

Post Svo. (published at 8s. 6d.) reduced to 8s.

EXPOSITION OF THE FALSE MEDIUM AND BARRIERS EXCLUDING

MEN OF GENIUS FROM THE PUBLIC.

By R. H. HORNE, author df " Greg, ry the Seventh ;'' " Cosmo de Medici ;" " Death of Marlowe," &c. &c. A work of no ordinary stamp. It contains scarcely a page in which matter deserving weighty consideration does not force Itself upon attention.— Court journal.

It teems with new and curious literary anecdotes. — Edinburgh Observer.

8oo„ lately published, 430 pages, gilt, cloth (published at 12*.) reduced to As. 6d.t

NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR;

.Descriptive of the Principal Hunts in Scotland and the North of England, with the Table Talk of Distinguished Sporting

Characters, Anecdotes of Masters of Hounds, Crack Riders, Ice. &c. a. latereating and amusing volume ; every person, fond of sporting anecdotes, should possess a ropy - -Monthly Review.

s20ts^^zs

THE

w © m k 3 m $ rf t 1 1 s if a ,

EMTE1 BY "W.HAZWTT.

-JOHN TEMPLEMAH. 2**, REGENT STREET,

THE COMPLETE WORKS

OF

MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE;

COMPRISING;

THE ESS AY S

(TRANSLATED BY COTTON) (

THE LETTEES;

THE JOURNEY INTO GERMANY AND ITALY;

NOW FIRST TRANSLATED ;

A LIFE, BY THE EDITOR;

THE CRITICAL OPINIONS OF EMINENT AUTHORS ON MONTAIGNE;

THE ELOGES OF MM. JAY AND VJLLEMAJN;

A BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF ALL THE EDITIONS;

AND COPIOUS INDEXES.

WILLIAM HAZLITT. ^?H&

LONDON: JOHN TEMPLEMAN,

248, REGENT STREET.

WO&IKC.

Preface

The first English translation of the Essays of Montaigne was executed by John Florio, Italian and French tutor to Prince Henry, son of James I., and is entitled : " The Essaies, or Morall, Politike, and Militarie Discourses of Lord Michael de Montaigne, Knight of the Noble Order of St. Michael, &c." It was first published in 1603, and was reprinted in 1613, and again in 1632. The form is a single volume folio, and it is dedicated — " To the most Royal and Renowned Majestie of the High-borne Princess Anna of Denmark, by the grace of God, Queene of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, &c." The Essays are prefaced by a copy of verses, in Italian, addressed to the same princess ; a preface to the reader, and some complimentary verses to " his deare brother and friende, Mr. John Florio," from " Samuel Daniel, one of the Gentlemen Extraordinary of her Majestie's most Royal Privie Chamber/* There is also an engraved title-page, of the most ornate description.

The translation by Charles Cotton appeared somewhere about the year 1680, but I have not been able to ascertain the exact date. It is dedicated in the following terms: —

•t

To the Right Honourable Georok, Marguiss, Earl, and Viscount Halifax, Baron of Eland, Lord Privy Seal, and one of his Majesty* s most Honourable Privy Council.

a

My Lord, — If I have set down the only opportunity I ever had of kissing your lordship's hands amongst the happy encounters of my life, and take this occasion, to many years after, to tell yoo so, your lordship will not, I hope, think yourself injured by such a declaration from a man that honours you ; nor condemn my ambition, when I publish to the world that I am not altogether unknown to you. Your lordship, peradventure, may have forgot a conversation so little worthy your remembrance : but the memory of your lordship's obliging fashion to me all that time, can never die with me ; and though my acknowledgment arrives thus late at you, I have never left it at home when I went abroad into the best company. My lord, I cannot, I would not natter you, I do not think your lordship capable of being flattered, neither am I inclined to do it to those that are ; but I cannot forbear to say that I then received such an impression of your virtue and noble nature, as will stay with me for ever. This will either excuse the liberty I presume to take in this dedication, or, at least, make it no wonder ; and I am so confident in your lordship's generosity that I assure myself you will not deny your protection to a man whose greatest public crime is that of an ill writer. A better book (if there be a better of the kind — in the original I mean) had been a present more fitly suited to your lordship's quality and merit, and to my devotion. I could hardly wish it such : but as it is, I lay it at your lordship's feet, together with, my lord, your lordship's most humble and most obedient •errant,

" Charles Cotton."

e

PREFACE.

The dedication is followed by this letter from Lord Halifax : —

" This for Charles Cotton, Esq., at his House at Berisford. — To be left at

Ashburne in Derbyshire.

" Sir, — I have too long delayed my thanks to you for giving me such an obliging evidence of your remembrance: that alone would have been a welcome present, but when joined with the book in the world I am the best entertained with, it raiseth a strong desire in me to be better known, where I am sure to be so much pleased. I have till now thought wit could not be translated, and do still retain so much of that opinion, that I believe it impossible, except by one whose genius cometh up to that of the author. You have the original strength of his thought, that it almost tempts a man to believe the transmigration of souls, and that his, being used to hills, is come into the moor-lands, to reward us here in England, for doing him more right than his country will afford him. He hath, by your means, mended his first edition. To transplant and make him ours is not only a valuable acquisition to us, but a just censure of the critical impertinence of those French scribblers who have taken pains to make little cavils and exceptions to lessen the reputation of this great man, whom nature hath made too big to confine him to the exactness of a studied style. He let his mind have its full flight, and sheweth, by a generous kind of negligence, that he did not write for praise, but to give the world a true picture of himself and of mankind. He scorned affected periods, or to please the mistaken reader with an empty chime of words. He hath no affection to set himself out, and dependeth wholly upon the natural force of what is his own, and the excellent application of what he borrow eth.

" You see, sir, I have kindness enough for Monsieur de Montaigne to be your rival ; but nobody can now pretend to be in equal competition with you: I do willingly yield it is no small matter for a man to do to a more prosperous lover ; and if you will repay this piece of justice with another, pray believe that he who can translate such an author without doing him wrong, must not only make me glad but proud of being his very humble servant,

" Halifax."

Mr. Cotton prefaces his translation in the following terms : —

" My design in attempting this translation was to present my country with a true copy of a very brave original. How far I have succeeded in that design, is left to every one to judge ; and I expect to be the more gently censured, for having myself so modest an opinion of my own performance, as to confess that the author has suffered by me as well as the former translator ; though I hope, and dare affirm, the misinterpretations I shall be found guilty of are neither so numerous nor so gross. I cannot discern my own errors ; it were unpardonable in me if I could, and did not mend them ; but I can see his (except when we are both mistaken), and those I have corrected ; but I am not so ill-natured as to shew where. In truth, both Mr. Florio and I are to be excused, where we miss the sense of the author, whose language is such, in many places, as grammar cannot reconcile, which renders it the hardest book to make a justifiable version of that I ever yet saw in that or any other language I understand ; insomuch that, though I do think, and am pretty confident, I understand French as well as any man, I have yet sometimes been forced to grope at his meaning. Peradventure, the greatest critic would, in some place, have found my author abstruse enough. Yet are not these mistakes I speak of either so many, or of so great importance, as to cast any scandalous blemish upon the book, but such as few readers can discover, and they that do will, I hope, easily excuse.

" The errors of the press I must in part take upon myself, living at so remote a distance from it, and supplying it with a slubbered copy from an illiterate amanuensis, the last of which is provided against in the quires that must succeed."

With reference to this translation, the editor of a later edition remarks : —

" Mr. Cotton has, indeed, succeeded to a miiacle in his translation of so celebrated a piece, and we are thoroughly persuaded that very few Frenchmen now living, were they to undertake the

2>

i

PREFACE.

i!

task, would find themselves capable of turning Montaigne's Essays into modern French with the same spirit and justice to the author ; but still our translator was not altogether infallible : li he bad certainly one of the most difficult books in the world to struggle with, and he complains of it himself in his preface : it is no wonder, then, that he fell into such mistakes, which we should not only have fallen into ourselves, but probably have committed a great many more, had he not first trod the rugged way before as."

The same Editor states that he has altered Mr. Cotton's prose in above three thousand places, and changed his language where fifty years had rendered it obsolete or harsh.

In 1776 appeared a new edition of Cotton's translation, " with very considerable amendments and improvements from the most accurate and elegant French edition of Peter Coste." Of this version there was a reprint in 1811. It exhibits, in many places, just corrections of Mr. Cotton, where that gentlemen has obviously misapprehended his author $ but it leaves a far greater number of errors untouched ; while its constant " improvements," in the way of modernizing Mr. Cotton's style and language, divest his translation of nearly all its spirit and naivete'. I also, no doubt, subject myself, in the opinion of many persons, to the charge of presumption, for having in my turn, ventured to correct Mr. Cotton ; and, indeed, I have had it roundly objected, that in any way to alter Cotton is to damage Montaigne. Having, however, read and re-read both the original work and the translation, the careful comparison I have made of the two has shewn me that not to alter Cotton, in many places, were gross injustice to Montaigne j and it is solely with this conviction that I have ventured upon the emendations here made. I most readily admit that Cotton's translation is, as a whole, a master- piece ; but then there occur in it, and at no very long intervals, instances of carelessness which greatly detract from the value of the translation, by making it fall short of, and in some cases absurdly misrepresent, the author's meaning. I could easily collect enough of these instances to make a new chapter in the Curiosities of Literature, but this would be as ungracious as it is unnecessary.

One or two illustrations will, I conceive, suffice to form my justification. In chapter 5 5, Montaigne, chatting about smells, remarks, En la plus espesse babarie, leg femmes Sycthes, &c. " in an age of the darkest barbarism, the Scythian women," &c. ; which in Cotton's version assumes the following shape : " in the wildest parts of Barbary, the Scythian women," &c. In chapter 56, Montaigne, after quoting a curious opinion set forth by Magaret de Valois, who speaks of a young man's saying his prayers in a church regularly after visiting another man's wife, as a testimonial of singular devotion, says, — Mais ce nest pas par ceste preuve settlement quon pourroit verifier que les femmes nesont guires propres, a traicter les matvtres de la theologie : " But this is not the only proof we have that women are not very fit to treat of theological matters," which Cotton thus renders : — " But it is by this proof only, that a man may conclude few men very fit to treat of theological affairs !" Again, in chapter 57, Montaigne observes, // me semble que, considerant la foiblesse de nostre vie et a combien d'escueils ordinaries et naturels elle est expott'e, on nen debvroit pasfaire si grande part d la naissance, d I'oysifvete et d Vapprentissage, — " Methinks, considering the frailty of life, and the many natural and ordinary wrecks to which it is exposed, we should not give so large a portion of it to idleness, either in childhood or in apprenticeship to the world," — which Cotton reads, — " For the frailty of life, and the many natural and accidental rubs to which it is obnoxious and daily exposed, birth though noble, ought not to share so large a vacancy, and so tedious a course of education." Book ii., chapter % Montaigne says, Laissons cette autre tecte (the Stoic) faisant expresse profession de fierte ; — " Let us leave that other sect, which makes an express profession of haughty superiority;'* which Cotton converts into this sentence : — " Let us leave that other sect, and make a downright profession of fierceness." In another place, Cotton subjects his author to a sad imputation : Montaigne (book ii. chapter 6), speaking of an accident that threw him into a swoon, says that, however, Je madvisais de commander quon donnast un cheval A mafemme, que je veoyois sempestrer else tracasser dans le chemin, qui est montueux et mafay se, "I had so much sense about me as to order them to give a horse to my wife, who, I saw, was toiling and labouring along the road, which was a steep and uneasy one ;" this Cotton renders, " I had so much sense as to order that a horse I saw trip and falter on the way, which is mountainous and uneasy, should be given to my wife," &c.

I trust that these illustrations will suffice to justify me, even with the warmest admirers of Cotton, — and he has no sincerer admirer than myself, — for the departures which I have made from his translation. They are frequent, it is true, but for the roost part, only where absolutely required to restore the author s meaning. The style and spirit of Cotton's version it would be impossible to improve upon $ and I have no hesitation in expresssing the opinion that, the inaccuracies in question being now carefully corrected, the present edition of the essays of Montaigne fully comes up to the deBnition of a good translation suggested by Lord Woodhouselee, viz. — " That in which the merit of the original work is so completely transfused into another language as to be as distinctly apprehended, and as strongly felt, by a native of the country to which that language belongs, as it is to those who speak the language of the original work." Here, indeed, as in the case of Ozell's Rabelais, the position might be even more strongly put.

-'i r

THE LIFE

OF

MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE.

JVliCHAKL de Montaigne was bom, as he himself tells us, " betwixt eleven and twelve o'clock in the forenoon, the last of February, 1533." He was the third son of Pierre Eyquem,1 Ecuyer? a brave and loyal soldier, who had seen service in the wars beyond the mountains, and bad brought back with him from Italy and Spain a cultivated mind. The description which his son gives of him, is highly interesting : — " He spoke little and well, ever mixing his language with some illustration out of modern authors, especially Spanish ; and amongst them Marcus Aurelius was very frequent in his mouth. His behaviour was grave, bumble, and modest ; he was very solicitous of neatness and decency in his person and dress, whether a- foot or on horseback. He was exceedingly punctual to his word, and of a conscience and religion tending rather towards superstition than otherwise. For a man of little stature, very strong, well proportioned, and well knit ; of a pleasing countenance, inclining to brown, and very adroit in all noble exercises. I have yet in the house to be seen canes full of lead, with which, they say, he exercised his arms for throwing the bar or the stone ; and shoes with leaden soles, to make him afterwards lighter 'for running or leaping. Of his vaulting he has left little miracles behind him ; and I have seen him, when past threescore, laugh at our agilities, throw himself in his furred gown into the saddle, make the tour of a table upon his thumbs, and scarce ever mount the stairs up to his chamber without taking three or four steps at a time."

This gentleman, with some instinctive prescience apparently, of his son Michael's mental superiority, formed a wish to have him educated in a manner altogether different from the routine then gone through. Even before his birth, he consulted learned and clever men on the subject, and on these consultations and his own admirable judgment, he formed a system, as Mrs. Shelley observes, such as may in some sort be considered the basis of Rousseau's ; and which shows that, however we may consider one age more enlightened than another, the natural reason of men of talent leads them to the same conclusions, whether living in an age when warfare party struggles, and the concomitant ignorance, were rife, or when philosophers set the fashion of the day: "The good father that God gave me," says he, " who has nothing of me but the acknowledgment of his bounty, but truly 'tis a very hearty one, sent me from my cradle to be brought up in a poor village of his, and there continued me all the while I was at nurse, and even longer, bringing me up to the meanest and most common way of living. This humour of

1 Scaliger, in the SctUigerana Secunda, U reported a* saying that Montaigne's father was a seller of herrings,— whether is gross or detail is not specified,— but the statement is a mere falsehood. In the supplement to the Chronique Bordclaise, by Jean Darnal, there is an account of the various gradations by which Pierre Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne, ascended from the office of first jurat of Bordeaux, in 1530, to that of mayor, in 1533.

* Montaigne himself mentions the surname of Eyquem, though it does not appear that he erer made use of it himself. He says the name was still borne by a family in England ; its English form was probably Egham.

a d his yet aimed this end, to make me familiar with those people, and that condition of men, which most need our assistance ; believing that I should be more holden to regard them who extended their arms to me, than those who turned their backs upon me : and for this reason also it was that he provided me godfathers of the meanest fortune, to oblige and bind me to them."

Next came the question of education. The Greek and Latin tongues, our author's father felt, are an acquisition of great worth ; but at the same time they were somewhat dearly bought under the system which, at that period, universally prevailed, and does so even now, to a great extent. The elder Montaigne's own reading being confined to works written in the living tongues, he was the more anxious that his son should be early made acquainted with the languages of Athens and Rome, and he meditated long on the received modes of introducing youth into these chief vestibules of knowledge. He was struck by the time given to, and the annoyances a child suffers in, the acquirement of the dead languages, and this had been exaggerated to him as a cause why the moderns were so inferior to the ancients in greatness of soul and wisdom. But the difficulty which he felt, the expedient he devised to obviate it, and the result of this expedient, cannot be better told than in Montaigne's own words : —

" My late father having made the most precise enquiry that any man can possibly make amongst men of the greatest learning and judgment, of an exact method of education, was by them cautioned of the inconvenience then in use, and informed that the tedious time we applied to the learning of the languages of those people who, themselves, had them for nothing, was the sole cause we could not arrive to the grandeur of soul and perfection of knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans : I do not, however, believe that to be the only cause ; the expedient my father, however, found out for this was that, in my infancy, and before I began to speak, he committed me to the care of a German (who since died a famous physician in France), totally ignorant of our language, but very fluent and a great critic in Latin. This man, whom he had sent for out of his own country, and whom he entertained, at a very great salary, for this only end, had me continually with him. To whom there were also joined two others of the same nation, but of inferior learning, to attend me, and sometimes to relieve him ; who all of them conversed with me in no other language but Latin. As to the rest of his family, it was an inviolable rule that neither himself, nor my mother, nor man, nor maid, should speak anything, in my company, but such Latin words as every one had learnt to gabble with me. It is not to be imagined how great an advantage this proved to the whole family ; my father and my mother, by this means, learning Latin enough to understand it perfectly well, and to speak it to such a degree as was sufficient for any necessary use ; as also those of the servants did who were most frequently with me.