humorist. Perhaps the only actual parallel to Montaigne in literature
is Lamb. There are differences between them, arising naturally
enough from differences of temperament and experience; but both
agree in their attitude—an attitude which is sceptical without being
negative and humorous without being satiric. There is hardly any
writer in whom the human comedy is treated with such completeness
as it is in Montaigne. There is discernible in his essays no attempt
to map out a complete plan, and then to fill up its outlines. But
in the desultory and haphazard fashion which distinguishes him
there are few parts of life on which he does not touch, if only to
show the eternal contrast and antithesis which dominate it. The
exceptions are chiefly to be found in the higher and more poetical
strains of feeling to which the humorist temperament lends itself
with reluctance and distrust, though it by no means excludes them.
The positiveness of the French disposition is already noticeable in
Rabelais; it becomes more noticeable still in Montaigne. He is
always charming, but he is rarely inspiring, except in a very few
passages where the sense of vanity and nothingness possesses him
with unusual strength. As a general rule, an agreeable grotesque
of the affairs of life (a grotesque which never loses hold of good
taste sufficiently to be called burlesque) occupies him. There is a
kind of anticipation of the scientific spirit in the careful zeal with
which he picks up odd aspects of mankind and comments upon
them as he places them in his museum. Such a temperament is
most pleasantly shown when it is least personal. A dozen generations
of men have rejoiced in the gentle irony with which Montaigne
handles the ludicrum humani saeculi, in the quaint felicity of his
selection of examples, and in the real though sometimes fantastic
wisdom of his comment on his selections.
Montaigne did not very long survive the completion of his book. On his way to Paris for the purpose of getting it printed he stayed for some time at Blois, Where he met De Thou. In Paris itself he was for a short time committed to the Bastille by the Leaguers, as a kind of hostage, it is said, for a member of their party who had been arrested at Rouen by Henry of Navarre. But he was in no real danger. He was well known to and favoured by both Catherine de’ Medici and the Guises, and was very soon released. In Paris, too, at this time he made a whimsical but pleasant friendship. Marie de Jars de Gournay (1565–1645), one of the most learned ladies of the 16th and 17th centuries, had conceived such a veneration for the author of the Essays that, though a very young girl and connected with many noble families, she travelled to the capital on purpose to make his acquaintance. He gave her the title of his “fille d’alliance” (adopted daughter), which she bore proudly for the rest of her long life. She lived far into the 17th century, and became a character and something of a laughing-stock to the new generation; but her services to Montaigne’s literary memory were, as will be seen, great. Of his other friends in these last years of his life the most important were Étienne Pasquier and Pierre Charron. The latter, indeed, was more than a friend, he was a disciple; and Montaigne, just as he had constituted Mlle de Gournay his “fille d’alliance,” bestowed on Charron the rather curious compliment of desiring that he should take the arms of the family of Montaigne. It has been thought from these two facts, and from an expression in one of the later essays, that the marriage of his daughter Léonore to Gaston de La Tour had not turned out to his satisfaction. But family affection, except towards his father, was by no means Montaigne’s strongest point. When Henry of Navarre came to the throne of France, he wished Montaigne, whom he had again visited in 1587, to come to court, but the essayist refused. It would seem that he returned from Paris to his old life of study and meditation and working up his Essays. No new ones were found after his death, but many alterations and insertions. His various maladies grew worse; yet they were not the direct cause of his death. He was attacked with quinsy, which rapidly brought about paralysis of the tongue, and he died on the 15th of September 1592, in circumstances which, as Pasquier reports them, completely disprove any intention of displaying anti-Christian or anti-Catholic leanings. He was buried, though not till some months after his death, in a church in Bordeaux, which after some vicissitudes became the chapel of the collége. During the Revolution the tomb, and as it was supposed the coffin, were transferred with much pomp to the town museum; but it was discovered that the wrong coffin had been taken, and it was afterwards restored to its old position. Montaigne’s widow survived him, and his daughter left posterity which became merged in the noble houses of Ségur and Lur-Saluces. But it does not appear that any male representative of the family survived.
When Mlle de Gournay heard of the death of Montaigne she undertook with her mother a visit of ceremony and condolence to the widow, which had important results for literature. Mme de Montaigne gave her a copy of the edition of 1588 annotated copiously; at the same time, apparently, she bestowed another copy, also annotated by the author, on the convent of the Feuillants in Bordeaux, to which the church in which his remains lay was attached. Mlle de Gournay thereupon set to work to produce a new and final edition with a zeal and energy which would have done credit to any editor of any date. She herself worked with her own copy, inserting the additions, marking the alterations and translating all the quotations. But when she had got this to press she sent the proofs to Bordeaux, where a poet of some note, Pierre de Brach, revised them with the other annotated copy. The edition thus produced in 1595 has with justice passed as the standard, even in preference to those which appeared in the author’s lifetime. Unluckily, Mlle de Gournay’s original does not appear to exist and her text was said, until the appearance of MM. Courbet and Royer’s edition, to have been somewhat wantonly corrupted, especially in the important point of spelling. The Feuillants copy is in existence, being the only manuscript, or partly manuscript, authority for the text; but access to it and reproduction of it are subjected to rather unfortunate restrictions by the authorities, and until it is completely edited students are rather at the mercy of those who have actually consulted it. It was edited in 1803 by Naigeon, the disciple of Diderot; but, according to later inquiries, considerable liberties were taken with it. The first edition of 1580, with the various readings of two others which appeared during the author’s lifetime, was reprinted by MM. Dezeimeris and Burckhausen in 1870. That of Le Clerc (3 vols., Paris, 1826–1828) and in a more compact form that of Louandre (4 vols., Paris, 1854) have been most useful; but that of MM. Courbet and Royer (1872–1900) is at present the standard. The Journal, long, neglected and still (vide supra) doubtful, was re-edited by Professor A. d’Ancona (Città di Castello, 1895) and translated into English by W. G. Waters (1903). The editions of Montaigne in France and elsewhere, and the works upon him during the past three centuries, are innumerable. The most recent books of importance are P. Bonnefon’s Montaigne, l’homme et l’œuvre (1893) and P. Stapfer’s Montaigne (1895) in the Grands écrivains, the latter a book of remarkable excellence. Edmé Champion’s Introduction aux essais may also be noticed, and Professor Dowden’s Montaigne (1905), which has an excellent bibliography. The somewhat earlier Montaigne of M. E. Lowndes (Cambridge, 1898) is noteworthy in especial for its attention to his life and character. In England Montaigne was early popular. It was long supposed that the autograph of Shakespeare in a copy of Florio’s translation showed his study of the Essays. The autograph has been disputed, but divers passages, and especially one in The Tempest, show that at first or second hand the poet was acquainted with the essayist. The book best worth consulting on this head is J. Feis’s Shakespeare and Montaigne (1884). Towards the latter end of the 17th century, Cotton, the friend of Isaac Walton, executed complete translation, which, though not extraordinarily faithful, possesses a good deal of rough vigour. It has been frequently reprinted with additions and alterations. Reprints of Florio are also numerous. One in the “Tudor Translations” (1893) has an introduction by G. Saintsbury. An English biography of Montaigne by Bayle St John appeared in 1858, and Walter Pater’s unfinished Gaston de Latour borrows from Montaigne and his story. The most noteworthy critical handling of the subject in English is unquestionably Emerson’s in Representative Men. (G. Sa.)
MONTALBÁN, JUAN PEREZ DE (1602–1638), Spanish dramatist, poet and novelist, was born at Madrid in 1602. At the age of eighteen he became a licentiate in theology, was ordained priest in 1625 and appointed notary to the Inquisition. In 1619 he began writing for the stage under the guidance of Lope de Vega, who is said to have assisted him in composing
El Orfeo en lengua castellana (1624), a poem obviously intended to compete with Jáuregui’s Orfeo, published earlier in the same year. The prose tales in Sucesos y prodigios de amor (1624) and Para todos (1632) were very popular. Montalbán’s father, a publisher at Madrid, issued a pirated edition of Quevedo’s Buscón, which roused an angry controversy. The violence of these polemics, the strain of overwork, and the death of Lope de Vega so affected Montalbán that he became insane; he died at
Madrid on the 25th of June 1638. His last work was a eulogistic
biography of Lope de Vega in the Fama póstuma (1636). His
plays, published in 1635–1638, are all in the manner of that
great dramatist, and were represented with much success,
but, with the exception of Los Amantes de Teruel, are little
