are we but "vaine, diverse, and wavering subjects"?), or of virtue, or of chastity. Let us live our lives, exercising all our faculties of body and mind-in prudent moderation, and with due regard to our time of life. It is not the greatest advice which can be given to man. If the human race had acted up to Montaigne's standard of wisdom, there would have been no prophets, no saints, no martyrs, hardly any great thinkers, or great explorers. It would be possible to follow Montaigne and be a haberdasher of small-wares. One could not follow him and be a bigot, "une bonne ligne droite de ferocité sotte," in any cause, or disgrace knowledge by pedantry, or conquest and discovery by cruelty and avarice. But it is an idle question whether he was better or worse than Luther or Saint Francis de Sales. He was different, and he is a perfect example of a stamp of man who will never fail while the human race lasts and thinks — the sagacious man who is naturally kind and honest, but is not virtuous in any lofty sense, or capable of strong conviction. Amid the clash of dogmatists, all fanatically sure they were right, and all cruel, which filled the sixteenth century with tumult, the voice of Montaigne supplied something which was sorely needed.

As a writer the importance of Montaigne can hardly be exaggerated. To him modern literature owes the essay, which of itself would be His style. a claim to immortality. He first set the example of discussing great questions in the tone of the man of the world speaking to men of the world.

His

His style, which can be eloquent to the highest degree, is more commonly easy and "savoury" full, that is to say, of colour and character. amplifications, and his constant use of quotations, his lawless wanderings away from his subject, and then through many turnings back to it—when he has a subject at all-his amazing indiscretions concerning his health, his morals, and his family history, his frequent sudden appeals to the reader, as of one speaking in confidence and on the spur of the moment, make up a combination which cannot be defined in its inexhaustible variety. It is not the least charm of the Essays that they invite desultory reading. If advice in this matter were ever of much value, we might recommend the reader who has Montaigne to begin, to start with the "Apologie for Raymond of Sebonde," which will give him the whole spirit and way of thinking, and then to read as accident dictates. Orderly study is quite unnecessary with an author who starts from no premiss to arrive at no conclusion, whose unity is due not to doctrine but to character, and who "rays out curious observations on life" all illuminated by a vast learning and by humour.

The teaching of Montaigne was expounded by Pierre Charron (1541-1603), a lawyer, who took Charron and orders, and had written against the League Du Vair. and the Protestants, before he fell under the influence of the author of the Essays. His most famous or rather, his one surviving-work, the Traité de la Sagesse (1601),1 is a restatement in more 1 Ed. Amaury Duval, 1828.

scholastic form of the ideas of Montaigne. Charron also drew largely, for he was not by any means an original writer, on Guillaume du Vair (1556-1621). Du Vair, who is considered one of the best prosewriters of his time, was the author of many treatises on philosophical subjects; but he is remembered mainly for his famous Suasion, or plea for the Salic Law, delivered before the Estates summoned by the League in 1593. He represented the magistracy, and it is said that his argument persuaded the Estates to reject the candidature of the Infanta of Spain, who had been brought forward by the extreme Catholic party as rival to Henry IV.

1 Euvres Complètes, 1641.

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CHAPTER XII.

THE LATER RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.

THE LATER RENAISSANCE IN ITALY-TORQUATO TASSO-HIS WORK-THE GERUSALEMME LIBERATA-GIORDANO BRUNO-LITERARY CHARACTER OF HIS WORK-GIAMBATTISTA GUARINI.

THE Later Renaissance, which was so great in Spain and in England, and in France was important, was elsewhere a time of decline, of silence, or of very faint beginnings. The literature of Germany has been broken into periods of vigour, with long intervals of silence between. The second half of the sixteenth century was one of these. Among the smaller peoples, with Holland at their head, there was as yet little more than the attempt to produce literature. The case of Italy was more fortunate than that of Germany. She at least can count two of her most interesting sons among the men of letters of this time, Tasso and Bruno. But here the decadence had begun, and had made no small progress towards the sheer dexterous futility which was to be personified in Marini. The spirit of the Renaissance was

The Later Renaissance in

Italy.

worn out, and was replaced by mere accomplishment, and by the nervous fear which is visible all through the life of Tasso. The Roman Catholic reaction was not favourable to literature. It brought with it the tyranny, or at least the predominance, of a religion which could no longer inspire. The Popes of the time endeavoured to make Rome moral by methods which might have commended themselves to the strictest sect of the Puritans; and commendable as this effort to restrain the licence of the earlier Renaissance and the period of the Italian wars may have been, still it was an example of the attempt to repress which was being made everywhere in Italy, and which succeeded, since it had only to deal with men of a weak generation. Giordano Bruno was, indeed, indisciplined enough; but he spent the active part of his life out of Italy, and when he did return, his fate was a severe warning against independence of character.

The life of Torquato Tasso is of itself enough to show under what a gloomy cloud literature had to work in Italy all through the later six

Torquato Tasso.

teenth century. It was a life of dependence, and was dominated by fear-fear of rivals, of envy, of accusations of heresy, and even of murder. That this fear was not quite sane in Tasso's case is true; but though his contemporaries saw it to be unfounded, they do not seem to have thought it absurd. He was born in 1544, the third son of Bernardo Tasso of Bergamo, who was secretary to Ferrante Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno. His mother was Porzia de Rossi, a

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