Michel, Seigneur, or Lord, of Montaigne, a feudal estate in the province of Perigord, near the river Dordogne, was born February 28, 1533, of a family said to have been originally from England. He was a younger son; but, by the death of his elder brother, inherited the estate by the title of which he is known. His father, a blunt feudal noble, who had served in the wars of Francis I., placed him out at nurse in a village of his domain, and directed that he should be treated in the same manner as the children of the peasants. As soon as he could speak, he was placed under the care of a German tutor, selected for his ignorance of the French, and intimate acquaintance with the Greek and Latin languages. All Montaigne’s intercourse with his preceptor was carried on in Latin; and even his parents made a rule never to address him except in that language, of which they picked up a sufficient number of words for common purposes. The attendants were enjoined to follow the same practice. “They all became latinized,” says Montaigne himself, “and even the villagers around learnt words in that language, some of which took root in the country, and became of common use among the people.” Thus, without any formal course of scholastic teaching, Montaigne spoke Latin long before he could speak French, which he was afterwards obliged to learn as if it had been a foreign language. When, at a mature age, he was writing his Essays, he professed to be still ignorant of grammar, having learnt various languages by practice, and not knowing yet the meaning of adjective, conjunctive, or ablative, (Essais, b. i. c. 48.) This last assertion probably is not to be taken strictly to the letter. He studied Greek also by way of pastime, rather than as a task. The object of his father was to make him learn without constraint and from his own wish; and, as an instance of the old soldier’s whimsical notions on education, he caused his son to be awakened in the morning to the sound of music, that his nervous system might not be injured by any sudden shock. At six years old Montaigne was sent to the College of Guienne, at Bordeaux, an establishment which then enjoyed a very high reputation. He soon made his way to the higher classes; and at thirteen years of age had completed his college education. Having no taste for military life, which was then the usual career of young noblemen, he studied the law; and in 1554 was made Councillor (or Judge) in the Parliament of Bordeaux, in which capacity he acted for several years. He went several times to Court, and enjoyed the favour of Henry II., by whom, or as some say, by Charles IX., he was made a Gentleman of the King’s Chamber, and Knight of the Order of St. Michel. Among his brother councillors at Bordeaux there was a young man of distinguished merit, called La BoËtie, for whom Montaigne conceived a feeling of the most romantic friendship, which soon became reciprocal. The sentiments and opinions of the two seem to have sympathized in an extraordinary degree. La BoËtie died young, but his friend’s affection survived: a chapter of the Essays is devoted to his memory, and in other parts of Montaigne’s writings we find frequent recurrence to the same subject.

Montaigne married FranÇoise de la Chassaigne when he was thirty-three years of age; and this he did, as he says, in consequence of external persuasions, and in order to please his friends rather than himself, for he was not inclined to a married life; “but once married, although he had been till then considered a licentious man, he observed the conjugal laws more strictly than he had himself expected.” On succeeding to the family estate, on which he generally resided, he took the management of it into his own hands; and although his father, judging from his habits of abstraction and seeming carelessness of worldly objects, had foretold that he would ruin his patrimony, Montaigne, at his death, left the property if not much better, certainly not worse than he found it. He was not rich, for we are told, by Balzac, that his income did not exceed 6000 livres, which was no great revenue for a country gentleman even at that time. In 1569 he translated into French a Latin work of Sebonde or Sebon, in defence of the mysteries and doctrines of the Church of Rome, against Luther and other Protestant writers. France was at that time desolated by civil and religious war. Montaigne, although he evidently disapproved of the conduct of the Court towards the Protestants, yet remained loyal to the King. He lived in retirement, and took no part in public affairs, except by exhorting both parties to moderation and mutual charity. By this conduct he became, as it generally happens, obnoxious to both factions, and he incurred some danger in consequence. The massacre of St. Bartholomew plunged him into a deep melancholy. He detested cruelty and the shedding of blood, and in several passages of his Essays has animadverted in strong terms upon the atrocities committed against the Protestants. It was about this dismal epoch of 1572, when, solitude and melancholy urging him to the task, he began to write that celebrated work, of which we shall presently speak more at length. It was first published in March, 1580; and had great success. After some time, Montaigne printed a new edition of it, with additions; but without making any alterations in the part which had appeared before. The popularity of the book was such that in a few years there was hardly a man of education in France who had not a copy of it.

Soon after the first publication of his Essays, Montaigne undertook a journey for the sake of his health. He went to Germany, Switzerland, and, lastly, to Italy. He visited several bathing-places, among others, Baden, and the baths of Lucca in Tuscany. He proceeded to Rome, where he was well received by several Cardinals and other persons of distinction, and was introduced to Pope Gregory XIII. Montaigne was delighted with Rome; he found himself at home among those localities and monuments which were connected with his earliest studies, and with the first impressions of his childhood. His remarks on what he saw in the course of his journey are those of a man of penetration, sincere and plain spoken, and written in his peculiar antique style. His MS. journal, after lying forgotten for nearly two centuries, was discovered in an old chest in the chÂteau of his family, and published in 1775, by M. de Querlon, under the following title, ‘Journal du Voyage de Michel de Montaigne en Italie, par la Suisse et l’Allemagne, en 1580–1.’ It is one of the earliest descriptions of Italy in a modern language. In this journey, Montaigne received the freedom of the city of Rome, by a special bull of the Pope, which he valued as the proudest distinction of his life.

While he was abroad, he was elected mayor of Bordeaux by the votes of the citizens; an honour which he would have declined, but that the king, Henry III., insisted on his accepting of it. This was a mere honorary office, no emolument being attached to it. The appointment was for two years; but Montaigne was re-elected at the expiration of that period, which was a mark of public favour of rare occurrence.

On retiring from his office, Montaigne returned to his estate. The country was then ravaged by the war of the League. He had great difficulty in saving his family and property in the midst of the contending parties, and once narrowly escaped assassination in his chÂteau. To add to the miseries of civil war, the plague broke out in his neighbourhood in 1586; and he then, with his family, left his home and became a wanderer, residing successively at several friends’ houses in other parts of the country. He was at Paris in 1588, busy about a new edition of his Essays. It appears from De Thou, that about this time he was employed in negotiation with a view to mediate peace between Henry of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV., and the Duke of Guise. At Paris, he made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle de Gournay, a young lady, who had conceived a kind of sentimental affection for him by reading his book. In company with her mother, she visited and introduced herself to him, and from that time he called her his “fille d’alliance,” or adopted daughter, a title which she retained for the rest of her life, as she never married. This attachment, which, though warm and reciprocal, has every appearance of being of a purely platonic nature, is one of the remarkable circumstances of Montaigne’s life. At the time of his death, Mademoiselle de Gournay and her mother crossed one-half of France, in spite of the civil troubles and the insecurity of the roads, to mix their tears with those of his widow and daughter.

On his return from Paris, in the latter part of 1588, Montaigne stopped at Blois, with De Thou, Pasquier, and other friends. The famous States-General were then assembled in that city, where the murder of the Duke of Guise, and of his brother, the Cardinal, soon after took place (23d and 24th December, 1588). Montaigne had long foreseen that the civil dissensions could only terminate with the death of one of the great party leaders; and he also said to De Thou that Henry of Navarre was inclined to embrace the Catholic faith, were he not afraid of being forsaken by his party; and that, on the other side, Guise himself would not have been averse from adopting the Protestant religion, if he could thereby have promoted his ambitious views. After these events, Montaigne returned to his chÂteau. In the following year, he became acquainted with Pierre Charron, a theological writer of considerable reputation. An intimate friendship ensued between the two authors; and Charron, in his book ‘De la Sagesse,’ borrowed many thoughts from the Essays, which he held in high estimation. Montaigne, by his will, empowered Charron to assume the coat of arms of his family, as he himself had no male issue.

Montaigne’s health had been declining for some time; he was afflicted with gravel and cholic, and he was obstinately resolved against consulting physicians. In September, 1592, he fell ill of a malignant quinsy, which kept him speechless for three days, during which he had recourse to his pen to signify to his wife his last intentions. He desired that several gentlemen of the neighbourhood should be requested to come and take leave of him. When they were assembled in his room, a priest said mass, and at the elevation of the host, Montaigne half raised himself on his bed, with his hands joined together, and in that attitude expired, September 13, 1592, in the sixtieth year of his age. His body was buried at Bordeaux, in the church of the Feuillans, where a monument was erected to him by his widow. He left an only daughter, heiress of his property.

Montaigne’s Essays have been the subject of much and very conflicting criticism. If we consider the age and the intellectual condition of the country in which the author was born, we must pronounce them a very extraordinary work, not so much on account of the learning contained in them, as for the philosophical spirit and the frank, independent, liberal tone that pervades their pages. Civilization and literature were then at a low ebb in France; the language was hardly formed, the country was still torn by the rude turbulence, and subject to the oppression, of feudal lords and feudal laws; and was, moreover, distracted by ignorant fanaticism, by deadly intolerance, and by civil factions, rendered more fierce by religious feuds. It is very remarkable that, in a remote province of a country so situated, a country gentleman, himself belonging to the feudal aristocracy, should have composed a work full of moral maxims and precepts, conceived in the spirit of the philosophers of Greece and Rome, and founded, not on the sanctions of revealed religion, but on a sort of natural system of ethics, on the beauty of virtue, on the innate sense of justice, on the lessons of history. It is almost more remarkable that such a book should have been read with avidity amidst the turmoil of factions, the din of civil war, the knell of persecution and massacre.

The morality of the Essays has been called, and justly so, a pagan morality: it is not founded on the faith and the hopes of a Christian; and its principles are in many respects widely different from those of the Gospel. Scepticism was the bias of Montaigne’s mind; his philosophy is, in great measure, that of Seneca, and other ancient writers, whose books were the first that were put into his hands when a child. Accordingly, Pascal, Nicole, Leclerc, and other Christian moralists, while rendering full justice to Montaigne’s talents and the many good sentiments scattered about the Essays, are very severe upon his ethics, taken as a system. Yet he was not a determined infidel, for not only in the Essays, but in the journal of his travels, which was not intended for publication, he manifests Christian sentiments; and we have seen that the mode of his death was that of a Christian. In his chapter on prayers, (Essais, b. i. 56,) he recommends the use of the Lord’s Prayer in terms evidently sincere; and in a preceding chapter, after speaking of two sorts of ignorance, the one, that which precedes all instruction, and the other, that which follows partial instruction, he says, that “men of simple minds, devoid of curiosity and of learning, are Christians through reverence and obedience; that minds of middle growth and moderate capacities are the most prone to error and doubt; but that higher intellects, more clear-sighted and better grounded in science, form a superior class of believers, who, through long and religious investigations, arrive at the fountain of light of the Scriptures, and feel the mysterious and divine meaning of our ecclesiastical doctrines. And we see some who reach this last stage, through the second, with marvellous fruit and confirmation; and who, having attained the extreme boundary of Christian intelligence, enjoy their success with modesty and thanksgivings, accompanied by a total reformation of their morals, unlike those men of another stamp, who, in order to clear themselves of the suspicion of their past errors, become violent, indiscreet, unjust, and throw discredit on the cause which they pretend to serve.” (Essais, b. i. ch. 54.) And a few lines after, he modestly places himself in the second rank, of those who, disdaining the first state of uninformed simplicity, have not yet attained the third and last exalted stage, and who, he says, are thereby rendered “inept, importunate, and troublesome to society. But I, for my part, endeavour, as much as I can, to fall back upon my first and natural condition, from which I have idly attempted to depart.” Although we may not trust implicitly to the sincerity of this modest admission, yet we clearly see from this and other passages, that Montaigne’s mind was anything but dogmatical, and that he felt the insecurity of his own philosophy, which was made up of impulses and doubts, rather than of argumentation and conviction.

Montaigne has been also censured for several licentious and some cynical passages of his ‘Essais.’ This licentiousness, however, is rather in the expressions than in the meaning of the author. He spoke plainly of things which are not alluded to in a more refined state of society, but he did so evidently without mischievous intentions, and as a thing of common occurrence in his days. His early familiarity with the Latin classics probably contributed to this habit.

Notwithstanding these faults, Montaigne’s Essays are justly admired for the sound sense, honesty, and beauty which abound in them. ‘The best parts of them (says a French critic) are those in which he speaks of the passions and inclinations of men; as for his learning, it is vague, not methodical, and uncertain; and his philosophical maxims are often dangerous.’ (MÉlanges d’Histoire et de Litterature,’ Rouen, 1699, tom. i. p. 133.) Montaigne combats most earnestly all the malignant feelings inherent in man, inhumanity, injustice, oppression, uncharitableness; cruelty he detests, his whole nature was averse from it. His chapters on pedantry and on the education of children are remarkably good. He throws, at times, considerable light on the state of society and manners in France in his time, which may be considered as the last period of feudal power in that country. In his chapter on the inequality among men, he speaks of the independence of the French nobility, especially in the provinces remote from the Court, as Britanny; where the feudal lords living on their estates, surrounded by their vassals, their officers and valets, their household conducted with an almost royal ceremonial, heard of the king but once a-year as if he were some distant king or Sultan of Persia, and only remembered him on the score of some distant relationship, which they hold carefully registered among their ancestral documents.

Mademoiselle de Gournay edited Montaigne’s ‘Essais’ in 1635, and dedicated the edition to the Cardinal de Richelieu. She wrote a long preface to it, which is a zealous apology for Montaigne and his works against the charges of the earlier critics. An edition of the ‘Essais’ was published by Pierre Coste, 3 vols. 4to. London, 1724, enriched with valuable notes and several letters of Montaigne at the end of the third volume. The edition of Paris, 3 vols. 4to. 1725, is, in great measure, a reprint of that of Coste, except that the publishers have added extracts of the various judgments of the most distinguished critical writers concerning the ‘Essais,’ and also two more letters of Montaigne’s at the end. These additions render this Paris edition the most complete. The ex-senator Vernier published in 1810, ‘Notices et Observations pour faciliter la Lecture des Essais de Montaigne,’ Paris, 2 vols. 8vo. It is a useful commentary.