Essays of Michel de Montaigne Part 8

CHAPTER X

OF QUICK OR SLOW SPEECH

"Onc ne furent a touts toutes graces donnees."

["All graces were never yet given to any one man."--A verse in one of La Brebis' Sonnets.]

So we see in the gift of eloquence, wherein some have such a facility and promptness, and that which we call a present wit so easy, that they are ever ready upon all occasions, and never to be surprised; and others more heavy and slow, never venture to utter anything but what they have long premeditated, and taken great care and pains to fit and prepare.

Now, as we teach young ladies those sports and exercises which are most proper to set out the grace and beauty of those parts wherein their chiefest ornament and perfection lie, so it should be in these two advantages of eloquence, to which the lawyers and preachers of our age seem princ.i.p.ally to pretend. If I were worthy to advise, the slow speaker, methinks, should be more proper for the pulpit, and the other for the bar: and that because the employment of the first does naturally allow him all the leisure he can desire to prepare himself, and besides, his career is performed in an even and unintermitted line, without stop or interruption; whereas the pleader's business and interest compels him to enter the lists upon all occasions, and the unexpected objections and replies of his adverse party jostle him out of his course, and put him, upon the instant, to pump for new and extempore answers and defences.

Yet, at the interview betwixt Pope Clement and King Francis at Ma.r.s.eilles, it happened, quite contrary, that Monsieur Poyet, a man bred up all his life at the bar, and in the highest repute for eloquence, having the charge of making the harangue to the Pope committed to him, and having so long meditated on it beforehand, as, so they said, to have brought it ready made along with him from Paris; the very day it was to have been p.r.o.nounced, the Pope, fearing something might be said that might give offence to the other princes' amba.s.sadors who were there attending on him, sent to acquaint the King with the argument which he conceived most suiting to the time and place, but, by chance, quite another thing to that Monsieur de Poyet had taken so much pains about: so that the fine speech he had prepared was of no use, and he was upon the instant to contrive another; which finding himself unable to do, Cardinal du Bellay was constrained to perform that office. The pleader's part is, doubtless, much harder than that of the preacher; and yet, in my opinion, we see more pa.s.sable lawyers than preachers, at all events in France.

It should seem that the nature of wit is to have its operation prompt and sudden, and that of judgment to have it more deliberate and more slow.

But he who remains totally silent, for want of leisure to prepare himself to speak well, and he also whom leisure does noways benefit to better speaking, are equally unhappy.

'Tis said of Severus Ca.s.sius that he spoke best extempore, that he stood more obliged to fortune than to his own diligence; that it was an advantage to him to be interrupted in speaking, and that his adversaries were afraid to nettle him, lest his anger should redouble his eloquence.

I know, experimentally, the disposition of nature so impatient of tedious and elaborate premeditation, that if it do not go frankly and gaily to work, it can perform nothing to purpose. We say of some compositions that they stink of oil and of the lamp, by reason of a certain rough harshness that laborious handling imprints upon those where it has been employed. But besides this, the solicitude of doing well, and a certain striving and contending of a mind too far strained and overbent upon its undertaking, breaks and hinders itself like water, that by force of its own pressing violence and abundance, cannot find a ready issue through the neck of a bottle or a narrow sluice. In this condition of nature, of which I am now speaking, there is this also, that it would not be disordered and stimulated with such pa.s.sions as the fury of Ca.s.sius (for such a motion would be too violent and rude); it would not be jostled, but solicited; it would be roused and heated by unexpected, sudden, and accidental occasions. If it be left to itself, it flags and languishes; agitation only gives it grace and vigour. I am always worst in my own possession, and when wholly at my own disposition: accident has more t.i.tle to anything that comes from me than I; occasion, company, and even the very rising and falling of my own voice, extract more from my fancy than I can find, when I sound and employ it by myself. By which means, the things I say are better than those I write, if either were to be preferred, where neither is worth anything. This, also, befalls me, that I do not find myself where I seek myself, and I light upon things more by chance than by any inquisition of my own judgment. I perhaps sometimes. .h.i.t upon something when I write, that seems quaint and sprightly to me, though it will appear dull and heavy to another.--But let us leave these fine compliments; every one talks thus of himself according to his talent. But when I come to speak, I am already so lost that I know not what I was about to say, and in such cases a stranger often finds it out before me. If I should make erasure so often as this inconvenience befalls me, I should make clean work; occasion will, at some other time, lay it as visible to me as the light, and make me wonder what I should stick at.

CHAPTER XI

OF PROGNOSTICATIONS

For what concerns oracles, it is certain that a good while before the coming of Jesus Christ they had begun to lose their credit; for we see that Cicero troubled to find out the cause of their decay, and he has these words:

"Cur isto modo jam oracula Delphis non eduntur, non modo nostro aetate, sed jam diu; ut nihil possit esse contemptius?"

["What is the reason that the oracles at Delphi are no longer uttered: not merely in this age of ours, but for a long time past, insomuch that nothing is more in contempt?"

--Cicero, De Divin., ii. 57.]

But as to the other prognostics, calculated from the anatomy of beasts at sacrifices (to which purpose Plato does, in part, attribute the natural const.i.tution of the intestines of the beasts themselves), the sc.r.a.ping of poultry, the flight of birds--

"Aves quasdam . . . rerum augurandarum causa natas esse putamus."

["We think some sorts of birds are purposely created to serve the purposes of augury."--Cicero, De Natura Deor., ii. 64.]

claps of thunder, the overflowing of rivers--

"Multa cernunt Aruspices, multa Augures provident, multa oraculis declarantur, multa vaticinationibus, multa somniis, multa portentis."

["The Aruspices discern many things, the Augurs foresee many things, many things are announced by oracles, many by vaticinations, many by dreams, many by portents."--Cicero, De Natura Deor., ii. 65.]

--and others of the like nature, upon which antiquity founded most of their public and private enterprises, our religion has totally abolished them. And although there yet remain amongst us some practices of divination from the stars, from spirits, from the shapes and complexions of men, from dreams and the like (a notable example of the wild curiosity of our nature to grasp at and antic.i.p.ate future things, as if we had not enough to do to digest the present)--

"Cur hanc tibi, rector Olympi, Sollicitis visum mortalibus addere curam, Noscant venturas ut dira per omina clades?...

Sit subitum, quodc.u.mque paras; sit coeca futuri Mens hominum fati, liceat sperare timenti."

["Why, ruler of Olympus, hast thou to anxious mortals thought fit to add this care, that they should know by, omens future slaughter?...

Let whatever thou art preparing be sudden. Let the mind of men be blind to fate in store; let it be permitted to the timid to hope."

--Lucan, ii. 14]

"Ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit; miserum est enim, nihil proficientem angi,"

["It is useless to know what shall come to pa.s.s; it is a miserable thing to be tormented to no purpose."

--Cicero, De Natura Deor., iii. 6.]

yet are they of much less authority now than heretofore. Which makes so much more remarkable the example of Francesco, Marquis of Saluzzo, who being lieutenant to King Francis I. in his ultramontane army, infinitely favoured and esteemed in our court, and obliged to the king's bounty for the marquisate itself, which had been forfeited by his brother; and as to the rest, having no manner of provocation given him to do it, and even his own affection opposing any such disloyalty, suffered himself to be so terrified, as it was confidently reported, with the fine prognostics that were spread abroad everywhere in favour of the Emperor Charles V., and to our disadvantage (especially in Italy, where these foolish prophecies were so far believed, that at Rome great sums of money were ventured out upon return of greater, when the prognostics came to pa.s.s, so certain they made themselves of our ruin), that, having often bewailed, to those of his acquaintance who were most intimate with him, the mischiefs that he saw would inevitably fall upon the Crown of France and the friends he had in that court, he revolted and turned to the other side; to his own misfortune, nevertheless, what constellation soever governed at that time. But he carried himself in this affair like a man agitated by divers pa.s.sions; for having both towns and forces in his hands, the enemy's army under Antonio de Leyva close by him, and we not at all suspecting his design, it had been in his power to have done more than he did; for we lost no men by this infidelity of his, nor any town, but Fossano only, and that after a long siege and a brave defence.--[1536]

"Prudens futuri temporis exitum Caliginosa nocte premit Deus, Ridetque, si mortalis ultra Fas trepidat."

["A wise G.o.d covers with thick night the path of the future, and laughs at the man who alarms himself without reason."

--Hor., Od., iii. 29.]

"Ille potens sui Laetusque deget, cui licet in diem Dixisse vixi! cras vel atra Nube polum pater occupato, Vel sole puro."

["He lives happy and master of himself who can say as each day pa.s.ses on, 'I HAVE LIVED:' whether to-morrow our Father shall give us a clouded sky or a clear day."--Hor., Od., iii. 29]

"Laetus in praesens animus; quod ultra est, Oderit curare."

["A mind happy, cheerful in the present state, will take good care not to think of what is beyond it."--Ibid., ii. 25]

And those who take this sentence in a contrary sense interpret it amiss:

"Ista sic reciprocantur, ut et si divinatio sit, dii sint; et si dii lint, sit divinatio."

["These things are so far reciprocal that if there be divination, there must be deities; and if deities, divination."--Cicero, De Divin., i. 6.]

Much more wisely Pacuvius--

"Nam istis, qui linguam avium intelligunt, Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt, quam ex suo, Magis audiendum, quam auscultandum, censeo."

["As to those who understand the language of birds, and who rather consult the livers of animals other than their own, I had rather hear them than attend to them."

--Cicero, De Divin., i. 57, ex Pacuvio]

The so celebrated art of divination amongst the Tuscans took its beginning thus: A labourer striking deep with his cutter into the earth, saw the demiG.o.d Tages ascend, with an infantine aspect, but endued with a mature and senile wisdom. Upon the rumour of which, all the people ran to see the sight, by whom his words and science, containing the principles and means to attain to this art, were recorded, and kept for many ages.--[Cicero, De Devina, ii. 23]--A birth suitable to its progress; I, for my part, should sooner regulate my affairs by the chance of a die than by such idle and vain dreams. And, indeed, in all republics, a good share of the government has ever been referred to chance. Plato, in the civil regimen that he models according to his own fancy, leaves to it the decision of several things of very great importance, and will, amongst other things, that marriages should be appointed by lot; attributing so great importance to this accidental choice as to ordain that the children begotten in such wedlock be brought up in the country, and those begotten in any other be thrust out as spurious and base; yet so, that if any of those exiles, notwithstanding, should, peradventure, in growing up give any good hope of himself, he might be recalled, as, also, that such as had been retained, should be exiled, in case they gave little expectation of themselves in their early growth.

I see some who are mightily given to study and comment upon their almanacs, and produce them to us as an authority when anything has fallen out pat; and, for that matter, it is hardly possible but that these alleged authorities sometimes stumble upon a truth amongst an infinite number of lies.

"Quis est enim, qui totum diem jaculans non aliquando collineet?"

["For who shoots all day at b.u.t.ts that does not sometimes. .h.i.t the white?"--Cicero, De Divin., ii. 59.]

I think never the better of them for some such accidental hit. There would be more certainty in it if there were a rule and a truth of always lying. Besides, n.o.body records their flimflams and false prognostics, forasmuch as they are infinite and common; but if they chop upon one truth, that carries a mighty report, as being rare, incredible, and prodigious. So Diogenes, surnamed the Atheist, answered him in Samothrace, who, showing him in the temple the several offerings and stories in painting of those who had escaped shipwreck, said to him, "Look, you who think the G.o.ds have no care of human things, what do you say to so many persons preserved from death by their especial favour?"

"Why, I say," answered he, "that their pictures are not here who were cast away, who are by much the greater number."--[Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 37.]

Cicero observes that of all the philosophers who have acknowledged a deity, Xenophanes the Colophonian only has endeavoured to eradicate all manner of divination--[Cicero, De Divin., i. 3.]--; which makes it the less a wonder if we have now and then seen some of our princes, sometimes to their own cost, rely too much upon these vanities. I had given anything with my own eyes to see those two great marvels, the book of Joachim the Calabrian abbot, which foretold all the future Popes, their names and qualities; and that of the Emperor Leo, which prophesied all the emperors and patriarchs of Greece. This I have been an eyewitness of, that in public confusions, men astonished at their fortune, have abandoned their own reason, superst.i.tiously to seek out in the stars the ancient causes and menaces of the present mishaps, and in my time have been so strangely successful in it, as to make me believe that this being an amus.e.m.e.nt of sharp and volatile wits, those who have been versed in this knack of unfolding and untying riddles, are capable, in any sort of writing, to find out what they desire. But above all, that which gives them the greatest room to play in, is the obscure, ambiguous, and fantastic gibberish of the prophetic canting, where their authors deliver nothing of clear sense, but shroud all in riddle, to the end that posterity may interpret and apply it according to its own fancy.