liquors was fast assisting to destroy. In his latter days he gave himself up almost wholly to drink; "he fell a sacrifice to it," says Ritson, "and he drank, as he often told me, to drown reflection." At this time he was often in want of clothes, of linen, and of the money wherewith to purchase them. His indolence increased, and his indifferent health and emaciated figure no longer fitted him for the stage, and he became dependent upon the bounty of his friends. Of the number of the kind, Mr. Slack, a printer in Newcastle, was kind beyond measure. His name deserves preservation. He not only received him into his house, but procured for him at his own expense the best medical advice, so that, at times, the poor poet had gleams of hope that he would be able to get round again, and, in the language of his friend Digges, "d- strolling altogether." But this was not to be. He lingered on under the friendly roof of Mr. Slack, and was to be seen loitering through the streets of Newcastle, his tall and once manly frame now spare and gaunt, his walk feeble, and his countenance betraying an inward discomposure, the effects of an unsettled life, and a constitution ruined by indulgence. At this time he became known to Bewick, the famous woodengraver, who has transferred to wood the poor poet and strolling player, just as he was every day to have been seen in Newcastle, carrying, in an old silk handkerchief, a herring, or some other common article of life. He remained in this all but helpless state till the 18th of September, 1773, when death came to his release, in his forty-fourth year. He was buried in the churchyard of St. John's, Newcastle, where a decent monument was placed over his grave, I believe by his friends Mr. and Mrs. Slack.

Cunningham seems to have been intended by Nature for a proud station in life, but disappointed hopes brought on despondency, and despondency drove him to drink. In his youth, unsuited with an aim, he became the companion of the dissolute and unsettled; of those

"Who hide in rant the heart-aches of the

night;"

the frequenter of tap-rooms, racecourses, ale-booths, and country fairs.

With this contamination around him daily, he did not, however, give up his faculty for song to any bad purpose; and has left behind him no line which, dying, he could have wished to have destroyed from the impurity of its thought. He did not prostitute his Muse, but, like a man of genius as he was, saw that poetry had other purposes; that to instruct and to please were its ends, not to vitiate and to divert. Well had it been if of many men of equal, of many of greater genius, we could say the same!

His brother Peter was a statuary in Dublin, and a modeller in wax, and, like himself, one on whom For. tune and Favour frowned. He resided all along in Ireland, and was employed upon a monument to Swift, as appears from the letters before me, and from his brother's works. Of others of his family, nothing is known.

The original of the following letter was long in the possession of Charles Mathews, the actor, and is here printed for the first time :

"To Mrs. A. Slack,

-

"At the Printing Office,
"Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

"Dear Madam,-I received yours, for which I thank you. I am in a bad state of health, and, I am afraid, rather peevish, -you will conclude so, perhaps, from my last. My health is, in short, so bad, that I am to remain at Scarborough till the company returns to Whitby (about six weeks). I could wish the books should be sent by the carriers overland to Whitby, and so forwarded to Scarborough. I have not heard about Mrs. Montague; had she a mind to let me hear from her, it must have been through your channel, as she cannot know my address. What do you think, Mrs. Slack, of sending her a book, in the manner of those I sent Mr. Garrick, and presenting it as my first-offering? The fly took up Mr. Garrick's, and Harry White, White, goldbeater, delivered them. I would have twenty or thirty sent to Mr. White, to whom I shall write about them directly. The York company will be three weeks at Hull, and if I had books I could distribute them I think to advantage in that quarter. Let the land-carriage be high-no doubt it will be so, but I am so teased, from particular friendship, here and in the environs, that I can make no longer excuses with propriety. My friend Slack mistakes when he thinks

Few writers of the sixteenth century have exercised greater influence in various departments of intellectual activity than Michel de Montaigne. To say that he was the father of the modern essayists, is to say little. The ideas which he either originated or adopted, the doctrines he propounded, the errors he embraced, the truths he asserted, have all produced a numerous progeny. An attempt to affiliate these would far transcend our patience. It is now scarcely possible to open a work of speculation, ethical or metaphysical, without lighting upon thoughts which, whether the material was drawn from his own mind or not, he had impressed with his image and superscription, and contributed to put in circulation. He has to answer for many of the absurd vagaries of the eighteenth century, and some of the soundest theories of succeeding philosophers have been drawn from his inexhaustible magazine. Not to mention the obligations of French literature to this original thinker, our own swarms with indications of his influence; he has presided over many a thoughtful moment of our greatest writers, and inspired some of their happiest imaginations. That Shakspeare had profited by his Essais is asserted, though it may be doubted; Bacon's Essays are, in por

tions, mere abridgements of passages of Montaigne. Pope drew his whole theory of human nature, as developed in the Essay on Man, from the Apologie pour Raymond de Sebonde; but it does not seem to be generally understood that, next to Rabelais, our inimitable Lawrence Sterne owes so much to no writer as to Michel de Montaigne.

We may, some day, without resorting to the vulgar imputation of plagiarism, criticise Tristram Shandy, with the express purpose of tracing the connexion of some of the ideas it contains with others met with in the Essais. Parallel passages we consider of no importance. They simply prove that intellectual architects have occasionally stolen a brick from a neighbour's house. Literary informers may discover that beautiful ideas have been transported wholesale from one book to another; they may marshal their witnesses in formidable array, and come before the tribunal of the country; but the author, whilst pleading guilty, maintains that he has done no wrong. He has merely discovered that another had expressed what he desired to say as well as he could have done, and in the same spirit, and has taken advantage of the circumstance. Who, for example, can blame Sterne if he traced a resemblance between the

positions of Yorick and Lord Verulam, and thought proper to borrow from the author of the Baconiana this tender sentence?" When from private appetite it is resolved that a creature shall be sacrificed, it is easy to pick up sticks enough from any thicket whither it hath strayed to make a fire to offer it with."

Certainly it savours something of ingratitude if due acknowledgment in such cases be withheld; but literary men are proverbially immoral, and it can serve no good purpose to accumulate proofs. What we should think valuable, would be a philosophical appreciation of the amount of influence exerted by a mind like Montaigne's, or such a mind as Sterne's, of the share the one had in moulding the intellect of the other, in suggesting his fancies, his characters, his illustrations, his forms of thought in modifying, if we may so speak, the frame of his mind. To us it appears that there are occasionally in the Essais passages, the peculiar tone of which so forcibly recalls to mind the manner of Sterne-his way of viewing the things of this worldthat if no other evidence existed, we should have inferred that, attracted by sympathy, the one was a constant student of the other.

"Forbear!" cries Montaigne to a lady who was indulging in an excess of grief," for not those flaxen tresses which now you tear, nor the whiteness of that bosom which, in your agony, you so wildly beat,--not these have been the cause of the disasters which have befallen your beloved brother; they winged not the shaft: expend your wrath more justly elsewhere."

It is needless to point out that this might be taken either as a model or a specimen of Sterne's method of moralising on the events of human life.

But we must not further pursue this subject at present. It will be more in place to observe that the theories of Locke and of Rousseau on education owe much to Montaigne; many of his notions have been transported bodily into the works of these two philosophers, and it is worth while to notice that the more objectionable and fantastical parts of his system have been adopted by the Genevese; whilst, with few excep

tions, the Englishman has chosen that which was solid and sensible.

Our object in this paper is to examine to what influences Montaigne himself was subject in his youth, what share in the formation of his mind had the circumstances by which his early life was surrounded, how much he owed to his parents, how much to the theories of education prevalent in his time, how much to his masters, how much to his boyish reading, how much to the accidents of college life. Without maintaining exactly that "the child is father of the man," we think that all these things are worthy of study, inasmuch as it is important to discover if possible in what degree a mind contributes to its own greatness, and how much it borrows from its age. Some maintain that there is a mysterious agency hid in the depths of our nature, which works out our character independently of surrounding circumstances; others, that we are moulded and fashioned entirely by external objects and events. Experience indicates that we are neither the masters nor the slaves of the material world; that the two theories of human character which possess a kind of inverted analogy with the Pelagian and Calvinistic heresies are alike untrue, and that it is unphilosophical to endeavour to trace a complex result to any one of the simple sources from which it springs.

We have only alluded to this abstract question for the uncharitable purposes of confutation. It seems to be a theory entertained by some writers, that a man's greatness is to be measured by the amount of his isolation from his contemporaries, of his independence of the age in which he lives. These persons hold, with some show of reason, that it is a sign of weakness and servility of mind to be too obedient to outward impressions. They look with contempt on those who, as Charles Blount expresses it, follow their leader like mules, and go wrong if he goes wrong. And, accordingly, their chief sign of greatness is the contrary of this defect. M. Villemain, among others, desiring to exalt Montaigne, tells us that no man owed less to the age in which he lived. Now insanity, to say nothing of the minor modifications of enthusiasm, is sometimes no

thing more than an excess of selfcontemplation; it argues a mind not sufficiently susceptible of regular external impressions, prone to feed on itself, to disregard the admonitions of sense, and trust to the suggestions of the imagination. Such a man as M. Villemain describes would then be an anchorite, the founder of a sect, a conqueror, or a madman. Montaigne was none of these things. He was a man eminently of his age, the expression, so to speak, of the times in which he lived; principally, it is true, the representation of the better part, but sharing to some extent in most of the vices of mind and manners common to his contemporaries. His comparatively sedentary life qualified him for the office of a reflector. The pleasure we derive in studying his career is not certainly excited by the rapid succession of romantic incidents, nor does his figure occupy any very prominent position in the history of the sixteenth century; but we must not, therefore, infer that "his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." On the contrary, vigorous as was his mind, independent as was his intellect, it fed almost entirely on the ideas of his time; and so far was he from occupying the position assigned to him, that we would venture to assert that his Essais could not have been written in any other country, or at any other stage of civilisation. Amidst the confusion of a civil war of extraordinary duration, when every estate of the kingdom took the field to assert its own rights or encroach upon those of others, when every landed proprietor deemed it his interest or his duty to fortify his mansion, arm his tenantry, join in forays, incline to one party or coquet with the other, Montaigne, it is true, in general remained quiet, unnoticed, and comparatively unmolested. He had no particular bias towards any party, the struggle of his prejudices and his convictions terminating in a professed ataraxia, or philosophical indifference on the subject of politics. For, in our opinion, we must not attribute the care with which he generally avoided active interference in worldly affairs entirely to that love of studious leisure which has

caused the retirement of several philosophers and scholars. He had many of the tastes and most of the habits of a man of the world; but he possessed also a considerable share of prudence and forethought, was little susceptible of enthusiasm, and could calculate with tolerable exactitude the chances of life. He understood well that the interests of the people were in no way concerned in the success of either of the two great parties that divided the kingdom; and saw that, for the third and least influential, composed of those who dared to sigh for real liberty, there was no hope of success.

It would be wrong, however, to suppose that these considerations alone induced him to steer his bark out of the foaming and turbulent stream of events, and anchor in the little sheltered haven which Fortune permitted him to choose. He certainly, though in a less degree, perhaps, than has been imagined, was disposed by his natural constitution to an inactive and speculative life; and he was, doubtless, right in thinking that the agitation and excitement of war or business would have disturbed the translucency of his mind, by stirring up the grosser particles that usually sink to the bottom in the calm and repose of comparative solitude.

But Montaigne's seclusion differed very widely from that melancholy misanthropy to which Stephanus Guazzus* attributes so many evils, and among others the liability to hypochondriacal affections. He was of the world, though not in it; and he would occasionally sally forth and try the dangers and taste the pleasures of a society the most brilliant and most immoral at that time existing in Europe. It would be vain to assert, that at any period of his life he came off unscathed from these expeditions. They left him restless and uneasy, and, no doubt, fostered that sceptical spirit which perverted his happiness, and from which all his attempts at dogmatism could never completely rescue him. It must be observed, moreover, that the decline of his years brought along with it cravings for pleasures which he had neglected when they were more in his power,

and that before he died the passion for retirement, instead of growing into a habit, had nearly spent its vigour. He grew young as he grew old. In spite of the peevishness bred of continual suffering, he was more alive to the realities of existence, more obedient to the blandishments of sense, more sensible of pleasure, even than when a youth. His taste became delicate, even to sensitiveness, and his mind, by excessive refinement, acquired something of a feminine character.

All this, however, proves that Montaigne was, in some respects, the creature of his age, far more so than is generally acknowledged. Certainly he dived deep into the well of antiquity to fetch up many of his thoughts and illustrations, and delighted in shocking the opinions of his contemporaries by strong doctrines and paradoxical theories; but this was eminently the character of the age. The world was rife with new theories, new ideas, new sentiments. Every man undertook to examine and confute the opinions of every other man. A moral insurrection raged over the whole of Europe, and, accordingly, we discover in the very circumstances which are thought to isolate Montaigne the proof that the developement of his mind was in accordance with a law at that time in universal operation. We are almost tempted to regret that so fine an intellect was exposed to such influences. We attribute many of the defects of his theories, and the deplorable wanderings of his imagination, to the unfortunate company in which he found himself; and so far from regarding him as an independent spirit, rising superior to the vices and follies of those around him, we feel it to be our duty to pity, and sometimes to despise him.

In viewing the early portion of Montaigne's life, we shall discern the origin of many of his peculiarities and oddities; for he was odd-the odd son of an odd father. Many of his eccentricities came to him by inheritance. We are not disposed to exaggerate the influences of "birth and blood," but still the parentage of a person celebrated for any great qualities is a just object of curiosity. No man's fortunes are independent of the auspices under which he is

laid in the cradle, and it is not at all unimportant whether a couch of gold, a buckler, or a manger, be a child's first resting-place. It is worth while knowing, therefore, that the ridiculous accusation of Scaliger-for he contrives to make an accusation of it-that Montaigne was the son of a herringmonger, is totally without foundation. He was a gentleman born and bred, as we shall presently proceed to shew. Before doing so, however, it may be as well, both as some excuse for Scaliger and as a specimen of the spirit of the age, to illustrate the perfectly Cambrian respect for pedigree at that time prevalent.

Two noblemen having quarrelled on a point of etiquette, a meeting of friends was called to adjust their differences. One of them had put forward a claim, based on his title and descent, which would have raised him above all his neighbours, whereupon they, taking alarm, sided against him, and began to assert their equality, some alleging one ancestry, some another, one citing a name, a second a scutcheon, a third an old family parchment, and the least among them proving himself the scion of some outlandish king. When they were about to sit down to dinner, a friend of Montaigne's, who happened to be present, instead of taking his place, began to retreat with profound obeisances, begging all present to excuse him for having, up to that time, had the audacity to live with them on terms of equality, but promising that henceforth, now that he had been informed of their ancient qualities, he would respect them according to their deserts. At any rate, he protested, he could not think of sitting by the side of so many princes. Having played these pranks for some time, he suddenly changed his tone, and indulged them with a copious flood of abuse, winding up thus,"Be content, in the name of God, with what contented our fathers, and with the knowledge that we are well enough if we only know how to behave ourselves. Let us not disavow the fortunes and conditions of our ancestors, and away with these stupid conceits, which may always be called in to prop up the dignity of any man who has the impudence to advance them." The astonishment