"They are gone who loved me best; "Ye speak in a language dead; And lead me to fountains whose source is dry; "Restore me my heavy chain! It was twined with the thoughts of bygone years, With the dream of her whose parting tears Had left in its rust a stain ! With memories dimm'd not by sun or breeze, "I had peopled my dungeon's gloom And its narrow bound to my soul was dear "Ye have torn me yet once more From the cherish'd things that I yearn'd to keep; And I learn the strength of the broken reed, "It has pass'd! that heedless throng- PERIODICALS OF THE PAST. No. III. WE resume our brief notices of and specimens of the periodicals of a previous period. The subject of our present notice is "The Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany." This periodical appeared at intervals of three months, and was published at the same price-namely, six shillings a number-as the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews. Indeed its plan was essentially the same, the principal difference being that it confined itself, as its title would have led one to expect, to the field of foreign literature. The Foreign Quarterly started in 1828, and died in 1830, making in all five volumes. It had its origin in a dispute between two gentlemen-Mr. Gillies and Mr. Fraser, who were both editorially connected with "The Foreign Quarterly Review," which still exists, and is published by Chapman and Hall. The latter periodical had only started the previous year. The quarrel arose as to which of the two gentlemen was to be considered the principal editor. Mr. Gillies, son of Lord Gillies, one of the Lords of the Court of Session in Scotland, asserted his right to be considered the editor, and maintained that in terms of the arrangement entered into between themselves and the publisher, Mr. Fraser was only to be regarded in the light of an assistant editor. The latter indignantly repudiated this, and said that he was in fact the real working editor, Mr. Gillies being only nominally connected with the Foreign Quarterly. The quarrel led to one of the keenest paper warfares we ever remember to have witnessed, and it lasted not less than twelve months. The matter ended in the secession of Mr. Fraser, who started the "Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany," Black, Young, and Young being the publishers, Sir Walter Scott, if we remember rightly, left the Foreign Quarterly and joined the new concern. So did Mr. Carlyle, and several other eminent writers. The work was ably conducted. Our specimen of its manner of handling subjects is by no means one of the most favourable for it, but it is most suited to our pages. It is an article headed MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYS. Our occupation has been, for the most part, with the modern writers in foreign literature. We now take up one nearly three hundred years old. If by our plan we had professed to limit our regards to the moderns only, we might yet, without any violation of it, and without any extravagance of fiction, have brought under our review such an author as Montaigne. Notwithstanding his venerable years he is a modern still. As a writer, he is in the full enjoyment of life, and exerts an influence upon the living greater than that of many a wit incarnate whom we have unscrupulously recognised. If his voice be yet heard amongst us, on what principle shall we abstain from speaking of him? for is not the vitality of his works the sole vitality of an author which criticism cares to acknowledge? We have a right to Montaigne, not only as his own writings are read extensively throughout Europe, but as other writings of a recent date have been fashioned after him, and have kindled at his light. His influence at this day is great as proceeding from himself, and great by reflection. Without further apology, we offer these remarks upon his genius and character. He was born in 1533, at Perigord in Gascony, where his family had long maintained a high rank among the noblesse of the country. The solution of his character commences with his earliest education. From the cradle he was taught to converse with the learned in a dead language, while the mother tongue was prohibited in his presence. Father, mother, nurse, and footman had all been trained, for his instruction, to prattle in the speech of Rome; for it was the father's hope that something of the Roman spirit might thus be infused into the nature of his son. But the plan was not consistent throughout; for in other respects the breeding of the young Montaigne was of the most delicate description, and the utmost refinements of the nursery were lavished upon his childhood. The manner of his being put to sleep is not recorded, but the shock of his awakening was relieved by the sound of musical instruments stationed in his chamber against the moment of his revival. Something analagous to this duplicity in the treatment of his childhood was afterwards apparent in his character as a man. The best teachers whom the age could afford were called to instruct him in the branches in which they respectively excelled; and amongst these our countryman George Buchanan, to whom Montaigne owed his early attachment to the poets. At thirteen years of age he commenced the study of the civil law. Not long after, he was appointed Counsellor in the Parliament of Bordeaux, and there contracted that friendship with a fellow-counsellor, Stephen de la Boetia, which is so memorably recorded in his writings. It furnished the pattern from which he drew the exalted ideas expressed in his essay on that subject. Twenty years after Boetia's death, while travelling in Italy, "Je lumbe en un pansement si pénible de M. de la Boetia, et y fus si longtemps sans me raviser, qui cela ma fit grand mal." The office of Counsellor he soon resigned, as its duties were not agreeable to his humour; yet his merits had transpired, and reaching the royal car procured for him the highest mark of distinction among the noblesse of France-the order of St. Michael. His essays were published in the forty-seventh year of his age. He afterwards travelled in Italy, from a desire chiefly to behold and to converse with the remains of antiquity. A journal of his travels, written by himself, was published a hundred and eighty years after his death, but it relates to nothing so much as to the mineral waters that occurred to him in the course of the journey. On his return to France he was elected Mayor of Bordeaux; and having held that honourable office during four years he retired to his family residence in Gascony, where he resigned himself to philosophy and ease, and died in his sixtieth year. From these few incidents one may form a conception of his character, such as it appeared to the common eye of his contemporaries. From infancy he is biassed to the study of philosophy by a singular course of education under the best preceptors of the time; he is "rocked, and swaddled, and dandled" into a philosopher. The more fashionable accomplishments proper to the rank of a cavalier are not neglected, that the dignity of his family may be conspicuous in the manner of the age; he is taught to reverence, with the simplicity of a scholar, the greatness of times past; and, as a man of the world, to understand and to protect himself against the present. He has at once the air of a litterateur and of a cavalier; in the latter character seeking admission into Parliament, in the other impatient to be out of it. He resorts to the court, where he is gratified by the notice of his prince, and even seems to dally with an ambition for employment in the offices of the state, confesses that he has no more aversion than a monk to an intrigue, and would have fought, if occasion had served, like another Herbert of Cherbury. We behold him next in the groves curantem quidquid dignum sapiente bonoque. There his philosophy is not so engrossing that it does not readily give place when the royal family, with its retinue, comes to honour the mansion of Montaigne. He is almost ashamed, like that lesser spirit of Italy, Guarini, to be ranked as a man of letters, and for that reason professes to limit himself to the study of a few favourite authors; disclaims all pretensions to the pedant faculty of memory, and declares that the language of the taverns is far more agreeable to him than the babble of the schools. All this is to preserve a proper balance betwixt the ornamental duties of his rank and the longings of an original and cultivated intellect. In the tenor of his life one may read the easy and peaceful disposition, which preserved him secure both in property and person in the midst of the transactions of the Reformation. With the enthusiasm of genius, but at a ripe age, and not without bodily infirmities, he sojourns in a foreign land to realize the fancies which had been the entertainment of his life-the amiable pilgrim dividing his attentions in a manner almost pathetic betwixt the waters and the monuments of Italy. Finally he retires; his character becomes more consistent, and looking back on the insignificance of his life, he finds himself less allied to those who had figured with grandeur on the theatre of the world, than to Plutarch, their intelligent spectator and historian-Plutarch the author. A contemporary might thus have interpreted the character of Montaigne from the circumstances of his life. Something more, however, has been revealed of it. "I cannot give any account of my life by my actions, fortune has placed them too low for that-I must do it by my fancies." We are thus referred from his history to his books, not only for the matter which they contribute to literature, but also for a full exposition of the character of the author. The great object of his essays, which are his only remains that interest posterity, he announces in the preface, is to paint himself—that May, 1846.-VOL. XLVI.—NO. CLXXXI. H an image of his mind may be preserved for his family. Is this a just explanation of the whole object? We think not, for in what manner does he, for the most part, paint himself, but by describing his sentiment and opinions on everything of interest that came under his notice? In that sense, every author may be said to paint himself, though the interest should rest not upon the writer, but upon the matter of the work. In this, however, we perceive the shyness of the Gascon gentleman to descend, with a singleness of aim, into the field of authorship. His work, it seems, is not intended for the common use of all the world, but to be an ornament in the escutcheon of his own family; placed in the hall of his own chateau, this monument of a noble ancestor is to collect for his descendants the precious dust of many generations! His book, however, is something more than an image-a mere simulacrum of Montaigne. He was, in truth, too noble-minded to dwell long upon himself, unless as reflecting the great truths of nature, and therefore not limited to the illustration of his own individuality. A great and original thinker, he sought to give expression to his thoughts, not for his own family alone, nor for the gentlemen of Gascony, nor the court of France, but for the whole world. In one respect, it is true, he differs from most authors; he is not bound, in their manner, to any certain subject of investigation, nor to any form of composition, but enjoys an aristocratic freedom from all the common crafts and cares of authorship. His fancies are under no necessity of being tortured into stanzas, or measured to five acts, or twelve books, or of being fashioned after any sort of literary mould; he is not even obliged to common method or consistency any further than he pleases. From all restraints he is happily absolved, by his licentious method of essay writing. "I paint my thoughts rough as they run, and incapable of being corrected. It is as much as I can do to couch them in this airy body of the voice." In this manner, no doubt, we see the form and habit of his mind better than from more regulated efforts; but it is in this manner, chiefly, that Montaigne can be said, more than any other writers, to paint himself. What, then, are the matters of which Montaigne, in this spirit of freedom, has treated in his essays? Are they connected with any branch of physical science to which the attention of the world, after a long slumber, had begun to be at this time awakened? The good old pursuits of gardening, planting, or the cultivation of vineyards, then in high esteem among the gentlemen of Gascony-has Montaigne thrown over these the mantle of his literature? "Alas!" says he, "I know no more than a child the phrases and idioms proper for expressing the most common things." Nothing, then, is to be hoped from him in this department. From his birth he was deaf to the pleasing call of physies; and with a well-expanded intellect he passed through life in a child-like ignorance of everything belonging to them. We are to look for him in his writings as a moralist and metaphysician, an observer of mind and manners, one whose sphere is altogether ideal, and who no more jostles than a spirit with the substantialities of this world. It is thus that Montaigne has come down to posterity. If it be asked what is that theory of morals or of mental physiology |