Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/202

Counter-Currents and the precise value of work lies in its call for renunciation. Nor has any knowledge ever been acquired and retained without endeavour. What heroic pains were taken by Montaigne's father to spare his little son the harsh tasks of the schoolboy! At what trouble and cost to the household was the child taught "the pure Latin tongue" in infancy, "without bookes, rules, or grammar, without whipping or whining"! Greek was also imparted to him in kindly fashion, "by way of sporte and recreation." "We did tosse our declinations and conjugations to and fro, as they doe, who, by means of a certaine game at tables, learne both Arithmeticke and Geometric. "Assuredly the elder Montaigne was a man born out of date. In our happier age he would have been a great and honoured upholder of educational novelties, experimenting with the school-rooms of the world. In the sixteenth century he was only a country gentleman, experimenting with his 186