Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/797

Rh M O N M N 767 a noble family in the district of Boulogne. He held in 1436, and later, the office of lieutenant-gavenier (receiver of the gave, a kind of church rate) in the city of Cambray, and seems to have usually resided there. Besides this he was for some time bailiff of the chapter of that city, and later provost. He was married, and left children. But this almost exhausts the amount of our knowledge respect ing him, except that he was present, not at the capture of the Maid of Orleans, but at her subsequent interview with the duke of Burgundy. As a subject of this latter prince he naturally takes the Burgundian side in his history, which extends in the genuine part of it to two books, and covers the period from 1400 to 1444. At this time, as another chronicler Matthieu de Coucy informs us, Monstrelet ceased writing. But, according to a habit by no means uncommon in the Middle Ages, a clumsy sequel, extending to a period long subsequent to his death, was formed out of various other chronicles and tacked on to his work. The genuine part of this, dealing with the last half of the Hundred Years War, is valuable because it contains a large number of documents which are certainly, and reported speeches which are probably, authentic. It has, however, little colour or narrative merit, is dully, though clearly enough, written, and is strongly tinged with the pedantry of its century, the most pedantic in French history. The best edition is that published for the Societe de PHistoire de France by M. Douet d Arcq in 1856. MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORTLEY (1690-1762), one of the most brilliant letter- writers of the 1 8th century, was the eldest daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, duke of Kingston, and Lady Mary Fielding, daughter of the earl of Denbigh. Her near relationship with Fielding the novelist is worth remarking. She was born at Thoresby in Nottingham shire in 1690. Her mother died when she was a child, and by some chance she received or gave herself an un usually wide literary education, had the run of her father s library, was encouraged in her studies by Bishop Burnet, and while still a girl translated the Enchiridion of Epic- tetus. After a courtship in which she showed a singular power of thinking for herself, she was married in 1712, against her father s wish, to Mr. E. Wortley Montagu, an accomplished and scholarly friend of the Queen Anne wits. At the new court of George I. her beauty and wit brought her much homage ; Pope was among her most devoted worshippers, and she even gained and kept the friendship of the great duchess of Marlborough. Her husband being appointed ambassador to the Porte in 1716, she accompanied him to Constantinople, and wrote to her friends at home brilliant descriptions of Eastern life and scenery. These letters were not published till 1763, the year after her death ; but, copies being handed about in fashionable circles, their lively, witty style, graphic pictures of unfamiliar life, and shrewd and daring judg ments gave the writer instant celebrity. In one of them she described the practice of inoculation for the smallpox, and announced her intention of trying it on her own son, and of introducing it in spite of the doctors into England. The most memorable incident in her life after her return from the East was her quarrel with Pope, caused, accord ing to her account, by her laughing at him when he made love to her in earnest. He satirized her under the name of Sappho, and she teased him with superior ingenuity and hardly inferior wit. From 1739 to 1761 Lady Mary lived abroad, apart from her husband, maintaining an affectionate correspondence with her daughter Lady Bute, in which she set forth views of life largely coloured by the asceticism of her master Epictetus, and wearing an appearance of oddity and eccentricity from their contrast with conventional thought. The character of coldness and unwomanliness which Pope contrived to fasten on his enemy was far from being deserved ; her letters show her to have been a very warm-hearted woman, though on principle she turned the hard side to the world. She died 21st August 1762. The best edition of her works is that of 1861, with a memoir by Moy Thomas. MONTAIGNE, MICHEL DE (1533-1592), essayist, was born, as he himself tells us, between eleven o clock and noon on 28th February 1 533. The patronymic of the Montaigne family, who derived their title from the chateau at which the essayist was born and which had been bought by his grandfather, was Eyquem. It was believed to be of Eng lish origin, and the long tenure of Gascony and Guienne by the English certainly provided abundant opportunity for the introduction of English colonists. But the elaborate re searches of M. Malvezin have proved the existence of a family of Eyquems or Ayquems before the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II. of England, though no connexion between this family, who were Sieurs de Lesparre, and the essayist s ancestors can be made out. Montaigne is not far from Bordeaux, and in Montaigne s time was in the province of Perigord. It is now in the arrondissement of Bergerac and the department of Dordogne. The Eyquem family had for some time been connected with Bordeaux. Indeed, though they possessed more than one estate in the district, they were of doubt ful and certainly very recent nobility. Pierre Eyquem, Montaigne s father, had been engaged in commerce (a herring-merchant Scaliger calls him), had filled many municipal offices in Bordeaux, and had served under Francis I. in Italy as a soldier. The essayist was not the eldest son, but the third. By the death of his elder brothers, however, he became head of the family. He had also six younger brothers and sisters. His father appears, like many other men of the time, to have made a hobby of education. Michel was not a strong boy, indeed he was all his life a valetudinarian, and this may have especially prompted his father to take pains with him. At a time when the rod was the universal instru ment of teaching it was almost entirely spared to Montaigne. He was, according to the French fashion common at all times, put out to nurse with a peasant woman. But Pierre Eyquem added to this the unusual fancy of choosing his son s sponsors from the same class, and of accustoming him to associate with it. He was taught Latin orally by servants who could speak no French, and many curious fancies were tried on him, as, for instance, that of waking him every morning by soft music. But he was by no means allowed to be idle. A plan of teaching him Greek, still more out of the common way than his Latin course, by some kind of mechanical arrangement, is not very intelligible, and was quite un successful. These details of his education (which, like most else that is known about him, come from his own mouth) are not only interesting in themselves, but remind the reader how, not far from the same time, the other greatest writer of French during the Renaissance was also exercising himself, though not being exercised, in plans of education almost as fantastic. At six years old (for the father s reforming views in education do not seem to have disgusted him with the extremely early age at which it was then usual to begin school training) Montaigne was sent to the College de Guienne at Bordeaux, then at the height of its reputation, having more than double the number of scholars (two thousand) that even the largest English public school has usually boasted. Among its masters were Buchanan, afterwards the teacher of James I., and Muretus, one of the first scholars of the age. These, with their colleague Gue&quot;rente, composed Latin plays for their pupils to act, and are held to have given no small impulse to the production of the classical French tragedy