Page:Poet Lore, volume 34, 1923.djvu/82

 1595) in preparation, and also many notes and papers. The widow, not equal to the task, delegated the sorting of these papers to Pierre de Brack, an intimate friend of her husband. He, in turn, sent them to Marie de Gournay to publish. It was a tremendous piece of work which the young woman did quickly if not perfectly.

The manuscript which she used has been lost. Feugère, in his Femmes Poètes du 16 Sciècle, quotes Le Grand Dictionnaire Moréri (1706) which mentions the fact that:

What became of this manuscript no one knows. This statement in Moréri, if true, disproves the assertion of Bonnefon, who in his Montaigne et ses Amis, says that Montaigne annotated but one text of his Essays, and that the edition of 1595 was published by Marie de Gournay from the published edition of 1588, changed and corrected from the notes and papers sent her by Pierre de Brack after the death of Montaigne.

The one manuscript still in existence is found in the library at Bordeaux. This, Marie de Gournay did not see. Why not? And why did Montaigne annotate two copies? These are questions which we cannot enter into at this time.

What interests us especially in this edition of the Essays published by Marie de Gournay is the Preface. It contains a sentence which shows that as early as 1595, when she was about thirty years old, Marie was already chafing at the limitations which hedged in the women of her century.

Happy are you, oh reader, if you are not of that sex deprived of all advantages, (tous les biens), without freedom of action, forbidden to use the efficiency at its command, and from whom all opportunity to develop talents is snatched away; so that there is left but one task and happiness, namely to live in ignorance and suffer. Happy is he who can be learned (sage), without thereby committing a crime, his sex granting him all power of action, of speech, and of the right to be believed, or at least to be listened to with respect. There is no weakling of a man who, with the approbation of the audience present, cannot, with a smile, a shrug of his shoulders or some plaisanterie, put me back into my place by saving, "it is a woman speaking!" I am so infuriated at this state of affairs, it hurts me so that I must denounce it publicly.