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Rh mulate our faculties to their best exertions, nature seems purposely to have thrown in our way, as stumbling-blocks in the pursuit of truth; and it is only to be regretted on such occasions, for the sake of his own happiness, that his genius and temper qualified and disposed him more to start the problem than to investigate the solution.

When Montaigne touches on religion, he is, in general, less pleasing than on other subjects. His constitutional temper, it is probable, predisposed him to scepticism; but this original bias could not fail to be mightily strengthened by the disputes, both religious and political, which, during his lifetime, convulsed Europe, and more particularly his own country. On a mind like his it may be safely presumed, that the writings of the reformers, and the instructions of Buchanan, were not altogether without effect; and hence, in all probability, the perpetual struggle, which he is at no pains to conceal, between the creed of his infancy, and the lights of his mature understanding. He speaks, indeed, of “reposing tranquilly on the pillow of doubt;” but this language is neither reconcilable with the general complexion of his works, nor with the most authentic accounts we have received of his dying moments. It is a maxim of his own, that, “in forming a judgment of a man’s life, particular regard should be paid to his behaviour at the end of it;” to which he pathetically adds, “that the chief study of his own life was, that his latter end might be decent, calm, and silent.” The fact is (if we may credit the testimony of his biographers), that, in his declining years, he exchanged his boasted pillow of doubt for the more powerful opiates prescribed by the infallible church; and that he expired in performing what his old preceptor Buchanan would not have scrupled to describe as an act of idolatry.

The scepticism of Montaigne seems to have been of a very peculiar cast, and to have had little in common with that either of Bayle or of Hume. The great aim of the two latter writers evidently was, by exposing the uncertainty of our reasonings whenever we pass the limit of sensible objects, to inspire their readers with a complete distrust of the human faculties on all moral and metaphysical topics. Montaigne, on the other hand, never thinks of forming a sect; but, yielding passively to the current of his reflections and feelings, argues, at different times, according to the varying state of his impressions and temper, on opposite sides of the same question. On all occasions, he preserves an air of the most perfect sincerity; and it was to this, I presume, much more than to the superiority of his reasoning powers, that Montesquieu alluded, when he said, “In the greater part of authors I see the writer; in Montaigne I see nothing but the thinker.” The radical fault of his