Page:Thoughts from Montaigne.djvu/12

  afresh by some busy chamberlain word of the pen.

And here am I, asked to introduce a man whom three centuries have pronounced one of the very best companions in the world. . . . What a sentence of humorous moralising might not the situation have suggested to that genial exponent of the everlasting discrepancies of life’s circumstances!

What, indeed, can the literary herald most enamoured of his office proclaim, now, of Montaigne, that will not sound brazen impudence? Who wants to be taught to love the man or to taste the philosopher; to know him deliciously human, yet incomparably far-seeing?

I vow I find myselfto change the simileinduced into an office as futile, perhaps as irritating, as that of the watchman of old braying to a world that has eyes to see and ears to hear, that the moon shines overhead and the church clock has struck the hour.

But when a lady asks, it is our misfortune it is our privilegeto be unable to say nay. And, stay; here do I perceive a graceful retreat. I am not after all the blatant crier-up of a great man, entrapping the listener into the tedium of vi