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MONTAIGNE 19
Montaigne was thoroughly normal, not to
say commonplace, in his ability to pass through
foreign countries without suffering anything so
alarming as a conversion. He left home on his
travels in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy,
a learned and extremely intelligent man of
affairs, who had taken, rather late in life
perhaps, to playing the part of a French
country gentleman ;
he returned with a store
of acute observations and pleasant anecdotes,
a little older, a little mellower, otherwise
unchanged. Of those magically expanded
views, those sudden yawnings of sympathetic
depths, that nowadays every one may count on
winning, if not by a week in Brittany, at any
rate by a month in Manitoba, we find scarcely
a trace. In the sixteenth century that sort
of thing was unusual. Even in those days
there were people of extraordinary sensibility
for whom life was a succession of miracles,
who with difficulty recognized themselves from
year to year, to whom going abroad was an
emotional adventure, a supreme revelation :
but of these Montaigne was not one. Him,
like some others, change seems merely to have
confirmed in his native predispositions and
prejudices. As he grew older he grew vainer,
rather more garrulous, fonder of his favourite
authors, and a little less open-minded ; and
his travels were nothing more than a long and