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20 MONTAIGNE
agreeable stage on the longest journey. There
are people for whom travel provides nothing
but supplementary evidence in a cause that
has already been judged. Those who can find
nothing good at home will smack their lips
over the sourest wines abroad ; and " Old
Meynell " need not have left his garden to
arrive at that conclusion commended by
Dr.
"
: Johnson For anything I see, foreigners
are fools." Montaigne was not of these,
either ; too normal to be above patriotism,
he was too proud and too intelligent to be
blindly patriotic.
Montaigne was the ideal man-in-the-street.
We do not mean that he was typical ;
but if
there are men-in-the-street in heaven, they
will resemble Montaigne. And though we
rank a third-rate saint or artist a great deal
higher than a first-rate good fellow, we
recognize that there is something about any
kind of perfection that dazzles even those
who are most alive to its essential inferiority.
Montaigne is the exemplar of good feeling
and good sense ;
in him we see those qualities
chatting on terms of familiarity with genius
and inspiration. He held the views that all
sensible people would hold if only all were as
intelligent and benevolent as they honestly
believe themselves to be ;
he expressed them
in a form appropriate to, and therefore limited