Download File

MONTAIGNE 21
by, his subject, but, within those limits,
perfect.
The form in which Montaigne expressed
himself was new to French literature. In the
sixteenth century there was a recognized
literary style based on the Latin period.
Sentences were long, sonorous, and circuitous.
It was a language well suited to those who followed
the profession of letters, but unserviceable
to one who would communicate his
thoughts and feelings to others. Montaigne
was not a professional author ; he was a
country gentleman with something of his own
to say. The literature of the professionals
was an ingenious and abstract superstructure
built up over an idea or an emotion. Mon-
taigne wished to set down the original thought
or feeling as it sprang, hot, from the mind ;
and, as original thoughts and feelings present
themselves always with the force of sensations,
he gave them the forms of sensations that is
to say, he wrote in images. He expressed his
philosophy of good sense in short, hard, coloured
sentences, keeping them as close as possible to
the naked thoughts they conveyed. That in
print they appear as long
as those of his con-
temporaries is a mere accident of typography ;
for almost every semicolon in the " Essais "
one may substitute a full stop : very rarely is
the long sentence in Montaigne a period.