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26 MONTAIGNE
This passage is exceptional ; it is not the
less sincere. Of its sincerity no one who
reads and feels can doubt. But generally
the instances of eximious virtue are what
Montaigne delights to honour. Nothing in
him is more lovable than this passionate
hero-worship ; and what quality is more
lovable or more common in the ordinary
man ?
" Le plus sage des Fransais," Sainte-Beuve
called him ; the judgment is typical of the
critic and his age. We need not stay to
quarrel with it. We can hold that there is a
higher wisdom than the quest of golden
mediocrity without disparaging either Horace
or his disciple.
If the man-in-the-street be
one who approaches the obvious in the spirit
of a
pioneer, we must admit that Montaigne
rises superior to his class, for he not only
explored that country, but possessed and culti-
vated it too, and forced it to yield an ampler
harvest of good sense and humanity than
any other husbandman before or since. France
has ever been rich, and is as rich as ever, in
men who have known how to sacrifice the
shadow to the substance ; in fanatics who
have pursued without pause or divagation
dreams of impossible Utopias and unattainable
good ;
in idealists who have joyfully given all
to love, to art, to religion, and to logic.
It is