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142 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
mee to translate the same into French It is easie
to translate such Authors, where nothing hut the
matter is to be represented; but hard and dangerous
to undertake such as have added much to the grace
and elegancy of the language, namely to reduce them
into a weaker and poorer tongue. It was a strange
taske and new occupation for me: but by fortune being
then at leisure and unable to gainsay the commandement
of the best father that ever was, I came ere long
(as well as I could) to an end of it: wherein he tooke
singular delight, and commanded the same to be
printed, which accordingly was after his decease performed.
I found the conceits of the author to be
excellent, the contexture of his worke well followed,
and his project full of pietie. Now forasmuch as divers
ammuse themselves to reade it, and especially Ladies,
to whom we owne most service, it hath often beene
my hap to help them, when they were reading it, to
discharge the booke of two principall objections, which
are brought against the same. His drift is bold, and
his scope adventurous; for he undertaketh by humane
and naturall reasons, to establish and veritie all the
articles of Christian religion against Atheists. Wherein
(to say truth) I find him so resolute and so happy, as
I deem it a thing impossible to doe better in that
argument, and thinke that none equalleth him. Which
booke seeming to me both over-rich and exquisite,
being written by an author whose name is so little
knowne, and of whom all we know is, that he was a
Spaniard, who about two hundred yeeres since professed
Physicke in Tholouse: I demanded once of Adrianus
Turnebus (a man who knew all things) what such a
booke might be; who answered, that he deemed the
same to be some Quintessence extracted from out Saint
Thomes Aquinas: For, in good truth, onely such a
spirit fraught with so infinite erudition, and so full
of admirable subtilitie, was capable of such and so rare
imaginations. So it is, that whosoever be the author
or deviser of it (the title whereof ought not without
further reason to be taken from Sebond) he was a very