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214044_The_Essa ... rd_Of_Montaigne_Vol_II.pdf - OUDL Home

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THE SECOND BOOKE 199<br />

Now from what vanitie can it proceed, we should so<br />

willfully contemne and disdainfully interpret those<br />

effects, which we can neither imitate nor conceive?<br />

But to follow this equalitie or correspondence betweene<br />

us and beasts somewhat further: the privilege whereof<br />

our soule vants, to bring to her condition whatsoever<br />

it conceiveth, and to dispoile what of mortall and<br />

corporall qualities belongs unto it, to marshall those<br />

things which she deemed worthie her acquaintance, to<br />

disrobe and deprive their corruptible conditions, and<br />

to make them leave as superfluous and base garments,<br />

thicknesse, length, depth, weight, colour, smell, roughnesse,<br />

smooth nesse, ha<strong>rd</strong>nesse, softnesse, and all sensible<br />

accidents else, to fit and appropriate them to her immortall<br />

and spirituall condition: so that Rome and<br />

Paris, which 1 have in my soule; Paris which I imagine;<br />

yea, I imagine and conceive the same without greatnesse<br />

and place, without stone and morter, and without<br />

wood; then say I unto ray selfe, the same privilege<br />

seemeth likewise to be in beasts: for a horse accustomed<br />

to heare the sound of trumpets, the noyse of shot,<br />

and the clattering of armes, whom we see to snort,<br />

to startle, and to neigh in his sleep, as he lies along<br />

upon his litter, even as he were in the hurly burly; it<br />

is most certaine, that in his minde he apprehends the<br />

sound of a drum without any noyse, and an armie<br />

without armes or bodie.<br />

Quippe videbis equos fortes, cum membra jacebunt<br />

In somnis, sudare tamen, spirareque soepe,<br />

Et quasi de palma gummas contendere vires.¹<br />

You shall see warlike Horses, when in sleep<br />

<strong>The</strong>ir limbs lie, yet sweat, and a snorting keep<br />

And stretch their utmost strength,<br />

As for a goale at length.<br />

That hare which a grey-hound imagineth in his<br />

drearae, after whom as he sleepeth we see him bay,<br />

quest, yelp, and snort, stretch out his taile, shake his<br />

1 LUCR. 1. iv. 982.

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