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68 MONTAIGNE'S ESSAYES
thereof, there was required more universall warrelike
expertnesse, and which might imbrace the greatest
part, and most parts of a military man. Neque enim
ecedem militates et imperatoria artes sunt, 'For the
same arts and parts belong not to a generall and
common souldier;' and who besides that should also
be of a fit and accommodable condition for such a
dignitie. But I say, that if more men should now
adayes be found worthy of it than have been heretofore,
yet should not our princes be more liberall of it,
and it had beene much better not to bestow it upon all
them to whom it was due, than for ever to lose, as of
late we have done, the use of so profitable an invention.
No man of courage vouchsafeth to advantage himselfe
of that which is common unto many. And those which
in our dayes have least merited that honourable recompence,
seeme, in all apparence, most to disdaine it, by
that meanes to place themselves in the ranke of those
to whom the wrong is offered by unworthy bestowing
and vilifying of that badge which particularly was due
unto them. Now by defacing and abolishing this to
suppose, suddenly to be able to bring into credit and
renue a semblable custome, is no convenient enterprise
in so licentious, so corrupted, and so declining an age,
as is this wherein we now live. And it will come to
passe that the last shall even from her birth incur tho
mcommodities which have lately ruined and overthrowne
the other. The rules of this new ordersdispensation
had need to be otherwise wrested and
constrained for to give it authority, and this tumultuous
season is not capable of a short and ordered bridle.
Besides, before a man is able to give credit unto it, it is
requisite a man lose the memory of the first, and of the
contempt whereinto it is fallen. This place might
admit some discourse upon the consideration of valour,
and difference betweene this virtue and others. But
Plutarch having often spoken of this matter, it were in
vaine here for me to repeat what he says of it This is
worthy to be considered, that our nation giveth the
chiefe preheminence of all vertue unto valiancie, as the