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connexion. This circumstance has, perhaps, contributed as much as any to render them favourites with our nation, an enemy to the continued attention which long dissertations demand; and with the present age, which dislikes the application required in continuous and methodical treatises His freedom of thought, his variety of style, and his metaphorical expressions, have been the chief causes of this celebrity which he has enjoyed during the last century, and which he still possesses; for he is, as it were, the breviary of indolent and ignorant men of letters, anxious to acquire some slight acquaintance with the world, and some tincture of learning, You will scarcely find a country gentleman without his Montaigne on the chimney-piece. But this liberty, which has its advantages when used within bounds, becomes dangerous when it degenerates into license. Such is that of Montaigne, who has thought himself entitled to overstep all the laws of modesty and decorum. The source of this defect in Montaigne lies in his vanity and self-love. He thought his merit entitled him to dispense with rules,-to set an example, not to follow one. All his pretended frankness cannot prevent us from perceiving in him a secret vanity of his official situation, of the number of his servants, and of the reputation he had acquired. If we collect all the small hints and occasional touches which he has adroitly introduced into his works, we shall find him, on the whole, his own panegyrist. Scaliger might well say, what is it to me whether Montaigne likes white wine or red? Is it not, in fact, a mere mockery of his readers to amuse them with these petty details of his tastes, and his domestic trifles?

Scaliger, no doubt, did not talk thus without a little personal feeling in the matter. Montaigne had in his writings assigned to Justus Lipsius the first place in the Empire of Letters; though in this, as in other things, he showed the badness of his taste. When he advances any bold or dispu table proposition, he says, "I do not give it as a good one, but as mine;" a matter with which the reader has very little to do; for his object is to know, not what Michael de Montaigne thought, but what he should have thought, in order to think well. He declares, throughout his work, that he is anxious to paint himself as he is, to the public. Before adopting such a design, must he not have had a tolerable persuasion that the original of the portrait was one which deserved to be painted, looked at, studied, imitated by all the world? could an idea like this spring from any other source than a plentiful supply of self-love?

And

His style is of a truly singular turn and original character. His lively imagination furnishes him. with a profusion of images on every subject, which he groups into that abundance of agreeable metaphors, in which he is unequalled by any other writer. It is his favourite figure; a figure which, according to Aristotle, is the characteristic of a great mind.

LXXXII. VAMPYRES.

There is something evidently singular in the accounts we possess of the Brucolacs* of the

* Phlegon de Mirabil. c. 1. Turquie Chretien; de la Croix, liv. 1, c. 25, pp. 116, et seq.; ex Leone Allatro, p. 118.; et Cassiano, p. 119; Etat de l'Eglise Grecque, ch. 25, pp. 78, et seq; Voyage au Levant, T. 2, ch. 21, p. 328.

E

Archipelago. We are told that those, who after a wicked life have died impenitent, appear in different places with the same forms which they bore when alive; that they attack the living, striking some and killing others; sometimes rendering useful services, but constantly causing terror and consternation. The Greeks believe that these bodies are delivered over to the power of the devil, who preserves and animates them, and employs them to torment mankind. Father Richard,✶ a Jesuit Missionary to these islands, about fifty years ago, published an account of the Island of Santerini, or St Irene, the Thera of the ancients, of which the famous Cyrene was a colony. He has a long chapter on the History of the Brucolacs. He tells us, that when the people are infested with these apparitions, they have the bodies disinterred, which are found entire and uncorrupted; that they burn or cut them in pieces, particularly the heart, after which the apparitions cease and the body decays. The word Brucolac comes from the modern Greek goxos, which signifies mud, and λéxxos, a ditch, because the tombs in which these bodies are placed are generally found full of mud. I do not at present inquire whether the facts there stated are true, or merely a popular error; but it is certain that they are related by so many authors of talent and credit, and by so many ocular witnesses, that we ought at least to decide with caution. It is certain also, that this idea, true or false, is extremely ancient, and that the classical authors are full of it. When the ancients had murdered a person fraudulently, or by

Relation de Santerini du P. Richard, ch. 18, p. 282.

surprise, they thought that they deprived him of the power of taking vengeance upon them, by cutting off his feet, hands, nose, and ears. (This was called ακρωτηριάζειν.) All these they hung round the neck of the victim, or placed them under his arm-pits, from which the word parxaís, signifying the same thing, is derived. A strong proof of this is to be found in the Greek Scholia of Sophocles. It was thus that Menelaus treated Deiphobus, the husband of Helen, and it was in this state he was seen by Eneas in the Infernal Regions. (Virg. Æn. VI. 494, et. seq.)

The ancients have treated as a fable the history of Hermotimus of Clazomene, whose soul frequently forsook his body to wander through distant regions, and to acquire information regarding futurity, which, upon its return, he imparted to his contemporaries; but at last his enemies having obtained permission from his wife to burn his body during one of these mental excursions, his soul finding itself on its return deprived of its usual retreat, retired for ever.

Suetonius tells us, that after the violent death of Caligula, his body had been but partially burned and superficially interred; the house in which he was slain, and the gardens where he was burned, were every night haunted by spectres, until the house itself was at last burned, and the last rites properly performed to his remains by the sisters of the deceased. Servius states expressly, that the souls of the dead can find no rest till the body is entirely consumed. The modern Greeks are persuaded that the bodies of excommunicated persons never decay, but swell out like a drum, and sound like one when struck or rolled on the

ground. These bodies they call Toupi, which in vulgar Greek means " a Drum.”

LXXXIII. LETTER READING.

I never read my letters in the evening before going to bed, or in the afternoon before dinner. Letters generally contain more bad news than good; and in reading them, we call up subjects of inquietude, which disturb our repasts and our repose.

LXXXIV. DELPHIN CLASSICS.

The Commentaries on the ancient Latin authors, which were undertaken, by order of the King, for the use of the Dauphin and public utility, were the invention of the Duke of Montausier alone. He had always loved and cultivated literature; and employed as much leisure in the perusal of the Classics as his military and political career permitted; but he had frequently found himself embarrassed by obscurities, for want of Commentaries, for which he was unable to find room in his limited military equipage. These obscurities were of two kinds, either they consisted in the text and expression of the author, or they regarded points of mythology or history, the understanding of which depended on a perfect acquaintance with antiquity. He attempted a remedy for both obstacles: he thought that an interpretation in the form of a paraphrase would clear up the obscurities of the text, and that notes, in the form of Commentaries, would explain such matters as were connected with ancient erudition. It were to be wished that, in following out this plan, it had been possible to have met with as many persons profoundly conversant with literature, as it was to meet with authors worthy of the task of interpretation and criticism.

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