In the Essays of MONTAIGNE, written about a generation later, the spirit of the Renaissance, which had filled the pages of Rabelais with such a superabundant energy, appears in a quieter and more cultivated form.  The first fine rapture was over; and the impulsive ardours of creative thought were replaced by the calm serenity of criticism and reflection.  Montaigne has none of the coarseness, none of the rollicking fun, none of the exuberant optimism, of Rabelais; he is a refined gentleman, who wishes to charm rather than to electrify, who writes in the quiet, easy tone of familiar conversation, who smiles, who broods, and who doubts.  The form of the detached essay, which he was the first to use, precisely suited his habit of thought.  In that loose shape—­admitting of the most indefinite structure, and of any variety of length, from three pages to three hundred—­he could say all that he wished to say, in his own desultory, inconsecutive, and unelaborate manner.  His book flows on like a prattling brook, winding through pleasant meadows.  Everywhere the fruits of wide reading are manifest, and numberless Latin quotations strew his pages.  He touches on every side of life—­from the slightest and most superficial topics of literature or manners to the profoundest questions that beset humanity; and always with the same tact and happiness, the same wealth of learned illustration, the same engaging grace.

The Essays are concerned fundamentally with two subjects only.  First, they illustrate in every variety of way Montaigne’s general philosophy of life.  That philosophy was an absolutely sceptical one.  Amid the mass of conflicting opinions, amid the furious oppositions of creeds, amid the flat contradictions of loudly-asseverated dogmas, Montaigne held a middle course of calm neutrality. Que Scais-je? was his constant motto; and his Essays are a collection of numberless variations on this one dominating theme.  The Apologie de Raimond Sebond, the largest and the most elaborate of them, contains an immense and searching review of the errors, the incoherences, and the ignorance of humanity, from which Montaigne draws his inevitable conclusion of universal doubt.  Whatever the purely philosophical value of this doctrine may be, its importance as an influence in practical life was very great.  If no opinion had any certainty whatever, then it followed that persecution for the sake of opinion was simply a wicked folly.  Montaigne thus stands out as one of the earliest of the opponents of fanaticism and the apostles of toleration in the history of European thought.

The other subject treated of in the Essays, with an equal persistence and an equal wealth of illustration, is Montaigne himself.  The least reticent of writers, he furnishes his readers with every conceivable piece of information concerning his history, his character, his appearance, his health, his habits and his tastes.  Here lies the peculiar charm of his book—­the endless garrulity of its confidences, which, with their combined humour, suavity, and irresponsibility, bring one right into the intimate presence of a fascinating man.