Works of Michael de Montaigne

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV. OP DIVERSION.1 I Was formerly employed to console a lady wbKt wo1. '*, . mournings com ander a real affliction; for most of their mourn- moniy are. ings are merely artificial and a matter of ceremony. TJberibus semper lacrymia, semperque paratis In statione sua, atque expectantibus illam, Quo jubeat manare modo.' And bids Th' impassioned showers fall copious from her lids, For at their posts like marshall'd troops they stand, Prepar'd to flow, to pour, at her command. A man goes the wrong way to work when he opposes this passion; for opposition does but irritate and make them more obstinate in sorrow; the evil is exasperated by being contended with., We see, in common discourse, that the same thing that I have let fall from me with indifference, if a man controverts what I have said, I insist upon it earnestly, and with the best arguments I can find; and much more a thing wherein I have a real interest . And besides, in so doing, you enter rudely upon your operation; whereas the first addresses of a physician to his patient should be gracious, gay, and pleasing; never did any ill-looking, morose . . J & How consolation physician do any thing to the purpose. On the 10 *- Ptm contrary, then, a man should at the first approaches favour their grief, and express some approbation of their sorrow. By this intelligence you obtain credit to proceed farther, and after an easy and insensible manner fall into discourses more solid and proper for their cure. I, whose aim it was principally to gull those present, who had their 1 Or turning aside. * Jurenal Ti. 272. VOL. III. 7 eyes fixed upon me, desired only to plaster up the disease And indeed I have found out by experience that I have an unlucky hand at persuading; my ar...