Produced by David Widger ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE Translated by Charles Cotton Edited by William Carew Hazilitt 1877 CONTENTS OF VOLUME 6. XXVII. Of friendship. XXVIII. Nine-and-twenty sonnets of Estienne de la Boetie. XXIX. Of moderation. XXX. Of cannibals. XXXI. That a man is soberly to judge of the divine ordinances. XXXII. That we are to avoid pleasures, even at the expense of life. XXXIII. That fortune is oftentimes observed to act by the rule of reason. XXXIV. Of one defect in our government. XXXV. Of the custom of wearing clothes. XXXVI. Of Cato the Younger. XXXVII. That we laugh and cry for the same thing. XXXVIII. Of solitude. CHAPTER XXVII OF FRIENDSHIP Having considered the proceedings of a painter that serves me, I had a mind to imitate his way. He chooses the fairest place and middle of any wall, or panel, wherein to draw a picture, which he finishes with his utmost care and art, and the vacuity about it he fills with grotesques, which are odd fantastic figures without any grace but what they derive from their variety, and the extravagance of their shapes. And in truth, what are these things I scribble, other than grotesques and monstrous bodies, made of various parts, without any certain figure, or any other than accidental order, coherence, or proportion? "Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne." ["A fair woman in her upper form terminates in a fish." --Horace, De Arte Poetica, v. 4.]