With the Renaissance, and the impetus it gave at that time to the study of Greek and Roman models, the exclusive domination of Christianity and the Church was broken. A literature of friendship along classic lines began to spring up. Montaigne (b. 1533) was saturated with classic learning. His essays were doubtless largely formed upon the model of Plutarch. His friendship with Stephen de la Boëtie was evidently of a romantic and absorbing character. It is referred to in the following passage by William Hazlitt; and the description of it occupies a large part of Montaigne’s Essay on Friendship. “The most important event of his counsellor’s life at Bordeaux was the friendship which he there formed with Stephen de la Boëtie, an affection which makes a streak of light in modern biography almost as beautiful as that left us by Lord Brook and Sir Philip Sydney. Our essayist and his friend esteemed, before they saw, each other. La Boëtie had written a little work[8] in which Montaigne recognised sentiments congenial with his own, and which indeed bespeak a soul formed in the mould of classic times. Of Montaigne, la Boëtie had also heard accounts, which made him eager to behold him, and at length they met at a large entertainment given by one of the magistrates of Bordeaux. They saw and loved, and were thenceforward all in all to each other. The picture that Montaigne in his essays draws of this friendship is in the highest degree beautiful and touching; nor does la Boëtie’s idea of what is due to this sacred bond betwixt soul and soul fall far short of the grand perception which filled the exalted mind of his friend.... Montaigne married at the age of 33, but, as he informs us, not of his own wish or choice. ‘Might I have had my wish,’ says he, ‘I would not have married Wisdom herself if she would have had me.’” _Life of Montaigne_, _by Wm. Hazlitt_. [Sidenote: _Montaigne on Friendship_] The following is from Montaigne’s Essay, bk. 1, ch. xxvii:—