“It is not long since I retired my selfe unto mine owne house, with full purpose, as much as lay in me, not to trouble myselfe with any businesse, but solitarily and quietly to weare out the remainder of my wellnigh spent life: when me thought I could doe my spirit no greater favor than to give him the full scope of idlenesse, and entertaine him as best he pleased, and withall to settle himselfe as best he liked: which I hoped he might, now being by time become more settled and ripe, accomplish very easily: but I finde ‘... evermore idlenesse Doth wavering mindes addresse.’ That contrariwise, playing the skittish and loose broken jade, he takes a hundred times more cariere and libertie unto himselfe than he did for others: and begets in me so many extravagant chimeraes and fantastical monsters, so orderless, and without any reason, one huddled upon the other, that at leisure to view the foolishnesse and monstrous strangeness of them, I have begun to keep a register of them, hoping, if I live, one day to make him ashamed and blush at himselfe.” Toward the multitude and its judgments of value he is indifferent, “Our soule must play her part, but inwardly, within our selves, where no eyes shine but ours: ... not for any advantage but for the gracefulness of honestie itselfe. This benefit is much greater, and more worthie to be wished and hoped, then honor and glory, which is naught but a favorable judgment that is made of us.... Is it reason to make the life of a wise man depend on the judgment of fooles? Nothing is so incomprehensible to be just waied as the mindes of the multitude.... “... In this breathie confusion of brutes and frothy chaos of reports and of vulgar opinions which still push us on, no good can be established. Let us not propose so fleeting and so wavering an end unto ourselves. Let us constantly follow reason: And let the vulgar approbation follow us that way, if it please. Of the many thousands of worthie, valiant men which fifteen hundred years since [the day of Juvenal] have died in France with their weapons in their hands, not one in a hundred have come to our knowledge.... It shall be much, if a hundred years hence the civil warres which lately we have had in France be but remembered in grosse.” Yes, the multitude may follow if it pleases; Montaigne will not urge it. He may remind it that in a few years its cause may be forgotten. But how free he is from the righteous indignation and vindictiveness and factiousness which everywhere storm about him. He has that urbanity of which I spoke, and the serenity of one who has learned to laugh at his own prejudices. “Surely, man is a wonderful, vaine, divers and wavering subject: it is very hard to ground any directly constant and uniforme judgment upon him.”