Marvels and Commonplaces in the Elizabethan Anthologies

Abstract

When in his later years Montaigne returned to his essay on Cato the Younger, one of the shorter offerings in the first book of Essais, he filled out his portrait of the Stoic worthy with some brief but precious reflections on literary criticism. The occasion for these was a set of five pithy quotations from Latin poets—Martial, Manilius, Lucan, Horace, and Vergil—presented in earlier versions of the essay, without comment, in praise of Cato. In his final revision, Montaigne walks his reader through each one in turn. The first two, he judges, seem ‘somewhat languishing’ in comparison to the others; the third is livelier, if a little extravagant; the fourth is better still. When he comes to the final excerpt, Montaigne finds himself at a loss. A reader will sense that this one excels the others ‘in some degree and space’, he avouches, ‘but which space he will sweare, can by no humane spirit be filled vp’. This critical exercise moves its author beyond the bounds of criticism, where the air is almost too thin to speak.