But it is time to leave this wondrous Gascon, this new 'Michael of the Mount,' this man who is 'consubstantial with his book,'--this 'Man of the Mountain,' as he figuratively describes it. Let us yield him this new ascent, this new triumphant peak and pyramid in science, which he claims to have been the first to master,--the unity of the universal man,--the historical unity,--the universal human form, collected from particulars, not contemplatively abstracted,--the inducted Man of the new philosophy. '_Authors_,' he says, 'have _hitherto_ communicated themselves to the people by some _particular_ and _foreign_ mark; _I, the first of any by my universal being_, as _Michael_ de Montaigne, I propose a life mean and without lustre: all moral philosophy is applied as well to a private life as to one of the greatest employment. _Every man_ carries _the entire form of the human condition_...I, the first of any by my universal being, as _Michael_,'--see the chapter on names,--'as _Michael_ de Montaigne.' Let us leave him for the present, or attempt to, for it is not very easy to do so, so long as we have our present subject in hand.

For, as we all know, it is from this idle, tattling, rambling old Gascon--it is from this outlandish looker-on of human affairs, that our Spectators and Ramblers and Idlers and Tattlers, trace their descent; and the Times, and the Examiners, and the Observers, and the Spectators, and the Tribunes, and Independents, and all the Monthlies, and all the Quarterlies, that exercise so large a sway in human affairs to-day, are only following his lead; and the best of them have not been able as yet to leave him in the rear. But how it came to pass, that a man of this particular turn of mind, who belonged to the old party, and the times that were then passing away, should have felt himself called upon to make this great signal for the human advancement, and how it happens that these radical connections with other works of that time, having the same general intention, are found in the work itself,--these are points which the future _biographers_ of this old gentleman will perhaps find it for their interest to look to. And a little of that more studious kind of reading which he himself so significantly solicited, and in so many passages, will inevitably tend to the elucidation of them.

PART II.

THE BACONIAN RHETORIC, OR THE METHOD OF PROGRESSION.

'The secrets of nature have not more gift in taciturnity.'

_Troilus and Cressida_.

'I did not think that Mr. Silence had been a man of this mettle.'

_Falstaff_.

CHAPTER I.

THE 'BEGINNERS.'

'PROSPERO.--Go bring THE RABBLE,

O'er whom I give thee power, here, to this place.'

_Tempest_.