Note 44 — Chapter I

The obligations of Charron to Montaigne were very considerable, but are stated too strongly by many writers. Sorel, Bibliothèque Françoise, p. 93; and Hallam's Literature of Europe, vol. ii. pp. 362, 509. On the most important subjects, Charron was a bolder and deeper thinker than Montaigne; though he is now so little read, that the only tolerably complete account I have seen of his system is in Tennemann, Gesch. der Philosophie, vol. ix. pp. 458–487. Buhle (Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, vol. ii. pp. 918–925) and Cousin (Hist. de la Philos. II. série, vol. ii. p. 289) are short and unsatisfactory. Even Dr. Parr, who was extensively read in this sort of literature, appears only to have known Charron through Bayle (see notes on the Spital Sermon, in Parr's Works, vol. ii. pp. 520, 521); while Dugald Stewart, with suspicious tautology, quotes, in three different places, the same passage from Charron. Stewart's Philosophy of the Mind, vol. ii. p. 233, vol. iii. pp. 365, 393. Singularly enough, Talleyrand was a great admirer of De la Sagesse, and presented his favourite copy of it to Madame de Genlis! See her own account, in Mém. de Genlis, vol. iv. pp. 352, 353.