And though the latent meanings, in which the interior connections and identities referred to above are found, are not yet critically recognised, a latent national affinity and liking strong enough to pierce this thin, artificial, foreign exterior, appears to have been at work here from the first. For though the seed of the richer and bolder meanings from which the author anticipated his later harvest, could not yet be reached, that new form of popular writing, that effective, and vivacious mode of communication with the popular mind on topics of common concern and interest, not heretofore recognised as fit subjects for literature, which this work offered to the world on its surface, was not long in becoming fruitful. But it was on the English mind that it began to operate first. It was in England, that it began so soon to develop the latent efficacies it held in germ, in the creation of that new and widening department in letters--that so new, so vast, and living department of them, which it takes today all our reviews, and magazines, and journals, to cover. And the work itself has been from the first adopted, and appropriated here, as heartily as if it had been an indigenous production, some singularly distinctive product too, of the so deeply characterised English nationality.
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.