‘All that solidity,’ said the Guide, ‘belonged not to him but to his predecessors in that house. There was an appearance of temperance about him, but it came from Epicurus. There was an appearance of poetry, but it came from Horace. A trace of old Pagan dignities lingered in his house—it was Montaigne’s. His heart seemed warm for a moment, but the warmth was borrowed from Rabelais. He was a man of shreds and patches, and when you have taken from him what was not his own, the remainder equals nought.’ ‘But surely,’ said Vertue, ‘these things were not the less his own because he learned them
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