piscem mulier formosa superne. I am at one with my painter in this second point, but I short of him in the other and better part. For my skill is not such that I dare undertake a fine, finished picture that follows the rules of art. It has occurred to me, therefore, to borrow one from Etienne de la Boétie, which will grace all the rest of this work. It is a treatise to which he gave the name of The Voluntary Servitude, but others who did not know this have since renamed it The Protest t He wrote this as an essay in his early youth, in praise of liberty and against t It has for a long time been circulating among men of understanding, not with out singular and well-deserved commendation, for it is as fine and perfect as it could be. Yet it is far short of the best that he A beautiful woman that tails off into a fish." Horace, Ars Poetica, 4. t Montaigne would have included it in his Essays if the Protestants had not printed it under this title in a collection of pamphlets published in 1976.