["If that half of my soul were snatch away from me by an untimely stroke, why should the other stay?  That which remains will not be equally dear, will not be whole:  the same day will involve the destruction of both.”]

     or: 

["If a superior force has taken that part of my soul, why do I, the remaining one, linger behind?  What is left is not so dear, nor an entire thing:  this day has wrought the destruction of both.”  —­Horace, Ode, ii. 17, 5.]

There is no action or imagination of mine wherein I do not miss him; as I know that he would have missed me:  for as he surpassed me by infinite degrees in virtue and all other accomplishments, so he also did in the duties of friendship: 

“Quis desiderio sit pudor, aut modus
Tam cari capitis?”

["What shame can there, or measure, in lamenting so dear a friend?”
—­Horace, Ode, i. 24, I.]

“O misero frater adempte mihi! 
Omnia tecum una perierunt gaudia nostra,
Quae tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor. 
Tu mea, tu moriens fregisti commoda, frater;
Tecum una tota est nostra sepulta anima
Cujus ego interitu tota de menthe fugavi
Haec studia, atque omnes delicias animi. 
Alloquar? audiero nunquam tua verba loquentem? 
Nunquam ego te, vita frater amabilior
Aspiciam posthac; at certe semper amabo;”

["O brother, taken from me miserable! with thee, all our joys have vanished, those joys which, in thy life, thy dear love nourished.  Dying, thou, my brother, hast destroyed all my happiness.  My whole soul is buried with thee.  Through whose death I have banished from my mind these studies, and all the delights of the mind.  Shall I address thee?  I shall never hear thy voice.  Never shall I behold thee hereafter.  O brother, dearer to me than life.  Nought remains, but assuredly I shall ever love thee.”—­Catullus, lxviii. 20; lxv.]

But let us hear a boy of sixteen speak: 

—­[In Cotton’s translation the work referred to is “those Memoirs upon the famous edict of January,” of which mention has already been made in the present edition.  The edition of 1580, however, and the Variorum edition of 1872-1900, indicate no particular work; but the edition of 1580 has it “this boy of eighteen years"(which was the age at which La Boetie wrote his “Servitude Volontaire"), speaks of “a boy of sixteen” as occurring only in the common editions, and it would seem tolerably clear that this more important work was, in fact, the production to which Montaigne refers, and that the proper reading of the text should be “sixteen years.”  What “this boy spoke” is not given by Montaigne, for the reason stated in the next following paragraph.]

“Because I have found that that work has been since brought out, and with a mischievous design, by those who aim at disturbing and changing the condition