'I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivolous and so vain'In 1572 Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and thinking. There he wrote his constantly expanding 'assays' inspired by ideas he found in the books of his library and his own experience. He discusses subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, love and friendship, ecstasy and experience. But, above all, Montaigne studied himself as a way of drawing out his own inner nature and that of men and women generally. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature, and an engaging insight into a wise Renaissance mind, which continue to give pleasure and enlightenment to modern readers.With its extensive introduction and notes, M. A. Screech's edition of Montaigne is widely regarded as the most distinguished of recent times.

The Complete Essays

1. ’80: now yet you at once infer that he is a man of little importance. It…

2. Diodorus Siculus, Historia, XII, cited Tiraquellus, De legibus connubialibus, III, §13.

3. Quintilian, Declamationes, III.

4. ’80: The rest of the country adopts as its model whatever is done, in court: those vicious fashions are born close to it. Let… ’80: our shameful parts, those monstrously padded…

5. A tercelet is a male falcon (one-third smaller than the female). Montaigne invents the word ‘quartlet’ for even smaller kinglets.

6. Plato, Laws, VII. In Ficino’s Latin translation Plato talks not of customs ‘to which God has vouchsafed’ continuance but of those to which ‘some divine Fortune’ has done so.

The Complete Essays

Page 300

Descargar Newt