'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. Etienne de La Boëtie, Vers françois, ed. Montaigne, Paris, 1572; sonnet XIV.

2. Pope Clement VII came to Marseilles to discuss heresy (and other matters) in 1533. Montaigne follows the account in the Du Bellay Mémoires.

3. Marcus Annaeus Seneca (the rhetorician, not the philosopher), Controversies, III.

4. Horace, Epistles, I, xix, 6 (cf. Erasmus, Adages, IV, III, LVIII: ‘Non est dithyrambus qui bibit aquam.’)

5. Cf. Montaigne’s dedication of his translation of Raymond Sebond to his father (given in the Appendix to the Introduction, p. lvii).

The Complete Essays

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